jeffw

Animation representing the loading cycle of the Mark I turret for the BL 15 inch Mark I These guns were used on several classes of battleships from 1915 until HMS Vanguard, the last battleship to be built for the Royal Navy, completed in 1946. Warships with the BL 15 inch Mark I gun: Queen Elizabeth-class battleships (Five ships with eight guns each) Revenge-class battleships (Five ships with eight guns each) Renown-class battlecruisers (Two ships with six guns each) HMS Hood - battlecruiser (Eight guns) Courageous-class large light cruisers (Two ships with four guns each) Erebus-class monitors (Two ships with two guns each) Marshal Ney-class monitors (Two ships with two guns each) Roberts-class monitors (Two ships with two guns each) HMS Vanguard - battleship (Eight guns in mountings taken from Courageous and Glorious) Coastal batteries Two coastal guns ("Clem" and "Jane") were mounted near Wanstone Farm in Kent in the 1940s. Five guns were mounted in Singapore at Johore battery and Buona Vista Battery in the 1930s. In the late 1920's Spain purchased four guns in single turrets. To guard Cartagena. These are still in place and the two batteries they form part of, are being renovated, and open to the Public. Production http://bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.21wmf10/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.pngTwo 15-inch guns outside the Imperial War Museum; the nearer gun from HMS Ramillies, the other from HMS Roberts. 186 guns were manufactured between 1912 and 1918.[3] They were removed from ships, refurbished, and rotated back into other ships over their lifetime. Elswick Ordnance Company, Elswick, Newcastle: 34 Armstrong Whitworth, Openshaw, Manchester: 12. William Beardmore & Company, Parkhead, Glasgow: 37 Coventry Ordnance Works, Coventry: 19 Royal Gun Factory, Woolwich: 33 Vickers, Son and Maxim, Sheffield: 49

Rail guns are easy....series of electromagnets which are switched on and off to accelerate the projectile. Interestingly Railguns could see the return of the Battleship as the capital naval ship. Effectively floating power stations with heavy armor could become the next Dreadnoughts. A railgun firing shaped mass projectiles at mach 10 would be capable of taking any aircraft or ship out easily.

First RN crew join the new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth And so it begins :) http://www.royalnavy...-Elizabeth-Crew

Of course I have a Naval bias, I'm ex-RN....what would you expect.

As for the Carrier debacle http://www.theregist...arrier_badness/

The Libyan operations would have been better served by the (ex) Harrier fleet running off the carriers rather than hyper-expensive RAF toys. You must work in the defence industry. The point I was making regarding the RAF not shooting anything down for 70 years is that all the enemy kills since have been done by aircraft flown off RN carriers. Which we have scrapped along with the Harrier fleet so we can keep our mothballed batch II Typhoons. http://www.theregist..._beaten_by_f16/ http://www.theregist...attack_the_pac/ Analysis Yesterday the UK National Audit Office published a detailed report on the current status of the infamous Eurofighter combat jet – nowadays officially known as Typhoon. We here on the Reg defence desk have always had a low opinion of the cripplingly expensive, marginally useful fighter: but even we were amazed by the new facts and figures. The Eurofighter, almost unbelievably, is turning out to be even worse value for money than we had thought. This plane is new and has just been expensively upgraded. It will be scrapped soon. Probably the most dismal figure we are given is that the RAF will actually put into service just 107 Typhoons. At the moment it has received 70: the last of the 160 planes ordered by the UK will be delivered in 2015. But, we are told, "by 2019" all the Tranche 1 jets (which were still being delivered to the RAF at the start of 2008) will be "retired" – that is, thrown away. We'll pay for 160 jets (actually we'll pay for 2321), but we'll only ever get a fleet of 107. This shows the acquisition cost of the Eurofighter/Typhoon in an even worse light than it had previously appeared, when an RAF fleet of 160 had been expected. It is now acknowledged that the development and production cost to the UK of Eurofighter will be £23bn with planned upgrades. This means that we UK taxpayers will have shelled out no less than £215m for each of our 107 jets – that's $350m at today's rates, rather more than the US taxpayers have been made to pay for each of their 185 Raptor superfighters2, almost all of which will be used operationally. And the Raptor has third-generation Stealth: the Eurofighter has no stealth features at all. The Raptor has thrust vectoring for unbeatable manoeuvrability in a dogfight: the Eurofighter doesn't. The Raptor is a hugely more sophisticated and powerful aircraft, and is actually – astonishingly – somewhat cheaper, despite the fact that it is being made in much smaller numbers than the Eurofighter! That's a really astonishingly bad bit of value for money on our part. Unfortunately the problems won't be over when the final RAF Typhoons are delivered. There are major problems with spare parts and support, unsurprisingly as the Eurofighter's manufacturing is distributed across Germany, Spain and Italy as well as the UK. The NAO auditors write: There are indications of problems with the collaborative contracts for the supply of spares and repair of equipment. There have been shortages of spares and long timescales for equipment repairs on some of these contracts ... The [2008] spares procurement contract does not include penalties for late delivery ... To compensate, the Department [the MoD] has had to take parts from some of its Typhoon aircraft to make other aircraft available to fly. Oh, those troublesome foreigners and their ramshackle collaborative arrangements! Who could possibly have been responsible for such a rubbish setup?... the Department played a central role in establishing the collaborative management structures that still exist today. As the biggest buyer, it was actually the good old MoD which had the biggest input into setting up the multinational collaboration system – and it seems to have done its usual brilliant job.Next page: RAF pilots won't be ready to do bombing missions until 2016 – by which time we'll be throwing away planes expensively modified for use as bombers.

Having worked with phased array radars while in the Navy and having had surface skimming missiles launched at me I would prefer a 'proper' carrier with 'proper' aircraft, something that could land on without having to ditch its payload would be nice and an AEW . As to the waste of space Typhoon, don't get me started. The RAF haven't shot down an enemy aircraft since 1945 and yet we still pour £Billions into aircraft that are simply going to be sold, cheap, or mothballed. Plus now they want us to spend even more £ getting it to move mud which it is wholly unsuitable for.

But it isn't the carrier that people like me who spent an interesting few months dodging Argentina aircraft without AEW platforms or the crew of the Sheffield who where on radar picket would have wanted. The fact is the RN doesn't need F35s of either variant, it needs a proper carrier with F18s & E2C....The F18 would outclass most if not all threats and be considerably cheaper than the, flawed, F35. The fact remains that we had better radar cover from a Gannet than we will ever get from a Helo.

The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies in two months. There was no single reason for this, but what had changed was a sudden convergence of technologies, combined with an increase in Allied resources. The mid-Atlantic gap that had been unreachable by aircraft was closed by long-range B-24 Liberators. At the May 1943 Trident conference, Admiral King requested General Henry H. Arnold send a squadron of ASW-configured B-24s to Newfoundland to strengthen the air escort of North Atlantic convoys. General Arnold ordered his squadron commander to engage only in "offensive" search and attack missions and not in escort-of-convoys. In June, General Arnold suggested the Navy assumes responsibility for ASW operations. Admiral King requested the Army's ASW-configured B-24s in exchange for an equal number of unmodified Navy B-24s. Agreement was reached in July and the exchange was completed in September 1943.[45] Further air cover was provided by the introduction of merchant aircraft carriers or MAC ships and later the growing numbers of American-built escort carriers. Flying primarily Grumman F4F/FM Wildcats and Grumman TBF/TBM Avengers, they sailed with the convoys and provided much needed air cover and patrols all the way across the Atlantic. Larger numbers of escorts became available, both as a result of American building programmes and the release of escorts committed to the North African landings during November and December 1942. In particular, destroyer escorts (similar British ships were known as frigates) were designed, which could be built more economically than expensive fleet destroyers and were more seaworthy than corvettes. There would not only be sufficient numbers of escorts to securely protect convoys, they could also form hunter-killer groups (often centred around escort carriers) to aggressively hunt U-boats. By spring 1943, the British had developed an effective sea-scanning radar small enough to be carried in patrol aircraft armed with airborne depth charges. Centimetric radar greatly improved interception and was undetectable by Metox. Fitted with it, RAF Coastal Command sank more U-Boats than any other Allied service in the last three years of the war.[46] During 1943, U-boat losses amounted to 258 to all causes. Of this total, 90 were sunk by Coastal Command and 51 damaged.[47] Allied air forces developed tactics and technology to make the Bay of Biscay, the main route for France-based U-boats, very dangerous. The Leigh Light enabled attacks on U-boats recharging their batteries on the surface at night. Fliegerführer Atlantik responded by providing fighter cover for U-boats moving into and returning from the Atlantic and for returning blockade runners. Nevertheless, with intelligence coming from resistance personnel in the ports themselves, the last few miles to and from port proved hazardous to many U-Boats. Dönitz's aim in this tonnage war was to sink Allied ships faster than they could be replaced; as losses fell and production rose, particularly in the United States, this became impossible.

I simple can't agree with your analysis.

I stole it from Wikipedia.....

Hein_Bloed, on 11 March 2013 - 01:37 PM, said: Thats partly right. The lack of good Destroyer and Air Support (recon). Also the streng of the fleet was to weak to make good effective naval operations. But only the pure exist of Bismarck and Tirpitz bind a lot of personal power and rescources. The heavy cruisers of the hipper class makes a good job at all. To left the carrier Zeppelin incomplett was also a big mistake. The design was not the best, but the BF 109 and also Ju 87 had be provided a real good airdefence again british Carrier Airgroups. The fight between Bismarck and the british home fleet was more ore less the only on between equal battleships. Bismarck shows a real good amour, gun fire was not enought to sunk the Bismarck. By the way, the Swortfish were to slow for the german target tracking systems, so they mist a lot of shoots :) Having fired AA 20mm and 40mm against moving drones from ships I don't think this 'Swordfish was too slow' is accurate as all guns systems of this type will have open sights available. The fact is the Bismarck (like other WW2 German Capital Ships) had poor AA defenses and very poor radar (those that had any at all). The RN had effectively stopped Battleship production in the 1930s and had move completely into the Fleet Carrier. The only seaborne threat from German was the Submarine and that was the weapon that almost brought the UK to its knees. The advent of Convoys, ASDIC & Escort Carriers meant the Battle of the Atlantic was also something German could not win in the long term.

Certainly one of the better 1930s designs to get round the Washington Treaty. German Surface Fleet was pretty ineffective in WW2 due to a lack of deep water escorts and no carriers.

The glamour getting in the way of reality again. Bismarck had poor AA weapons fit and it was slow moving aircraft the caused her demise. Have a look here http://www.combinedf...com/baddest.htm and see how she fares against the other Battleships of the era. Remember of course that the Battleship had been replaced as the Naval Capital ship by the Fleet Carrier by 1941-42.

Stole it from Wikipedia but it is very interesting....There is a youtube video somewhere of the process to fire a main gun on one of the US Battleships. I'll see if I can find it.

Sea keeping is a critical part of Warship design....

Lt Cmdr Roope, Captain of HMS Glowworm was awarded the Victoria Cross (highest military honour) as a result of the recommendation of the Hipper's Captain Heye. This is the only VC awarded as the result of am enemies recommendation.

http://en.wikipedia...._Admiral_Hipper

Admiral Hipper, the first of five ships of her class, was the lead ship of the Admiral Hipper–class of heavy cruisers which served with the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched February 1937; Admiral Hipper entered service shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1939. The ship was named after Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the German battlecruiser squadron during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and later commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet. Admiral Hipper saw a significant amount of action during the war. She led the assault on Trondheim during Operation Weserübung; while en route to her objective, she sank the British destroyer HMS Glowworm. In December 1940, she broke out into the Atlantic Ocean to operate against Allied merchant shipping, though this operation ended without significant success. In February 1941, Admiral Hipper sortied again, sinking several merchant vessels before eventually returning to Germany via the Denmark Strait. The ship was then transferred to northern Norway to participate in operations against convoys to the Soviet Union, culminating in the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942, where she was damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers HMS Sheffield and HMS Jamaica. Enraged by the defeat at the battle, Adolf Hitler ordered the majority of the surface warships scrapped, though Admiral Karl Dönitz was able to convince Hitler to retain the surface fleet. As a result, Admiral Hipper was returned to Germany and decommissioned for repairs. The ship was never restored to operational status, however, and on 3 May 1945, Royal Air Force bombers severely damaged her while she was in Kiel. Her crew scuttled the ship at her moorings, and in July 1945, she was raised and towed to Heikendorfer Bay. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1948–1952; her bell resides in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Operation Weserübung Following her return from the North Sea sortie, Admiral Hipper was assigned to the forces tasked with the invasion of Norway, codenamed Operation Weserübung.[8] The ship was assigned as the flagship of Group 2, along with the destroyers Paul Jakobi, Theodor Riedel, Friedrich Eckoldt, and Bruno Heinemann. KzS Heye was given command of Group 2 during the operation.[10] The five ships carried a total of 1,700 Wehrmacht mountain troops, whose objective was the port of Trondheim; the ships loaded the troops in Cuxhaven.[8][11] The ships steamed to the Schillig roadstead outside Wilhelmshaven, where they joined Group 1, consisting of ten destroyers, and the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were assigned to cover Groups 1 and 2. The ships steamed out of the roadstead at midnight on the night of 6–7 April.[12] While steaming off the Norwegian coast, Admiral Hipper was ordered to divert course to locate the destroyer Bernd von Arnim, which had fallen behind Group 1. In the mist, the destroyer encountered the British destroyer HMS Glowworm; the two destroyers engaged each other until Bernd von Arnim's commander requested assistance from Admiral Hipper.[13] Upon arriving on the scene, Admiral Hipper was initially misidentified by Glowworm to be a friendly vessel, which allowed the German ship to close the distance and fire first. Admiral Hipper rained fire on Glowworm, scoring several hits. Glowworm attempted to flee, but when it became apparent she could not break away from the pursuing cruiser, she turned toward Admiral Hipper and fired a spread of torpedoes, all of which missed. The British destroyer scored one hit on Admiral Hipper's starboard bow before a rudder malfunction set the ship on a collision course with the German cruiser.[14] The collision with Glowworm tore off a 40-meter (130 ft) section of Admiral Hipper's armored belt on the starboard side, as well as the ship's starboard torpedo launcher.[15] Minor flooding caused a four degree list to starboard, though the ship was able to continue with the mission.[13] Glowworm's boilers exploded shortly after the collision, causing her to sink quickly. Forty survivors were picked up by the German ship.[8] Admiral Hipper then resumed course toward Trondheim.[14] The British destroyer had survived long enough to send a wireless message to the Royal Navy headquarters, which allowed the battlecruiser Renown time to move into position to engage Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, though the German battleships used their superior speed to break off contact.[16] After arriving off Trondheim, Admiral Hipper successfully passed herself off as a British warship long enough to steam past the Norwegian coastal artillery batteries. The ship entered the harbor and docked shortly before 05:30 to debark the mountain troops. After the ground troops seized control of the coastal batteries, the ship left Trondheim, bound for Germany. She was escorted by Friedrich Eckoldt; she reached Wilhelmshaven on 12 April, and went into drydock. The dockyard workers discovered the ship had been damaged more severely by the collision with Glowworm than had previously been thought. Nevertheless, repairs were completed in the span of two weeks.[14] Admiral Marschall organized a mission to seize Harstad in early June 1940; Admiral Hipper, the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and four destroyers were tasked with the operation.[14] The ships departed on 4 June, and while en route, Admiral Hipper encountered and sank the empty troopship Orama on 9 June.[17] Before they reached Harstad, the Germans learned that the Allies had already abandoned the port. Marschall's squadron was then tasked with intercepting an Allied convoy that was reported to be in the area. The ships failed to find the convoy, and returned to Trondheim to refuel.[8] On 13 June, the ship's anti-aircraft gunners shot down an attacking British bomber.[8] On 25 July, Admiral Hipper steamed out on a commerce raiding patrol in the area between Spitzbergen and Tromsø; the cruise lasted until 9 August.[18] While on the patrol, Admiral Hipper encountered the Finnish freighter Ester Thorden, which was found to be carrying 1.75 t (1.72 long tons; 1.93 short tons) of gold. The ship was seized and sent to occupied Norway with a prize crew.[19] In December 1942, convoy traffic to the Soviet Union resumed. Großadmiral Erich Raeder, the commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine, ordered a plan, Operation Regenbogen, to use the available surface units in Norway to launch an attack on the convoys. The first convoy of the month, JW 51A, passed to the Soviet Union without incident. The second, however, convoy JW 51B, were spotted by the submarine U-354 south of Bear Island. Raeder ordered the forces assigned to Operation Regenbogen into action.[37] Admiral Hipper, again served as Kummetz's flagship; the squadron comprised Lützow and the destroyers Friederich Eckoldt, Richard Beitzen, Theodor Riedel, Z29, Z30, and Z31.[38] The force left Altafjord at 18:00 on 30 December, under orders to avoid confrontation with even an equal opponent.[39] Kummetz's plan was to divide his force in half; he would take Admiral Hipper and three destroyers north of the convoy to attack it and draw away the escorts. Lützow and the remaining three destroyers would then attack the undefended convoy from the south. At 09:15 on the 31st, the British destroyer Obdurate spotted the three destroyers screening for Admiral Hipper; the Germans opened fire first. Four of the other five destroyers escorting the convoy rushed to join the fight, while Achates laid a smoke screen to cover the convoy. Admiral Hipper fired several salvos at Achates, raining shell splinters on the destroyer that severed steam lines and reduced her speed to 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph). Kummetz then turned back north to draw the destroyers away. Captain Robert Sherbrooke, the British escort commander, left two destroyers to cover the convoy while he took the remaining four to pursue Admiral Hipper.[39] Rear Admiral Robert Burnett's Force R, centered on the cruisers Sheffield and Jamaica, standing by in distant support of the Allied convoy,[37] raced to the scene. The cruisers engaged Admiral Hipper, which had been firing to port at the destroyer Obedient. Burnett's ships approached from Admiral Hipper's starboard side and achieved complete surprise.[40] In the initial series of salvos from the British cruisers, Admiral Hipper was hit three times.[38] One of the hits damaged the ship's propulsion system; the No. 3 boiler filled with a mix of oil and water, which forced the crew to turn off the starboard turbine engine. This reduced her speed to 23 kn (43 km/h; 26 mph). The other two hits started a fire in her aircraft hangar. She fired a single salvo at the cruisers before turning toward them, her escorting destroyers screening her with smoke.[41] After emerging from the smoke screen, Hipper was again engaged by Burnett's cruisers. Owing to the uncertainty over the condition of his flagship and the ferocity of the British defense, Kummetz issued the following order at 10:37: "Break off action and retire to the west."[42] Mistakenly identifying Sheffield as Admiral Hipper, the destroyer Friederich Eckoldt approached too closely and was sunk.[43] Meanwhile, Lützow closed to within 3 nmi (5.6 km; 3.5 mi) of the convoy, but due to poor visibility, she held her fire. She then received Kummetz's order, and turned west to rendezvous with Admiral Hipper. Lützow inadvertently came alongside Sheffield and Jamaica, and after identifying them as hostile, engaged them. The British cruisers turned toward Lützow and came under fire from both German cruisers. Admiral Hipper's firing was more accurate and quickly straddled Sheffield, though the British cruiser escaped unscathed. Burnett quickly decided to withdraw in the face of superior German firepower; his ships were armed with 6 in (150 mm) guns, while Admiral Hipper and Lützow carried 20.3 cm (8.0 in) and 28 cm (11 in) guns, respectively.[44] Based on the order issued at the outset of the operation to avoid action with a force equal in strength to his own, poor visibility, and the damage to his flagship, Kummetz decided to abort the attack. In the course of the battle, the British destroyer Achates was sunk by the damage inflicted by Admiral Hipper. The Germans also sank the minesweeper Bramble and damaged the destroyers Onslow, Obedient, and Obdurate. In return, the British sank Friederich Eckoldt and damaged Admiral Hipper, and forced the Germans to abandon the attack on the convoy.[38] In the aftermath of the failed operation, a furious Hitler proclaimed that the Kriegsmarine's surface forces would be paid off and dismantled, and their guns used to reinforce the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall. Admiral Karl Dönitz, Raeder's successor, convinced Hitler to retain the surface fleet, however.[45] After returning to Altafjord, emergency repairs to Admiral Hipper were effected, which allowed her to return to Bogen Bay on 23 January 1943.[46] That day, Admiral Hipper, Köln, and the destroyer Richard Beitzen left the Altafjord to return to Germany. The three ships stopped in Narvik on 25 January, and in Trondheim from 30 January to 2 February.[47] After resuming the voyage south, the ships searched for Norwegian blockade runners in the Skagerrak on 6 February before putting into port at Kiel on 8 February.[48] On 28 February, the ship was decommissioned in accordance with Hitler's decree.[46]

Don't worry....they will be in the European Union soon....just like Greece !

The Kirovs are very interesting ships. They would need to work with land based aircraft to be effective against the US carrier groups as the USSR didn't have a large scale (or effective) carrier fleet. They are pretty old tech now though.

HMS Agincourt under power I remember the Matapan in Portsmouth Harbour when we used to go fishing. She had been converted to a Sonar trials ship.

Interesting subject. The propulsion diagram seems to come from a RN Type 45 Destroyer (Daring Class) and not the DDG-1000.

Interesting stuff.