Historynerd

Well, at least it shows that the problem of a DP gun was felt, and not completey ignored... it was just discussed far too late, considering the period and the available resources. Besides, even the Japanese ended up with a DP gun that cannot be considered successful, as the 12.7 cm/50 Type 3 ended up having too slow turn and elevation rates.

I disagree; destroyers had multiple roles, and defending major warships against submarines was just one of them. How about USS Melvin torpedoing the Fuso during the battle of Surigao Strait? It's debated wheter the battleship broke in two or sank in one piece, but it's accepted that it was a torpedo from the USN destroyer that ultimately sent it to the bottom.

If I'm not mistaken, HMS Renown and HMS Repulse were nicknamed Refit and Repair because of their many visits to the dockyard. Also, Nelson and Rodney were known as Nelsol and Rodnol, because of their odd shape that made them look like oil tankers!

Keep in mind that the 203 mm guns have much better penetration compared to the 152 mm guns, if one uses AP a lot.

And here come the carriers! Nice work! I was looking a little back, and I realized I had not shared the info about the DP 120 mm guns discussed in the article about the 1939 Naval Programme, those that should have been fitted to the development of the Soldati-class. I'll remedy now. Apparently there were attempts and studies about DP mounts, focusing on the 120mm caliber (which was widespread on all destroyers, so it was a logical move); they apparently ended with some experimental 120/46 batteries which turned out to be failures, and these guns ended up as shore batteries near the Strait of Messina. This problem returned to prominence during the discussion about the 1939 Naval Programme, which accounted for replicas of the Soldati-class destroyers armed with "anti-aircraft weaponry". The guns were to be positioned two fore and two aft in four single turrets, then it was decided to add one amidships that could also fire star shells. The guns per se were to be studied by the Ansaldo, and it was preventivated that they would be semiautomatic and that they would have to be fitted on the same pre-stabilyzed mountings of the 90 mm AA gun fitted on the newest battleship classes (both modern and modernized). In the end, two solutions were proposed: 120/34: 34 calibers length, muzzle velocity 750 m/s, maximum range more or less 15'000 m, ceiling at a 75° angle more or less 8'800 m 120/40: 40 calibers length, muzzle velocity 840 m/s, '' '' '' '' '' 17'000 m, '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' 9'980 m The Navy felt that the most adequate gun would have been the longer one; however, while the shorter one could have used the normal mounting of the 90 mm gun with few modifications, the longer one, firing a longer charge, would have required extensive modifications which would have raised the weights of the same. In any case, by the end of 1939 it was decided to keep up the work on both solutions, with the 120/34 rendered as performant as possible and the 120/40 as lightened as it could be. In the end, as the same units of the Programme, nothing came out of these studies; however, given the troubles that the 90 mm gun mountings suffered from (because of insufficient isolation from the water, and because of the perhaps too ambitious nature of the mountings themselves), it is likely that, had these guns been built, they would have likewise suffered from the same kind of issues.

Of course; sorry if it seemed like I was too blunt.

Why not use the battleship symbol? Because like this it seems that battlecruisers in-game are going to be considered cruisers, which conflicts with the current IJN battleship line.

Why are the battlecruisers considered cruisers? We already have (with the IJN) plenty of examples of battlecruisers being considered part of the battleship lineage, and I see no reason not to do this in the German line, too.

I don't agree; besides, doing this heightens the chance that you'll get a friendly with your torpedo salvo.

It's not quite the same thing, but I'll give it a try. In the Regia Marina at least a few people (including Admiral Alberto Da Zara) called the four modernized battleships of the Cavour and Duilio classes "Voronoff" (but I think it was hardly a compliment). The nickname came from Serge Voronoff, a Russian doctor who lived in France (pretty near to the Italian border, where I live) and who gained notoriety for being able to rejuvenate people thanks to... well, certain odd surgical ways. Look it up for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Voronoff

My mistake, I should have said major fleet engagements.

Well, what do you know. I admit I wasn't aware that a ship that participated in the Gallipoli campaign, let alone one such as this, still survived to this day, to my shame. Really interesting, thank you!

Good reasoning. Except that it doesn't answer the question: why do all of this, in a game based upon major surface engagements, in which submarines played no integral part?

You're welcome.

Here is something, I hope it can be helpful:

Are you asking for a guide about using torpedoes from destroyers or from carrier aircrafts?

On one hand, it's true that destroyers perform better in the game in the torpedo attack role than in IRL, for balance reasons. Just the restricted area for the secondary guns is enough to make the deal way smoother for them than it was historically. On the other hand, however, at the beginning of the submarine era pretty much everyone tried (at least to a degree) to use submarines as part of the battlefleet, but it didn't work out. Given that this game is based on fleet-vs-fleet (or at the very least squadron-vs-squadron) engagements, submarines have no place here. This is my opinion.

One of the reasons why Italian shipbuilding was considered with interest for a long period of time!

I'd give the Averof more credit for her role in the First Balkan War, in which she was critical in the allies' victory by defeating the Ottoman fleet pretty much all by herself, twice. As I already said, her role in both WWI and WWII was minimal, and in the latter she was very lucky not to meet any German bomber squadron, because she wouldn't have lasted long.

Oh, right; forgot about that one. I was actually referring to the Vasilefs Costantinos, but again it seems I was mistaken, because some work had already been done when the war interrupted everything.

Well, I can't blame them; work on them never reached further than paper study, so few people knew what to expect. And after the war everyone said that they were to follow in the footsteps of the Condottieri. There have been things like this, before someone with patience dug out documents that proved otherwise.

Don't expect too much, however; the Hellenic Navy had the Georgios Averof, which survived WWII just because no aircraft ever met it, a few destroyers, a dreadnought battleship that was never built, and that's it. Barely enough for some spots in a mixed tree.

Couldn't the Ciano design (on which I said earlier that it seems they weren't after all improved replicas of the Abruzzi but different designs) be a premium, somehow?

Well, to be honest I think it was a sensible move to rebuild the two Cavours, because they could take on pretty much all the French battleships, perhaps even the Dunkerque and the Strasbourg with some luck; rebuilding the two Duilios proved to be a mistake, given that they cost decidedly more, and they stood in the way of a speedy construction and fitting out of the four Littorios. I'm not sure if it would have been possible to put guns of a higher caliber than the 203 mm on a single cradle... Anyway, I just wanted to say that perhaps these 320 mm guns were just a little bit better than what normally claimed, and that perhaps we need to look at the fire discipline to find out some of the reasons why Italian gunfire tended to be rather ineffective. Moreover, in the same booklet it says that Admiral Campioni himself after the battle pointed out that it would've been better to fire from the beginning at the maximum rate sustainable, instead of trying to find the right bearing first, both for the battleships and especially for the two Trento-class heavy cruisers, which apparently fired at a very desultory rate. EDIT: Scratch the doubt about common cradles for high calibre guns; they could do them, or at least the French could.

Well, I meant to say that at least to a degree the big openings of the Italian salvoes noticed by the British were intentional. But it's nonetheless a fact that the dispersion of these guns was relatively high, surely higher than the older 305mm guns (which I don't think were exceptional weapons). However, I don't see them being as bad as those relative to the 203mm guns, because at least they had a separate cradle for each gun; while single cradle solutions turned out everywhere (not just in Italy) to warrant for some bad dispersion.