Historynerd

Random fact: General of the Genio Navale (the Regia Marina's corps of engineers, more or less) Umberto Pugliese was a notorious naval engineer, known especially for having designed the Littorio-class battleships and the anti-torpedo underwater system that bears his name. He was also a Jew; this meant that when in 1938 the racial laws were emanated by the Italian government, he had to leave the service. However, after the "Taranto night" (in which three battleship were torpedoed by British aircrafts), who did they turn to to collaborate in the salvage operations? Yep, to him; who said yes, on the only condition that he had to be allowed to wear his uniform. Really, dictatorships have no shame...

Ok, I'm putting here an abstract from "I sette minuti di Punta Stilo, authored by Enrico Cernuschi (1998); I think there are several interesting facts that give an useful insight on issues like the well-known dispersion of the high calibre guns of the Italian battleships and the fire-control philosophy. In the early 1930s, given the ever-increasing distance at which it was possible to open fire, there was the question on how this would influence the fire-control doctrine; because at increasing distances the chances of missing the target, it was seen that concentrating the salvo too much wouldn't be beneficial, also because the target could execute small turns to throw off the aim. To execute an effective fire at distance, there were three alternatives: Raising the longitudinal dispersion, to enlarge the area where the shot would fell and forbidding the enemy of getting out of it; Lessening the time it took for the shells to reach the target, by heightening the muzzle velocity; Leaving the current dispersion unaltered, instead augmenting the error in the cinematic correction calculations, to correct for the enemy maneuver. (Another possibility would have been to adopt the "concentration fire" doctrine, having more ships firing on one target, but this was frowned upon by the Regia Marina; Admiral Da Zara was a follower of this doctrine and, during Operation Harpoon, ordered it used against the enemy, but it's difficult to give a definite judgement on its effectiveness compared to the mainstream posture.) After the results obtained in long-range firing trials with the not-yet modernized battleships (so with the old 305/46 guns of the Cavour and Duilio-classes), the Regia Marina decided to stick with the first solution, which had the effect of having pretty much all the salvoes "straddling" the enemy, but having a very low percentage of hits per salvo. The Royal Navy followed the third alternative, keeping its salvoes well concentrated and therefore a good percentage of hits per salvo, but a low percentage of straddles; this was also motivated by the fact that, contrary to the Italian equipment, British fire-control systems could not easily cope with sudden turns and maneuvers by the enemy, thus experiencing a crisis of some minutes before the data could be corrected again. However, this whole matter was further complicated by the experience of the "new-2 320/44 of the modernized battleships (obtained by re-boring the 305/46), which notoriously suffered from increased longitudinal dispersions compared to their previous state. Anyway, there is an interesting detail about the fire discipline experienced on the Italian battleships during the battle of Punta Stilo (the only one where Italian and British battleships fired at one another): each battleship divided its fire in "groups" (to avoid firing broadsides, always stressful for a ship if not brand new), namely three groups formed respectively by the I, II and III, and IV turrets (the Italian tradition being to assign roman numerals to each turret from the bow, rather than names or letters). The British reports always talk of the longitudinal dispersions of the Italian fire; however, this was in part voluntary, since the I and IV turrets fired initially with their cursor shifted (on opposite directions, of course) by 7 thousandths relative to the data given by the fire director, which was instead followed without alterations by the central group (and this is said as being part of the official instructions). This onboard the Cesare, but I have little doubt that the Cavour was doing likewise. I believe this is relatively important, when discussing such well-known issues. Don't you think?

IRL they shot only at planes; they were just an AA gun, on the Littorio-class battleships the secondary gun was what in game is called OTO 152mm triple mount.

What I really don't get is why they put the 90mm in the secondary guns... have historians howled for years at the choice of the KM and the RM to have separate secondary and anti-air guns for nothing?

Well, it seems that people aren't that worried about that...

Ah, I see. So that's what the Pugliese does... it raises the chance that the enemy will hit your ship.

Oh, they said that? Wonderful...

Out of relevancy, I'd say.

I was thinking precisely about that, in fact.

If you want to be named the Troll amongst Trolls, sure...

I hate to be a pain, but it's actually 90mm; we Italians used millimeters for guns. Is it because of the +1 evasion of the 12.7cm? What is evasion anyway? Maneuverability?

Right, because this paper ship is something that totally doesn't come from a mind going too high to bother with practical things.

It will happen after HMS Incomparable will arrive.

Hooray for historical accuracy... giving destroyers something that would decidedly increase their performance as torpedo craft, just because.

If I'm not wrong, these were used by submarines, which aren't in the game. Bummer.

OP already stated that he knows he might be wrong, so I don't need to repeat it... I just want to say that this coincides with my experience. I feel that most of the times in numerically unbalanced matches, the victory goes to the numerically superior team. I repeat, this might be a wrong impression.

Well, I guess that this leaves out only the Pugliese bulkhead... but we can't have everything that we want. This is already better than I expected.

At least there is someone who has reminded everyone that perhaps one of the reasons that the IJN destroyer's AA isn't that impressive is the relatively mediocre quality of the most part of their AA guns. The 25 mm AA gun (which is not properly a Hotchkiss, but a derivative from that gun) is more or less universally considered a mediocre weapon at best; unfortunately, it was also the most widespread, so there's one reason why the IJN vessels weren't that impressive when fighting off aircrafts.

I see, thanks for the answer. Wait a second, but I thought that there was just the "Kai" version of the pasta gun...

Guys, after starting the flame war that raged a few pages back, I'm reluctant to pop up again, but I hope that if I ask something more, while stating that I don't want to cause another raeg battle or something, it will be alright. I've heard that there is a hidden bonus for mounting a ship's historical main armament on it, which improves their stats. Namely, I've heard about the 381mm/50, which someone claims that does not suffer from a huge number of misses when fitted on Littorio/Italia and Roma. Is this true? Or is it just a rumour? Does anybody have some experience with these ships fitted with the gun?

Yup, Lady Lex in all her boredom... I guess that for humanity that was "Victory through air power"... So, are we going to see what these kind of Fog vessels do beside being bored or not?

Hey, I found the perfect soundtrack for this!

In a carrier, aircrafts attacking his own ship? It's the only thing that seems possible to me...

The more guns you have means that you must have more turrets; it therefore means that you have to enlarge the magazine area, which means that you have to protect it, increasing the displacement. Even gun and naval designer were human being, and moreover they were constrained by a number of factors, mainly budgetary costraints; it's not simple to build something like a battleship, especially if you have to try out what you plan on putting in before beginning to build it. That means lots and lots of money.

This is what I get for trying to point out to a little known fact... After opening a topic in the forums (not very successfully, you can find it here: http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/12635-longest-hits-scored-from-a-moving-warship-against-a-moving-target/), I decided that the WoWs subreddit would be interested in knowing about the Raimondo Montecuccoli's record hit, rivalling the ones scored by the Warspite and the Scharnhorst. This was the rather dismal result... shoulda known better.