Historynerd

It must be the Warspite. 'Cause that ship pops up bloody everywhere! No disrespect, but why is it always the same ships that come out? What about a little variety and a little imagination? The RN had plenty of ships whose career is interesting enough, and that could make nice additions!

When they come, I pretend to see the upgraded Italian captains with the Medaglia d'Oro!

No fair. They first have to introduce one Italian carrier and an Italian sub! Then they can do whatever they want.

Is that captain already decorated with the Legion d'Honneur? Now that I think of it... do other nation's captains have medals as well?

If she's Prince of Wales, then I want Littorio and Roma casually pointing out how, despite their class taking flak for apparently having an inadequate underwater defense, it was her that came out the worst when hit right in the back! ...Oh... wait... ...This sounds totally wrong, doesn't it? XD XD XD

This was one of the critical flaws of the Italian gun and gunfire systems, among others. In the main book for Italian naval guns, it is said that the electrical engines used to move the guns were often of insufficient power, in terms of reaction times, and were delicate and sometimes they caused some imperfections in small adjustements.

Interesting discussion about firing procedures and theories. Maybe I can add my two cents. Putting them under spoilers so who wants to read it can do it, and the other can carry on. Sorry for contributing to the OT...

True that. Want me to scan the article and send it to you? We might find something useful in that "what-if" design. I might be wrong, but they kind of look like something roughly comparable to the British C-class cruisers, more or less. They're in that class, anyway.

Bad news, I'm afraid... The article on Storia Militare is not about the Ciano-class (besides, if I had some brain cells active when I pointed to this upcoming article, I might've thought that they would have been light cruisers rather than scouts...), but about three designs of esploratori oceanici (oceanic scouts) designed after the Great War, and sponsored by Admiral Thaon di Revel. Sorry for the unjustified interest, this is a bad derp on my part!

If you find Tirpitz's AA to be troublesome, prepare to spill lots of tears when a Littorio-class BB will come around... I must say I'm personally partial to this:

I never looked into it, but I wonder if any comparable BB would have had the deck armor to stop the Fritz X that sank the Roma, or would have suffered a similar fate. The KGV included.

As far as I know, the Aquila was supposed to be armed with eight 135 mm guns (in single DP mounts, that however never materialized), twelve 65 mm AA guns (an interesting weapon in the medium range, I guess) and one hundred thirty-two 20 mm MGs. Is this what you meant?

Not to pat myself in the back, but I made a topic about it here. Turns out that, while not perfect, it didn't turn out so bad, in respect to the systems other nations used. And that several people who talked about it should have checked their facts a bit better.

We'll see when, either as a premium or as a regular, a Littorio-class comes around, how tough a Bismarck is against it.

The Lexington is weak in protection, but packs considerable punch. And all those classes are quite the pain in the rear to balance out. I don't know, let's wait and see. Also because, if Deamon93 is to be trusted, the Italian BB tree will most likely feature a somewhat similar design at Tier VII...

And the other BBs' guns will slice through hers. Not to mention that some 203 mm guns might still punch through at close range... It might work; I'm just a bit dubious.

Is the Strasbourg good for Tier VII? Her belt armor goes from 225 to 283 mm, while her bulkheads and all-around turrets and barbettes are strengthened, too. Is it enough to deal with higher-tiered opponents?

Only one choice for that: the Aquila. True, there was another carrier being built, but she was more like a big escort carrier rather than a fleet carrier.

If the plane is Italian, why wouldn't be Italian the carrier as well?

Heeey, that's very interesting! In Italy, because of the Red Tent and all for that, that name had its popularity. There was a big and heavy steam locomotive that wasn't the railwaymen's favorite, and they called it "Krassin" because they totally felt that it "broke the rails".

So... looks like I'll have to be the necromancer, at least to a degree... Looks like there's a new Italian plane around. And that many see it as announcing the arrival of an Italian carrier. Thoughts?

The only premium cruiser (or ship, in a general sense) that I will consider buying is an Italian one. Where are you, Pola, Montecuccoli?

It's curious to notice that on 28 March 1941 the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto suffered very similar damage, in causes and effects. An air-dropped torpedo tore away one of the outer propellers and disabled the near internal one. Still, Erminio Bagnasco and Augusto De Toro opine that overall the Italian battleship came out on top in regards to durability, as most of its generators kept working, and its crew managed with strenuous efforts to prevent any serious water infiltration in the machinery spaces (of course, it doesn't mean that in the PoW's situation the Vittorio Veneto would've survived, just that it survived this punch a little better).

Maybe I just don't get it, but given that a torpedo seldom ran just below the surface, hitting the belt of a battleship (even its lower edge) must have been possible only if there were some serious listing going on. In that case, "serious flooding" would be already underway, given that the first thing one does if the ship begins to list is to counterbalance it on the other side. But this might be the reason why Friedman mentioned (in his U.S. Battleships: An illustrated design history) why it was decided early on that conventional armor was just not the right answer to torpedoes, and in some cases might have been even more dangerous than helpful (again, if I'm not mixing things up).

These images were taken after the ship had capsized, had stayed in the mud for months, then it had been righted and refloated (which I think involved a good deal of scraping the seafloor and the likes). Isn't there a good chance that some plates fell over because of any of these causes? I found this: It talks of cracked plates, and before I read that the shallow depth might have caused resonance waves that enhanced the forces of the explosion. It looks like that the West Virginia too took some torpedoes in the belt; I found these images: The belt looks warped, but not pierced.