SES's Position on Brit Magazine Explosions

Von der Tann

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Good question. Agincourt firing a broadside was, according to eyewitnesses, a sight like "a battlecruiser blowing up". Now imagine it actually blowing up - perhaps something Industrial Light & Magic could get an award for :p.
 

Bullethead

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Only one little thing to add, perhaps: German propellant charges were encased in metal, while the British kept theirs in silken bags - makes a much quicker fire.
Actually, for German guns of 28cm and above, the charge was too big to handle in 1 piece, so these guns had part of the charge (the amount varied by gun but averaged about 1/3 of the total) in silk bags just like the Brits. This was called the fore charge because it was ahead of the main charge in the cartridge case. These fore charges were obviously more likely to ignite than the main charges in the cartridge cases. However, even the main charges just had cardboard or something similarly flammable and flimsy over the front end, so they were also somewhat vulnerable to flash.

Campbell says how many of each type were involved in the various German propellant fires. Usually, it was more fore charges than main charges. IOW, when the Germans had big fires involving way more propellant than Lion's Q turret, at least 1/2 and often a bit more of it had been in silk bags, just like Brit propellant. Thus, the use of cartridges really didn't make the German big gun ammo system any less prone to burn. Where the cartridges made a difference was for the 2ndary guns. Most Brit capital ship 2ndary batteries were BL, but all the Germans were QF.

I watched a Discovery Channel documentary on Jutland where among other things, they measured crudely the rate of propogation of cordite flash. Now I do not remember if they had WWI cordite. As I remember they came up with a burn rate of 600ft/sec in a tube. That seems awfully fast to me in comparison to black powder which burns at 560-2000 ft/sec when confined.
I saw that show. They didn't have WW1 cordite, they had modern arty propellant, which is way better behaved. It's very similar to WW1/2 German naval propellant. It burns like crazy, but not as fast as cordite.

I saw another show where they went down to Majestic's wreck off Gallipoli and brought up some genuine WW1 Brit cordite. The wreck is covered with it from the ship capsizing and spilling charges all over, and the silk bags rotting away. Anyway, this stuff had been immersed in shallow sea water for about 90 years. It still ignited very easily and burned with a bright white flame that threw huge sparks all over, but it didn't burn very fast. It was like the guy was holding a giant holiday sparkler. He had to toss it over the side in self defense, and it continued to burn underwater as it sank. I've often wondered how it would have gone if he'd still been directly over the wreck :p Or what would have happened if he'd let it dry out for a couple of days before lighting it.

Question - will a ship like HMS Agincourt with 7 twin turrets be more likely to suffer a turret hit (and hence the following KABOOM if it penetrates) than a ship with fewer turrets? Assume armor is the same. I've often thought Agincourt was a multiple magazine explosion just waiting to happen.
Yeah, I'd say Agincourt's more likely than anything else to get hit in a turret. OTOH, she's got 12" turret armor instead of the usual Brit standard of 11", so it's something of a trade-off. Of course, her value is somewhat limited due to lacking a director and the fact that the rest of her is armored no better than Lion.
 
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Double Whisky

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Yeah, I'd say Agincourt's more likely than anything else to get hit in a turret.
You are right.
In the matter of fact I think they were three major factors influencing the safety of the ship against the magazine explosions:
1. Use of proper propeelant and explosive materials;
2. Proper design of turrets and magazines (including proper damage control features);
3. Limiting the number of the turrets within reason.
 

Double Whisky

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Obviously, if Agincourt and Erin don't have directors, then Westfalen and Rheinland don't, either. None of them are of much use at long range.
British gunnery control systems, based on Dreyer tables were well in advance of the German ones, as demonstrated by the proportion of main calibre hits under manœuvre and were fitted to the majority of British capital ships by May, 1916. The Royal Navy used centralised fire control systems on their capital ships, directed from a point high up on the ship where fall of shells could best be seen, utilising a director sight for both training and elevating the guns. This had been installed on ships progressively as the war went on because of its demonstrated advantages, and was installed on the main guns of all but two of the Grand Fleet's capital ships. The German battlecruisers controlled the fire of turrets using a training-only director which also did not fire the guns at once. The rest of the German capital ships were without this innovation.

The text above is from Wiki (regards for TBR :)) article (Battle of Jutland).

As I'm still out of home I have no access to my books, but as I remember it was AFTER the battle of Jutland, when Germans replaced the masts on most of they ships by heavier models to put directing equipement in place.
The full fire control suites (Richtungsweiser) were installed on most German BB's as late as 1917 -1918. So it was probably not only the case of Westfalen and Rheinland, I suppose... :)
May be our German friends are able to help with clarifying this problem. :)
 
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Bullethead

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As I'm still out of home I have no access to my books, but as I remember it was AFTER the battle of Jutland, when Germans replaced the masts on most of they ships by heavier models to put directing equipement in place.
I think most of the confusion comes from different terminologies used to describe the various systems and their pieces. Whatever you want to call it, in 1916 the Germans had some fancy fire control equipment in most of their ships that allowed them to shoot at long range at least as well as, and arguably somewhat better than, the Brits. Westfalen and Rheinland didn't have this.

Technically, the German equipment wasn't as fancy as the Brit stuff in terms of remote control and firing, nor did they have as much stuff up in the masts. However, it obviously worked quite well enough, and/or the Germans were just very good at using it, based on the results.
 

Double Whisky

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Technically, the German equipment wasn't as fancy as the Brit stuff in terms of remote control and firing, nor did they have as much stuff up in the masts. However, it obviously worked quite well enough, and/or the Germans were just very good at using it, based on the results.
Hi, Snowman :D
I'm not so sure, because of two factors:
First - performance of German BB's was not so splendid in battle of Jutland and later in battle in Gulf of Riga (I'm talking about hard data - not about different speculations :)).
Second - If the equipement was good enough, why Germans invested a lot of money, work and material in the time of war, with a lot of other needs, to put the Richtungsweisern on eight BB's (if I do remember correctly) and somewhat simplified versions on other nine or ten BB's? :)
Best regards - keep the head over the snow :D
DW
 
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Rhetor

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Hi, Snowman :D
I'm not so sure, because of two factors:
First - performance of German BB's was not so splendid in battle of Jutland and later in battle in Gulf of Riga (I'm talking about hard data - not about different speculations :)).
Second - If the equipement was good enough, why Germans invested a lot of money, work and material in the time of war, with a lot of other needs, to put the Richtungsweiseren on eight BB's (if I do remember correctly) and somewhat simplified versions on other nine or ten BB's? :)
Best regards - keep the head over the snow :D
DW
Or - 3. if the equipment wasn't good enough, what the heck were German battlecruisers using? What were Spee's gunners using?

If someone is really good at his job, he will excell even with less-then-vintage equipment.
 

Double Whisky

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Or - 3. if the equipment wasn't good enough, what the heck were German battlecruisers using? What were Spee's gunners using?

If someone is really good at his job, he will excell even with less-then-vintage equipment.

Still - the German BC's were equipped with directors (at least training directors) before Jutland. Their performance was about 30 % better than this of BB's...
 

Bullethead

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Still - the German BC's were equipped with directors (at least training directors) before Jutland. Their performance was about 30 % better than this of BB's...
As I said, this is a difference in terminology. Some folks use "director" to mean the full system with remote firing, remote laying, the works. Under this definition, the Germans never had "directors" in any WW1 ships. Some folks, OTOH, use "director" to mean any centralized system involving some sort of computer that developed a fire control solution from a wide variety of inputs and one way or another determined which way the guns needed to point and got that info to them. Under this definition, all but 2 German capital ships and their newer CLs had "directors".

You and I have already argued about the relative accuracy of German BBs vs. BCs, but I'll repeat it for the record. IMHO, there's no reason to suppose the BBs would have shot any worse than the BCs under the same conditions, because they apparently had the same equipment and training. However, at Jutland, the BBs most definitely did NOT have the same conditions as the BCs, so you can't just compare the total hit percentages directly.
 

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I'm begining to get a bit woried here, from what i've been reading this game is being set up so the germans have the posibility of winning a full fleet engagement !!!
Can someone enlighten me is this a sim or a rts :angry: or have i just been reading the wrong books ????
 

AJ.Lintern

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Wouldn't be much of a game if the RN won all the time... (Got to give Jonny Foreigner a chance old boy, just wouldn't be cricket otherwise, what? :D)
 

Haida

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Let's wait for the game to come out and play a few scenarios before passing judgement. There has to be a balance between realism and gameplay. If the High Seas Fleet always got their butt kicked it wouldn't be much fun. In the game as in life, luck should play a role.
 

Rhetor

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so the germans have the posibility of winning a full fleet engagement !!!
Can someone enlighten me is this a sim or a rts :angry: or have i just been reading the wrong books ????
If you judge the winning possibilities by numbers only, I would advise to look up the name of some guy who apparently did not think that numbers are decisive, namely "Horatio Nelson".
 

seasalt

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Let's wait for the game to come out and play a few scenarios before passing judgement. There has to be a balance between realism and gameplay. If the High Seas Fleet always got their butt kicked it wouldn't be much fun. In the game as in life, luck should play a role.
I totally understand there have to be trade offs to make a playable game, but it seams even SES feels the need to explain themselves, ie this thread. they know the ballance is going to be contavercial , and they have to give all the help they can to the HSF. Come on the brits had enough dissadvantages what with propelant and dodgy shells , not to mension bc's not up to the job, but to take away the only real advatage the british had apart from numbers is sad ,

There is know way that the german BB long range rangefinding was as good as the british. and it deteriated with an extended engagement..

Frederic Dreyer and Arthur Pollen will be turning in there graves:angry:
 

Yang

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Geez, please keep the patriotic debates to a minimum. The game isn´t even out so there is little point in judging those issues. Those things will never end and SES has to draw a line somewhere. We already have nationalised fire directors, so there are differencies. You certainly can´t expect to HSF being much worse shots than GF, Jutland certainly didn´t show that. Next thing is that the other half of the players demand that Command & Control problems by bad signaling are simulated which would impede the GF more than HSF. Also we already know that identification isn´t an issue, so if the British player spots some Battlecruisers limping home in a dark night, he knows that they aren´t his and will open fire. ;)

So all in all i doubt that the game will be tooled into the direction that the HSF performs better than historically for playability reasons.
 

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And this was such a nice and civil forum...

To cite Mike Myers: Behave!

I'll search for some books that mention German WWI gunnery control.
 

seasalt

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I apolagise, ive had a bad day :upset: dead cat and bad day at work :upset:

But i do like a good debate so only a little apolagy:D

One question then. What was the GF doing better than the HSF, becouse as far as i can see from this game the HSF is better in most and at least as good as the GF in all aspects of early 20th century naval warfare. not ONE aspect does it seem british ships have the edge , apart from having more of them :(

edited to say cat was put down ,old age, 20 years so a good innings, i'm not a cat person but was suprised to shed a tear.
 
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