I am fascinated by Battleships. In particular, life on one for a crewman. I have a few questions about it-
1.) How loud were the Battleship’s main guns? Some of these guns are huge- the Yamato had nine 18.1" guns. How big of a boom does it make, and do the crew get any kind of warning?
2.) Why exactly did it take so many bodies to run the ship?
3.) What was it like for a Battleship’s crew when the ship suffered a hit (say, from a shell comparable in size to its own armament)? I’ve heard a given amount of armor was assumed to be able to defeat a shell of comparable diameter (8" armor stopping 8" shells, for example). Was this true? What was the biggest shells that a battleship successfully shrugged off? It seems like in spite of all the armor, battleships still got beat to hell in a slugfest. A good example of this is the Bismark- she suffered a ton of hits and while still afloat, her superstructure and turrets were wrecked. Given that the turrets tend to be the most heavily armored part of the ship, why even pack all that armor on if the result is the same?
4.) Was being on a Battleship crew better than, say a cruiser or a destroyer? I’ve heard being on Destroyer Escorts was pretty miserable because the ships were so dinky and they tended to escort convoys out on the open ocean- the ships would get tossed around by waves easily because of their size.
Yay a battleship thread! I am obsessed with them also but sadly I can offer little to this thread haha.
The turrets were armored the most because they were the sole purpose of having the ship at sea, and they had to make them unaffected by most types of attacks. A single turret structure could weigh well into the millions of kilos. I am astounded at the actual scale of battleships. It is hard to imagine a set of cannons that can fire 2000+ pound shells over 20 kms (not KriegsMarines!)
Really, really loud. The crew didn’t receive specific warnings of shots, but it’s not like they would shoot them off for the hell of it. Well, I suppose for things like honor guards they would let the crew know. But for battle/training conditions, the crew would be at battle stations and would know to expect shots.
Generally speaking the result isn’t the same. I will disagree with DavidBfd and say that the turrets were armored because that’s where you store your shells. One shell hitting a ship is bad news. One shell hitting your ammo stores and setting off 100 other shells is really bad news. So yeah, the Bismark’s turrets were eventually disabled, but that’s far better than being blown to bits.
Of course a lot depends on what type of shell/round hit. An armor piecing round might penetrate several decks before exloding while a high explosive round would not.
Battleship trivia: One of the Yamato’s turrets weighed more than a Fletcher Class destroyer. In and around Leyte Gulf one can only imagine what it would have been like for those destroyer crews trying to harass the Yamato.
maybe not enough to throw a man several yards like in “under siege 1” but really loud, even though no one aboard the ship is within the “sonic cone” of the blast. every time a warship goes into battle stations, the decks are cleared of sailors, except for those in semi-exposed gun and AA nests.
anything from 1,000 to 2,500 men (the latter case for the iowa- and yamato-class battleships) with at least 60 officers. manning costs were one of the main reasons the battleship grew less in significance during ww2 and after.
by 1980, the complement of the iowa has been reduced to about 1,300. this appars to be the minimum (to maintain WW2 efficiency) for crewing the engines, electro-mechanical maintenance, communications, weapons and ancilliaries. and even this can be reduced by nearly 500 if the following proposals are followed:
removal of the 5"/38 secondary guns (nearly 200 crewmen relieved.)
reduced manning for the 16"/50 main guns (nearly 100, there at at least 27 powder passers per turret magazine in an iowa.)
scaling the down the engineering crew from 530 (all war-time engines intalled) to 287 (speed reduced to 25knots, adequate for current requirements.)
electronic/communications personnel originally numbered at least 50. with modernized equipment, this was reduced to less than 10.
lots of healthy arguments about this in a previous thread. first, remember that a battleship shell is almost all-steel. a 2000-pound shell has less than 300 pounds of explosive. it relies mainly on kinetic energy to pulverise an enemy ship. so two battleships pounding each other is like they’re throwing wrecking balls at one another at mach 3 velocity. the two main considerations are penetration and overmatch.
actual penetration (meaning the shell goes past the armor largely whole) is rare. penetration happens mainly in unarmored areas. your 1 unit shell diameter vs. 1 unit armor thickness is close but the correct numbers to compare are shell momentum (m x v) and armor sheet compressive strength. as far as i know, no post-washington treaty battleship had its main armor punched clean through by an enemy shell. the bismark’s dud shells embedded into the prince of wales’ armor but didnt go through. the bismark’s turret barbettes were smashed but british shells cleary failed to reach the magazine. musashi was sunk by torpedoes. the yamato blew up when fires eventually reached the magazine. so penetration doesn’t look as important as overmatch.
you’ll have to get in touch with t.a. gardner, a moderator of WW2 forums, for a better explanation but any armor piercing shell bigger than 12 inches, fired accuratey at a good angle, can damage the thickest armor ever installed (iowa, south dakota and yamato.) it’s all about shell momentum vs armor strength. and a lot depends on angle of hit. a perpendicular hit at close range could smash armor that’s thicker than the shell is wide. but an angle of hit less than 45 degress could just cause a shell to glance off. then again, the shell could glance off due to the shallow angle but it could still smash the armor if it’s able to tranfer enough energy. i remember reading about the battle cruiser hood hitting an italian battleship on the turret. the 15-inch shell glanced off (30 degree angle hit) but the turret got cracked and gouged sufficient to kill the crew and knock out the guns.
a battleship is a priority target so expect a lot of enemy ordnance coming your way. cruisers and destroyers are not as important and they’re fast do they can scoot away. but they also have much less ability to shake off damage. also, the battleship enjoys more protection from other ships and planes. it’s basically a choice between having to stand beside the president or beside a front-line state trooper.
if you’re thinking of crew accomodations, then there’s no contest. battleship and carrier accomodations are far better than those of cruisers and destroyers. and big ships are docked more often than small ones so you get bigger chances of being photographed kissing a nurse in manhattan.
If your library has a copy of “Battleship Sailor” by Theodore E. Mason, be sure and check it out. It sounds about like what you are after - life as a seaman in the battleship “California” just before Pearl Harbor.
BTW, I recall reading several places that the South Carolina had one of her turrets hit by a 500 lb Jabanese bomb, and the crewman inside didn’t even know this had occured.
If you haven’t already, you really should visit a Battleship Museum. They are nearly always being kept company by some vets that served on one, often the ship you’re touring.
You can find the museums nearly everywhere there is ocean, I think everyone was planning to have the Iowa in the SF area, but now it is going to the Los Angeles area. Still, not too far I would think for a nice trip.
My family is in North Texas, but we’ve made several trips down south of Houston to go aboard the second USS Texas, BB35; of which we’re especially proud- she served in both wars, spent the 2nd war banging away in important campaigns in both theaters. See www.usstexasbb35.com (for battleship info, I’m not affiliated).
Don’t know much about the other questions, but I seem to recall reading … somewhere, or seeing some documentary where the fellow mentioned that the main guns weren’t as bad as the 5-inch batteries for some reason.
Perhaps the 16-inch guns had more of a throaty roar, while the 5-inch guns spanked the air with a sharper report.
The French battleship Jean Bart was hit by 5 16 inch shells from the USS Massachusetts. Two of those hits could be shrugged off because they didn’t hit anything vital. Conversely, the Japanese battleship Hiei was so badly crippled by 5, 6, and 8 inch shells during the night action of November 13, 1942 that among other things she was unable to steer and was left a sitting duck to aircraft from Henderson field once morning broke.
I was on a reserve training cruise on a DD. I was in gun mount 52 when 51 was firing. The first shot I was leaning against the gun mount bulkhead. When the first shot went off that bulkhead slammed me hard in the back. I know all the old salts were laughing to them selfs, about the green Ensign that did not know not to lean against the bulkhead.
I unlderstand that when the main guns fire the decks have to be cleared.
As for the size of the crew. The Navy runs a ship in a manner if it is hit and some of the crew are wiped out that enough are left to keep the ship running.
As an example. Merchant ship engine room watch. 1 Senior Watch officer, maybe a junior 3rd, a fireman, and a oiler. On a Navy ship Boiler room 5 to 7 BTs, engineroom 5 to 7 machanist mates. Plus auxalliary spaces personel.
Not a battleship, but Fort Point in San Francisco is a Civil War-era fort that held lots of cannon. During a tour, I saw three cannon emplacements in one relatively small stone-walled room, so that a single crew could load and fire in all directions. The guide said they used to fire all the guns at once, until some men started dying of internal hemorrhage from the concussion. I suspect WWII battleship guns were thought out a bit better, but yeah, big guns can be a hazard to your health.
Not exactly what your looking for but I’ve fired 105mm and 155mm howitzers (sitting on the trail of the latter), a much smaller calibre, but those things are pretty loud. More than the sound though, the thing that suprises you is the shock wave, if you’re not paying attention and they’re firing nearby.
I knew a guy that was supervising the firing of 8inch guns and he said forgot his earplugs and he couldn’t see for a split second when they fired for effect with 4 guns.
Loud. To give you some idea, the blast from the Nelson class 16" guns would break the windows on the bridge if the guns were fired abaft of the beam. Yamato’s guns were a lot more powerful, if was necessary for the crew to clear the decks when firing them to avoid deafness and injury, and all the light AA guns needed to be fitted with blast shields.
It would be interesting to see a detailed breakdown of what the individual jobs of the crew were. Bear in mind, running a battleship is a 24/7 operation, so multiple watches were needed.
It’s not that simple, penetration depends on the weight and composition of the shell, it’s cross-sectional area, it’s velocity (shells lose a considerable amount of speed over long distances due to air resistance) and the geometry of the hit (a 90 degree impact will go through several times more armour than a 20 degree glancing hit). At very long ranges, shells would fall at a steeper angle, giving them improved ability to penetrate deck armour. At very short ranges, the shells would hit vertical armour at a very oblique angle, and with greater velocity, giving them the best chance of penetrating.
As a rule of thumb, most battleships were designed to protect the most vital parts of the ship (boiler, engines, guns, fire control systems, electrical systems etc.) against gun of it’s own caliber at what were considered normal battle ranges. It was not practical to provide complete protection, due to the weight of armour that would be required. Up to 40% of a battleship’s displacement was taken up by armour. Despite this, large portions of the ship were completely unarmoured.
To look at a real-world example, the 14" guns on Prince of Wales and King George V were capable of penetrating Bismarck’s belt armour and turrets, but only at fairly short range and oblique angles. In a normal engagement, it’s armour was sufficient to keep most shells out of the vital parts of the ship.
It’s not quite clear why Bismarck stopped firing so quickly. Looking at the wreck, only one barbette was penetrated, others have shell marks where the armour did it’s job. Turret and barbette armour was useful, there are several examples of turrets remaining functional after receiving hits. However, there are other cases where turrets were jammed or disabled by non-penetrating hits.
Minor nitpick, are you sure oblique is the word you want here? A right angle presents both the thinnest path through the armor and the least chance of deflecting…and vertical armor (like the side of a hull) is most likely to be hit at right angles from short range, which would seem to match your example of the death throes of the Bismarck.
My father-in-law served in the Navy (in WWII) and, while I am uncertain of the type of ship or size of gun, he was caught out on deck when the main guns fired. He sufferred permanent hearing loss and was discharged from the Navy. So, apparently loud enough to matter.
Sorry, I was getting my terms mixed up. Yes, an armour plate is most easily penetrated by a shell hitting at 90 degrees.
To summarise, at maximum range a shell has it’s greatest ability to penetrate deck armour, as it is falling at a steep angle, but little ability to penetrate vertical armour due to low velocity and impact at a shallow angle. At very close range the reverse is true.
