Some Imperial Japanese heavy cruisers had what appears to be an odd arrangement of the front batteries: The forward turret was lower than the turret immediately aft of it, but the turret behind that one was lower and faced aft (toward the superstructure). Here’s a picture of a model of the heavy Cruiser Myoko that shows the arrangement: http://www.swampworks.com/Kits-Myoko.html
What is the logic behind this configuration?
When I looked at that picture, my first thought was, “Well, these guys were into ritual suicide.”
Really, though, all I could dig up follows.
From The Treaty Cruisers
Assuming that two guns per turret was all their technology was up to at the time (Myoko was built in the '20s), the had to put it somewhere, and they already had a problem with these cruisers being top heavy, so raising that middlemost turret was probably not a good idea.
The third turret is completely functional. The point of traditional line of battle was to get broadside to your enemy, and bring as many guns as possible to bear on the enemy when you’ve done so. The best possible situation was to “cross the T”, where your line of battle crosses the bows of your enemy, and you can use all your guns, while your enemy can only use their bow-guns. The forward-most two turrets are able to fire through a 270[sup]o[/sup] arc, so they may also be used in a chase situation. When firing broadside, the “masked” turret comes into play, greatly increasing the throw-weight of a broadside.
I would think it would be better to cross that T from the stern. Just a wag here but I would think the bow is heavly armored and high while the stern os lower in the water allowing more of your shots to hit the deck and damage their guns & personal.
While it is true that pouring a broadside enfilade at an enemy’s stern might be preferable to firing on their bows (even more so in the days of wooden ships when the unarmored, and window-pierced officers’ quarters made better targets than the reinforced and angled-away bows), the classic “crossing the T” was generally discussed in terms of crossing the enemy’s bows on the assumption that they were at least attempting to engage, rather than fleeing.
The placement of a turret that could only fire broadside was not limited to the Japanese. The British had several similar designs, including the battleships HMS Hood and HMS Rodney.
I was informed by gunners mates of my aquaintence that ship’s main batteries always fired broadside: so that the recoil would be absorbed by the rolling of the ship; and that a fore-and-aft shot from the large turret guns would cause structural damage.
(While we’re on the subject of Japanese naval design - how 'bout them goofy horizontal funnels on their flat-tops? And the all-time strangest thing about the Japanese Navy, observed by Slithy Tove in person: no ship-to-shore detail would be required for destroyers. When a Japanese ship aproached its mooring, members of the ship’s deck force would vault onto the pier and do their own tieing up! We wondered what they did back when they had aircraft carriers - strap parachutes to the backs of deck apes and launch them at the pier from the catapults?)
Two questions.
Why does the 55" inch wooden RC model you use as an example for the OP need a bilge pump as an accessory? Is water entering the ship in some manner?
Re the issue of damage to ships if fired in fore and aft alignment I thought large naval guns had some sort of hydralic (or similar) recoil control system to absorb the shock. Did they not have this in WWII vintage ships?
Astro: The boats in question are part of a scale-battle hobbyist game. The ships mount working BB guns, with limited “scale” range (to roughly approximate the trajectory of a shell scaled down) and the players attempt to sink one another’s ships.
Check out the whole SwampWorks site, it’s rather interesting.
The bilge pumps help keep the thing afloat, to both simulate ‘scale’ damage better, and to make battles last longer.
As for damage from the main guns’ discharge, the “structural” damage is not major, as in bulkheads buckling or hull-breaches.
The blast of something like the New Jersey’s Iowa-class 16" rifles causes a several-thousand-pound overpressure wave. When fired over the bow of the ship, that blast tends to blow paint off bulkheads, it blows firefighting and rescue equipment overboard, damages things like the chain handrails and generally makes things unpleasant.
In wartime, nobody cared. For practice, one salvo from the turret might make for two days’ repair work just in repainting alone. Hence- and the crossing-the-T bit has something to do with it as well- the broadside is standard operating procedure, where much of the blast is dissipated on open ocean.
The British beat the Japs to this design by at least a decade with HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson.
These were the first battleships to be completed under the Washington and London treaties and as such were pretty much experimental.
Although extremely powerful they were also relatively slow and so were largely used either in shore support roles, finishing off enemy vessels that had already been slowed and were still capable of shooting back or in convoy duties with their 70, count 'em, 70 anti-aircraft guns.
As effective ship to ship combat units though they were not at all useful.
HMS Nelson pictures.
Here an referance and worth saving.Really does explain things. the relevant issues.
I searched around the house for the book but I couldn’t find it. I read an excellent military history account of a large naval battle in 1905 in the northern Pacific where the Japanese navy managed to perfectly “cross the T” of the Russian Pacific fleet and virtually destroy it. The account I read addressed the crossing of the T…how it was the ultimate tactic, a rare occurrence because a fleet of battleships would normally do anything to avoid having their T crossed. If any of you are interested, a little research into the Russian-Japanese war will probably get you an account of that decisive marine battle.
You know, I’ve been reading the responses and have been wondering why people are mentioning “crossing the T”. I thought I’d said that I knew that ships always fired broadside. Oops. I did mention that in the original, longer version of the OP before I hit “submit”, but I took it out when I edited it. I have no excuse; I’d had my caffeine.
In any case, it looks like the reasons it was placed there were treaty considerations and that the top-heavy design of Japanese warships preculded placing it higher.
Re: the bilge pump. I don’t know about the wargames, but water does get into ships and boats of all sizes. I think the main point of entry is where the shaft exits the hull. Of course there are seals to keep the water out, but I suspect that those in a model are not as sophisticated as those in an acutal vessel. (I remember one model I had when I was a kid had a box around the exit hole that was filled with Vaseline to keep the water out.)