World War II Battleship on Battleship Engagements

Lezt said:

Oh how can we forget IJN kitakami?

5 launcher per side, each with 4 long lance torpedos. I.e. 20 torpedo per broadside.

Richard, many bb had torpedo tubes in ww1. In ww2, its only the scharnhorst class n the tirpitz. And they had launchers for your mentioned reasons. But ultimately, its that for point blank, battleship guns is seeimg 10 km. What good is it for torpedos with a typical range of <8 km?

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Keep in mind the battle of Tsushima strait mainly occurred at 3-4kms, with some extreme range shots at 6kms. That was the most recent battleship action at the start of WWI.

At the start of WWI, most navies expected that battleship action will take place at ranges less than 10km. Many battleships had maximum main gun elevation limits that restrict their maximum range to 15km or so. The Germans in particular thought the often misty conditions and poor visibility of the North Sea meant battleships can surprise each other and begin engagements at knife fight ranges.

This makes it more understandable why torpedos were considered worthwhile

Richard Santos said:

Normal Torpedo range can be 20km, Japanese oxygen torpedos can go 50kms, depending on their speed setting. The problem isn't the range. The problem is even at the highest speed settings, torpedos don't go all that fast, 45 knots tops. It takes a far longer to reach the target at anything more than 2-3kms than it take for the target to move out of the way. If the enemy sees a torpedo launch from more than a few km away, or just suspect there had been a launch, they could easily change course and cause the torpedos to miss by a large margin.

Hence the range at which torpedos have high probability of hitting is just a few Kms at most, regardless of how far the torpedo can keep moving.

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Well, range is important, Geman WW2 torpedo G7a T1 had a range of 6km @ 44 knots, 8 km @ 40 knots, 14 km @ 30 knots. late war British 21" mark IX** had a range of 10 km @ 41 knots, 13.7 km @ 35 knots. Us early war Mark 15, had a range of 6.5 km @ 45 knots, 9 km @ 33.5 knots, 13.7 km @ 26.5 knots. US late war Mark 17 had a range of 16.5 km @ 46 knots. its only the Japanese long lance that truly had range, 40 km @ 38 knots, 32 km @ 42 knots, and 20 km @ 50 knots.

Now consider battleship fights.

Scharnhorst straddles Glorious at 24 km
Warsprite straddles Guilio Cesare at 23 km
Yamato might have straddled White Plains at 32 km
Iowa / New Jersy might have straddled Nowaki at 31 km
POW straddled Bismark at 27 km
Bismark/PE sunk Hood at 14 km
Washington sunk/crippled Krishima at 10 km at night
South Dakota stuck atago/takao at around 18 km
Krishima disabled South Dakota at around 12-16 km?

Basically, unless you have a late war torpedo or a long lance, the majority of the battleship fights are outside of torpedo range. unless you run into fog where Hiei sank/crippled Alanta and San Francisco between 8 km to 2 km, where San Francisco's 8" can penetrate the battle crusier's armor and cripple Hiei

I mean its semantics, technically it is effective range. but given a torpedo is not kinetic based, high explosive is by definition effective at any range, but what is the hit probability? All navies had anti torpedo maneuvers that are clocked based and the zig zagging is timed based on the perceived range of enemy ships. This is why the katikana was born.

launching 20 long lances per broadside, say at a spread of 100 meters center on center at 15 km, the intent is to create a lethal area for 2 km area for a battleship sized target which is zigzagging and maneuvering. had the BB maneuvered parallel into or away from the torpedos, a battleship is around 30 m beam, so it is a 30% probability to hit. but in doing so, the BB would sacrificed using her forward or rear guns to return fire; and significantly mess up their firing solution; which will take another ~15 minutes to rebuild. i.e. subjecting the BB to a significant period where it could not return fire.

Its also not that easy to change course, a US standard battleship is 21 knots, 39 km/hr, and its turning radius is ~700 meters.

Needless to say, since WW2 had no battlelines for fleet engagements, the katikana didn't acheive much. Now, if you put the german G7ES acoustic seeking torpedo seaker onto the long lance, than you have something.

Richard Santos said:

Keep in mind the battle of Tsushima strait mainly occurred at 3-4kms, with some extreme range shots at 6kms. That was the most recent battleship action at the start of WWI.

At the start of WWI, most navies expected that battleship action will take place at ranges less than 10km. Many battleships had maximum main gun elevation limits that restrict their maximum range to 15km or so. The Germans in particular thought the often misty conditions and poor visibility of the North Sea meant battleships can surprise each other and begin engagements at knife fight ranges.

This makes it more understandable why torpedos were considered worthwhile

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I understand that, but in that campaign, the seige of port arthur, Japanese destroyers launched 124 torpedos at Sevastopol and none got past her torpedo nets. The torpedo of that age, like the British Whitehead had a range of 800 yards @ 26 knots. the german Schwartzkopf (lit. translated to be blackhead) had a rabge if 440 yards at 25 knots. it is only by 1910/ww1 that torpedo ranges go into the 2-4 km range.

Basically,
at the battle of Tsushima 1905, gun range is around 4-10 km, torpedo range is <1km
at the battle of Jutland 1916, gun range were around 14 km, torpedo ranges were ~4 km
at ww2, 1939-1945, gun ranges were around 10-30 km, most torpedo ranges were 8-14 km and you have the long lance at 40 km

yes, there were some overlap, but that only came during ww2.

Torpedo nets are useless for ship's under way. Torpedos even in WWI has considerably longer range than 1 km. Firing them at an individual ship several Kms might offer minimum chance off success. But it is easy to see how the chance can seem considerably better if they are fired at a line of enemy battleships. WWI capital ships uses analytic gunnery fire control technology which can't handle maneuvers on the part of the firing ship. Even if the enemy line can take evasive actions to avoid torpedos, the maneuver can still spoil the enemy's gunnery and potentially give one's own side an advantage.

This is most clearly demonstrated in the battle of Jutland, when the German high sea fleet's battle line of 16 battleships had it's T crossed, unable to see the British fleet, being subjected to heavy British fire, was on the verge of a complete route. In a desperate gamble to get away, the high sea fleet's destroyers launched a puny torpedo attack of less tha 50 torpedos from 6-8kms away.

But the entire British battle line of almost 30 battleship, unsure of how many torpedos were in the water, turned away to avoid the torpedos. This gave the highsea fleet the opportunity to escape into the mist and darkening evening, and ultimately escape.

But an often overlooked aspect of this episold is the British did not turn away from the actual torpedo attack from German destroyers. They turned away from what they thought was an torpedo attack from German battlecrusiers.

When German admiral Scheer saw the gun flashes of 30 British battleships crossing his T, he actually also ordered his 5 battlecruisers, already badly damaged in earlier action against British battlecruisers, to launch a suicide attack against the British battleline in order to give his battleships cover to escape. Needless to say, the German battecruisers were clobbered. But the British, unclear why the Germans would send their battlecruisers on a hopeless head on attack against British battlefleet at 5 against 30 odds, thought the German battlecruisers must be dashing in to launch a torpedo attack. Hence the turn away.

As it turns out, none of the German battlecruisers actually launched any torpedos, although the British battleships manage to hit German battlecruisers Lutzow several times near her forward torpedo room with large caliber shells, and the Lutzow eventually sank due in large part to uncontrollable flooding spreading from the torpedo room.

Also, in only one instance in entire naval history did one battleship indisputably fired a torpedo at another in battle. 3 guesses as to which ship fired the torpedo and what was the intended target.

Richard Santos said:

Torpedo nets are useless for ship's under way. Torpedos even in WWI has considerably longer range than 1 km.

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I did say ww1 torpedo were at around 4 km range..

Lezt said:

it is only by 1910/ww1 that torpedo ranges go into the 2-4 km range.

Basically,
at the battle of Tsushima 1905, gun range is around 4-10 km, torpedo range is <1km
at the battle of Jutland 1916, gun range were around 14 km, torpedo ranges were ~4 km
at ww2, 1939-1945, gun ranges were around 10-30 km, most torpedo ranges were 8-14 km and you have the long lance at 40 km

yes, there were some overlap, but that only came during ww2.

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The only indisputed instance when one battleship fired a torpedo at another in battle was when HMS Rodney fired a torpedo at the Bismarck at long range, probably >15km km, during the battle that eventually sank the Bismarck on may 27, 1941.

It missed.

The torpedo fired by the Rodney was also the largest torpedo ever fired in battle - 24.5 inches, larger than the dreaded Japanese 24 inch torpedos.

The largest torpedo ever deployed on significant scale were not the Soviet 25.5 inch wake homing submarine torpedo as often claimed. It was the 26.7 inch torpedo Germany deployed near the end of WWI.

The oversized German and British torpedos mentioned are both designed at the end of WWI specifically for use in underwater torpedo tubes on battleships. neither packed a particularly large warhead. They were so large in diameter primarily to allow them to carry sufficient fuel and compressed air to achieve the desired range without being excessively long. The desire to limit the length of torpedos used by battleship underwater tubes was primarily driven by the desire to make torpedo tube and torpedo handling room shorter, and thus improve underwater subdivision.