Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Actually it doesn't hurt accuracy at all. Standard procedure was to fire a salvo of one barrel from each gun at the same time, left barrels first. Then a salvo from all three middle barrels, then from the right. The purpose was to prevent damage to your own ship. A fine example of this is the records of HMS Rodney in the Bismarck engagement. Rodney spent most of the battle firing salvos as described. When the range was down to about 4000 yards Rodney started firing full broadsides. As a result the ship sustained severe damage in several places that took weeks to repair.
On the other hand smaller ships tended to fire full broadsides, as it made fire control simpler. The firing ship needs to spot where the shots land and that is very difficult when they're flying about at random.
So the realistic way would be to have one gun from each turret fire simultaneously. All guns firing at once is less likely, but having them fire one at a time - bang! bang! bang! - is also quite unrealistic.
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The guns on the Bismarck were induvidually sleeved but were mostly coupled together. The Germans usually fired semi-salvoes, forward guns first, then aft guns. About the blast damage, the reason for why the Prinz Eugen lead the Bismarck into battle during the battle of the Denmark Strait was because of the damage to Bismarcks radars when she fired at the British cruisers following her.