[mako88sb]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

[COLOR=orange]Bottom line: as with the battle of the Denmark Strait and the subsequent huntdown of the German Battleship: luck is a major factor- when you get into battle, plan 'A' is no longer in effect....an errant big shell that turns torpedo can literally 'undermine' your expensive top armor...Edge to Iowa imho; especially in a preferred nighttime engagement in which an astute calculating American commander would have the advantage

I thought these were pretty interesting too:

The Japanese 18.1"/45 reigned supreme as the most destructive piece of naval ordnance ever mounted afloat. However, its ballistic performance was not particularly inspiring, and the performance of its Type 91 shells was inferior to the norm, partly because they were optimized for underwater trajectories 7. Immediately below it in terms of power is the US 16"/50. Good ballistics, and superb shells, give this gun a tremendous whallop, and in combat terms I rate it as the equal of the Japanese weapon, largely because of its shells. Below that, in an upset, comes Richelieu's 15"/45, as the best all-around 15" gun, and feel the most useful in an actual combat situation. The Italian 15"/50 was an enormously potent weapon from a raw power perspective, but it sacrificed a lot in order to achieve that performance, and had decidedly inferior shells. I should note, though, that I am still investigating this particular gun and her shells in more detail; the information available on her shells is rather spotty. Bismarck's 15"/47 shell is 10% lighter than the French and Italian, although her cyclic rate is attractive, and her guns were very accurate. At the bottom of the spectrum, King George V's 14" gun clearly doesn't have nearly the oomph necessary to compete with the rest of these guys.

It is important to note that better high muzzle-velocity does not necessarily equate to better performance against horizontal deck armor. For instance, guns like Richelieu's and Vittorio Veneto's have tremendous ballistics at short range, but they are comparatively lousy at penetrating deck armor. Why? Because these guns fire their shells at very flat trajectories, and shells coming in at flat trajectories tend to ricochet. It's very tough to get any sort of penetration at obliquities above 70-degrees. This means that flat trajectory weapons don't start getting effective deck penetration until they are much farther away and their shells start coming in at a decent fall angle. The end result is that guns that have poorer ballistics make up for it (to a certain extent) at longer ranges against deck armor because they must fire their guns at higher elevations for a given range, and therefore loft their shells higher, and consequently hit decks with the benefit of gravitic acceleration from a greater height. The battleship that benefits most from this is South Dakota. Her 16"/45 has a muzzle velocity of only 2300 ft./sec., and thus she has to heave her shells very high to get them out to range. But her shell weighs 2700 lbs, and thus has better deck penetration than Yamato or anybody else. Note, too, that the Americans worked out the ballistics and range tables for firing the Iowa's 16"/50 weapons with reduced charges (three charges instead of four) which would still allow for great range (given the 50-caliber barrel), but would also require greater elevation for a given range, and thus provide greater striking power against deck armor. I have not tried calculating these figures, but they would tend to make the 16"/50 even more powerful against deck armor, and would make the Iowa a very formidable long-range foe.

Then of course the info about just how superior those 5" guns combined with proximity fuses were for anti-aircraft.