Dilandu wrote:runsforcelery wrote:
Didn't see this post, but even if I had, I wouldn't share your conclusion.
I know.
I disagree about the ability of Mikasa to generate smoke screens sufficient to block Iowa's visual fire control,
May I inquire about why exactly you consider smoke screens ineffective? As far as I know, even 1945 "Iowa" did not have IR or UV sensors (which Japanese navy actually have, for example)
I will grant you the probability that her ECM will futz up Iowa's radar, but Mikasa still has to close to 15,000 yards to score a hit, even with the best fire control in the world,
...Okay, I'll tell you the old Russian secret of adding a few extra miles to gunnery range.
Just flood the side compartments.
The ship would start to list, so your guns would have the additional angle on one side) Proven to be workable during "Slava" clashes with German dreadnoughts - and "Slava" haven't got sophisticated fire controls.
and one of Iowa 16" shells is pretty much going to gut her when it lands, given her size and armoring scheme.
So the whole point is NOT being hit)
Precisely how is she going to survive to close to a range a which she can hurt her opponent --- or keep Iowa from maneuvering to gain a clear shot
So you mean that "Iowa" must actually went to point-blank range. In smoke screen. Against enemy with greatly superior sensor, better short-range battery and torpedoes.
The risk of mutual destruction is pretty good.
--- unless her fire control can also control wind direction and speed and prevent Iowa from knowing even roughly where she is?
Yes, her fire control, ECM systems and smoke screens could do exactly that.
I also question how successful her grafted on ECM would be at flat out blinding Iowa's radar, which is what she'd have to do.
Blinding? Please, you are insulting the ECM techs. The old-fashioned range & direction decoy jamming would work much better.
Nor do I think "a few 12' hits" from 1905-era shells filled with Shimose are going to take Iowa's fire control totally off line, given how dispersed her visual rangefinders are and how heavily armored her plotting systems are
"South Dakota" lost all fire control from much less powerfull 8-inch shells. With all respect to vacuum tubes, mechanical differentials and optics, but they are MUCH less shock-resistant than microchips and fiber-optics.
I'm not interspersing quotes because it's getting too complicated. However, in response to your points:
I specifically said "smoke screens sufficient to block
Iowa's visual fire control." I should perhaps have expanded further in that sentence, but I felt that my subsequent comments made it clear that I was talking about not simply
producing smoke, nor arguing that
Iowa's optical systems could magically see through it, but of a 15-knot vessel being able to generate a smokescreen and
keep it between itself and an opponent more than twice as fast as its own maximum speed given typical wind and sea state conditions. Smoke screens are subject to wind, and that would dictate the only directions in which
Mikasa could move while keeping the smoke between herself and
Iowa. This would be easier — note that I said eas
ier, not
easy — if she is adopting a totally defensive posture, but I would argue that if she finds herself in a position in which the
only posture she can adopt is totally defensive, then she is rather self-evidently tactically inferior to her opponent. I should probably also point out, vis-à-vis smokescreens, that the hypothetical matchup is between a
Mikasa which has had
only its electronics updated and an
Iowa which hasn't been updated
at all. The reason I mention this is that so far as I'm aware,
Mikasa wasn't equipped to generate chemical smoke, which means she'd have been capable of producing a "smokescreen" using only her funnel smoke. That would tend to nail down a focal point for
Iowa's pitiful optic sensors pretty damn quick. Just saying.
I might also point out that in those moments when
Iowa can see
Mikasa, in a broadside duel (outside the range of their secondary batteries), she'll be firing 18 16" rounds per minute (48,600 pounds total weight of metal) to
Mikasa's 4 12" rounds per minute (3,400 pounds total weight of metal). Even if
Iowa is headed bow-first into
Mikasa's broadside, it becomes 12 rounds per minute (32,400 pounds of metal) versus
Mikasa's 4 rounds and 3,400 pounds. Put another way, the older ship's
entire broadside is only about 26% heavier than
a single shell from her opponent, and her guns fire half as quickly. So each 12" tube is putting 13% as much metal in the air as each
16" tube per unit of time.
About flooding
Slava's side compartments to increase range. I'm aware of that practice. I'm also aware that it was utilized in the Baltic, not in typical Atlantic or Pacific sea states, where
Mikasa's relatively lower freeboard (vis-à-vis
Iowa) would make the practice far riskier. Unless we are now going to stipulate that in addition to chemical smokescreen generators, the skipper of the
Mikasa possesses the power to control the weather and sea state on the day of our fateful encounter and the skipper of the
Iowa can't, thus allowing
Mikasa to rely upon mill pond wave states. And unless
Mikasa wants to induce a 30° list (which would promptly cause her to capsize even in calm weather) she still can't match
Iowa's designed elevation. She could clearly increase her range beyond 15,000 yards, and with the upgraded fire control system, could probably count on obtaining a high percentage — I'll even give you a
very high percentage — of hits at the extended range. She could
not increase her range to match
Iowa's, but assuming the sea state allowed her to employ this strategy
and she was able to generate a sufficient smokescreen (without those chemical generators she doesn't have) and keep it between her and
Iowa, she would indeed have a significant tactical edge. Whether it would be sufficient to offset
Iowa's higher speed (i.e., ability to close the range), greater size, and vastly superior armor (in both thickness and placement) would be another question entirely, however, and one that I think would not work out in
Mikasa's favor. I expect
Iowa would be much more heavily damaged if
Mikasa was able to achieve the "Goldilocks" conditions of wind and weather required to make this work (and had those chemical smokescreen generators), but I also think she'd still win in the end.
Apropos what happens if
Mikasa gets hit. I understand that the entire point of the exercise may be to avoid being hit. The best laid plans frequently go astray, however — as I am arguing above is all too likely to happen — and and assuming that
Iowa does land a single main battery hit on
Mikasa, it's going to ruin
Mikasa's whole day. It's certainly going to hurt her one hell of a lot more than being hit by a 12" shell weighing less than a third as much and charged with Shimose's picric acid instead of Composition D is going to hurt
Iowa.
If
Iowa effectively goes to "point-blank" range — which is
not what I said in the passage you quoted, where I was referring to
Mikasa's challenge in maneuvering to prevent
Iowa from generating an unblocked firing angle by relying on funnel smoke in average wind conditions — the consequences for
Mikasa would be disastrous very quickly, and her secondary battery and torpedoes (
please!) aren't going to change that. We already looked at the disparity between their main battery rates of fire and weights of metal. Secondary batteries, in a broadside duel (which is basically the only kind of exchange in which
Mikasa could actually use her casemate-mounted 6" guns;
Iowa would have limited but superior fire ahead and astern from her double-tiered twin turrets) would pit seven 6"/40 against ten 5"/38. That's roughly 28 6" shells per minute versus
190 5" shells (or 2,800 pounds of metal versus 10,469) and the armor protecting the weapons and vital systems of
Mikasa's opponent is vastly superior. As far as
Mikasa's 12-pounders are concerned, they'd be outnumbered approximately 40-to-1 by
Iowa's 40 mm, which would chew up
Mikasa's superstructure like a chainsaw. And about those torpedoes, are you serious? We're talking 18" weapons launched from submerged tubes with a maximum range of under 4,500 yards at 23 knots (even assuming that we are using the purchased Whitehead "B" version) and a 209-pound bursting charge of picric acid against a ship whose designers assumed a bursting charge of
700 pounds of TNT. And so far as I am aware, no battleship torpedo launched from a submerged torpedo tube
ever hit another ship in combat except for the
possible hit
Nelson is credited with achieving against a nearly stationary
Bismarck while she and
King George V pounded their opponent into a wreck, and not even that hit was ever
confirmed. So, yeah, I've got to really, really like
Iowa's chances in a "point-blank" action. And, no, the "risk of mutual destruction" is
not "pretty good." The risk of painful
damage to
Iowa may be much higher, but that's a very different proposition from "mutual destruction."
You are dreaming if you think that all the ECM in the world is going to completely defeat optical systems in the
real world where there are things like wind and waves to disperse smoke or blow it in an . . . unfortunate direction, even assuming that, unlike the
Mikasa stipulated in my original example,
your version has chemical smoke generators. And even if she has chemical smoke generators, they aren't going to have infinite endurance. All
Iowa has to do is to follow you (or run away in front of you) while maintaining a range at which she can take you under fire if you
aren't using up your generators' endurance — which her superior speed will allow her to do easily — and wait you out. Sooner or later, you're gonna run out of smoke, at which point you
get smoked by those old-fashioned optical systems that ECM
cannot defeat.
And, finally,
South Dakota did not lose "all fire control" at the Battle of Guadalcanal. She lost her
radar and suffered a temporary loss of power to her rangekeeper, which took her plot off-line very briefly. And because radar was what she had been relying on as her main sensor feed at the time, her optical fire control systems — although they remained remained fully functional, were inadequate to sort out the situation under the visibility conditions that applied, with a relatively green crew seeing ship-to-ship action for the first time, and with ships already on fire and
multiple banks of smoke to confuse the the human eye. And before you say anything about "Aha! See, they were inadequate!" I have been consistent in acknowledging that if a 15-knot
Mikasa can work its way into attack range of a 33-knot
Iowa in the middle of the dark or a dense fog, 21st century fire control will definitely trump 1945 fire control. I have also been consistent about pointing out that without the direct assistance of God (or authorial fiat), the skipper of the
Mikasa better not count on being able to do that. Especially since, if I am the skipper of the
Iowa, I really don't care if what your ECM techs are doing is decoy jamming me or not. As soon as my radar picks up
anything that I can't identify coming at me in the dark and I know that your
Mikasa with superior electronics is out there, I am putting my stern to you and staying away from you with my superior speed until dawn breaks or until the weather clears. And don't forget, my oil-fired boilers and geared turbines will let me maintain a 25-30-knot speed of advance for as long as my fuel holds out, whereas your coal-fired, hand-stoked boilers, and reciprocating engines won't even be able to maintain
15-knots for any great length of time. So you can't catch me until I've decided visibility and weather conditions favor me sufficiently to overcome your sensor advantages and funnel smoke.
As I said. End of exercise:
Mikasa exploring the Marianas trench firsthand.