Hey Matt--you may appreciate this. I'm currently reading listening to a book that's detailing an incredible naval battle in the WWII pacific theater. (And such books are good, because once you have a broad historical knowledge--it's great to hear the individual accounts of the battles. It has really changed my perspective on the entire war.) In any event, here's where you come in...
The japanese naval strategy was this. They calculated that US ships hit their targets w/ an approximate 3% accuracy from (something like) 2 miles out. The japanese ships hit their targets with about 9% to 10% accuracy. So they believed that they could exploit this weakness. And they did so by increasing the gun sizes on their battleships. Increased gun sizes means more muzzle velocity means more distance. What's more--they could achieve a longer distance with less of an arc. (More horizontal vector, or whatever you math people would say.) And this was designed for great effect. If they can hit a ship with an increased horizontal vector (with a shell of significantly increased speed)--then they would actually shoot *in*front*of* the ship. (Theory and practice being that their shells could maintain enough velocity *underwater* for some 200 meters--and still have the ability to breach over 9 centimeters of hardened iron/steel. This would create damage below the waterline, which is significantly more severe than above the waterline or within the ship.) Anyway--thus was the japanese navel theory. So they built the largest battleships (ever) with the largest guns (ever--even by today's standards) to sink US ships from a farther distance by increasing damage below the water line.
The US theory was simple. Ships won't win wars. Planes will. So crank out the carriers. Heavy carriers, light carriers. I don't care--just give us carriers. And light carriers might even be better... Sure they're unarmored and much easier to sink--but you have to sink 4 light carriers to equal the loss of a heavy carrier. And given the (then) US capability to produce these things like Model Ts, (and with the attitude that the necessary expenditure of some lives would ultimately save the most lives)... Anyway--in short, our theory won. It's kind of apples and oranges though; our production power was way more than them anyway.
Interesting though--and I thought you might be interested about all that muzzle velocity and shell trajectory, etc...
The japanese naval strategy was this. They calculated that US ships hit their targets w/ an approximate 3% accuracy from (something like) 2 miles out. The japanese ships hit their targets with about 9% to 10% accuracy. So they believed that they could exploit this weakness. And they did so by increasing the gun sizes on their battleships. Increased gun sizes means more muzzle velocity means more distance. What's more--they could achieve a longer distance with less of an arc. (More horizontal vector, or whatever you math people would say.) And this was designed for great effect. If they can hit a ship with an increased horizontal vector (with a shell of significantly increased speed)--then they would actually shoot *in*front*of* the ship. (Theory and practice being that their shells could maintain enough velocity *underwater* for some 200 meters--and still have the ability to breach over 9 centimeters of hardened iron/steel. This would create damage below the waterline, which is significantly more severe than above the waterline or within the ship.) Anyway--thus was the japanese navel theory. So they built the largest battleships (ever) with the largest guns (ever--even by today's standards) to sink US ships from a farther distance by increasing damage below the water line.
The US theory was simple. Ships won't win wars. Planes will. So crank out the carriers. Heavy carriers, light carriers. I don't care--just give us carriers. And light carriers might even be better... Sure they're unarmored and much easier to sink--but you have to sink 4 light carriers to equal the loss of a heavy carrier. And given the (then) US capability to produce these things like Model Ts, (and with the attitude that the necessary expenditure of some lives would ultimately save the most lives)... Anyway--in short, our theory won. It's kind of apples and oranges though; our production power was way more than them anyway.
Interesting though--and I thought you might be interested about all that muzzle velocity and shell trajectory, etc...
posted by Greg | 8:28 AM
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