Why the KGVs might have been 4-2-4 x 14 instead of 3-3-3 x 15
I do mean that. Nice to know I was on the right track. Thanks. Not so easy to load at any angle of elevation from the side.
Flop-rammer behind the gun. (see saw Mark 2)
I'm wondering why a three gun turret to 14in guns wasn't tried on the KGV class? Still too top heavy? Just how wrong were initial estimates on that design? 14x 14in has some appeal. 12x 14in is still an option, but with greater top weight.
Some uncertainty here, but triplet guns in individual isolated gun pits would have not meant much difference in the barbette turntable size. By using known and certain designs for twins, the result is that from a known twin to a quadruple is an "apparent" design simplicity and shortcut. Of course after the practical result reveals the error in the wrong thought process it is too late to go back and design a triple from scratch.
A new lighter triple might even retrofit the 15in twins. Not that it would ever come to that. I'm trying to understand the thinking at the time. Does any springstyle of KGV exist I can adapt to test?
Same again. All sorts of unforeseen consequences from ballast issues to armor redistribution to frame stress carries through and down. Refer to the problems the IJN and Italians had in their rebuilds. Or the Americans.... You think some of the Pearl Harbor rebuilds did not have potential hogging issues that had to be factored when they were "modernized" with their new superstructures?
And...
"I'm just an angel in disguise."
Note that her upper works were razed to the strength deck, she's a lot fatter in the mid section and she looks like a SoDak now?
The obvious 1944 gun suite (AAA to a fare thee well)m, the radars and the directors, are plain to see. What one does not see is that inside that outer skin below the new superstructure, the Americans rebuilt her entire amidships torpedo and bomb damaged section, rehung her belt armor, added a huge antitorpedo blister, reframed her and rearranged subdivisions and bulkheads inside as they trunked her funnels, added forced ventilation, rearranged compartmentation fattened her up with that huge new torpedo blister, replaced/repaired her electric motor/generator sets and upgraded her physical plant. 2 and 1/3 years at Pearl and Puget Sound she was undergoing this work. Under wartime conditions and pressures the only thing left somewhat untouched on her was her main armament. Even that was tweaked inside the barbettes. Why? She clogged a couple of slipways, a drydock, and occupied 1,000 workers who could have been used to build a new ship, say a fast carrier or an oil tanker or even another gunship.
So why rebuild her? Pride? Or maybe someone needed a West Virginia congress cretin for some reason?
One might see the need to not float her out of the anchorage to clear a berth and then scuttle her in deep water for morale purposes back in that day like a sensible navy would have done (USS Maine 1898-1904), but it sure is weird that her old berth at Pearl still has a pier marker with her name on it to this day.
Anyway, besides making the point that insanity can be a group effort, the thing is from an engineering standpoint, when someone makes a glib suggestion about what could be ATL done to "improve" something, (Refer to my Ise Abortion above.) one must take into account the hidden details of why the RTL people of the time did not do what to us, post-hoc, seems "obvious".
Unless you are FDR or Bennie the Moose. Politics.
