Wasn't Goeben's black gang pretty much exhausted by this time having sprinted away from the two RN BCs? If he was in good condition then Souchon could sit outside the range of the British 9.2" and either run or deliberately pick them off. However if he loses the speed advantage he could effectively be cornered. Not sure at what range the 9.2" would penetrate the Goeben's belt. Even if successful it would probably cost 2-3 armoured cruisers crippled or sunk IMHO.
Goeben sprinted away from the BCs (4 deaths from scalding steam and over a dozen passed out from heatstroke) then most of days hard work coaling the ship before resuming travel at speed (but a more relaxed pace).
Does Troubridge have his destroyers as he planned? In which case he will attempt to close and attack with torpedoes. Historically some of his destroyers didn't have the coal to steam at enough speed to intercept.
Back of a fag packet maths from data on NavWeaps says about 4,000 yards for the thickest sections?
If engaging something that big they would likely start with HE at longer range. Hope that it causes chaos and hopefully lights something important on fire. When they get close (Assuming they are still fighting) they will switch to AP and use the secondary battery to keep trying to burn the upper works.
True. But that’s 4,000-odd yards until belt penetration on the thickest 11” (“The belt was 280 mm (11 in) thick where it covered the ship's ammunition magazines and propulsion machinery spaces” - wiki) section. They’d be able to hit, damage and even penetrate other parts of the ship and the thinner sections of the belt (“The belt tapered down to 76 mm (3 in) on either end” - wiki) at greater ranges.
Can the PD use smokescreen to further complicate the range advantage of the Dreadnoughts ?
Smokescreen is a pretty difficult thing to use offensively. There is a reason it is normally used to try and bug out. For starters it affects you just as much as the enemy, and it is difficult to get the right conditions to have the smoke laid out in the direction you want without the wind dissipating it. It might be possible that a PD could use it to try and escape, but the Dreadnoughts speed advantage would allow them some leeway in following and engaging when the conditions are favourable.
Or, the dreadnought can equally engage two pre-dreadnoughts at once.
Theoretically, it could. The fire control suites were designed to be able to do so from Dreadnought on. Some of them were a little questionable in their actual layout though. The famous example is Dreadnought's tower being behind the funnel, but there were others. They all generally had a second fire control position but I don't know if engaging two ships at once was ever actually tried.
I think the best is a Norwegian fiord where the range could be forced to be very, very close and have no warning of the fight....... any BB would be in trouble if hit at 0 range from even 12" guns and underwater torpedoes when its not expecting it.
The opinion is that Lutzow would have survived Jutland if it wasn't for the hit (or hits) Invincible made on his torpedo flat, we can probably chalk that one (own goal) up to torpedoes too.
It was standard in the RN from Dreadnought to the Nelsons, although the only time a BB fired a torpedo at another BB was when Rodney fired at Bismark in 1941 which makes it sound like they weren't much practical use.
It was Royal Navy thinking pre-war that guns would slow the enemy and torpedoes would sink them. The idea was always to hit at range with guns, close to torpedo range to sink the enemy.
