A twin Mark 45 wouldn't be a bad idea, but the OTO-Melara isn't well-served by having a twin mount. It's got plenty of RoF to not need the two guns and it's designed for small combatants and as a secondary gun anyway.
Naval Equipment that should and shouldn't have entered service
- Thread starter Spencersj345.346
- Start date
I would ask why RN or USN did not make a single 3"/70 or agree for one to make a twin and the other the single and plan of sharing both?
Could the Brits produce a more widespread "super torpedo" based on a modified 24 inch design they designed and built for the NelRods? They were supposed to be the inspiration for the IJN Long Lance but to my knowledge the NelRods were the only ships the Brits used those torpedoes on the NelRods and I don't believe they were ever so much as fired in combat.
Was their something inherently wrong with the design? Seems like they could have proven quite lethal if used on a destroyer class.
Was their something inherently wrong with the design? Seems like they could have proven quite lethal if used on a destroyer class.
Rodney shot three torps at Bismarck and hit with at least one. That was the only instance of a battleship hitting another battleship with torpedoes. The relationship between the British 24.5 inch torpedoes and the Long Lance was the oxygen-rich gas used as an oxidizer. The Japanese experience with them in WWII was that they were more trouble than they were worth because of the danger the torpedoes and their propellant posed to the ships carrying them. Two of the Japanese heavy cruisers at Samar were sunk by their own torpedoes, and it was common practice for Japanese cruisers and destroyers under air attack to jettison their torpedoes. A compressed air torpedo would have been much less sensitive and would have perfectly adequate range and speed for the night-fighting around Guadalcanal.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
They were a ton heavier than the 21" models and 3' longer. That's the reason, the Japanese destroyers were either larger than the British preferred to build, heavily overloaded, or both. Given the treasury had forced the RN to downsize their destroyers compared to what they want, and the British were much more concerned about stability, seakeeping and such, larger torpedoes have issues when the 21" is to all accounts fine
McPherson
Banned
1. This is debated. MOO is that Rodney missed.
2. The British could not make an oxygen boosted torpedo at all. The Japanese persisted and they actually made it work.
3. The lesson learned (much later) was that advanced propulsion in a torpedo required either an expensive battery and degraded performance or a monopropellant fuel that could be bound with an oxidizer and which required a catalytic agent or continuous ignition process to generate gas expansion to do work.
The Americans solved that one (3) first with silver sea water batteries and then NAVOL which was dangerous. And then with Otto fuel, which is "safe" relatively speaking.
They agreed to share the barrel and shell....I think that suggest it's more that US and RN would want mounts that fit with national systems on different hulls more than distrust? I was suggesting with hindsight RN should have built a single mount as its fitted better as the main gun on frigates and as a small AA for larger ships CVs/CAs.
McPherson
Banned
There were technical secrets, both navies hid from each other. There was also Admiral King; who did not help matters.
OTOH, I agree that if the two navies had managed not to get mad at each other (Battle of the Atlantic / Drumbeat and the Singapore Bastion Defense Fiasco) there was ample opportunity for developing an auto-loader 3 inch /50 with some kind of Huhlsmeyer detector (radar fuse) early-war that mated with a Mark 37 director in groups of two or three per sky quadrant would have been devastating and welcomed in the Mediterranean and early Pacific by both navies.
Ah...
Absolutely putrid weapon. took 10 years to develop, never performed worth a hoot, weighted more than the twin 5"/38 mount it was meant to replace. It did, however, shoot really fast, right until it jammed. Two different navies (three if you put the RCN separately) and none of them could get the damned this to consistently feed.
Only good thing about them, from the U.S. perspective is that they were so kludgy it convinced the fleet to buy off the shelf and pick up the OTO-Melara 76mm