67th Tigers
What I meant is that traditionally, at least for the dreadnought period before then, the RN went for heavier shells with hence greater hitting power. Also lower muzzle velocity because the extra time in flight was mitigated by the reduced barrel wear.
If they had gone with that same philosophy for the Nelson's the 16" shell used would have been somewhat heavier than the 2048ib you mentioned and the velocity lower. Can't remember the details but at least as heavy as the comparable US 16" shell I think.
Steve
The UK 12" round was slightly lighter than the US (850-860 lbs vs 870 lbs). The 13.5" was obviously slightly lighter than the US 14" (1,250-1,270 lbs vs ca. 1,400 lbs). The UK 15" was 1,938 lbs in this period (all ammunition types), whereas the UK 16" was slightly lighter than the US (2,048 lbs vs 2,110 lbs).
With the exception of the 12", the US guns all used heavier charges than the UK guns giving greater MV (in the 12" there were similar). US claims of greater barrel life have to therefore be questioned. In fact the RN had much greater standards of accuracy for their guns, and so simply replaced them sooner.
In fact the USN doesn't seem to have placed much weight on accuracy of fire. The 14" guns in twin turrets often gave spreads of ca. 8% of range, whilst the 14" triples gave spreads of 12%. This means that in combat the majority of the US battleline would hit simply by chance. The 16" twins of the Colorado gave much improved performance of about 2%, which was typical (actually quite high but acceptable) for RN guns. From the accurate Colorado guns things got worse, the triple 16/45 was not good, and the triple 16/50 on the Iowas was abysmal until they adopted improved propellents and procedures ISTR during the Vietnam War.
This shows at Surigao Strait. Firing at a wounded battleship under radar control at ca. 20,000 yards the West Virginia hit a grand total of once (and the round did not detonate), whilst the five other US battleships did not hit with their main guns at all (a total of one hit by a malfunctioning round out of 285 heavy rounds). Yamashiro was sunk by being torpedoed four times, not by US gunfire.