Recently I was taking a look at the history of the HMS Vanguard and a thought struck. Why did the Royal Navy not use the 15 inch barrels to make a reliable turret early? For one it would drive down the cost and two it would ensure the ships were ready early which given the darkening situation in Europe and Asia would have been better
Whatever calibre the British chose the turret was going to be 'Jutland Proofed' as much as possible and there would be issues regardless.
It was the interlocks and anti flash systems that made it complicated - but not that complicated - not the calibre.
When we drill down to it and investigate other heavy engagements involving multiple battleships engagements.....well outside of the RN there are not that many....we find much more limited data and that those engagements resulted in far fewer salvos while for the British we know an incredible amount of information almost down to individual salvos fired at what time, with the effectiveness and what guns failed etc.
At Suguro for example the old battlewagons fired very few salvos - certainly less than the 30 or so KGV fired at Bismarck before experiencing issues - West Virginia fired the most - 93 main gun rounds which = 93/8 = just under 12 salvos or very much more likely more than 12 partial salvos.
I could not find any information on Washington's main gun reliability while being the big bad wolf at Guadalcanal or how many main gun rounds/salvos she fired only the suspected number of hits etc
So why we can form an 'informed opinion' on British 14" Turret reliability (and other British guns systems for that matter) due to the very readily available data on them but cannot do the same for those gun systems of other nations.