16" Naval Gun; Two 16-Shot Groups. Accurate?

Bart B. said:

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The range error is about 3.0% range.

The deflection error is 8 MILS.

At 25,000 yards, they scored 8 hits out of 16 rounds, the USS Iowa only two operational turrets.

15% of the range error is due to velocity variation, the other 85% is inaccuracy of elevation due ship roll. Barrel whip error is so small, it doesn't even come into play.

That is not a bad group considering the shots were taken at 14 and 20 miles, from a ship floating in the ocean.

Also, this is NGFS, i.e., indirect fire. Naval gunfire in direct fire mode, directed by radar has better accuracy. It has been proven to get first salvo hits on a maneuvering battleship size targets at nearly 23,000 yards, granted, the guns were newer, when they did that.

Before radar was refined, battleships carried float planes to spot shotfall.
Shells contained dye packets to identify which ship had fired, in the anticipated but never seen large fleet gun engagements.

Slamfire said: ↑

Lack of accuracy was a major reason why the battleships were retired. At extreme range, all they could hit was another battleship, somewhere, with their main armament.

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Wrong... The aircraft carrier is what made the battleship obsolete. While a battleship could destroy anything within the 20-something mile range of its main guns, the planes from a carrier could do the same from hundreds of miles away. The fate of the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse near Singapore just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor are a perfect example.
They were two of the best battleships in the Royal Navy but they were unaccompanied by carriers and didn't have any land based air support. Japanese aircraft sank them both within a few hours of spotting the British battleships with the lose of only 3 planes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and_Repulse

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Where you born after 31 Mar 1992? Are you aware that our WW2 era battleships were taken out of mothballs in the early 1980's and then, decommissioned? I think we had aircraft carriers in the 1980's all through the 1990's, but maybe someone lost them. Yet, we had these WW2 battleships floating around, well after WW2. Why were they put back in service and why were they taken out of service? Maybe the Navy forgot about the Prince of Wales and the Repulse and forgot where they parked their carriers on the Potomac River?

Out in 1967, off duty in 1969, back out in 1982-1990.

cfullgraf said:

Learn something everyday. I kind of though the only battleship vs battleship action in the Pacific was during the Battle of Leyte Gulf late in the war.

The USS Washington sank the JDS Kirishima at Guadalcanal.

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At a range of about 4800 yards which is child's play for a 16 inch gun. Plus the Washington's 5 inchers just machinegunned the superstructure.

And go read about the First Naval Battle Of Guadalcanal! Range of just over 1000 yards... yes a guy on the deck could have engaged them with a '03 Springfield. It was, as they said, a 'knife fight in a telephone booth'.

Deaf

cfullgraf said:

The USS Washington sank the JDS Kirishima at Guadalcanal.

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Just to keep things straight, JDS describes ships of the current Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. JDS Kirishima is a guided missile destroyer. The WWII battlecruiser/battleship Kirishima was IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy.)

Tinpig

Tinpig said:

Just to keep things straight, JDS describes ships of the current Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. JDS Kirishima is a guided missile destroyer. The WWII battlecruiser/battleship Kirishima was IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy.)

Tinpig

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Thanks for the correction. I was just copying info listed from a historical web site and that is how they listed the Japanese WWII battleship name.

I watched, in awe, when I was a young JO as the 76mm on our bow bobbed and weaved with each wave to hold steady on whatever imaginary target it was holding on - gyroscopic stabilization is an incredible thing.

I believe the chart Bart B put here is a post 1982 era examination of the role of battleships. It is a bit deceptive as the Pentagon is a very large building, the inner courtyard is 5 acres in size. It looks small in the picture, but anyone in the Pentagon would have understood the CEP of the weapon systems given that the Pentagon courtyard is the aiming point in this chart.

Google Map image of Pentagon: https://www.google.com/maps/place/P...3b87a33d7402523!8m2!3d38.861529!4d-77.0607637

I was around in that era and I remember the discussions surrounding the re commissioning of the Iowa Class battleships. This NYT article sort of summarizes the "justifications" used :

RETURN OF THE BATTLESHIPS: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/04/magazine/return-of-the-battleships.html?pagewanted=all

In fact, in spite of the rationale in the article, the basic reasons for bringing back the battleships was a feeling of nostalgia, an incredible amount of Defense money sloshing around, (this was the Reagan era buildup), and Naval Secretary John Lehman was trying to build a 600 ship Navy during his tenure. At the time, the semi conductor revolution was in its early years so a case could be made that the 16" guns were accurate enough. However, by the time you get to the 1990's, missile accuracy had been vastly improved. You can look on the web, current estimates of the Indian short range ballistic missile, Prithvi-I/II/III https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/prithvi/, the range of which is 24 miles to 93 miles, the Prithvi-t has a CEP at maximum range of 50 meters. You can place them all day inside the Pentagon courtyard at 93 miles, or you could aim them at the KFC or Starbucks in the building, and likely hit those.

I have been on Admiral Dewey's Battleship, on the USS Alabama, the difference in technology is amazing, and yet, the technology gap between 1944 and today is equally amazing. While the old battleships were the best in its day, and everyone loves big guns, later analysis showed just what antiques they were.

If you had the coordinates, you could land this nuclear tipped Pershing II missile on turret number one and taken out the whole battle fleet.




As destructive as these weapons were, no one in their right mind would use them today on a modern battlefield.






This is the best use of these things, today:

Missiles are more accurate, but now lets talk about price & sustained fire.

Missiles are more accurate, but now lets talk about price & sustained fire

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Rocks are plentiful and cheaper than either missiles or shells, but do you want to win the war, or save money while losing it?

It is easy to say wars are not cheap. Even the military becomes cost constrained, it is not easy to balance out expensive performance against low cost. I am sure the battleship was sold as a cost effective weapon. But some time down the road, that was not enough.

Slamfire said:

Rocks are plentiful and cheaper than either missiles or shells, but do you want to win the war, or save money while losing it?

It is easy to say wars are not cheap. Even the military becomes cost constrained, it is not easy to balance out expensive performance against low cost. I am sure the battleship was sold as a cost effective weapon. But some time down the road, that was not enough.

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Now that is a totally absurd non-comparison.

There are now guided projectiles available for cannon down to 3 inch/76mm. If the accuracy of a 16 inch/50 caliber rifle isn't enough for you, guidance systems could be fit to the projectiles that would give you all the accuracy you could use. The advantage of "dumb" projectiles is that they can't be "spoofed;" they follow the laws of physics, specifically ballistics. Additionally, when a section of beach goes up in gretbigo clouds of sand and a spotting drone moves to the next area, the people there, provided they aren't in very well-protected fortifications, tend to wave white flags. Just sayin'.

92 posts and half are about battleships and guns vs. rockets rather than the original topic and of the other half are about the accuracy of the gun in which everyone makes the mistake of referring to the group size as an indication of the gun's accuracy. Group size does not define accuracy, group size relates to precision not accuracy. Accuracy is how close the group's center is to the point of aim while precision is how close the individual impacts are to the group's center (how small the group is).

The gun looks to be pretty precise (considering the roll of the ship) and it's probably pretty accurate (accounting for the roll and comparing the center of the group to the point of aim).

In salvo firing with naval guns you want a decent spread; too tight a group and the chances of a hit are reduced.

Sergei Mosin said:

In salvo firing with naval guns you want a decent spread; too tight a group and the chances of a hit are reduced.

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Just like any other big gun (artillery) you use the blast radius to your advantage, the real trick is how fast you can deliver high explosives to the target area.

Just because - here's a recent viewpoint of Norman Polmar on the utility of gun based fire support and the ships that are supposed to do it. The Zumwalts are a flop. As far as being at sea, I read that the Zumwalt's guns couldn't handle a ship to ship engagement.

macgrumpy said:

Just like any other big gun (artillery) you use the blast radius to your advantage, the real trick is how fast you can deliver high explosives to the target area.

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I was thinking in terms of ship vs. ship gunnery (or any other application where a direct hit is required.) The Japanese had some problems with this; their ships tended to fire very tight salvoes but sometimes missed the target entirely where a wider salvo spread might have yielded a hit.

Very interesting thread, thanks to one and all. Always wondered how much actual explosive was in one of those monsters. Now I know.

Sergei Mosin said:

In salvo firing with naval guns you want a decent spread; too tight a group and the chances of a hit are reduced.

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I read that the objective is to get a "straddle" and then pour it on.