How many Tachibana class escort ships be made with the first 30% of a Yamato class battleship?

@ABWorsham4

Iowa’s faster and outranges the, hypothetically (not including fire control) Iowa can take out a ton before it runs out of ammunition.

If they’re fighting close Iowa losing to 8 pre dreadnoughts with 14 inchers sounds right. 👍

@king_of_tanks

Good point.

There is an interesting report by the US Office of Naval Intelligence on the Battle of the River Plate, with quite a few photos and ship damage reports.  It can be found here, at the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library, and downloaded for free.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org

As for a battle between the Admiral Scheer and a Baltimore–class cruiser, I would bet on the Baltimore-class ship, unless the Scheer got some early lucky hits on gun turrets, as the Spee did on the HMS Exeter.  The USS Salt Lake City, one of our two oldest heavy cruisers in World War 2, with an older gunfire control system than the Baltimores, was able to score hits on the IJN Nachi at ranges in excess of 21,000 yards.  The following comment from the ONI report applies to the Spee’s gunnery.

German shooting was described as quite good, initially, but the accuracy fell off rapidly.
(a) 11-inch opened with two 3-gun salvos, very close and on in deflection.
(b) 5.9-inch also fired at Exeter; no definite hits determined, but many splinters came aboard.

Part of the problem that the US Navy ran into when it went to war was that – like many military forces before or since – it had to learn some things for itself before it believed them.  The British had over two years of experience fighting the Battle of the Atlantic at that point, but the Americans didn’t feel that they needed any advice from them on the matter.  It didn’t help that Admiral Ernest J. King was an Anglophobe, in addition to having a generally abrasive personality.  (His wife reputedly once said: “Ernie is the most even-tempered man I’ve ever met.  He’s always in a foul mood.”)  As a result, the Americans made mistakes in their early ASW methods of operations which could have been avoided.  In fairness, the US Army had similar learning-curve problems in North Africa, notably at Kasserine Pass if I remember correctly.

Hands down, US Fletcher class destroyer. 175 built, the next two US destroyer classes based off of it. It was the destroyer that screened the US carrier battle groups. 5 duel purpose 5" guns, numerous AA guns, 10 21" torpedo tubes (only effective after the US solved its torpedo problem). speed, 38 knots. a true warship. also, one could argue they won the war for the US. It was basically the Navy’s version of the Sherman tank. plus, the last one was decommissioned in 2001, so a life of 57-59 years depending on when it was commissioned.

@Der:

Mine was probably one of the books in the Time-life series published about WWII.

Same, my Great-Grandfather had a bunch of those Time-life books that he gave to me.

@wittmann:

Thanks Noll. I guessed it was something like that. Should have realised it had to be Alexandria. Where else would our frogmen have sunk anything?
I forgot it was two Battleships that were sunk.
Do you subscribe to the Italian connection in the Novorossiysk incident?
It is nice to think it could be true.

I seriously don’t know and I can’t tell. I’d like to think so tho’.

@Imperious:

Yep thats pretty much the sinker.

Id like to see a poll on the best Great War Battleship

The Great War is awesome to study. Wish I knew more about the ships of that era.