I had a look too and only found references to the AP round as well.
Best guess, either it was a round that it “could” use but never did. Or maybe Gaijin just made up a round for stock grind hurdle reasons
They fired HE shells in shore bombardment during WW2. HE was started to be issued since 1930s.
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Stats of Rondeys 16" guns.
Japanese guns hit harder and have a significantly lower reload rate. If unchanged then it looks like Rodneys primary advantage will be in her superb survivability. She might even have better survivability than Scharnhorst.
Her bursting charge is also no joke, meaning she can do some very funny kills from hitting barbettes.
She looks solid, the only way I can see her being ruined is if she has godawful dispersion to pair with that 46 second reload.
It does look like that only the Japanese can have their RoF based on low angle firing tests. Which is just bizarre and unfair for everyone else.
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Kommuna also, as I report it when she released. If we have data of how fast reload is in loading angle, we can report it. Gaijin don’t have ability to find it.
West Virginia reported a consistent 41 second reload during long range fighting at Surigao, with a fairly green crew at that. Short Range Battle Practice may have started the time on first firing, I’m not certain, but based on the number of shells recorded as fired during the exercise recorded average reload was based off firing six full broadsides as fast as possible, making a 48 second interval impossible. Also, William Jurens very in depth article on US Navy battleship gunnery notes that in the late 30s battleship SRBP shoots were ordered not to fire more often than every 24 seconds due to safety concerns, entirely unnecessary if a 48 second interval couldn’t be exceeded. To my knowledge practically every battleship to see combat significantly underperformed trial shoots and theoretical reloads, most in game just don’t get stuck with combat numbers.
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This was because some update happened a few months ago messed up the ballistics of all shells in the game, for example, penetration of Hood’s 15" 4crh at 15km increased from 357mm to 422mm. So the Japanese 16" guns are actually overperforming now like all other guns existed the game before that update.
On the other hand Rodney’s 16" and Dunkerque’s 330mm was introduced after the broken update, they actually have somewhat “historical” ballistics which makes them not so impressive compared to the broken majority. As you can see here the 16" penetration is just barely better than Hood’s 4crh (437mm vs 422mm @15km) while it should have been much better (437mm vs 357mm @15km). As far as I remember Japanese 41cm No.5 APC penetrated ~420mm before its penetration gets messed up. So when the broken shells get fixed the UK 16" would have been on par with or slightly better than the Japanese 41cm No.5.
Dunkerque’s 330mm would also looks less terrible as others get nerfed back to the level they should be.
Russia is getting a Revenge class before Britain in the dev server. So hopefully we get one added before the update goes live, although I don’t think Gaijin likes to add multiple 7.0’s to a TT at once.
It’s not the Japanese’s fault that they were able to implement a fixed reload for the 410mm. And this reload was even implemented not only during training shooting, but also in 1944 in the Battle off Samar.
Until the battleship Nagato arrives with improved armor, he he
Spoiler
Sorry, but ill have to doubt thay source. 24 second reload? At 32k meters where the gun will need to be elevated 25 degrees? (Especially when the gun needs to be lowered back 3 degrees to load.) As well as doing so the entire action?
Every other country never had their capital ships engage at their most optimum rate of fire. As seen in Guadalcanal, Jutland, and Denmark Strait. I highly doubt that the Japanese were the magic exception to this rule.
You can doubt as much as you like. But the fact that the Japanese were able to do this will not go away. All sources that exist, both open and some closed, write that they were able to reload in 21 seconds after modernization, and before in 24 seconds. But the funny thing is that you are surprised how such a rate of fire was possible on 16-inch guns, but do not ask yourself how some countries were able to develop approximately the same rate of fire on 380 mm main caliber.
Is the 21 seconds not counting the elevation time of the guns
They weren’t really able to develop a 15” gun doing that. Bismarck never even approached its paper firing rate in combat, I recall reading that in the fight with Hood both ships traded five, maybe six salvos in a period of 8 minutes before Hood exploded. If you don’t mind I would like to see your source that the Japanese ships accomplished these rates at Samar, since my understanding is that the effective cap on battleships rate of fire irl generally has more to do with fire control considerations and spotting fall of shot than the actual reloading of the guns.
Well the turrets were busy ruining the fire directs at points in combat
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With ignoring safety manual, so don’t count. And it is not consistent, only after some salvo almost half a gun can’t make reload in time, so ship just fired with some gun missing.
You forgot about USS Arkansas staying on service, and upcoming fast battleships.
I would like you to find me a single engagement in WWII where a battleship did not have a gun miss a salvo for one reason or another. I don’t believe you will be able to do it, errors in drill and some level of machinery failure were a fact of life for every ship old and new. Juren’s article also dates the order to 1938, when North Carolina had only just recently been laid down and Washington may not have even began, and states the average for the entire battle line was 2.5 shots per gun per minute for the entire 1930s.
Which is what true rate of fire is (or to put it in small arms terms, cyclic rate). External considerations like “waiting to observe previous impacts” doesn’t actually factor in to how quickly the guns can physically be reloaded.
I believe rodney should have 35 second reload peak at minimum, potentially even 30. Interestingly the navyweps part on the rof of the 16" mentions a 26 second reload for bl 15" i think.
Sorry if this is abysmal english my eyes hurt from swimming without goggles for 2 hours and i am very tired.
Moral of the story, there is a lot to do for rodney and I will begin making a list on her. Slightly tied up with eft though also so any help would be appreciated, I know you wonderful people will have more than enough.
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So some ships use the old penetration calculator and some use the new one?
Bizzare
For the game’s purposes sure, since elevation and depression times aren’t taken into account, guns perfectly align immediately, and there’s never any issue with keeping a live update on a fire control solution. IRL if you attempted to match in game practice at any real combat range you wouldn’t hit anything at all, in game figures are only possible if you don’t move the gun from loading angle and fire immediately when loaded, as was done in the point blank training shoots most ships in game are allowed to pull their reload from.
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