They were already sinking from gunfire if they couldn’t get back to port in-time. Torpedoes just sped up the process and allowed the British to get close enough to actually catch them and pepper them with more gunfire. Bismarck for example only 1 torpedo is noted as causing significant damage and that was to the propellor shafts leaving the ship unmaneuverable. No mention of flooding.
But when the cruisers attacked the next day she is noted as having a heavy list on the side to which she receive gunfire.
The ships have poor reserve buyouncy as do all post-war German Dreadnoughts , which is supported historically, yes they are well compartmentalised but what happens when you for example, break those compartments…
The theory of buoyancy needs no historical evidence, it’s elementary physics. Since the ceiling of the turtleback is below the waterline when loaded, this means that the citadel doesn’t contain any effective volume to contribute to the ship’s reserve buoyancy, as good old Archimedes already told us that any volume that displaces water already contributes to the ship’s buoyancy. The very low citadel protection deck also means that the volume of the citadel is rather limited, which is not capable of keeping the ship afloat when all other volumes are flooded, as in typical all-or-nothing designs. The turtleback also exacerbates the free surface effect, making it easier for the ship to lose stability and capsize. Compartmentalisation really isn’t something to be complimented on - what’s the point when the ship’s protection can be easily penetrated by contemporary guns at literally any range? It doesn’t really change anything other than slowing down the sinking process.
Apologies this is unrelated to your comment but do you know why Kronshtadt has the 305mm guns rather than the 3x2 German 38cm guns of the design to which she was laid down?
(modification and order of turrets made in August 1938, ships laid down intended September actual November).
No idea, developers chose anything as they wish :)
But I would strongly doubt she’d be better to have 38cm guns. The 38cm SK C/34, along with the old German 38cm, the British 15" and Japanese 41cm shares the worst accuracy in the game. I’d rather have the 305mm laser guns.
Out of curiousity, do you have any proof the ceiling of the turtleback is below water? Thr pic of the armor scheme above has it slightly above the waterline…
Haha, I am not advocating for a backhanded ‘buff’ for Kronshtadt, she is well balanced now.
I am more interested in developer precedent, the devs have gone with her ‘final’ design, before she was laid down on the basis that as she had been laid down, she is suitable for addition. But with her ‘final’ design which means the 305mm despite subsequent modification before she was laid to use 38cm.
I want to amend my G3 post to include an option for G3 in her ‘final’ design as this was with 16.5/45’s firing a 2,552 lbs. (1,157 kg) APC projectile at 2,425 fps (739 mps) based on Greenboy but with a 6Crh.
Im not totally sure about this, but it feels ingame that smaller calibres with higher rof beat the big gunZ (38, 41cm) which take a millenia to reload. Bigger also means less accuracy in WT (however, thats secondary, biggest flaw is the rof.
It became evident with the Graf Spee and its 28cm main guns. First I was hyped by a cruiser sized ship with the armament of a battleship. Soon it turned out that thanks to poor rof and accuracy every 15cm armed cruiser beat that. Even some of the top destroyers have more lethal firepower (ingame) than Spee with its two 28cm turrets.
Wall of text…what I wanted to say: Upping the guns wouldn’t neccessarily mean a buff.
Yes you are right: RoF, gun-handling and penetration are all king at the moment.
When I say ‘backhanded’ I mean that the 38Cm is better than the 305mm in calibre but comes with downsides such as RoF though the 38cm could achieve 2.3 rounds per minute.
In Bismarck’s case, the draft will increase to 9.9m when fully loaded, which then brings the turtleback approximately level to the waterline. My apologies for the inaccurate comment but the conclusion still stands - as there’s no significant citadel volume expanding over WL (even with the designed WL) the citadel alone was incapable of keeping the ship afloat.
In addition, in most of original blueprints, (and therefore most of reproduced diagrams that can be found online) ship’s waterline was given as their unloaded conditions. For example, in Renown’s original plan the WL is even lower than the main belt:
Battleships are very difficult to sink via gunfire alone, because most of time thats what they’re made to do. However, no battleship is going to be happy when a shell peirces their armor belt and detonates inside. Kirishima, for an example, took multiple body blows from Washingtons 16" super heavy shells and still took a whole day to sink.
You can mission kill and cripple a battleship, but if you want it sent to the bottom in a timely manor, you’ll need a torpedo for the coup de gras. The Royal Navy didnt want to wait around for days for Bismark to get sunk, so they used torpedoes to speed up the process. Any claims that Bismark was ‘immune’ to gunfire or was scuttled is simply an act of cope.
What WT Naval needs right now is penetrating hits to actually matter. A BB having its barbette peirced is a disaster that knocks out the whole turret. But right now the only thing it does is slow the battleships reload rate.
Pumping is also an issue, if your armor belts waterline gets peirced you can just tap a button and the water gets pumped out. However, the actual waterline of the ship stays the same. In actually counterflooding is needed when that happens and when done lowers the waterline of the ship until the worst case scenerio. The armor belt becoming completely submerged and the only thing protecting is structeral steel.
WT naval needs more work to make kills other than magazine hits reliable.
Probably has something to do with overlapping plates+decapping+angling/angle of fall.
But yes its insane.
I look forward to reporting that HMS Duke of York cannot penetrate Scharnhorst where she did historically. Or that the same 14" gun cannot penetrate Bismarcks thick conning tower at the range she did historically.
Scharnhorst has a main belt and then a sloped turtleback behind it. The first plate will aide in decapping the shell and then the turtleback which is both thick, and highly sloped and will have increased resistance against the slug behind the cap if the cap is removed. But the effectiveness of turtleback armour is slightly debated.
We’ve been waiting for a Scharnhorst armour fix since she was introduced.
Just the way the code works, trust me there wouldn’t be a thread for it if it was a simple bug…
I am more than a little frustrated by it but the best I can do is just try my best to either avoid Scharnhorsts, or damage them in the ways that I can.
IMO Scharnhorst should be removed and all players with her should instead receive Ersatz-Yorck and Ersatz-Mackensen instead being able to recrew Scharnhorst later on for free with all the mods when she would actually be balanced at 8.0 where she belongs. Yes it gives Germany lots of top tiers, but they’re all killable in a 1v1 engagement and are more in-line with HMS Hood.
With varying 13.4" and 15" guns in an armour configuration closer to that of Derfflinger but with vastly better guns, the same good 2.5 RPM per gun (so a 25 second reload) but slightly worse armour than Hood. The same shells as on Bayern class for Yorck and the shell stats for the 13.4" are known.
Scharnhorst cannot and will not be balanced until much later ships, to reflect this, those ships should be removed. Also as Gaijin has said all nations will receive new rank 6 ships, Germany only has either another Scharnhorst class, or one of these WW1 Era ships that are available (unless they add Bismarck which I wouldn’t put past them)…
