- Yes
- No
Introducing a bit of realism
Cutaway view of a British 15-inch battleship turret and ammunition handling system.
Background
Naval guns are heavy. A lot of naval guns have a system of power-assisted loading because of the weight of any particular shells, not including the propellant. Oftentimes, it is impossible for large guns to be loaded at too high of elevation, due to the weights involved.
For example, the 12-inch AP shells found on the Alaska-class large cruisers weighed 1,140lbs (517.1kg) each, and the full propellant charge was an additional 275lbs (124.7kg). At such weights, it is impossible for a machine of reasonable size to “push” the shells into place, let alone being hand loaded by the crew, at high elevations; it is simply too heavy.
So, guns needed to be “zeroed” to load. As in, the elevation had to be set to the gun’s loading angle to allow the rammer to “push” the shells into the gun breech. Most guns could only be loaded at or around this angle. For manually loaded guns, they had to be zeroed, otherwise the weight was just too much.
Many naval guns were capable of independent elevation, allowing just one barrel to be zeroed and loaded at a time, instead of all of the guns of a particular turret.
Currently, in War Thunder, this aspect of naval warfare is absent from the game. Naval guns have the same reload time regardless of their angle of elevation. Whereas, in real life and upon being fired, the gun would have to be first lowered to the loading angle (0 degrees or otherwise), then properly loaded (a shell is now in the barrel), and then re-elevated to the previous angle to fire.
A full firing cycle should look like this:
Firing Cycle
-
The guns are fired
-
The guns remain in place for a moment to let smoke exit the barrel (similar to how it is on tanks)
During this time the shell hoist is bringing up a set of shell and charges up from the ammunition/magazine. -
The guns are lowered to their loading angle, the shell and charges arrive in the gun house, and are rammed into the gun
Once ramming the shell and propellant into the breech is complete, the gun can be fired even if not on target. -
The guns return to elevation, and can be fired again (if they haven’t been fired already)
Patience must be used here as the gun also has to re-align to where the director is telling it to shoot, which can vary per gun. Shooting too early will result in a shot going off target.
These steps are a significant part of the time between the periods when the guns actually fire. But they are variable, for example if the gun is at a low elevation the amount of elevation change needed to move into the loading angle is minimized, and so the time period between elevation and loading is absent. This is where the name of the suggestion comes from.
This can be explained as a simple equation.
Total reload time (s2) = (Gun elevation relative to reload angle (θ) / speed of elevation (ω))*2 + Time to ram shell into gun (s1)
additionally,
Total Firing Cycle (s3) = Total reload time (s2) + Time for sight correction (s, variable)
Time for sight correction can be skipped if the player chooses to fire the guns early.
Additionally, there is an extra layer of steps too.
Ammunition Elevator Steps
The shell and charges leave the magazine, and are moved up into about halfway up the turret stalk. This can happen while the gun is already loaded.
This could be treated as a first-stage ammo stowage, of one round per gun.
Upon the guns being fired, the elevator from the gunhouse (turret) meets the elevator from the magazines in the middle, and the shell and charges are exchanged. The elevators then return to their starting positions, of the gunhouse and magazine respectively.
Depiction of the two ammunition elevators using the IJN Haruna.
The blue line is the elevator from the magazine, which has to stop at both the shell room and the charge room. The green line is the elevator from the gun(s), which leads to the yellow-outlined breech, and the purple line is where the two elevators meet and exchange shell and propellant.
However, this comes with the caveat that should the ammunition handling system be hit while the elevator from the shell room is present, the unexploded shell and/or charges can go off, causing a catastrophic explosion.
In game this would be represented as one set of ready-use ammo (per gun) being in the middle, and those can be hit and explode.
However, due to this weakness, it should be optional to toggle the use of said ready-use ammo stowage so that the player’s ship does not do a Jutland. If turned off, the elevator from the magazine is only sent up once the gun has fired, and can immediately transfer the rounds to the turret elevator, never “storing” the ammo.
Conclusion
Currently, these processes are not present in game. I think adding this process as an animation would be very important for naval battles, both for visuals and gameplay. It can communicate to the enemy (presumably watching you through binoculars) when you are about to fire, or to the player when their loading is complete.
Variable animation for reloading would essentially be similar to how the M901 currently works, where the turret needs to swivel around to the front to perform the reload animation. Here, however, the player retains control of the turret, but not the elevation of the barrels. It is the gun that lowers to 0 degrees and is loaded, and the player regains control of the gun once it is reloaded and has to choose to wait for the gun to aim on target again. This is to encourage patience, as firing before this process is complete will mean your guns are off target.
This does not apply to just battleships, either. Smaller caliber guns, although easier to hand load, did still require the barrels to be lowered at high angles unless they were in an AA mode, or built for high angle loading.
References and Important Links
kbismarck - Thread on any-angle loading of big guns - Note that I cannot verify any of the claims here, but nonetheless they should be taken into consideration
okieboat - 6-inch Mk 16 gun and turret
Wikipedia - Animated Gun Turret (gif)
Maritime - 5-inch/38 Mk 12 Operating Instructions
Maritime - Guns and Interior Ballistics
Youtube - Iowa-class ships conducting firing drills - Note how the guns are lowered once fired
Youtube - Battleship New Jersey - Firing the main guns - Timestamped to show the guns lowering and smoke leaving the barrel
