Tides of War

I've recently, and enjoyingly, been playing the tactic missions with the battlecruisers Hood, P.E. and K.W. however I've noticed a distinct lack in manueverability. I feel this should be addressed and the turning ability greatly increased. Before you guys jump on me about how heavy ships manuever less allow me to explain my point, and perhaps lend a little aid to the developers (I hope).

I spent 2 years in the US Navy as a helmsman for a Wasp-class Multipurpose Amphibious Assault ship. For those of you not familiar with this vessel it was modeled after the Essex-class Fast Attack Carrier, what does any of this have to do with a battlecruiser you may ask? Well several points really. My ship that I drove had a standard displacement (Standard, not full mind you) of roughly 40,500 tons, and I received alot of personal time learning her handling characteristics, also please keep in mind that this is a flat bottomed hull, less manueverable than the contoured, round hulls which most major heavy warships were built with. Also my ship had significantly /LESS/ shaft horsepower and only two screws (70,000 SHP unlcassified). Despite all these hinderances she was still very manueverable and when handled right could even turn in only a few boat-lengths.

The battlecruisers currently in the gold eddition on the otherhand were similiar to trying to steer a modern aircraft carrier with a canoe paddle. Also a major point missing I noted was the varying manueverability over speed ranges. The Wasp-class I drove was by no means fast, but at flank speed, even a single degree of rudder would render a higher turn rate than throwing the rudder hard over at 5 knots (hard over is 35 degrees of rudder). In addition to this WW2 warships such as the american South Dakota, Iowa etc. class warships used hull designs where it wasn't just the water moving to either side of the rudder that assisted in the turn, but the water traveling _under_ it. The hulls were shaped in such a manner that it was the full 3d effect of it flowing over the hull that lent these ships their manueverability. When (again I'm going to use the Iowa as an example here) one of these ships turned it naturally heeled over to the outside of the turn, however the water flowing along the underside of its hull actually sucked the ship through the turn, helping to pull it around, not just the sole action of the rudders. This is why when one of those ships entered shallow water where it couldn't get the proper flow underneath its keel it lost a significant ammount of its manueverability (which perhaps can be utilized when land is put in?). And incase all that isn't enough reason to make those ships more manueverable, I present my visual aid.

This is a shot from WW2 of the Japanese Super-battleship Yamoto manuevering wildly to avoid attacking carrier-born bombers and torpedo-bombers. This warship displaced over 70,000 tons and is a prime example of what (then at that time) modern engineering can accomplish.



The Yamoto is the one in the middle completing a circle, you can follow its wake and see where it zig-zaged a couple times before spinning around in what I'm estimating to be about 6-8 boat lengths though I could be wrong, I'm just using my Mark-1 Mod-0 eyeball on this.

Yaivenov

aka

CTR3(sel) Pugh

U.S. Navy

A helmsman is a BM. Were you in Deck Division before you went to CT School?

You were a CTR, Which was a Cryptologic Technician (Spook). My brother was a spook, too.

I was an FC Fire Controlman (Twidget).-----Tomahawk and Harpoon. >:(

Very good info Sir.

Point taken and it will be remedied. Thanks for taking the time to lay it out so nicely.

--East

Yes, Monty, I was a knuckle dragging deck ape for 2 years before I went secret squirrel. I was qualified for the underway bridge watch positions of Helmsman, Lee Helmsman, Emergency Aftersteering Helmsman (that one is tricky to do well) and of course Lookout. In the game I actually feel like i'm back on foreward lookout stationed above the bridge

I dont mean to put a spanner in the works but are you sure comparing the Hood with Yamoto is a good comparison hood was built in 1918 and yamamoto in 1940 that is 22 years of design improvements.

True, however you should also take note that hull designs are also 'generally' slow to advance. For instance the "modern" Ticonderoga-class Guided Missile Cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class Guided Missile Destroyers are both built on the hull originally used in the old Spruance-class Destroyers (1975), and the Nimitz-class use the hull design from the Enterprise-class (1961). I'm not saying there couldn't have been advancements but mostly I was illustrating the ability for significantly heavier ships to have decent to good manuevedrability.

I'm currently hunting for any drydock photos to examine the underside design of the Hood-class and will post those whenever I manage to track them down.

everything you need to know about hood is on here the official website

http://www.hmshood.com/

I was not so much thinking about hull design but propulsion systems.

as long as we're on the subject of large warships:

PBS tuesday, oct. 4 7pm (US Central): The Sinking of the Superbattleship Yamato.

just FYI.

What channel # is PBS?

well, in Milwaukee Wisconsin it's channels 10 and 36, but it might be different where you live.

Edit: it's going to be on ch10 here, but it gets repeated the next day on 36.

I'd suggest going to the PBS website.