WesWorld

Are those guns on the Tribal class DDs FULLY automatic guns as stated=

Probably like the "automatics" on the Kyustendil: I simmed them as autos to add weight to deal with shell-handling equipment. I noted that in the comments section, though.

All the 5.5" mounts I have are automation-assisted, I guess the closest historical analog would be the Worcester mounts, but probably less sophisticated (I'm not really an expert on them), but definately nothing approaching the 1950+ 5"/54 mounts. The automation is geared towards averting crew fatigue impact on ROF and DP use, not removing crew from the turrets. I used to sim the twin guns as triples to simulate all the additional weight for the earliest weapons (namely for the Labrador, Ontario, Renown, and Batch I Tribals), but with other players chosing lighter options, I decided to start doing so as well.

Hmmmm....

Please don´t think I´m bashing Canadian here. I have some problems with ALL these automatic guns.

You said Worcaster is the example you followed. Well, this is what NavWeaps has about these guns - which entered service in 1948. After some delay, that is, but nevertheless 1937/38 is a it early even for WesWorld.

I also don´t understand why you guys are so keen on these automatic weapons. DP I understand to some degree even though I wonder why those nations invent these guns that have not even fought a single plane as of lately.... And why automatic? The French build medium size caliber DPs for their ships without using automatic guns. Using quads on the Dunkerque class was a failure as was using two lifts on the 6" Richelieu mounts but with a standard twin mount with two hoists I don´t see these problems to occur. No need to go for the much more advanced american models.

The Worcaster guns also add not much to ROF of a well designed 6" gun (10 vs. 12 shots/minute comparing Cleveland vs. Worcaster) but add lots of technical issues resulting in lots of failures and thus missed salvos - which in fact means a lower ROF!

Regarding weight - those automatic high angle medium size mounts weighted much more than a comparable low-angle mount (Worcaster 212 tons per mount, Brooklyn 170 tons, Cleveland 176 tons). And this is the turret weight only - without taking into account what that means to the supporting decks etc. In case of the 8"/55RF it´s even worse. So I think simming them as triples is a minimum. EVERYBODY using such guns but NOT simming them at least as triples should re-sim his designs, IMHO.


(End of my delayed monday morning rant...)

I don't really see any problem with this concept. As Shin said, it's NOT an automatic gun - it's extra equipment to reduce crew fatigue: "used in a mounting with better shell handling and loading equipment". That's precisely what I intended for the Kyustendils and what ShinRa said the Tribals have. The NavWeps page on the Mark 16 also notes that the USN had worked on the gun starting in the 30s, and had neglected it for several periods before finalizing it in 1943.

Personally, I am against simming twins as triples. I think we need to add miscellaneous weight - as ShinRa did on the new Tribals - or we need to use the "Automatic" gun function in Springsharp... which also is used on the Tribals.

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So I think simming them as triples is a minimum. EVERYBODY using such guns but NOT simming them at least as triples should re-sim his designs, IMHO.

Actually you have got the miscellaneous weights option for that.
If you sim them as triples, then they are triples. Nothing more, nothing less.

I like doing it that way because it includes the weight of a 50% greater ammo supply. That helps Russian ships sustain the higher firing rate.

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Originally posted by AdmKuznetsov
I like doing it that way because it includes the weight of a 50% greater ammo supply. That helps Russian ships sustain the higher firing rate.

That'd be the one bone I'd have to pick with the newest Tribals: I'd prefer to have 250 rounds per gun, at the least. Remember the gunfight the Irish Connacht had with the merchant cruiser: in 29 minutes, with the Irish gunners firing at less than half the stated rate of the 5.12" guns, Connacht used 169 rounds per gun, leaving only 30 rounds remaining in her magazines - and 2/3rds of those were starshell. The after-action report noted Connacht's ammo usage statistics and recommended:

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Extend the capacity of the main magazines from 200 rounds per gun to, if possible, 250 rounds per gun, and reduce the number of starshell per gun from twenty to ten.

This recommendation is one of the main reasons for the Irish decision to buy 4.5" DP guns from Britain to arm Ulster, Munster and Leinster, rather than standardizing with the 5.12": the weight savings from the guns permit the magazine capacity to be raised to 250 rounds. The gain in ammunition supply was determined to be more important than the performance lost as a result of down-gunning.

But that's just the Irish Navy's current working theory, gained from their one relevant example of hands-on experience. I'd be interested to hear what the SAE and Argentine technical committees are discussing right now, as they'd have more relevant combat examples than the INS.

As NavWeaps says...

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Work began in 1937 as the main guns for a new class of cruisers limited by treaty to 8,000 tons. This project was halted in 1940 with the failure to produce an acceptable 8,000 ton design for this cruiser.

Canada had additional motivation to get a start on the concept even earlier;

I can't speak for anyone else's motives, but Canada's stems from how the RCN was formed; the RN dumped all the 5.5" white elephants on me, which resulted in the RCN adopting odder calibers than pretty much every other power. At some point, beuracratic beancounters decided that there was no need for another caliber between 4" and 7.5", and thus decreed that 5.5" wasn't all that bigger than 5", and should work as a DP gun. Canada's now spent the last ten years or so trying to make that beuracratic musing a reality, with mixed results; the first attempts on the Argyll and Canada classes have no automation assists, and will suffer drastic problems with sustained ROFs if tested in combat. With those issues made appearant during training and excersizes, automation assisted mounts were researched, developed, and eventually placed on several classes with the triple-as-twin simmed solution. This was all in news reports for several years.

So, to reiterate, the automation in Canada's 5.5" mounts is intended for an acceptable sustained ROF, not for a substantial increase over manual loading. The possibility for that in the future is there, but the technology isn't there yet. And, of course, none of this addresses how well they'll perform in actual combat; as I already stated, the pure manual guns on Argyll and Canada will have serious problems if they get caught in a sustained AA battle. If the Labradors and other ships with the early automation-assisted mounts had found themselves in combat, they'd have suffered teething problems (Now that they've been in service for 5+ years, I expect them to perform fairly well). I had a similar plan for the new-model lightweight mounts when they were introduced in 1940; If combat arose while the guns were still relatively new, they'd have teething and jamming problems for a while. I bumped the date up to 1937 as a reaction to seeing other players (without the 10-year development backstory) begin to fudge reports with much lighter weight 'automation assisted' mounts. :\

I can't really speak for the Russian, Bulgarian, and other such mounts; None of them have the extensive backstory I developed, and for the most part mate the technology with lighter shells that are less suseptible to crew fatigue, and thus presumably have different motivation.

In regards to ammo capacity, the new Tribal batch will have basically the same ammo capacity as the first batch, but has two additional guns to feed. That's something of a compromise given the fact that the hull is not being substantially enlarged to handle increased ammo capacity and the new guns.

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Originally posted by ShinRa_Inc
I can't really speak for the Russian, Bulgarian, and other such mounts; None of them have the extensive backstory I developed, and for the most part mate the technology with lighter shells that are less suseptible to crew fatigue, and thus presumably have different motivation.

My use of the "Automatic" Bulgarian guns was derived via RA's advice here regarding the original Kyustendil-class design. Originally I was gunning for (pun intended) 140mm DP mounts, but the Bulgarian Navy already had 130mm DPs and therefore I stuck with that. (Additionally, I had already noted the long Canadian development times on the 140mm, and recognized I didn't have the backstory the Canadian guns did.) I was also uninterested in switching to 4x150mm or 6x150mm, and therefore determined 8x130mm was the weapon to choose.

The extra weight originally simmed to try to make a workable 140mm gun remained with the 130mm, so I called it "Improved Shell-Handling Equipment". In truth, the Bulgarian "automatics" are not - it's a fudge factor to demonstrate the designer's attempts to sustain the 12-16 RPM rate of fire the guns are allegedly capable of.

Or it might be a fudge factor to show the weight of the mavrud the seamen are expected to sneak into the turrets with them.

I have them on one vessel (Hiei Special), but it's only experimental. I did forget with a few designs to change the guns from auto to DP since they were originally for the 1940s, but I think that I corrected those faults. Should you encounter a ship design in the Japanese encyclopedia other than the Hiei Special (or the "Caerula Sanguis") with automatic guns, it should actually be DP guns.

The Russian semiauto DP mounts were introduced on the experimental destroyer Caspianskiy, laid down 1932. She also serves as the flagship of the Russian Caspian Sea Flotilla.

The system is intended to help the gun crew sustain a firing rate of 15rpm or so.

So far as I'm aware, the only true automatic weapons are some 128/45 C/34s on Germany's Z-203 destroyer and those on Hiei. The others are just a bit mechanised. I think the best way of thinking of them are as RP10 and similar mountings with remote power control, automatic fuze setting etc.

Looking at weights again, realistically it seems that such mountings weigh up to about 50% more, with truely automatic mountings weighing even more. There's a lot of variety in the figures though, skewed by how much armour is on the mountings themselves.

For heavy weapons in sustained fire, the following rates should be considered fairly typical;

6" : 6-8rpm
5.25" : 8-10rpm
5" : 12-14rpm
4.5" : 12-16rpm
4" : 16-20rpm
3" : 16-20rpm

Navweaps does have a habit of quoting absolute maximum firing rates for some weapons, rather than normal ones. With lower calibres, like 3", the amount of metal being moved reduces, but time to open the breech etc. stays relatively fixed, so the rate of fire doesn't really increase past 20rpm.

Without proximity fuzes, all large calibre AA is fairly useless at shooting down aircraft. High rates of fire don't make a great deal of difference as it's the actual aiming which is wrong, rather than the gun itself. Throwing more shells in the general direction of attack helps, but its not really a proportional relationship to shootdowns.

Italy has a duple 152/53 mounting capable of higher angle elevation and faster training rates for which I gave 25% extra weight. It's probably reasonable. There's also the 65/64 automatic undergoing extensive development; it'll morph into something else before being adopted.

Having read a bit more on heavy automatic weapons since, for guns of 5" and above there isn't going to be a realistic improvement on rate of fire with current technology. It really requires 1950s technology, and even then you've got plenty of reliability problems. Germany's idea of using automatic loading to ensure the loading sequence takes the same amount of time, and so help the FC system, is interesting, but really, RPC would take care of this by adjusting the dead time in the system.