Ambrose vs Zitterling ?

[sid guttridge]

Hi Nigelfe,

Of course simply adding up gross shell weights and using it for equivalence is far from the whole story. However, I would suggest that it is not quite "total nonsense" because the weight of projectiles is necessarily one factor in any comparison to be made.

Discussion of this subject has contained a number of caveats such as "....it tells us nothing about range, weight of shell, ammunition availability, etc...." and "Of course, this would all bear double checking and begs a lot of questions." We are aware it is a more complex issue.

That said, thanks very much for a very informative post.

Have you any more hard facts using the rule of thumb you describe that would help establish the equivalent value of a typical cross section of British battleships, cruisers and destroyers?

Cheers,

Sid.

[nigelfe]

If adding up gross weights had merit the Brits would have done it because its simple. It hadn't so they didn't! Of course they had selected a standard target 'men crouching in slit trenches' but their premise (and I guess they validated it) was that for practical intents and purposes it was the most appropriate approximation. This is not a precise science in practical terms.

I can't remember seeing anything on ship battery equivalence for WW2, and am fairly sure it was post war. However, there could well have been something. A lot of the work was done at the behest of the committee (name escapes me for the moment) that was planning the fire suppport for DDay. This of course led to LCT(Rkt) and the use of the 105mm Priest regts on the run in fireplan controlled by their 'Coventry Clocks' because they concluded the conventional naval and air effort would be insufficient.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Nigelfe,

Another question:

It strikes me that naval ammunition would primarily have been designed for ship-to-ship actions and so presumably wasn't necessarily suitable for ground support. Were special naval ammunition types developed for supporting land operations?

Cheers.

Sid.

[nigelfe]

I've never explored naval ammo so I don't know. A complicating factor would be when the ammo was designed. I'd guess that earlier designs of HE were 'general purpose'. However, when the 3.7-inch HAA was designed the shell was explicaitly designed to damage airframes, so the fragemnts were designed to be quite large, which was less than ideal for ground targets. The navy might have taken the same approach with shells designed in the '30s, if any, for guns with an AA role. 4.5-inch might be in that category, I don't know if the army and navy AA used the same shells, but seems likely. However, I've never come across anything saying that the shell design was optimised for airframe damage.