My 'Normandy Tank Killers'

Martin, You also are developing a nice thread! When I look at the size of the Tiger 11 round I too begin to wonder about the physics of it, recoil, pressure, mass, breech size. I have noticed that the weight of rifled cannon seems to go up logorrheically if velocity is similar. The Tiger 11 turret was reasonably large but not that big in proportion to the gun. One would guess the loader must be agile and very strong. I see videos on occasion of one pushing the round in then the breech closes. That must mean a pretty big shove and some danger to one's hand. The US and Brits, I believe, still use the same technique but the Russians I believe used autoloaders, they quit them briefly but now are using them again and I read somewhere the French were going auto too. The interior around the KWK 43L/71 must have been pretty chaotic.

Gaines

 

Range, no point in hanging around if the bad guys are out of range. Same reason the VCS-7 pilots gave up their Seafires at RNAS Lee-on-Solent and went back to their OS2U and SOC floatplanes aboard the various cruisers in CruDiv7.

 

but the bad guys were in range, the navy just was not asked to help. Coutances is only 14km from the west coast. Avranches is less than 20km. the gun had a range of 36km, just not used. just another one of those thing that makes an old sailor go "Hmmmmm"

scott
just a tired old sailor glad to be home from the sea

 

It's an interesting point ( although we're drifting a little o/t here..)..certainly the US battleships were much in evidence on D-day itself ( numerous accounts refer to them most famously Hemingway in 'Voyage To Victory' referring to USS Texas & USS Arkansas ). But I don't seem to recall many references to the USN during the breakout fighting. Maybe, as R Leonard suggests, range was a key factor. Post D-Day, the US & British/Canadian forces were fighting in very different terrain against different troop concentrations.

 

will open a new topic elsewhere on the forum

 

Of course Arkansas and New York were lined up to provide support to Operation Dragoon, which may also have something to do with their departure.

 

Don't forget USS Nevada also went south to join in Dragoon.

The big guns were needed elsewhere.

 

Didn't at least one of the British monitors support some latter ops?

 

Yes indeed - HMS Roberts, armed with WW1-era 15" guns.

 

Weren't they the ones, guns and turret both, from either Courageous or Glorious? The same guns that equipped the last British battleship I believe.

 

The gun turrets from Courageous and Glorious were reused on the last British battleship, HMS Vanguard.

WW2 Monitors HMS Roberts had the gun turret from WWI monitor HMS Marshal Soult, the HMS Terror had the gun turret from the WW1 monitor HMS Marshal Ney. Monitors HMS Erebus & HMS Abercrombie used the 15-inch turrets constructed for HMS Furious - they were to have been used if the 18-inch turret was a failure.

 

While all his ammo (both tank and naval) is so impressive, we forget that with the increase in size of ammo comes two drawbacks: both rate of fire and number of rounds carried suffered. The German tankers also had an additional liability, the loader is on the right side of the gun. That means that right-handed loaders had to use their left hand and arm to load those gigantic cartridges.

 

Missed this somehow. No Allied bombardment vessels were going to sail into the bays of St Malo or Mont Sr Michel. The coastal batteries on the Channel Islands and the threat of mines, along with the insane tidal flows worked against it. Which meant that all bombardments were conducted west of Caen in the Bay of the Seine. On top of that, the coastal batteries at Le Havre and Cabourg, along with the threat of minisubs from Le Havre limited the area the bombardment vessels could use. IIRC, most bombardment operations ended by the second week of July.

 

Harolds, thank you for getting us back on the topic, tanks, I remember few with 15-16" main guns. I had forgotten that German loaders being on the right. Anyone know why this was true. As the vast majority of homo sapiens are right handed it seems most odd the gunner would have to mainly use his left hand. As shell size increased the issue would worsen. this one seems to be a significant advantage to Western tanks and the ability to fire more rapidly. But I am assuming a well-trained loader could not do both.

My primary question was why the usually logical German's did this?

Gaines

PS, I do think a new thread on coastal bombardment would be a capital idea. Like the German hit on Texas off Cherbourg.

 

In the early Mk IIIs and Mk IVs, with their 37mm and short 75mm guns, it probably wasn't a problem and it would have been a time-consuming pain to re-engineer them when they were up-gunned. So why did they keep this arrangement in the later types, including the late war Hetzer? Perhaps it wasn't so much of a problem after a while when the loader built up muscles and dexterity. Anybody got any thoughts on this?

 

Opened a new thread to discuss US battleships in Europe. I did not mean to hijack this thread.