On 23/06/2014 02:43, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:

>  The article also stated that the over-all accuracy of the UK ships
> at the Falklands was pretty poor but that when directors were later
> added the accuracy did improve greatly.

At the Falklands, the German admiral (Spee?) ran upwind, forcing the
British to peruse into his smoke, making their sighting poor. Also,
those early BCs had a poor mast and funnel arrangement that tended to
put smoke into and over the tops.

> As a side-note, I once played a computer wargame that was supposed to
> have used actual historical for surface engagements. I was surprised
> to see that, in the simulation, those particular UK BC's only had 90
> rounds/maingun!

That's quite normal, though for operational use ships tended to pack in
more. The guns had to be rebarreled after something like 220 full-power
rounds, and battleship ammo is /heavy/ as well. USS Iowa's allowance was
100 per gun, and the barrel life 300 rounds, so it never really changed.
Also consider that 90 rounds was 30-45 minutes of maximum rate of fire,
which was very unlikely to actually be seen. Shore bombardments required
more sustained fire than fleet actions, generally.

> Anyway, when I tried to simulate the Falklands battle historically
> (germans run away rather than closing in to attack while the UK ships
> were still at anchor), I discovered that, if I opened fire with the
> UK ships at max range, it was possible for them to run out of ammo
> w/o scoring a single hit! Turned out the trick was to hold fire until
> a certain range while making sure that the german main guns were
> still out of range.
>
> Made me wonder about the accuracy of the program.

No, that was probably about right, and it's what the British did - held
range outside the German's effective range, and grind them to ruin.