RN Littorio - Guide 045 - Part 2 of 2 (Human Voice) 

I'm a fairly new subscriber so not sure if you have covered this. Your opinion of Graf Zeppelin is pretty low in terms of aircraft carrier design but how does the Italian CV Aquila stand up to other designs?

Do you think railguns could be the herald of the return of battleships or some modern equivalent? Aside from being main guns, what other roles could railguns fill? (CIWS with extreme range?) With the ability to do whatever you want, how would you design a railgun equipped modern BB? (Could be as big as Gerald Ford or more modest)

What would be the effect of modern anti ship missiles against WW2 era battleships, considering most of them are designed to hit the waterline (where the main belt would be) and are not armour piercing weapons. The Fritz X and other bombs were actually designed with armour piercing in mind afterall, and no sabe designer of modern ASMs would design a missile that gives up explosive payload and range in order to pierce armour that is mostly nonpresent in the modern context?

Would you like to discuss the torpedo protection system in a bit more detail? I (think I) understand that the fluid distributes the impulse energy equally among the outside of the inner barrel. But why did it need to be of a certain size to work?

@@eduardocharlier7560 Depends on the missile. Something like a Shipwreck would probably pen anyway, something like a Harpoon not so much.

Kinda sad for the German bomb designers. The bomb was not that effective against the US and Britain since they had air cover and would destroy the bombers before they launched. There was also radio jamming, radar jamming, and other shenanigans from the Allies. But they could attack their former ally. Yay!! Blew up a few ships, bringing you no closer to winning the war.

@@princeofcupspoc9073 They had two types, a radio guided that had to be watched and could be jammed, the other used a wire and TV camera inside the bomb to be guided from a very small TV screen in the aircraft. Both types had to stay close to the ship they attacked until the bomb hit. Which kept them in range of the larger anti-aircraft guns and enemy fighters. Both types were available by 1940 but held back as secret weapons until later. Possibly the best use would have been taking out as many British aircraft carriers and battle ship's as possible. Before they developed countermeasures to them. Anti-aircraft and fighter cover at sea at the beginning of the war, was nowhere as good as it became later on. possibly the best time would have been in support of the Africa korp before Montgomery was in command, along with giving the Italian Navy German Radar operated by German technicians. Always easy looking back.

@@spookyshadowhawk6776 well as they say, "hindsight is 20/20"

@@princeofcupspoc9073 you have also to consider that just one of those bombs was a "lucky shoot" by hitting the second turret armory, the other two battleships was hit too but received almost no damage. If it wasn't for the fact that the captain of the Roma ordered to not open fire against the nazi, then probably the Roma would have managed to survive despite all. OH and apart from that, then there are still people calling us "traitors" instead of the nazi. Even after have surrender to the allies our ships have not opened fire against them. But they had no remorse to open fire against us.

That, fuel shortages and the fact the battleship concept was outdated by that point.

Italy was not a very industrialized nation at this point in time. Them even being able to construct these is quite a feat for Italian industry at the time.

@@rogerwilco2 not so sure the capacity was bad what was bad was lack o raw materials. Italy produced some fantastic war machine like the Macchi fighter plane at the end of the war: too little too late but fearsome fighter planes Italy navy had no radar! But battleships like the Vittorio Veneto could find range almost immediately. Not bad

And the brilliant chap who looked at radar and said "nah, it will never catch on"

There was nothing wrong with Littorio's shells actually. The measured dispersion would have been considered good by any navy and, tested by the Allies, the fuses were more reliable than German ones.

It seems the Italians make excelent Torpedo target practice ships

I guess those attacks proved how useless the "innovative" torpedo protection system was.

@@BHuang92 most ships where torpedoed once and sunk. These Ships where torpedoed more then once. And where more back in the dockyard then at sea

@@obelic71 This isn't pre-WW1 we're talking about. All treaty BBs were up to the task of surviving multiple torpedo hits.

@@Tepid24 I think Prince of Wales takes exception to that.

The moment when you pull off a successful missile attack on a battleship and not know it...

@@bkjeong4302 With all that AA flying in the air and with Allied air superiority, I can well understand their desire to not confirm their kill.

It was impossible to not notice the nuclear fungus that was made by the armory explosion. Half of the crew died instantly with the captain included. The other half of the crew was almost burned alive, they had to throw themselves in the sea to quit the flames on their bodies. "Fun fact"...

There's a book out there called "Struggle for the Middle Sea" that I'm currently reading that nicely covers the Mediterranean theatre of WW2 - from the political background to the high level strategies to the details of the engagements.

My thought as well. Littorio and Scharnhorst were the most beautiful battleships ever IMHO.

My favorite picture is at 4:13

@@MJMJ27 I do LOVE that raised 3rd turret and barbette. Very distinctive and iconic to the class.

I know it’s controversial but I really like the look of the nelsons. Something about the “no retreat” look of the ship

@@babomb2146 they are very rough and blue collar looking ships. Their profile and outline is unique among battleships.

I think Drach goes way overboard and makes very opinion based claims on absolutely nothing except how he feels on that system, it obviously worked and was easily better than any American ships protection for example and he never went on that kind of rant when talking about those ships.

We say no to pay to win Yeah, if one of our ships took a torpedo it was just easier to build another ship. Industrial might at its finest 🇺🇸

@@bluewatersnipe2227 Well luckily non of your new capital ships got critically hit.

Live-scale tested by the Soviets, the Pugliese TDS performed better thant the standard spaced TDS, that's why they chose it for the Sovetsky Soviet class. It's also pretty ridicolous than, among the defects of the system, it's often cited the "difficulty of repair", when the Littorios had always been repaired in record time in respect to other BBs hit by a torpedo.

@@neutronalchemist3241 Record time?

No lie. Visit Italy some time. As a sloppy American I felt rather inadequate. Even the gang bangers on the street corners were dressed to the 9s. People dress for dinner. I mean, suits and everything. (In the US suits are only for weddings, funerals, and job interviews.)

Princeofcups Poc and the occasional hot date

Italian ocean liners have very pleasing lines. Can't think of any country that does better.

Yes. I love their unique style

This makes their early WWII aircraft so confusing. Like they took a break for a minute. Now they were much better than the French abominations but still nothing special. Fortunately from an aesthetic standpoiny they fixed all that with the later Macchi C.202 Foglore, Reggiane Re 2005 Sagittario and Fiat G.55 Centauro.

and better Admirals...

An even better one would be "they never actually did anything noteworthy, like most other contemporary battleships".

HMS Nelson seemed to be a magnet for mines.

@@francescomiele6601 Fleet in being only works if the enemy doesn’t realize your fleet-in-being is an empty threat.

@@francescomiele6601 The Allies THOUGHT Tirpitz posed such a threat, but she actually never did. The Japanese really wanted to get the carriers at Pearl, it was bad luck for them that they left just before the Japanese showed up.

@@francescomiele6601 Tirpitz couldn't have done all that much even without the Allies keeping her imprisoned; but the Allies failed to realize this, so they wasted resources trying to counter a ship that was herself a pointless waste of resources.

A big shame really, they could have been very impressive with a bit of modernization. Either that or hopefully preserved as museums..

@@Arthion why bother modernizing them?

@@bkjeong4302 Why bother modernizing the Iowa's or Vanguard? Same reason basically. And if there were to be useable they'd need radar and a functional AA suite at the very least.

@@Arthion Vanguard was never modernized and the Iowa modernization was a waste of money.

@@bkjeong4302 I've heard numerous arguments for keeping Vanguard rather than scrapping her as for the Iowas I certainly agree they went too far but certainly got a good 20 yrs worth of use out of them

@Robert Baptie wrong war

@Robert Baptie I'm well aware she was a battlecruiser, but the construction style is still the same and still pretty fuckin hideous

Nope. I'll be standing beside you if anyone is dumb enough to try taking this hill

@@mulgerbill Yamato

​@@mulgerbillCore has a point...

If you're talking about the secbat I'm not really sure how useful the setup of 4x3 6" guns and 12x1 90mm AA guns was compared to a more uniform dual-purpose battery. Probably a lot of weight that could have been saved there.

At the time advantages of dual purpose guns were not fully appreciated, to the point entire classes were specifically designed with specialized 6" anti-ship secondaries , as a 6" AA was deemed unreasonable and 5" were rightfully considered inadequate for anti-ship use. It is the relative scarcity of ship targets (as compared to planes) that made the BB 6" (and 5" alike) batteries worthless for anti-ship use.

@@sandrodunatov485 Mostly only the Axis navies, most other navies had completely abandoned 6" secondaries in favor of the 5"/38 , various different guns for the UK etc. and given how little use the 6" guns saw in combat they were mostly dead weight

You mean clutter and trash like gun directors, radar masts, and anti-aircraft guns that work? Yeah, such a drag.

@@chandlerwhite8302 This class actually had a rather absurd number of directors, as well as search radar (don't think they ever got around to fire control radar)

Modifications to allow at sea refueling would not be difficult and you can always tow the d_mn_d thing. Not being able to reliably hit small cities probably had something to do with the idea being discarded.

@@calvingreene90 It just that the Littorio class battleships were designed to operate in the Mediterranean. So even if there were modifications to allow sea refuelling, there is the issue of mechanical reliability (Italian warships during ww2 were notorious for machinery breaking down). The British concluded that the cost of maintenance and modifications to make the trip all the way to British Malay was not worth it.

@@BHuang92 And how would the analysis have gone if she was capable of nail driving accuracy with her guns? It makes a big difference on what is cost effective.

​@@calvingreene90 Accuracy aside, the ammunition available for the 38cm guns was limited. Even if the ex-Italian battleships were to be commissioned in the Pacific theatre, it would not make much difference by 1944.

@@BHuang92 Actually the machines of the Littorios were ultra-reliable. Only the Trento, with its 150.000 hp installed, had reliability problems. But exactly the experience gained with the Trento made so that the subsequent ships had very reliable engines. The German high-pressure engines were known to be pretty unreliable.

Those ships had a long illustrious career and a lot of them were made for that type of class.

Yes, it's a complete mystery to me.

The Italian 15” gun is among the most capable BB guns ever anyways: an Italian 16” would have been overkill.

@@bkjeong4302 A gun that doesn't hit,isn't very capable...

Thel 'Vadam The gun had no issues hitting, it was the ammunition manufacturing inconsistencies that led to lack of accuracy.

@@bkjeong4302 The only complain of the excessive dispersion of the 381/50 came from Adm. Iachino. A pretty suspicious source since he had to justify his fiasco at Cape Matapan. The 381/50 actually shown a 2% distance longitudinal dispersion in actual battles fought in 1940-1941, that, at that time, was considered good by any navy even in tests. All the Littorios received delay coils for the central guns in winter 1942/1943, further tightening the patterns.

@@neutronalchemist3241 So the gun had no issues even with the poor shell quality control.

The underwater protection is better than a North Carolina, iowa or South Dakota, it's actually fine to good protection, Drach makes it out as terrible which it really wasn't.

@@Alex-cw3rz South Carolina is a ww1 ear ship ...

@@thelvadam2884 North Carolina

The underwater protection was fine. Tested by the Soviets in real scale, it actually wored better than the standard spaced system. That's why they decided to use it in the Sovetsky Soyuz class. The "quality control" issues on the charges and shells, and all the "excessive dispersion" bullshit have a single source (Adm. Iachino), amply disproved at the time, but repeated again and again.

The Pugliese system's task was not to avoid torpedo hits, but to contain damages. A thing that it did very well.

@@neutronalchemist3241 No it didn't, it didn't work.

@@jwadaow It worked very well actually, with limited damages and record-time repairings every time it had been hit by a torpedo. The Soviets, after having full-scale tested the Pugliese and the standard layered protection, chosen the Pugliese for the Sovetsky Soviet class battleships. The results of their tests are available online.

It's technically not super-firing through.

@@Alex-cw3rz I do know what the terminology implies, but why is the aft 15" turret almost a full deck higher than I needs to be?

@@N0rdman so you can have the scout planes behind saving space rather than having them in the centre of the ship, it increase the guns field of fire, increases the range, less interference with secondaries and it looks aesthetically pleasing.

To fire over the secondaries. The Littorio's rear turret had an unmatched 320° firing angle. The ship could fire a 9 gun salvo angling just at 20°.

It's good to mention the scale of loss on those ships. After all, they are floating weapon platforms with a full crew.

He does talk more about casualties in the longer videos that focus on battles instead of ships. I do agree that casualties should probably be mentioned in the ship reviews though.

Agreed; I looked it up and in this case, "the ship had a crew of 1,849 when she sailed; 596 survived with 1,253 men going down with Roma."

That I wonder too

One plane was stored right under the gun barrels, which would be impossible if they were lower

Adam Kennedy but they did not do that on the Yamato. Why?

@@RedwihteGame I believe they stored the aircraft under the deck of the Yamato.

To fire over the secondaries. The Littorio's rear turret had an unmatched 320° firing angle. The ship could fire a 9 gun salvo angling just at 20°.

Short range (remember, they were built for the Med).

@@bkjeong4302 True however its not a long way from the south coast of England to Normandy. I wasn't referring to campaigns in the Pacific where range would be an issue. I just thought that a couple of modern 15'' gun battleships might have been useful to someone.

The allies were not interested in random death from the sky when it came to shore bombardment.

@@calvingreene90 Haha true I guess, "which country would you like your shells in?"

@@calvingreene90 that would probably have been solved by having the Allies manufacture the shells, because the issue was with shell quality rather than design.

Well not every pronunciation can be transferred over when you say it in English

I think the biggest reason why they got scrapped is the same as it was for heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen; they could have been used as tribute to glorify fascism, neo nazis and such

No, they're not ;) HMS Invincible sunk in a similar fashion, but there's a destroyer next to the bow section in the photograph.

Not that most of the competition did much better.

They did have mainmast rangefinders. Lots of them. Their supposed lack of accuracy has been massively exaggerated, and even in cases where it was true it had far more to do with shell quality than with their FCS or rangefinders.

1:00

Not much, because there were too many other factors working against battleships as a whole.

yes

Isn't that the story for battleships of WWII in general? Either get attacked by airplanes or expend fuel on the sidelines as friendly aircraft do the work.

@@bkjeong4302 I'd argue that's the story for Battleships in the Pacific. The Atlantic/North Sea/Mediterranean were much worse environments for Carriers (imeo) which is why most european Battleships were destroyed either by other Battleships or massed attacks from land-based aircraft. The most famous example probably being the Bismarck, where the attack from Ark Royal was vital, as it crippled her mobility, but was completely incapable of dealing significant damage and had Rodney and KGV not been in hot pursuit, it's likely the Bismarck could've at least returned and started repairing in a friendly harbour.

@@Tepid24 I seriously doubt that further air attacks wouldn't have done her in. And even in the European theatre you don't really see battleships justifying their costs; you see battleships being more active but not actually getting much done compared to land-based aircraft/carriers/other surface ships. You're also looking only at carriers, and ignoring the fact land-based aircraft essentially filled thay role in many parts of Europe.

@@bkjeong4302 Bismarck showed that she was very capable of resisting torpedo attacks, especially the smaller air-droppable ones. With the hit that jammed her steering being the only one that caused any real damage, and that hit also did nothing to Bismarcks ability to fight anything that came into range of her guns. Without Rodney and KGV bearing down on her there's a far higher chance and a lot more time for the Kriegsmarine to at least try to send any help. It's also not outside the realm of possibility for someone to actually figure out how an AA gun works by the next time a dozen Swordfish come out, which would've taken quite a while. Of course they're not some wonder-weapon that eliminated the need for other aspects of naval warfare, but I'd encourage you to think about the prospects of convoy escort and shore bombardment with a Carrier instead of a Battleship. Carriers are at an advantage when they can choose the range and location of the engagement, with many mission profiles that is not really an option. They're also completely unviable for commerce raiding. 3 aspects essential to the war efforts of most countries that were fulfilled much better by Battleships than Carriers. I could go around and say that Carriers did "not actually get much done" if I was so narrow-minded as to only look at those aspects where Battleships were better and the same goes for your argument. On a side-note, how do you define "justifying their cost"? The Tirpitz didn't do anything, but she caused the RN and RAF to expend horrendous amounts of fuel and explosives. She was mainly responsible for the destruction of convoy PQ-17. She was the reason why the RN had to keep multiple capital units in Northern Europe essentially just waiting around for her to do something rather than using them elsewhere. And for that same reason, even ships that did "very little" like the legay R class and Queen Elizabeth class ships definitely "justified" their cost by protecting convoys and smashing german coastal positions. Duke of York comes to mind, how much did she "justify her cost" by sinking the Scharnhorst? It can look like Battleships did relatively little, but that's because Battleships existed at the same time as other Battleships. If only one side had had Battleships, that side would've had an enormous advantage. Looking carefully, most of the time Battleships were just sailing around, preventing the enemy from using their own Battleships. On a second side-note, I chose to only look at carriers because it's dumb to compare the usefulness of Battleships to the usefulness of land-based aircraft for rather obvious reasons. Mainly being that aircraft can't fly into the middle of the Atlantic and Battleships can't shell Dresden. That's also why all my points are only talking about Battleships in WW2 in European waters. A modern aircraft can fly into the middle of the Atlantic, whereas a hypothetical modern Battleship still wouldn't be able to shell Dresden. It only makes sense to compare a ship with another ship and for the reasons above I am of the firm belief that the Aircraft Carrier didn't replace the Battleship in Europe nearly at the same time as it did in the Pacific.

@@Tepid24 Carriers are bad at commerce raiding, yes, but so are battleships. Battleships aren't that good at shore bombardment either, their importance in that role is honestly overrated. Normandy being a key example. The Tirpitz situation was more a problem with the British overestimating the threat posed by an obsolete and useless ship than anything else. You shouldn't expect your enemies to be that dumb all the time. She couldn't have done anything if the British left her alone (between fuel being relocated to more important things and the Kriegsmarine surface fleet being drastically curtailed by Hitler). Duke of York arguably did justify her costs, but more of an exception than the rule there, and again it was caused by the Kriegsmarine using one of their own battleships for something battleships are bad at. The argument that battleships are useful if there aren't enemy battleships ignores the fact that if there are no enemy battleships, you don't need one of yours, because it would be more effective to counter enemy subcapitals with your own subcapitals. And it's false that battleships played a key role in WWII by deterring each other; carriers, land-based aircraft, and mines were more cost-effective at deterring battleships, even in Europe.