A friend pointed this video out to me, fantastic job on analyzing the Sovetsky Soyuz class! Last October I had the opportunity to study some archives concerning the VMF in St. Petersburg. On the note of the large difference in firepower of the Soyuz: The 406 mm/50 (16") B-37 Pattern were designed strongly off of the Italian designs from their 406mm/57 (16") Modelio 1936 guns designed for the UP .41 design. In fact it'd probably be more accurate to say they just copied the designs. The upside to this was the incredible shell velocity of the Pattern 1937's. These guns had a tested shell velocity of nearly 880 MPS. This shell velocity had incredible penetration capability and pretty much cancelled out the mediocre GFS the Soyuz were outfitted with. End of the day, I still think an Iowa class would win the engagement on paper, but it would be a hard fight, the Iowa's would take a beating from those canons. Fun fact: the guns of the Soyuz were used by both the Germans and Soviets in the Siege of Leningrad.
Thank you for this one. 👍🏻 May I point out that the USSR didn't have any North Atlantic ports but, Arctic Ocean ports. More of these vids please! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Very interesting details here. I would like to see a video comparing Battleship New Jersey with both the HMS Rodney and the French Jean Bart. These foreign designs both placed all main battery turrets in the forward section of the ship. What were the advantages and disadvantages of this type of main battery arrangement? Also, Rodney was Bismark's primary target in battle they fought. I have read that Bismark did land some hits before being disabled but I have never found any specific details. Please include if you have any.
The advantages to having the main battery forward is it shortened the length of the armored citadel and allowed them to cram the biggest guns and thickest armor into the 35,000 ton limit of the Washington Naval treaty. The disadvantages would be the limited arc's of fire. Having all the main battery so close together could increase the chances of it being knocked out in a fight. The Jean Bart especially, a lucky hit on a turret could potentially take out 50% of your main battery. To my knowledge the Bismarck did not score any hits on Rodney or any other British ship in the final engagement. the fact that she was locked in a turn would have prevented her from getting a firing solution because her heading was always changing. She was reduced to firing ranging salvo's and praying for a lucky hit. German fire control was vastly inferior to the US MK-8 Rangekeeper.
Another advantage is you can fire all your main guns at an enemy whilst also facing them, thus making a slimmer target. It also mean striking the belt armor occurs at very shallow angles, increasing the change to ricochet hits.
@@LexieAssassin No you couldn't, the third turret wasn't super firing over the front two. I do think you would still need to expose a bit less of your ship compared to a rear turret though.
Interesting that Fascist Italy would be so accommodating as to provide modern battleship designs to the Soviet Union. I wonder what that deal consisted of?
Nice to see the subscribers level rising. Deserve way more and it will come only a matter of time. Ryan i have a question? In a previous video you made a reference to time on a submarine? Were you a submariner in the US Navy and got you're dolphins? Great content as always.
Ryan is a very interesting man it intrigued me so i had to ask! Maybe an idea or it may not but a video on Ryan and his career on museum ships like a mini bio would make a cool video? And may inspire some of the next guardians of the beautiful USS Iowa. Thank you for the prompt reply.
I think there's another factor that comes into determining the better ship. That's the training of the crew. I'd match U.S. training any day against almost any other. The British were also extremely well trained and had been for over 200 years.
Excellent content. Thank you for this. I was wondering what the qualities of the Soviet 16inch Gun were. Could you possibly produce a video ranking the primary battleship main armaments used (or planned) in World War II at some point?
Ah the joys of the Soviet naval construction programs. Either the ship was built perfectly and worked as intended with only minor easily compensated for issues or... somewhere in construction something went wrong and either no one noticed or no one reported it or it was noticed and caused major setbacks.
Have not heard of that class, either. Fire computing (radar)? 16/50 shells that the fire control computer could solve in most weather conditions? Training? Doctrine? Could the Soviets compete? The limited capacity of the USSR's ability to produce combatants, as Ryan reported, caused me to recall what I've read about the United States' manufacturing prowess at that time. American geographical and political system advantages, it seems to me in retrospect, were a great advantage. FDR, beginning early in his first term, worked avidly to build up U.S. naval power. A key to the coming conflict and U.S. involvement. (Presidential power, not absolute, could be overwhelming in the hands of a master politician and a compliant Congress.) At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, iirc, the U.S. Pacific Fleet maybe numbered 250 vessels, most of them aging. Fewer than 4 years later, Nimitz charged across the central Pacific with a fleet of some 1680 ships, the largest in world history. And this at a time when the U.S. industrial and political focus was on the European theater. Every time I think about this fact of national power, it boggles my simple mind. Amazing. US-FDR vs. USSR- Stalin, only one winner there. OK, I've wandered off topic a bit. It's just that this is where my unorganized mind led me.
My bet is that each NATO member would have just kept at least one or two battleships in service longer to maintain face - after all, nobody wanted to lose office because their opponents accused them of creating a "battleship gap"
I think not. Carriers has become the main striking force of the WW2 and post. Montana will be useless like Alaska class cruisers since they already have the Iowa's. BBs like Iowa's became the CV guards. The USN making more CVs was a great call.
Sir, regardless of their necessity, does the presence of a secondary battery diminish the potential size or number of the main battery? or is that for a given main battery their is always space and tonnage available for a secondary battery?
Since Ryan didn't answer, I'll give it a try. Short answer: No. Long answer: Almost never as Battleships/Battle Cruisers/ Fast Battleship all have there Main Gun turrets where ever the powerplant isn't as the barbets go very deep almost completely through to the bottom of the ship. Then, most nations put the secondarys over the powerplant as they have much smaller barbets. If you removed the secondarys, you would save weight but wouldn't really make more room for more main battery turrets.
@@willpat3040 Perhaps you could have had wing turrets like the dreadnoughts. I think we all understand why things turned out the way they did though, as far as design strategies
@@solutionless123 Not to put to fine a point it, but since secondarys are so much smaller and don't have massive barbettes that pierce down deep into the hull, the answer too "does having secondary batteries decrease the number of main battery guns", is still no. You can redesign the ship if you want wing turrets for some reason but to get them you can't just remove the secondarys, as they are over machinery and/or other important things.
Even if they built a lot of Sovetsky Soyuz BBs. Americans will just build a lot of aircraft carriers. In fact the USN did. There was too much Essex Class carriers post WW2 and BBs won't stand a chance against aircraft carriers.
Two things that I’m curious about. Could the 16 inch guns on the Iowa class have been upgraded to be capable of rapidfire like the 8 inch heavy cruiser guns on the Des Moines? Also, how would a heavy cruiser like Des Moines have done in a battle against a world war one era battleship? Despite its rapidfire capability I would think that the Iowa class would be able to kill a Des Moines rather easily, but I’m wondering if due to the improvements in technology the Des Moines might have been able to go up against say the USS Texas or USS Oklahoma,, etc.
So much depends on the range at which the fight happens. You probably already know about each BB class's 'immunity zone', the range from an enemy at which its armor is designed to withstand main-battery hits with no critical penetrations. If the cruiser skipper is able to dictate the range, he would want to get in close for a knife-fight, right? But the WWI-era BB's secondary battery will be able to penetrate the cruiser's armor at close range, so now the fight has to be about accuracy, maneuvering and concealment, as well. So you see there are enough variables to keep a game software guru busy for a very long time.
Could the 16 inch guns been upgraded to "rapidfire" or auto fire? No, not really unless you were willing to give up one gun per turret and then maybe. All auto fire guns take up a ton more space and are much heaver than a more standard gun. Maybe if you removed the 3 triple turrets and then added 3 twin turrets they could be auto firing. It would have been very very expensive but it probably possible with 6 guns per ship.
How would the British king George the 5th stack up to the Iowa class and how might a modernised/refitted N3 battleship(radar, new fire control, new engines, ect.) Fare against New Jersey or are they so old/ slow that they would be assigned to convoy escort like the R- class.
It would be almost impossible for the Iowa (WW2 version) to hit/destroy a Burk because the Burk would never come close to getting in range of the Iowa's main guns. Instead the Burk would stay a few hundred miles away and launch Tomahawk, Harpoon and other missiles at the Iowa and there would be NOTHING it could about it. The Iowa would never even see or know where the Burk was. This is a no contest.
2:56 chief engineer explaining to the admiral in charge about that ....um.....'creak' from down in the hull during their transit tru the bearing straight in gale force storm weather.
Since we are comparing ships that were not built... what about U S S New Jersey vs U S S Zummwalt ( with her originally designed "rail gun" ) ? Thanks for everything about the N J
The Zumwalt was built. Three of them, in fact. Which one of them would win in a fight would depend on which one of them detected the other first and got its Tomahawks away. Given that the Zumwalt has a pair of helicopters which have a much larger range and more sensors than the mastiff RPVs of the modernized Iowa's, I'd say the Zumwalts have the ability to strike first. At the very least, I'd say the Iowa would be mission-killed, with its topsides absolutely wrecked by the 1000 lb warheads. I wouldn't be surprised if the warhead (roughly equivalent to 2000 lbs of TNT), could dislodge or wholly destroy a 12-inch thick armor plate. If the Iowa managed to get off an accurate return strike of Tomahawks, the Zumwalt is probably in for a rough time. 32 tomahawks is a lot of incoming missiles to shoot down, and if even one gets through the ship is not going to be in good shape. Likely also at least a mission kill, if not outright sunk.
All in all, USSR would have probably been able to launch 4-6 of those ships had war not started. But it would have taken them a very long time to fit them out. Electrical power plant components, radar, fire control systems would have either to be license produced or bought from abroad. In real life, Soviets could only start building big ships in the late 70s - early 80s and that did them in economically.
The Iowas had true blindfire and could dictate range and if they wanted to engage at all and how they wanted to engage. Their fire control would have been massively better and they would have been much more accurate. If it is a world war two battle, assuming no lend lease, the Russian ships don't even have radar. If post world war two they would have been sitting ducks for aircraft. They were smart to not bother with them.
The Soviets in WW2 never had any Radar small enough to fit on a ship. So in daylight outside of a lucky Soviet rang finding shot, the Iowa wins with it's fire control/radar. If it's night/fog, well it's just going to be a slaughter like many other times in WW2 when the Allies had radar at night/fog and the Axis did not. Like the Battle of Surigao Strait, on paper the fight looked like a slight US advantage, in reality it was completely one sided battle.
That's some ultra American bias here my friend. Let me guess, you served on US navy to underestimate Soviet navy like that? Vietnam SHOULD be a good lesson for US to never ever underestimate potential enemies
@@b-17gflyingfortress6 Vietnam was a good lesson. A lesson in how the military industrial complex ensures the military does JUST enough to keep a conflict going and never enough to win. There is no money in winning a war, only in extending it for as long as possible. If public opinion was firmly behind the war, the Vietnam war would be going on to this very day. If the goal was to WIN the Vietnam war and the US Military was allowed to fight they could have achieved that objective in a year or less. The Russians were from a technology standpoint very crude in WW2. They didn't defeat the Germans in the field of battle they simply swarmed them over with insurmountable numbers. They didn't have the technology to finish their battleships, they couldn't make armor plate with the required thickness so they would have been using thinner plates in layers. Their fire control would have been LIGHT years behind the West and even the Germans in WW2. It would have been EASY pickings for any American Battleship from the North Carolina class on up and even the rebuild West Virginia with the MK-8 fire control system would have squashed it.
@@b-17gflyingfortress6 I will also point out that Soviet training and leadership was POOR. Again without a 10-1 numerical advantage the Soviets were trash on the battlefield. While impressive on paper the Russian battleship would have had a poorly trained crew that was poorly led. It would have been a disaster waiting to happen during their first major encounter.
@@Bellthorian Hmm. Fair point. But I think real reason they couldn't build Soyuz class were because they cancelled for the sake of Planes and tanks (T 34 and Il-2 is most produced vehicles of their class after all). Soyuz and Rossiya were planned for 1943 but as you said, because of technical issues, date changed to 1944-45. "Yes they would still have technical issues because of crew training, but you know russian style, if it can move and shoot, it can fight (Like Marat still fighting after her bow blowing up, or Soyuz's prototype 406mm firing at Germans 174 times in Leningrad) 2 Lion class of British had similar fate of Soyuz class as well. Being cancelled for the sake of other vehicles, and Germany's 6 H class, well, they barely begun their construction if not only 1. I think US had the biggest advantage by being on different continent. Industry and cities were pretty safe from Axis invasion or bombardment, also because of IJN and Atlantic, encouraged US to focus on Naval research. Meanwhile almost all Europe suffered from Bombardment. Tho isn't it's kinda unfair to compare technology of US with USSR? While they do make a great improvements during Cold War, their industrial study was just born because of Stalin's 5 year plan, so it was just a newborn baby. Their biggest mistake were jumping from construction of Izmail Battlecruisers to 60k ton Soyuz Battleships.
A friend pointed this video out to me, fantastic job on analyzing the Sovetsky Soyuz class! Last October I had the opportunity to study some archives concerning the VMF in St. Petersburg. On the note of the large difference in firepower of the Soyuz: The 406 mm/50 (16") B-37 Pattern were designed strongly off of the Italian designs from their 406mm/57 (16") Modelio 1936 guns designed for the UP .41 design. In fact it'd probably be more accurate to say they just copied the designs. The upside to this was the incredible shell velocity of the Pattern 1937's. These guns had a tested shell velocity of nearly 880 MPS. This shell velocity had incredible penetration capability and pretty much cancelled out the mediocre GFS the Soyuz were outfitted with. End of the day, I still think an Iowa class would win the engagement on paper, but it would be a hard fight, the Iowa's would take a beating from those canons. Fun fact: the guns of the Soyuz were used by both the Germans and Soviets in the Siege of Leningrad.
Thanks guys. Never heard of the Sovetsky Soyuz class before. Always something new! :)
Soviet union class :D
I would ask for a video discussing how the Littorio-class of Italy compared with the Iowa-class.
Its not a video but there is a really detailed comparison of many of the main battleship classes here: www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm.
Thank you for this one. 👍🏻 May I point out that the USSR didn't have any North Atlantic ports but, Arctic Ocean ports. More of these vids please! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
You come up with some amazing information. Thank you
Very interesting details here. I would like to see a video comparing Battleship New Jersey with both the HMS Rodney and the French Jean Bart. These foreign designs both placed all main battery turrets in the forward section of the ship. What were the advantages and disadvantages of this type of main battery arrangement? Also, Rodney was Bismark's primary target in battle they fought. I have read that Bismark did land some hits before being disabled but I have never found any specific details. Please include if you have any.
The advantages to having the main battery forward is it shortened the length of the armored citadel and allowed them to cram the biggest guns and thickest armor into the 35,000 ton limit of the Washington Naval treaty. The disadvantages would be the limited arc's of fire. Having all the main battery so close together could increase the chances of it being knocked out in a fight. The Jean Bart especially, a lucky hit on a turret could potentially take out 50% of your main battery. To my knowledge the Bismarck did not score any hits on Rodney or any other British ship in the final engagement. the fact that she was locked in a turn would have prevented her from getting a firing solution because her heading was always changing. She was reduced to firing ranging salvo's and praying for a lucky hit. German fire control was vastly inferior to the US MK-8 Rangekeeper.
Another advantage is you can fire all your main guns at an enemy whilst also facing them, thus making a slimmer target. It also mean striking the belt armor occurs at very shallow angles, increasing the change to ricochet hits.
@@LexieAssassin Not really, the third turret on the Nelson was flush with the deck so it could not fire at targets in front of the ship.
@@Bellthorian yh but the JB could use all of its firepower in a frontal attack
@@LexieAssassin No you couldn't, the third turret wasn't super firing over the front two. I do think you would still need to expose a bit less of your ship compared to a rear turret though.
Interesting that Fascist Italy would be so accommodating as to provide modern battleship designs to the Soviet Union. I wonder what that deal consisted of?
Nice to see the subscribers level rising. Deserve way more and it will come only a matter of time. Ryan i have a question? In a previous video you made a reference to time on a submarine? Were you a submariner in the US Navy and got you're dolphins? Great content as always.
Ryan's only been in the museum navy, but he was with a museum sub for many years
Ryan is a very interesting man it intrigued me so i had to ask! Maybe an idea or it may not but a video on Ryan and his career on museum ships like a mini bio would make a cool video? And may inspire some of the next guardians of the beautiful USS Iowa. Thank you for the prompt reply.
Check this out th-cam.com/video/yEbs410JuEA/w-d-xo.html
I think there's another factor that comes into determining the better ship. That's the training of the crew. I'd match U.S. training any day against almost any other. The British were also extremely well trained and had been for over 200 years.
Excellent content. Thank you for this.
I was wondering what the qualities of the Soviet 16inch Gun were. Could you possibly produce a video ranking the primary battleship main armaments used (or planned) in World War II at some point?
Ah the joys of the Soviet naval construction programs. Either the ship was built perfectly and worked as intended with only minor easily compensated for issues or... somewhere in construction something went wrong and either no one noticed or no one reported it or it was noticed and caused major setbacks.
Have not heard of that class, either. Fire computing (radar)? 16/50 shells that the fire control computer could solve in most weather conditions? Training? Doctrine? Could the Soviets compete?
The limited capacity of the USSR's ability to produce combatants, as Ryan reported, caused me to recall what I've read about the United States' manufacturing prowess at that time. American geographical and political system advantages, it seems to me in retrospect, were a great advantage. FDR, beginning early in his first term, worked avidly to build up U.S. naval power. A key to the coming conflict and U.S. involvement. (Presidential power, not absolute, could be overwhelming in the hands of a master politician and a compliant Congress.)
At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, iirc, the U.S. Pacific Fleet maybe numbered 250 vessels, most of them aging. Fewer than 4 years later, Nimitz charged across the central Pacific with a fleet of some 1680 ships, the largest in world history. And this at a time when the U.S. industrial and political focus was on the European theater. Every time I think about this fact of national power, it boggles my simple mind. Amazing. US-FDR vs. USSR- Stalin, only one winner there.
OK, I've wandered off topic a bit. It's just that this is where my unorganized mind led me.
New Jersey vs Yamato. The one we've all been waiting for!
Check this out th-cam.com/video/FAnxQAAPOt0/w-d-xo.html
depends on weather conditions from what I heard. the worse weather, the better edge for an Iowa class
Very interesting. One wonders had some of these vessels been complete at the outset of the war how they would have fared against the Kreigsmarine.
There was also a Russian Battleship Design that heavily borrows from the Nelson-class Battleship design.
Who ? The battleship that makes the first and most damaging Hits.
Do think if the Soviets had completed this ship would the US Navy have been forced to go ahead with the Montana class?
My bet is that each NATO member would have just kept at least one or two battleships in service longer to maintain face - after all, nobody wanted to lose office because their opponents accused them of creating a "battleship gap"
I think not. Carriers has become the main striking force of the WW2 and post. Montana will be useless like Alaska class cruisers since they already have the Iowa's. BBs like Iowa's became the CV guards. The USN making more CVs was a great call.
Sir, regardless of their necessity, does the presence of a secondary battery diminish the potential size or number of the main battery? or is that for a given main battery their is always space and tonnage available for a secondary battery?
Since Ryan didn't answer, I'll give it a try. Short answer: No.
Long answer: Almost never as Battleships/Battle Cruisers/ Fast Battleship all have there Main Gun turrets where ever the powerplant isn't as the barbets go very deep almost completely through to the bottom of the ship. Then, most nations put the secondarys over the powerplant as they have much smaller barbets.
If you removed the secondarys, you would save weight but wouldn't really make more room for more main battery turrets.
@@willpat3040 Perhaps you could have had wing turrets like the dreadnoughts. I think we all understand why things turned out the way they did though, as far as design strategies
@@solutionless123 Not to put to fine a point it, but since secondarys are so much smaller and don't have massive barbettes that pierce down deep into the hull, the answer too "does having secondary batteries decrease the number of main battery guns", is still no. You can redesign the ship if you want wing turrets for some reason but to get them you can't just remove the secondarys, as they are over machinery and/or other important things.
Even if they built a lot of Sovetsky Soyuz BBs. Americans will just build a lot of aircraft carriers. In fact the USN did. There was too much Essex Class carriers post WW2 and BBs won't stand a chance against aircraft carriers.
Two things that I’m curious about. Could the 16 inch guns on the Iowa class have been upgraded to be capable of rapidfire like the 8 inch heavy cruiser guns on the Des Moines? Also, how would a heavy cruiser like Des Moines have done in a battle against a world war one era battleship? Despite its rapidfire capability I would think that the Iowa class would be able to kill a Des Moines rather easily, but I’m wondering if due to the improvements in technology the Des Moines might have been able to go up against say the USS Texas or USS Oklahoma,, etc.
So much depends on the range at which the fight happens. You probably already know about each BB class's
'immunity zone', the range from an enemy at which its armor is designed to withstand main-battery hits with no
critical penetrations. If the cruiser skipper is able to dictate the range, he would want to get in close for a knife-fight, right? But the WWI-era BB's secondary battery will be able to penetrate the cruiser's armor at close range, so now the fight has to be about accuracy, maneuvering and concealment, as well. So you see there are enough variables to
keep a game software guru busy for a very long time.
Could the 16 inch guns been upgraded to "rapidfire" or auto fire? No, not really unless you were willing to give up one gun per turret and then maybe. All auto fire guns take up a ton more space and are much heaver than a more standard gun. Maybe if you removed the 3 triple turrets and then added 3 twin turrets they could be auto firing. It would have been very very expensive but it probably possible with 6 guns per ship.
Hi Thanks for the great Videos, did you ever make the video on KGV, I can't find it?
Apparently we didn't? It might be the Mandela effect, we argued about it for like 10 minutes that we must have but I guess not.
@@BattleshipNewJersey Thanks for the reply. Hope you do it one day.
Its now top of the list to cover the shame of no longer knowing what we've done!
How would the British king George the 5th stack up to the Iowa class and how might a modernised/refitted N3 battleship(radar, new fire control, new engines, ect.) Fare against New Jersey or are they so old/ slow that they would be assigned to convoy escort like the R- class.
G3 would be a closer match,. though KGV has really good protection
I would like to see a comparison between, a new burke destroyer and an Iowa.
It would be almost impossible for the Iowa (WW2 version) to hit/destroy a Burk because the Burk would never come close to getting in range of the Iowa's main guns. Instead the Burk would stay a few hundred miles away and launch Tomahawk, Harpoon and other missiles at the Iowa and there would be NOTHING it could about it. The Iowa would never even see or know where the Burk was. This is a no contest.
Is the New Jersey listing or is it the way the camera was setting?
Just the camera.
Very informative but I have to ask, why is the Union Jack at half staff?
Flags were at half staff when we filmed it. Could have been any number of things.
Was the Montana actually built?
No
I guess it isn't what it isn't is appropriate.
What would be the largest difference...construction or technology?
These are the best!
In theory, theory and practice align. In practice they do not.
20%? Try 84% for the furthest along whilst the 2nd was 72%
How might an Iowa class battleship have fared against a Kirov class battle cruiser?
2:56 chief engineer explaining to the admiral in charge about that ....um.....'creak' from down in the hull during their transit tru the bearing straight in gale force storm weather.
Smaler ships could go through the inland waterways from the white sea to the baltic to the black sea and the caspian sea.
Where are the Soviet battleships now
Since we are comparing ships that were not built... what about U S S New Jersey vs U S S Zummwalt ( with her originally designed "rail gun" ) ?
Thanks for everything about the N J
The Zumwalt was built. Three of them, in fact. Which one of them would win in a fight would depend on which one of them detected the other first and got its Tomahawks away. Given that the Zumwalt has a pair of helicopters which have a much larger range and more sensors than the mastiff RPVs of the modernized Iowa's, I'd say the Zumwalts have the ability to strike first. At the very least, I'd say the Iowa would be mission-killed, with its topsides absolutely wrecked by the 1000 lb warheads. I wouldn't be surprised if the warhead (roughly equivalent to 2000 lbs of TNT), could dislodge or wholly destroy a 12-inch thick armor plate. If the Iowa managed to get off an accurate return strike of Tomahawks, the Zumwalt is probably in for a rough time. 32 tomahawks is a lot of incoming missiles to shoot down, and if even one gets through the ship is not going to be in good shape. Likely also at least a mission kill, if not outright sunk.
All in all, USSR would have probably been able to launch 4-6 of those ships had war not started. But it would have taken them a very long time to fit them out. Electrical power plant components, radar, fire control systems would have either to be license produced or bought from abroad.
In real life, Soviets could only start building big ships in the late 70s - early 80s and that did them in economically.
The Iowas had true blindfire and could dictate range and if they wanted to engage at all and how they wanted to engage. Their fire control would have been massively better and they would have been much more accurate. If it is a world war two battle, assuming no lend lease, the Russian ships don't even have radar. If post world war two they would have been sitting ducks for aircraft. They were smart to not bother with them.
...(leans in from San Pedro)🤣
you design tractors. Congratulations comrad, tomorrow you design battleship. and don't disapoint comrad Stalin..........
The Soviets in WW2 never had any Radar small enough to fit on a ship. So in daylight outside of a lucky Soviet rang finding shot, the Iowa wins with it's fire control/radar. If it's night/fog, well it's just going to be a slaughter like many other times in WW2 when the Allies had radar at night/fog and the Axis did not. Like the Battle of Surigao Strait, on paper the fight looked like a slight US advantage, in reality it was completely one sided battle.
USSR: _Sovetsky Soyuz_
Hitler: _Sov-YEET-sky no youz?_
The MK-8 Rangekeeper made ANY battleship ANY Battleship engagement against a US battleship a one sided massacre in favor of the US ship.
The Soviet ships would have been trash and easily blown out of the water by just about any enemy capital ship they encountered.
That's some ultra American bias here my friend. Let me guess, you served on US navy to underestimate Soviet navy like that? Vietnam SHOULD be a good lesson for US to never ever underestimate potential enemies
@@b-17gflyingfortress6 Vietnam was a good lesson. A lesson in how the military industrial complex ensures the military does JUST enough to keep a conflict going and never enough to win. There is no money in winning a war, only in extending it for as long as possible. If public opinion was firmly behind the war, the Vietnam war would be going on to this very day. If the goal was to WIN the Vietnam war and the US Military was allowed to fight they could have achieved that objective in a year or less. The Russians were from a technology standpoint very crude in WW2. They didn't defeat the Germans in the field of battle they simply swarmed them over with insurmountable numbers. They didn't have the technology to finish their battleships, they couldn't make armor plate with the required thickness so they would have been using thinner plates in layers. Their fire control would have been LIGHT years behind the West and even the Germans in WW2. It would have been EASY pickings for any American Battleship from the North Carolina class on up and even the rebuild West Virginia with the MK-8 fire control system would have squashed it.
@@b-17gflyingfortress6 I will also point out that Soviet training and leadership was POOR. Again without a 10-1 numerical advantage the Soviets were trash on the battlefield. While impressive on paper the Russian battleship would have had a poorly trained crew that was poorly led. It would have been a disaster waiting to happen during their first major encounter.
@@Bellthorian Hmm. Fair point. But I think real reason they couldn't build Soyuz class were because they cancelled for the sake of Planes and tanks (T 34 and Il-2 is most produced vehicles of their class after all). Soyuz and Rossiya were planned for 1943 but as you said, because of technical issues, date changed to 1944-45. "Yes they would still have technical issues because of crew training, but you know russian style, if it can move and shoot, it can fight (Like Marat still fighting after her bow blowing up, or Soyuz's prototype 406mm firing at Germans 174 times in Leningrad)
2 Lion class of British had similar fate of Soyuz class as well. Being cancelled for the sake of other vehicles, and Germany's 6 H class, well, they barely begun their construction if not only 1.
I think US had the biggest advantage by being on different continent. Industry and cities were pretty safe from Axis invasion or bombardment, also because of IJN and Atlantic, encouraged US to focus on Naval research. Meanwhile almost all Europe suffered from Bombardment.
Tho isn't it's kinda unfair to compare technology of US with USSR? While they do make a great improvements during Cold War, their industrial study was just born because of Stalin's 5 year plan, so it was just a newborn baby. Their biggest mistake were jumping from construction of Izmail Battlecruisers to 60k ton Soyuz Battleships.
@@Bellthorian Also just a question if you know the reason behind it. What was the real reason of Iowa's turret explosion accident?