Naval Gazing originated as a series of comments in the open threads of a blog called Slate Star Codex. Someone asked about hobbies, and I began to talk about my tour-guiding, followed by a version of my fire-control spiel. I then spent about the next eight months posting stuff there before I moved to Oklahoma and started Naval Gazing as an independent blog. These are links to those original posts. At this point, they're essentially of historical interest only. With a few very minor exceptions, everything discussed there has also been covered here, usually in significantly greater detail. Originally, the asterisks were a system for keeping track of which ones had been revised.
History:
- General History of Battleships, Part 1*, Part 2*
- The Early Ironclads*
- Pre-Dreadnoughts*
- Pursuit of the Goeben and Breslau*
- The Battle of Jutland Part 1*, Part 2*, Part 3*, Part 4*, Part 5*, Part 6*
- US Battleships in WW2*
- The Battleships of Pearl Harbor Part 1*, Part 2*, Part 3*
- Rest-of-world Battleships in WW2*
- Battlecruisers*
- Battleships after WW2*
- The Destroyer that accidentally attacked a President*
- The loss of HMS Victoria*
- The South American Dreadnought Race*
- Dreadnoughts of the minor powers*
- Life aboard Iowa*
- Network-centric Warfare Part 1*, Part 2*
- History of Naval Aviation (hlynkacg) Part 1
- Warship Types of WWI and WWII*
Technical: - Fire Control, Part 1*, Part 2* (Old)
- History of Fire Control
- Armor Part 1*, Part 2*
- Propulsion*
- Armament Part 1*, Part 2*
- Turret vs barbette*
- Underwater protection*
- Secondary Armament Part 1*, Part 2*
- Survivability and Damage Control Part 1*, Part 2*
- Mine Warfare Part 1*, Part 2*
Modern Naval: - Why the carriers are not doomed Part 1*, Part 2*, Part 3*, Part 4*
- AEGIS*
- Strike Warfare*
Misc: - Naval Bibliography*
- Thoughts on tour guiding*
- Questions I get as a tour guide*
- Thoughts on the Summer 2017 Collisions
Comments
I've heard conflicting accounts regarding actually superfiring superfiring turrets, i.e. firing directly forward or aft. Some say it was safe to do, while others say that firing directly over the bow or stern would risk damage to the softer elements of the ship. To what extent was it actually done?
If it was discouraged in practice, were there other reasons for having a superfiring arrangement, given that I imagine superfiring turrets made for a more top-heavy ship? Lessening the length of the armored citadel? Improving the field of fire even if it didn't go all the way forwards/aft in practice? At least providing the option to fire directly forwards/aft in extremis?
The ability to fire directly over the other turret depends heavily on some details of turret design. The British had trouble within about 30 deg before Hood. The US didn't. It was normal to fire on the broadside, and firing dead ahead was somewhat rare. You're pretty much right on the advantages. Smaller citadel (turrets at the same level need room to turn past each other), better broadside firepower, more efficient use of weight. I'm going to talk about this a lot more quite soon, so I think I'll cut this off here.