Breaking the T - An Inversion of the classic Crossing the T

Question

Shortly after the Washington Naval Treaty, the British designed and built two Nelson-Class Battleships, and a decade later these designs inspired the French Richelieu-Class Battleships.

Both of these designs have a very significant quirk, in relation to this question: All the guns in their primary batteries are capable of firing forward. Now, there were a few issues (Especially with the Nelson class) of firing all the guns directly forward - But this question assumes these issues have been or can be solved.

The question is simple: Would a line of battleships with Nelson-style configurations have the advantage when their T is crossed?

In most T-crossing scenarios, the ships being crossed are at a disadvantage because their rear weapons cannot fire. In earlier warfare with fixed guns, it was even more devastating because almost all of their guns could not fire. Nelson-style configurations, however, do not suffer from this and can fire all of their weapons on the targets in front of them.

All of those targets which are presenting wide fronts, while each of the Nelson-style ships are presenting narrow fronts.

To be completely fair, I don't envision this as an ideal position for the Nelson-style ships to be in. Their enemy can still fire every one of their guns. However, the Nelson-Style ships don't have the disadvantage that normally comes with having their T crossed, so perhaps the playing field is going to be a little more level.

I am curious as to what sort of things I may be missing out. I'm not a military or naval strategist - My interests lie significantly more on the engineering and technical end of things, so those are the details that stick out to me.

Relevant information: This is targeted at the world I'm building, 50s ish tech where shipbuilding is advanced but aircraft never gained dominance. Battleships tend to be bigger and have bigger guns, but realistically speaking treat the ships as being largely equivalent except for gun placement.

Answer 1

Think Squadrons, not Ships

• A battleship is a couple hundred metres long. With a reasonable safety distance for maneuvers, two ships will be roughly a kilometre apart. A squadron in line will be several kilometres long.
• Effective gunnery range will be a few tens of kilometres.
• Speed is 30 to 50 kph. A squadron in line might take ten minutes to steam past a stationary observer. A battle fleet takes longer.

Draw it up on graph paper and measure or calculate the ranges. Assuming that both sides have the same gunnery range, the crossing force will be able to concentrate the fire of all their ships against the lead ship of the enemy for several minutes while the rest of the enemy is still out of range.

Answer 2

By the time of your scenario crossing the T is a less useful tactic. The nail in its coffin is radar, which allowed ships to get a very accurate picture of the enemy's position and bearing, even over the horizon, which combined with mechanical gun computers, meant that guns could be laid very accurately.

If you could get into a position where you could cross your opponents T it still meant that you could get more guns on target but given kilometres of maneuver room and forewarning it was considerably harder. The most recent example of crossing the T Battle of Surigao Strait (1944), but in that battle by the time the T was crossed the Japanese had already been crippled by the US who outranged them and they were trapped in a strait that meant they were not free to turn to broadside.

What this boils down to is the ability to fire all of your guns when bow on is of limited utility. It would mean that in the event that your T was crossed you could reply with all your guns, so you'd be equivalent going up against a ship with equal weight of fire, range, and positioning data. However T crossing is going to be rather rare, potentially a ship might go it's entire service without ever using this feature.

Answer 3

A force of Nelson-style battleships would be at a great disadvantage if their T was crossed to their rear, which was a valid tactic, although a bit harder than crossing the T to their front. This tends to suggest that T-crossing wasn't a major factor in their design.

The actual reason for the design was to save weight. They were designed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Naval Treaty which had placed limits on the weight of battleships. Putting all the turrets close together reduced the total weight of armour needed to protect their magazines. The British were very keen on protecting magazines after several of their ships exploded at the Battle of Jutland.

Answer 4

I'm by no means a military history buff, so take this with a grain of salt...

I'm thinking that it would largely depend on range and given the blockade formation (several ships side by side) that this would probably be a longer range engagement to start off. Long range shots tend to be parabolic, aim high on your target and expect an arch in the shot. This may sound obvious, but determining distance tends to be more difficult than direction... More or less it's much easier to adjust left and right than it is to recalculate the distance (pitching the barrel up or down)

With that out of the way... You'll present a smaller target approaching head on, from a left right perspective, but a slightly larger target on the other axis.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile_motion for the math.

I think I get the source of the question... In earlier naval combat "broadsiding" was more of an issue. Canons were shorter range and shots tended to require less of an arc and you could place a lot more cannons down the length of a ship in fixed placement, but by the 1920-30's artillery had progressed enough to allow for much longer shots. These larger artillery pieces also tended to have larger calibers and longer barrels, so a forward facing placement was a bit more practical. Kind of the difference between a volley of fire approach and a more targeted approach.

Answer 5

  Nelson-class could not fire all of their guns facing forward. As you can see from the picture, third turret is below second turret. When guns from third turret face forward, they aim directly into second turret.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/The_Royal_Navy_in_the_Interwar_Period_Q70606.jpg/790px-The_Royal_Navy_in_the_Interwar_Period_Q70606.jpg

  Richelieu-class could theoretically fire all of the guns facing forward (guns from second turret over first turret). But problem remains, if such ships steam in battle line, could guns from second ship fire over first ship without hitting him ? And could gun laying equipment on second ship even detect targets (and shell splashes) when first ship in line blocks their view ?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Richelieu_1943.jpg

    Therefore, crossing the T remained relevant tactics until the end of era classic gun-armed battleships.

Answer 6

As others have mentioned by this time period crossing the T did not offer much of an advantage. Older ship designs had primarily fixed broadside armament that could on fire to the side of the ship. They few if any guns that could fire forward or rearward. Many battles were two lines of ships sailing side by side.

If you could arrange your line of ships to cross in front of or behind the enemy, all of your broadside guns could fire down the length of your opponents ships doing tremendous damage.

More modern ships had their guns in turrets that could be rotated to fire in different directions. The guns were far more accurate and had a much longer distance virtually eliminating the lines of ships sailing side by side in battle. Add to this weapons like torpedoes and aircraft and the line of battle were no longer effective and crossing the T effectively no longer existed.

Answer 7

I would think that by the 1950's in your scenario, "crossing the T" would be considered archaic.

Firstly, even early in WWII, capital ships had radar, and by the end of the war radar had been well developed.

Secondly, scouting ahead is still possible, even without airplanes or zeppelins. Destroyers or Frigates with radar, powerful optical systems and radios would be ahead of the capital ships, both to warn them of the enemy approach, but also to spot for the big guns.

Finally, and perhaps a bit of a stretch, artillery weapons might have reached well beyond the few tens of miles of traditional Battleship guns. The Germans pioneered this with the "Peenemünde Arrow Shells", highly aerodynamic shells fired from a modified version of the Krupp K-5. Ranges of well over 100km are claimed, and apparently this is why "Anzio Annie" could not be bombed - the allies were looking in the wrong place and had no idea the range of the cannon was so great.

A Battleship with such weapons would need to operate in a much different fashion than a more conventional ship. Assuming some form of airplane is possible, then an observation plane flying well ahead of the ship is needed, otherwise, very fast scouting ships would need to sail in a ring formation around the Battleship far enough out to identify targets and radio in corrections (even a radar set on the Battleship itself would not be able to detect targets that far over the horizon. Even when wisely dispersed, with proper radio procedures Battleships would also be able to concentrate fire, even a fairly long column formation would still see the rear ships able to fire over the column and add their firepower to the battle.

So, no, advances in radar, communications and artillery would render the idea of "crossing the T" archaic.