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Efficiency of Multiple Gun Turrets on Warships
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Efficiency of Multiple Gun Turrets on Warships
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“Guns in multiple mounts always lose efficiency as compared with the same number of guns in single mounts. This is a factor of reduced rate of fire, handling awkwardness, the guns interfering, fire control and salvo problems etc etc. To allow for this there is a gun-index rule of thumb that goes like this.
A twin mount is roughly 1.75 times as effective a single mount
A triple mount is roughly 2.5 times as effective as a single mount
A quadruple mount is roughly 3.125 times as effective as a single mount.
So four twin mounts is 4 x 1.75 = 7 single gun equivalents.
Applying this to other ships, a ship with 9 guns in three triple turrets is equivalent to 3 x 2.5 = 7.5 single guns. So her advantage of a four twin ship isn't one gun, its half a gun.
KGV worked out as (2 x 3.125) + 1.75 = 8 single gun equivalents
Using this to compare a Japanese heavy cruiser (5 x 1.75 = 8.75) as opposed to a three triple US heavy gives her a 1.25 gun advantage over the US ship.”
Running the above through a curve finding program results in the following table using the standard power (y=axb) formula:
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Actual # of Guns |
Practical # of Guns |
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1 |
1 |
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2 |
1.770 |
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3 |
2.470 |
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4 |
3.140 |
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5 |
3.770 |
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6 |
4.390 |
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7 |
4.980 |
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8 |
5.560 |
