readx; The "Hindenburg" class with 800-mm guns includes three ships: H42, H43, and H44 (in fact, the latter two have not even started design). The battleship experts of the German Naval Construction Bureau, who were almost stunned by Hitler's request www.biquge.info with the help of the admirals, repeatedly made suggestions to Hitler, but they could not get Hitler to give up this unrealistic idea. After a series of assessments, naval experts finally decided that it was not feasible to install an 800-mm gun on the existing hull (also a twin 4-gun turret) and that a new hull (i.e. the 100,000-ton kind) had to be built. As a result, the four unfinished "Hindenburg" class ships were dismantled. By the time the Allies arrived at the receiving shipyard, there was not a single residue of the Hindenburg class left, except for the huge, empty dock.

Since only four "Hindenburg" with a design of 420 mm guns and a displacement of 60,000 tons have been built, only the details of these four ships have been introduced earlier.

Hull characteristics of the "Hindenburg" class with a total length of 277 meters, a waterline length of 266 meters, a width of 38 meters, a draft of 9.6 meters, and a draft of 11.2 meters at full load (the design dimensions of the H44 are 330 meters long, 48 meters wide, and 12 meters draft). This class of ships has fully absorbed the successful experience of the "Bismarck" class and has continued to use the "Bismarck" hull. In addition, welding technology is still widely used, and the welding volume accounts for 90%~95%. Welding saves about 15% of the hull weight compared to riveting, and it is used to strengthen protection. In addition, German steel was the world's best at that time, and "Hindenburg" used better high-strength steel than "Bismarck", and its impact resistance will be "on a higher level".

The bow of this class is still the Atlantic bow, and the Bismarck-class proves that this type of bow is more suitable for the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Because the bow is susceptible to damage from projectile attacks and mine explosions, a moderate outboard and freeboard are used to maintain sufficient reserve buoyancy and reach a speed of 26 knots even if it is damaged and causes water in the bow area.

The Hindenburg class has a total of eight 420 mm (16.53 in) guns, four twin turrets, A and B turrets in the bow, and C and D in the stern. Each gun has 110 rounds of ammunition, a total of 880 rounds, and the maximum ammunition carrying capacity is about 1,000 rounds. The rate of fire of the main gun is 2~3 rounds / min. The barrel life of the gun is 180~210 rounds.

The gun is hydraulically actuated for gyration and pitch and can reach 2° and 8° per second, respectively. A salvo can be fired every 40 seconds.

There are two main types of shells used for the main gun: armor-piercing shells and high-explosive shells, of which the power of armor-piercing shells is 10%~15% higher than that of "Bismarck". According to the post-war recollections of some of the German Krupp artillery designers involved in the design of the gun, at that time there were frequent fire tests of the 420-mm guns equipped with the "Hindenburg" class, testing their firepower at the distances of various battleship gun battles, and the target was a homogeneous steel armor plate with a vertical hit. The gun pierced vertically at 10,000 meters with a horizontal level of 550 mm, 20,000 meters at 404 mm, and at 35,000 meters it could penetrate 21.5 mm.

The secondary guns are 12 twin 66x caliber 150 mm guns, which are deployed on both sides of the upper deck, mainly used against enemy surface ships, and are also used for anti-aircraft fire in emergency situations. There are two seats in each of the two forwards for direct forward firing with a rotation angle of 150 °. There are also two seats in the aft part of each of the two broadboards, with a gyration angle of 135 °. The other secondary guns are all located in the middle of the ship's side. The whole ship has 2,600 rounds of ammunition, and the maximum rate of fire of the gun is 6 rounds per minute.

The "Hindenburg" class was initially without torpedo tubes, but after the "Bismarck" was sunk, two additional 533-mm launch tubes were installed.

Anti-aircraft firepower Because the German army did not have aircraft carriers, and most of the battleships fought without air cover, special attention was paid to anti-aircraft fire, and even the reconnaissance planes on board were equipped with 20 mm cannons. The anti-aircraft defense of the "Hindenburg" class consisted of heavy, medium and light anti-aircraft guns.

The heavy anti-aircraft guns consisted of 16 twin 105-mm SK-C/37 anti-aircraft guns, all located on the deck of the first superstructure, with 4 on the front, rear, left and right. Six of them can shoot directly into the airspace ahead, the other six can shoot directly into the airspace behind, and eight on each side can fire directly into the air

This type of anti-aircraft gun is a significant improvement over the 105-mm SK-C/33 equipped with the "Bismarck" class, with a maximum rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute, an elevation angle of 80 ° and a firing height of 12,500 meters, a maneuver angle of 360 ° and a maneuver speed of 8.5 degrees per second.

The medium anti-aircraft guns consisted of 24 twin 37-mm C83 guns, all of which were placed on the superstructure and could maneuver 360 ° at a speed of 4 degrees per second. Compared with the 37-mm SK-C/30 equipped with the "Bismarck" class, the actual rate of fire of the former has increased to 80 rounds / min, and the latter can theoretically reach this rate of fire, which in fact is only half of the former. The maximum range of the 37-mm C83 is 45 meters at an elevation angle of 8500 °, and at an elevation angle of 85 °, it is 6800 meters.

The light anti-aircraft gun was a 78-seat 20-mm C65 single-mounted gun with a maximum rate of fire of 120 rounds per minute. Its range is 4900 meters at an elevation angle of 45 °, 3700 meters at an elevation angle of 85 °, and the maneuver angle is also 360 degrees.

In particular, it should be pointed out here that the anti-aircraft fire of the "Hindenburg" class is all mechanically automated (the difference between the automatic here and the current automation is 108,000 miles, in fact, it should be called semi-automatic, while retaining the ability to operate manually), while the anti-aircraft artillery of the "Bismarck" is all manually operated. The advantage of manual is that it can maintain combat effectiveness in the event of damage to the power system of the battleship, and the biggest disadvantage is unresponsiveness. Compared with the anti-aircraft guns of Allied battleships of the same period, the reaction speed of the manual 105-mm guns was only half that of the 134-mm guns of the British "George V" class, and the 37 guns were even more excessive, only one-third of the 40 guns. That is, the anti-aircraft guns of the "Bismarck" had only 1/2 of the ability to respond to emergencies as the Allies. This is the fundamental reason why the old British "Swordfish" can easily cast torpedoes in bad weather.

In addition, after the sinking of the "Bismarck", the anti-aircraft fire of German surface ships, especially large surface ships above the cruiser, increased sharply. The "Tirpitz" class, whose displacement was much smaller than that of the "Hindenburg" class, sharply increased the number of single-mounted guns of the 20-mm C65 type from 12 to 78 units. "Hindenburg", of course, was not willing to "condescend to others" and increased the number of 37-mm guns to 32, and at the same time replaced the 20-mm single-mounted anti-aircraft guns with 98 4-mounted ones! This means that the "Hindenburg" class has at least 4 ships of the "Tirpitz" class with short-range air defense capabilities.

In terms of carrier-based aircraft, the "Hindenburg" class is equipped with six "Arado-196" seaplanes for reconnaissance, calibration, and liaison. Two of them were placed in one hangar under the main mast, and four were placed in two standby hangars on either side of the chimney. The plane was launched from 2 catapults between the chimney and the mainmast. "Hindenburg" also carried up to 28 dinghys.

Speaking of this armor protection, in fact, the armor of German ships is often exchanged for sacrificing firepower, because it is difficult to balance firepower, mobility and defense power. The German ship adopts the "heavy armor doctrine", which will be more advantageous when the enemy is outnumbered. German ship designers believed that one more gun would not necessarily hit the enemy, and that an extra inch of armor could allow the shells of several enemy ships to be bounced off at the same time. In our Chinese words: stay in the green mountains, not afraid of no firewood. When designing the "Hindenburg" class, the Germans placed great emphasis on short-range protection, which could not only withstand the shelling of enemy ships, but also have sufficient protection against torpedoes.

Therefore, the armor of the battleships of the "Hindenburg" class was even thicker to an outrageous extent. The upper deck was reinforced with 80 mm thick steel armor to protect against shrapnel and delay the downward penetration of shells, which exploded before they could penetrate the plates. The armored deck protects the vital parts of the ship, with a thickness of 120~160 mm and a total length of 215 meters. The armor plates on both sides are up to 200~400 mm thick, protecting the engine room, boiler room and ammunition room. Both the conning tower and the fire control area were protected by thick armor, the thickest part was 370 mm. For the most vulnerable main gun turret, its frontal thickness reached 420 mm, and the sides also reached 280 mm. The main armor of the secondary gun also reached 80 mm. The "Hindenburg" class has an extremely strong torpedo protection system on the side of the gunwale, and it is said that the standard design is to protect against one torpedo with a 450 kg TNT charge; Hit 2~3 torpedoes with a 450 kg charge can still continue the battle; Hit more than 4 pieces and still survive for a long time. The question of such a torpedo protection system remains a mystery. Many battleship experts believed that it was just more watertight compartments and thicker compartment armor plates. But now the latest information has revealed that the inside of the ship and the center line of the hull of the "Hindenburg" have a mediastinal wall, and the most important power area and the lower part of the turret are set up with a triple bottom.

The other is the propulsion unit, which was originally planned by the designers to use the electric propulsion power system that would be widely used on large merchant ships for the Hindenburg class. In the end, high-pressure turbine steam turbines were used for safety and fuel savings. The "Hindenburg" was equipped with three "Bismarck" class Curtiss light turbines, each in three transversely arranged watertight cabins, each driving a propeller. The power plant consists of 12 500 kW diesel generators, 8 690 kW turbine generators and 2 460 kW turbine generators, generating a total of 12,440 kW. They are installed in four compartments, with turbine generators in the nose compartment and diesel generators in the aft compartment.

Crew Establishment: The total number of ships is 2,100, and the maximum number of people as a flagship in wartime is 2,400. The entire crew is organized into 12 detachments, each with 180~260 members. The 1st ~ 4th detachment is the main and auxiliary artillery detachment, the 5th and 6th detachments operate the anti-aircraft artillery, the 7th detachment is composed of cooks, tanners and other life support personnel, the 8th detachment is ordnance personnel, the 9th detachment includes signal soldiers, telegraph operators, etc., and the 10th ~ 12th detachment is mechanical personnel.

There is very little information on what kind of shipborne radar the "Hindenburg" class is equipped with, but it is known that the designers expected that the radar would inevitably replace the traditional observation equipment, and for this reason they were preparing to install one anti-air radar and one anti-sea radar for the "Hindenburg" class. However, due to the unstable performance of the radar used by German warships (as is always the case with new things), the "Hindenburg" class was still equipped with eight large searchlights, ready to fight the enemy ships at night when the radar failed.

In order to defend against German submarine attacks, Allied merchant ships would be formed into fleets, which were escorted by a certain number of destroyers. However, this type of formation is most afraid of running into the enemy's surface fleet, so it is often necessary to arrange several cruisers or even battleships and aircraft carriers in the fleet.

As a result, due to Hitler's automatic abandonment of the construction of battleships of the "Hindenburg" class (the mustache self-defeated...... The fearful British Navy finally put its heart back in its belly, not only canceling the last few "Vanguard" class battleships under construction, but also writing off all the "Lion" class battleship construction plans and devoting all its efforts to the production of destroyers and frigates (of course, the participation of the US Navy is also an important factor). As for its surface forces, most of them can be transferred to the Pacific theater to fight a decisive battle with Japan without any worries. For the German Navy, without the cover of the surface fleet, the days of the U-boats were becoming more and more difficult.

In the war, German U-boats sank a total of 2,603 ships, totaling 13.57 million tons, but as many as 781 ships themselves were sunk, about 28,000 people were killed (seventy percent of all U-boat personnel), and about 5,000 people were captured. It is believed that if only half of the planned "Hindenburg" class had been completed and put into service at that time, the losses of the U-boats would have been much smaller. If it was really built, this class of ships would be the most powerful battleships in the world at that time, and its protection and attack power were far superior to those of the Japanese "Yamato" class at that time. At that time, 4 or even 6 "Hindenburg" class ships will be the most lethal opponents of the Allied navies, and the allies will not have battleships of the same class to compete with each other.

And it is a pity that if the H44, which had a maximum displacement of 118104 tons and was equipped with a 480-mm main gun, had been built, the Allied navies would have really been big. Think about the time when the British Navy exerted all its strength to sink the "Bismarck," and another ship of the same class, the "Tirpitz," contained a dozen British battleships, heavy cruisers, and a number of aircraft carriers. Although the H44 was not born, which disappointed many battleship fans, it was undoubtedly the greatest good news for peace-loving people (Zhao Heng was unhappy in his heart).