Talk:5inch Single Gun Mount Mk.30/@comment-175.156.13.185-20180422161421/@comment-33100091-20180518051210

Most CA turrets i assure you are armored well for a cruiser (IJN cruisers included)... that is to say they pretty much are designed to withstand cruiser caliber gun hits nevermind DD.

Generally most cruisers are designed to be resistant to DD guns in most area, and either immune or close to immune to them in belt, and turret which are usually rated to withstand other cruiser gun hits.

What Samar showed was that the USN guns in their DD generally were able to throw their weight of fire much more accurately than the IJN ships could and they have significant advantage in low visibility condition.

USN guns with their automatic gun control generally could zero in the range to target, and track their target much better even through the smokes and limited visibility than the IJN semi automatic system could (at least until they lose their search radar after the DD and DE were crippled)

But even without radar and Mark1 ballistic computer, for example the 5 inch gun mount on the CVE, (each had 1 5 inch gun in the tail that is meant as a last resort) they actually managed to score hits back on the cruisers.

The reality was that if the CVE with their SINGLE non radar, non computer controlled 5 inch gun managed to score hits back on the IJN cruisers... then for some reason, the IJN cruisers had to close the distance to such a point where the CVE's 5 inch gun could fire back at them... and HIT.

The IJN cruisers basically were either unable to fire effectively at the CVE or were missing most of their shots on the CVE until the CVE could fire back at them with that single pea shooter.

Mind you CVE are one of the EASIEST target to hit for a warship (if you can even call them one), they are slow... they are big for a combat ship (though still smaller than fleet carrier obviously), they got basically no real armor, their only gun that can hit warships realistically... is that 1 single 5 inch gun, and they don't exactly maneuver well at all.

It's also worth noting that one of the DD, Johnston... basically gun duelled against an entire IJN DD screen... in her attempt to stop them from executing their torpedo run against the CVEs, a single USN DD basically threw more gunfire weight and hit them more often than they could in return to her that they all had to abort their run and fired their torpedoes prematurely.

That kinda tells you that her gun fire is a LOT more effective than what the IJN DDs were able to throw back at her.