2 quickie questions...well...maybe only 1 quickie and another rather involved

Mate have a look at Jeff Hearne's article at www.modelwarships.com/features/how-to/modeling_water.htm.Excellent article that tells you all you need to know.
Cheers
Mick

Generally speaking the barrels of a battleship's turrets can indeed be elevated and fired independently. Most navies' tactical doctrines during the World War II period, however, called for the guns to operate in salvoes under most circumstances.

All the turrets in the main battery (two turrets, in the case of the Graf Spee normally would be controlled electronically by the main gun director, on top of the superstructure. (If the target was ahead or astern, obviously, only one turret could be brought to bear on it.) There are plenty of instances of guns firing individually for one reason or another (damage or mechanical problems, for instance), but under normal circumstances all the guns of the main battery that could be brought to bear on the target would fire at once.

Another point for model building purposes: the gun director controlling the turret that's firing should be pointed on the same bearing as the turret.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the link Mick and answerj tilley...Ok understand the mechanics now, let me ask you this just for my general education...when firing would the barrels be at different elevations in order to achieve a quicker bracket of the target, or were all barrels laid along the same elevation and deflection (well, I guess you really cant have a different deflection excepting the horizontal offset of the barrels themselves). I am also guessing that crew proficiency also played into getting the weapon into battery. When they were hot and heavy into it, would they wait for all weapons to come into battery together than fire, or was it more of a fire when your weapons up?

Generally speaking (there undoubtedly were exceptions) all the guns in the turret would be aimed at the same elevation. If they weren't, it would be almost impossible to spot the fall of shot. (The spotters wouldn't be able to tell which gun made which splash.)

Some guns (maybe all of them; I'm not sure) could only be loaded when they were at certain elevations. So after the gun was fired it would dip to that elevation while being loaded, then go back up to the angle prescribed by the gun director. So you might see the guns in one turret at slightly different elevations during an action - but only briefly. If I were doing a diorama of a battleship in action, I'd set all the guns in the turret at the same elevation.

By the way - we discussed the Graf Spee recently in another thread, under the title "Graf Spee: help needed." There's some interesting information about details of the ship and sources of information. I've just moved that thread to page 1 of the forum; it should appear just below this one.

Interesting stuff. Good luck.

okey doke...thanks

I have Heller's kit of Adm. Scheer and bought osprey's German pocket battleships for research. All main guns were capeable of independant elevation (they have a picture of this). It was a common occurance for maintenance. They also show Spee off south america in a muted dazzle camo. scheme with fake bow wave. Good book to check out if you're doing a pocket battleship. gl

I'm with you gl, it would be alot easier to run a barrel swab down a gun on a three gun turret if the other two were out of the way.