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The USN has never published a top speed (just "at least 30 knots"), I wonder if they'll declassify the data now that the ship's been decommissioned.

This article makes a good case that a top speed higher than 33.6 knots is unlikely.
With all 8 reactors at full power, the ship makes more steam than the turbines (rated for 280kshp) can handle.

How about mentioning that Washington closed to within 7700 m of Kirishima - point blank range[*]

Duke of York opened fire on Scharnhorst at 10,900 m - pretty close to point blank.

Which was my whole point in response to your remarks about maximum range accuracy. No surface action was ever fought or planned at maximum range. The weapons were not as inaccurate as you claim they are, not at maximum range, and certainly not at the ranges they were actually employed at.

Washington got 9 hits on Kirishima for 75 main gun rounds fired at Kirishima (rounds were also fired at other targets)

Modern examinations suggest that she got 20 main battery hits, which is the figure Hornfischer quotes. Where did you find the 75 shots fired figure? I was looking for Washington's after action report, there used to be a USS Washington memorial page that had it, but it seems to have disappeared; all I could come up with was the total number of shots fired in the entire engagement.

As for the Japanese destroyer - it never was hit by the battleship. It got away.

Yes, she did; but there was still a first salvo straddle at extreme range. Actually multiple straddles, there's a write up of that engagement somewhere and the Iowa was using a combination of radar fire control and aerial spotting. The destroyer had a speed advantage and so escaped that way, which begs the question of why no aircraft were available for a strike, but such details are presumably lost to history for an insignificant engagement that has no name.

but again, just like Bismarck, it took torpedoes to finish the job.

Kirishima was done in solely by gunfire, the aforementioned link disputes the notion that she was scuttled. Of course, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter does it? Gunfire was enough to mission kill any warship afloat, in short order, and sustained gunfire would leave them a floating wreck even if the engineering plant remained functional. Bismarck was doomed even without the torpedoes and/or scuttling, as was Scharnhorst. One might even say that South Dakota was mission killed by inferior shells (mostly 5" and 8" hits to her superstructure, her armor defeated the one 14" round that found her, on the aft barbette) although poor damage control (she really was a bad luck ship) played a role as well. Then of course there's the example of what 5" shells managed to do to Japanese cruisers and battleships off Samar.

No.
Bursting Charge
(see Note 5) AP Mark 8 - 40.9 lbs. (18.55 kg)
HC Mark 13 - 153.6 lbs. (69.67 kg)
HC Mark 14 - 153.6 lbs. (69.67 kg)
Nuclear Mark 23 - W23 warhead, about 15-20 kilotons

14 out of the 15 landed within 250 yards (230 m) of the center of the pattern and 8 were within 150 yards (140 m). Shell-to-shell dispersion was 123 yards (112 m), 0.36% of total range.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapon...

i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.

Incredibly accurate, even with the cutting edge of 1940s technology. This was always the advantage that the United States Navy had which the Japanese couldn't even dream of duplicating. Read about the USS Washington savaging of Kirishima off Guadalcanal, in the dark, with 5" and 16" fire directed solely by radar. The USN credits Washington with eight or nine 16" inch hits but modern research suggests she scored over 20 main battery hits and as many or more hits with the secondary 5" battery. If the USN had had more officers in the early days who understood the proper usage of radar (Admiral Lee is one of the most underrated WW2 leaders, in my humble opinion, a man who was way ahead of his time) Iron Bottom Sound would be littered with Japanese wrecks instead of American ships.

For another example, read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, the story of Taffy 3 off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Our destroyers and destroyer escorts could land first salvo hits at maximum range, while maneuvering at flank speed, simply by pointing their computerized fire control directors at the Japanese ships. Even at this late stage in the war the Japanese could not duplicate radar directed fire control, they relied on optical rangefinders for their fire control, the consequence of which is they could not actually land hits on maneuvering targets until they were nearly at point blank range. Nor could they really maneuver themselves without losing their fire control solutions and starting from scratch.

Want an personal anecdote to add to all of the above? One of my best friends was aboard the USS Antietam, where he served in the 5"/38 battery. During target practice he tells me that they didn't actually aim at the target sleeves being towed by airplanes, rather they would aim at the cable connecting the sleeve to the airplane and more often than not they could hit it. There's a reason why the Japanese paid a very heavy price whenever they tried to attack our ships with aircraft, look at what happened to them during the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands.

This is the single biggest reason why people who select Yamoto in the "Iowa vs. Yamoto" debate are deluding themselves. Iowa, or even the so-called treaty battleships (North Carolina and South Dakota classes) would have raped Yamoto, as evidenced by her poor fire control off Samar. Having the biggest guns in the world means nothing if you can't land hits with them. Hell, I would almost take the old battleships that survived Pearl Harbor up against Yamato; they all had modernized radar driven fire control suites after their rebuilds.

>> I also heard something about some nuke carriers carrying bunker fuel to help keep the destroyers topped off but that seems a bit silly since there are already fleet oilers to perform that task.

The oilers can't keep up with a nuke task group at top speed. Most of the destroyers have GE turbofan engines to drive the shaft so they won't be too far behind. http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-028.htm

The University's president can't tell the difference between a 35mm canon, and a 9mm browning.

The scythe-shaped prop and the problem it was meant to fix, blade beat, has been known to the Russians since about the seventies. Sure, the exact shape may not have been disclosed by once you know of the problem, the solution follows easily. But again, the shape of the blade probably isn't the most secret thing about the blade.

The biggest secret about the prop, I would guess, is the metallurgy behind it and the methods used to shape it. The blade is spindly and perhaps the technology to make a blade of that shape strong enough to drive a sub at speed is tough. Or perhaps the machining or milling is difficult. The Russians had to buy the milling technology from Japan twenty years ago. One wonders if that technology is still relevant, or if Russia has obtained updated methods. Burrs on the blade, for example, may make it loud and prone to cavitation regardless of the design, and complex shapes are really hard to mill.

It's like making a nuclear bomb. You know how to filter uranium, and you know basically what a bomb has to do. The problem is doing it. Milling a plutonium or uranium chunk into the proper shape is the real secret to making a bomb.

It's always the "stupid" technologies that are hard to emulate. For example, the cool digital camouflage pattern worn by U.S. Marines was apparently too hard for the Canadian textile industry to make. See here.

and old battlewagons..., and if memory serves, a lot of auxilliaries.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-038.htm

Lets not tell them what to expect ahead of time, just like the cruise ship with the sonic defense. That was a suprise and as such it was effective. Now the cat's out of the bag. Next attack may come with motorcycle helments with proper hearing protection.

Too bad they didn't have a Bofors 40 mm cannon. There wouldn't be a next attack.