My post yesterday listed the problems with shells.

It appears likely that the RN was using black powder charges in their
shells until Lyddite was adopted. When this was found to be unsuitable TNT
was used as the Germans had been doing for some time.

BTW I discovered that British shell failures is blamed on Japanese success
in the Russio-Japanese war!

The Japanese used mainly HE against the Russians and as a result the RN
concluded that explosive effect was more important than armour penetration.
That helps explain one thing that has always mystified me which was why
Agincourt at Jutland only carried HE and that most ships did mainly
fired common shell instead of AP during the action.

From the figures available this is a rough analysis of shell use at
Jutland:

15" About 70% AP and 25% Common
14" All APC              
13.5"/1400 About 50% AP and 50% Common
13.5"/1250 About 60% AP and 40% Common
12" About 40% AP, 20% Common and 40% HE

For comparison the Germans are estimated to have fired 3597 heavy shells of
which 3160 were AP and 437 were Semi-Armour Peircing.

The German SAP was similar to British Common but had a smaller explosive
charge in a larger shell and was not capped.

Agincourt had only HE
15" gun ships had no HE
Canada had no Common
for 13.5" and 15" about 60% of shells in the magazines were AP
12" had a smaller quantity AP                                

German 11" guns had only AP and the 12" guns were supplied with about 70%
AP.                                

As none of the british ships fired more than half their amunition there
must have been a clear doctrine to fire Common at heavily armoured ships at
12,000 yards!

        Jutland: An analysis of the fighting
        N J M Campbell
        Conway Maritime Press, 1986, ISBN 0 85177 3796

        [cut sig]

        Hmmmm...anyone besides me wonder if this guy is for real, or just
joking? He seems intellectually drained enough. Look at all the evidence.
He actually thinks Russia still poses a conventional threat to the US!

As an aside, is his name a joke? Wasn't it 'Chuck' Lamphear who did
not shoot down Yamamoto?