SgtBeltfed

Depends a lot on which version of the ball turret you're dealing with. The early ones, which were the more common ones, Didn't have room for a normal sized gunner (being the short gunner in the crew had some drawbacks), carried less ammunition, with the guns prone to jamming (requiring a special tool to unjam the ammo feed) had a smaller oxygen bottle so someone else had to swap it out during flight, and as you've mentioned, it didn't have room for a parachute. It was a deathtrap. Later in the war, a retrofit was introduced that moved a lot of stuff out of the ball, put the ammo and oxygen bottle on the supporting yoke (allowing full sized bottles, and much more ammunition), and could hold a bigger gunner. If the gunner was a small guy, and he got the right parachute, it was actually the easiest position to bail out from, as all the gunner had to do is point the guns horizontal, undo the latches, and fall out. It was still a horribly exposed position though. The one in the picture looks like it's got the relocated oxygen bottle, so it's probably a retrofitted one.

Actually, creative reporting of displacement was pretty common on treaty battleships. There was a lot of running the ships on trials with no ammunition on board, partial fuel loads, lacking some armament, ect... I think the Germans held the record leaving the secondary armament off, and the fire control system.

Nagato and Mutsu carried 41 cm (16.1 inch) guns. Which were redesignated as 40cm weapons in 1922. They always had 410 mm bores. Yamato's guns were designated as 40 cm guns, or 40.6cm guns (16 inch) weapons for deception purposes. Interestingly enough, 16 inch is also a caliber the IJN never used. There was no "code", The Japanese were trying to (and for a long time did) trick everyone into believing that Yamato simply carried an improved model of Nagato's guns

I'm not surprised with it happening at tier 10 at all. Tier 10 was always miserable. Bad players race to tier 10 as fast as possible, under the mistaken assumption that having a tier 10 ship makes them good. I mostly run ops these days, just to get away from the players that their thirst to get to the top has outstripped their skills, and they can't figure out what they've done.

Graf Zeppelin's 150mm guns were not meant as offensive armament, despite how we use them in game. They were just the standard defensive armament for large German warships, meant to see off destroyers in the North Sea and Baltic. Standard German practice when Graf Zeppelin was designed for destroyers was to attach them to a light cruiser, the light cruiser acted as flagship for the squadron, and provided facilities that were missing from the destroyers. This was standard practice in WWI, and still very common in WWII. 105mm guns were not considered enough to stop a light cruiser, so the low performance 150mm guns are added.

True, WG's first attempt at fixing it allowed anything with rapid fire HE to just melt a ship with torpedo bulges. Lasted on TC for a week, if that.

The Torpedo Protection Hit ribbon was created to solve the "0 damage pen" argument that kept cropping up on a regular basis from hitting torpedo bulges. It was added a long time after launch.

If anyone is going to try and make an airworthy example, they'd be better off making a copy from the recovered aircraft. This has been done for a couple of other aircraft.

The 2-pdr Pom-Pom was really short ranged, even with the HV shells, having only about 2/3rds what the Type 96 or 1.1"AA could manage. At least it would probably kill what it hit though. The 40mm Bofors by comparison could reach out roughly 20% further than the Type 96 or 1.1" AA. I would still love to see an octuple 2pdr Pom-Pom mount light off with all 8 guns in real life.

Unfortunately, the only people who thought that far ahead were in the Swedish Navy.

Sort of, The Type 96 25mm AA gun was a medium range AA gun. weighed a little over 3 tons for a triple mount. Wasn't a bad weapon in 1938, and it was probably a little better than the US Navy's 1.1" AA gun that was almost 5 tons for a quad mount. The US Navy was well into getting rid of the 1.1" AA gun by the end of 1943, replacing it with the 40mm BOFORs. The Japanese replacement for the Type 96 was the 4cm Type 5, which it's name implies the problem. It wasn't ready for service until 1945 (and it's an unlicensed copy of the 40mm BOFORS). The Japanese and US were on the same plan, just Japan took longer, and ran out of navy before they got it in service. The US had a license to built the 40mm BOFORS before the war, so it was readily available. Japan had to do it the hard way reverse engineering some British guns captured in the Far East.

A MGD is heavier, so keeping the backup as low as possible makes sense considering topweight. Richelieu was a very weight efficient ship, and the best of the treaty battleships as far as what she did without breaking tonnage. Mounting the director for the 6" guns up high gets it above the worst of the smoke from the rest of the armament.

Correct, but the real problem was gassing the director crew with exhaust fumes. Heat distortion or smoke interfering with the optics probably wasn't a big deal for the 6" guns, as they don't have to fire that far.

Well, as they are paper ships, Wargaming may have taken liberties with them. On actually ships, the only articulated funnels I'm aware of are folding and telescoping funnels. Folding ones come in two forms. Ones that lay down and keep operating, as seen on USS Ranger and Hosho. The others are found on K-class submarines, which stop working when they are laid down and stowed away. The other kind I'm familiar with are the telescoping ones, that vertically retract. USS Monitor, had a a pair so they could be protected, and some ships have used them to to allow them to go under low bridges. In Richelieu's case, the funnel helps support the aft fire control station, and historically could cause them problems when the ship had a tail wind. If the funnels rotate on the tier 9 and 10 paper ships, it might have been one of those ideas that would not have survived common sense if the ships had actually been made. The French were an early adopter of the mast/stack combination, and it does come and go from ship designs even today. Funnels and French ships are an interesting topic, as the French are rather creative when it comes to funnel caps, and over the years have tried just about everything, possibly on the same ship. Some of the predreadnoughts can have their photo's dated by looking the funnel caps they messed with them, so often. The French were trying to get extra power, allow the engines to run cleaner, reduce the embers coming out of the funnels at night, ect... They put a lot of effort into something that probably gave them very little in the way of results. The only country that gives the French a run for their money in funnel weirdness is the Japanese, with the above deck trunking together of funnels, the down turned funnels on carriers and the inclined funnels also found on carriers. The above deck trunking caught on and was used by other nations, even if it was hidden inside the superstructure. The down turned funnels never really caught on outside Japan, they made the Japanese carriers better at operating aircraft, but hurt them as warships. The Royal Navy had a variation on it and weren't happy with it. The inclined funnels on Japanese carriers made a reappearance on the USS John F Kennedy and some amphibious assault ships, and may keep showing up.

Akagi's major late 30's reconstruction could be worked in to make up for the lack of certain construction steps that carriers do not have, such as having no main armament. WG could also make a tier 6 version of Akagi (with triple flight decks) as an intermediate reward for when you finish the initial ship, but before you reconstruct it. Enterprise could still be done as Enterprise 43', with a rebalanced airwing made up of F6F's, TBF's and SBD's. (just like Ark Royal had to have Swordfish, Enterprise should have SBD's) HMS Victorious (aka USS Robin) could be fun, especially if WG gave her a choice between two air wings (one of Fleet Air Arm aircraft, the other US Navy Aircraft in USN markings) The crew picketing while in port because the ship ran dry would be a nice touch, but probably over the top.