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Post by chaosblade on Aug 21, 2018 7:15:00 GMT -6
Could the washington Treaty and its follow ups damaged the repair capability, or degraded somewhat the naval capabilities to explain the differences, at least in part? That is to say naval facilities might have not been upgraded in the interregnum as they were in the pre-WWI days of the Battleship race?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 21, 2018 10:10:41 GMT -6
Could the washington Treaty and its follow ups damaged the repair capability, or degraded somewhat the naval capabilities to explain the differences, at least in part? That is to say naval facilities might have not been upgraded in the interregnum as they were in the pre-WWI days of the Battleship race? We know that the reason for the two naval treaties was to reduce naval forces of signing nations and eliminate a possibility of a naval arms race. It was also designed to reduce the size of the ships however, this would not eliminate complexity. The interwar period was a period of increased research into technology and this would increase the complexity. Now, as to shipyards, the commercial yards would have to struggle for many years after WW1 to do commercial building, repair and upgrading. Many would be eliminated. Many of the British yards on the Thames were not improved and were only capable of performing work on smaller ships. With the post-war boom and then the bank failures, inflation and depression, naval shipyards would be affected. Naval budgets would be slashed and each navy would have to eliminate older ships, and delay upgrades to other ships. Would this affect repair capability? Most likely but indirectly. Navies in peace, don't worry a lot about how to repair ships in combat, they might simulate it at war colleges but they don't really put much effort into it. Logistics always suffers in peacetime. The only advantage the US Navy had was that the US was always an industrial nation and logistics came natural to us. It did not take us long to increase the logistics of our fleet. Many of the men and women used in the war for logistics were in the CCC camps and worked for the government during the depression doing national projects like building dams, roads Etc. The experience, and knowledge along with the necessary equipment was already in place. Good question and I will do some research in my books later.
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Post by jeb94 on Sept 1, 2018 0:57:49 GMT -6
That also brings up the USS O'Brien DD-415. Yes she was sunk by the same torpedo spread that sank the USS Wasp but she didn't sink until over a month later. After a few port stops and temporary repairs from the seaplane tender USS Curtiss and the sub tender USS Argonne she left New Caledonia for San Francisco for permanent repairs. Unfortunately her over stressed hull structure split open along the way. It gives a bit of an idea of how the repair process worked for the USN during the Solomons campaign. Here is a link to some interesting pictures of the O'Brien, here history and diagrams of the torpedo damage. ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/WarDamageReports/WarDamageReportDD415/WarDamageReportDD415.htmlAs this document states, the problem of adequate docking facilities was already being solved and was remedied after the loss of the O'Brien. I knew the damage was severe but seeing it like this is truly eye opening. It seems she was lucky to get as far as she did and shouldn't have attempted the voyage to New Caledonia and never should have tried for San Francisco. Of course, hindsight and all. Just a little bit of roughness to the sea and she broke up. To me that damage looks almost bad enough to deem her not worth repairing. The USN could probably have built a new Benson/Gleaves class ship as fast or faster than they could repair this old Sims and a few months longer for a new Fletcher.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 1, 2018 8:19:36 GMT -6
I knew the damage was severe but seeing it like this is truly eye opening. It seems she was lucky to get as far as she did and shouldn't have attempted the voyage to New Caledonia and never should have tried for San Francisco. Of course, hindsight and all. Just a little bit of roughness to the sea and she broke up. To me that damage looks almost bad enough to deem her not worth repairing. The USN could probably have built a new Benson/Gleaves class ship as fast or faster than they could repair this old Sims and a few months longer for a new Fletcher. When you see the damage to the O'Brien, you get a sense of the excellent engineering and repair crews on board a ship. My Dad's ship, was torpedoed after the Battle of the Eastern Solomon's on August 28,1942. She was electrically powered and the whole power system died. So now, this big carrier is sitting, not moving, can't launch aircraft, waiting for the Chief Engineer and his men to correct the problem, so they can head to New Caledonia then back to Bremerton for repairs and updates. He was on the Saratoga. He said the whole ship rattled and shook when she was hit. He told me it was eerie, just sitting there hoping that submarine did not take another shot. The engineering crews got her back into shape very quickly.
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Post by julianbarker on Sept 22, 2018 14:35:51 GMT -6
Clearly when fighting in places like the Pacific distance and availability of shipyards is a major factor, but that doesn't explain why the RN took so long to repair ships damaged in British Waters or the Med compared with the same in WW1, or why German and Italian repairs took so long. Surely the main factors for that are fourfold.
1) The Naval Treaties and the 1930s. A combination of reducing naval expenditure and general slowdown in economy will have reduced shipyard capacity significantly from WW1 for all nations, reduced investment in the equipment and skills necessary to maintain modern ships etc.
2) Airpower. Repairing a ship in range of enemy attack or sending halfway around the world for major repairs b ya colony or all? Operation Cerberus wit hall the risks was preferable to being in the original shipyard. Also West Africa for French ships.
3) As mentioned above, resources. Germany and Italy would be very short of many things. RN sent ships to Canada and US to be closer to steel production etc. Japan was short of everything.
4) Priorities. For Britain the priority for shipyards was building, maintaining and repairing merchant ships to keep the war going, and for escorts. For Germany it was U-Boats.
All these are more pronounced in WW2 than in WW1 (at least until 1917).
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Post by dorn on Sept 23, 2018 2:59:41 GMT -6
Clearly when fighting in places like the Pacific distance and availability of shipyards is a major factor, but that doesn't explain why the RN took so long to repair ships damaged in British Waters or the Med compared with the same in WW1, or why German and Italian repairs took so long. Surely the main factors for that are fourfold. There were several reasons for that.
Capital ships was sent to USA for repairs as large local shipyards were full of work and were bombarded. As repairs werer done by nation in peacetime and with foreign equipment it took more time. This is comletely different cicumstances at which USA did repairs under war condition of their own ships.
However there are even some misinformation as I usually see writing when somebody asks why Illustrious was repaired more than year after her damage in 1941. In reality it took only 5 months (from 12th May to October - trials) in peacetime USA but after she were on way to Home Island together with Formidble they collided each other in storm and needed additonal repairs and usually time of her second departure of were considered as end of damage repairs from January 1941 (so she was damaged in 1/1941 but again in action in 3/1942 - thus 14 months out of action which repairs of damage including trials took only 5 months).
But main points are peacetime USA with foreign equipment. RN shipyards were bombarded by Germans and priority was given to ASW.
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Post by oaktree on Sept 28, 2018 10:54:02 GMT -6
Another factor with repairing is having the right parts for the ship being repaired. A port away from home waters like Alexandria or Singapore might not have the equipment or parts that you need to fix an particular class' engines for instance.* And unless you have a lot of spare transports the odds are that a lot of these items are warehoused at home, or need to be fabricated at same. And IIRC some of the UK ships that got repaired/upgraded at US yards showed up with the new equipment in crates on their decks.
* - There were a few IJN heavy cruisers that sat out the end of the war in Singapore since they simply could not be repaired there and could not safely make it back to Japan either.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 28, 2018 12:35:03 GMT -6
Another factor with repairing is having the right parts for the ship being repaired. A port away from home waters like Alexandria or Singapore might not have the equipment or parts that you need to fix an particular class' engines for instance.* And unless you have a lot of spare transports the odds are that a lot of these items are warehoused at home, or need to be fabricated at same. And IIRC some of the UK ships that got repaired/upgraded at US yards showed up with the new equipment in crates on their decks. * - There were a few IJN heavy cruisers that sat out the end of the war in Singapore since they simply could not be repaired there and could not safely make it back to Japan either. www.combinedfleet.com/IJN%20No.%20101%20Naval%20Construction%20and%20Repair%20Department%20at%20Singapore.htmThis should explain your last statement. It is true also. Logistics management was never the IJN's strong suit. The US Military was very, very good at logistics management. They still are, btw.
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