|
Post by ramjb on Sept 21, 2018 8:51:38 GMT -6
The fore 105mm mounts of the Bismarck were of a different model than those in the aft. Both types of mount had different traverse/elevation rates, which made things a mess. The semiautomated AAA FCS of the ship gave remote orders of train/elevation to those mounts,so the different traverses and elevation rates were a serious issue unless you were firing at something static. Planes weren't static. And that was with the FCS working properly. German naval AAA FCS didn't work properly until 1943, and only tentatively so even then.
Effectively Bismarck had 8 working 105mm guns, the other 8 of them being worthless for any practical AAA purposes other than putting random puffs of smoke in the air.
The 37mm mounts on the Bismarck were useless. Singleshot manual reloaders, they struggled to keep a ROF of 30rpm. To engage air targets you might aswell look bad at them - the practical effect would be pretty much the same.
The 20mm FlaK30s were adequate for the role, if anything. It had well known feeding problems, never fully resolved. They had a low firing rate (120 rpm) too. As light AAA they were quite bad, but then again most light AAA suites of the time were as bad or worse, which would mean they were "OK". But "Ok" is a far cry from "good enough". Specially given how few of them were aboard.
We're talking a 45kton displacement ship here, btw, just to put out things in perspective. Half of the heavy AAA battery (which wasn't heavy enough compared with that of nations using DP mounts,something the germans discarded for the Bismarck even while they had a pretty decent DP mount for the 128mm gun) was useless. The 37mms were useless. And the 20mms were ok-ish...as long as they didn't have any feeding problems.
On top of that the german AAA FCS at the time was renowned for being an absolute disaster. Even internal Kriegsmarine reports and correspondence talk about how bad it was.
that Bismarck didn't shot any plane down wasn't an accident. The accident would've been it shooting anything down.
As for trafalgar...completely off topic, not gonna insist. But no, the british fleet were far from "Should've been screwed". The only thing the combined french-spanish fleet had was numbers. All the rest was on the british side: shipman quality, ship readiness and maintainance, crew training and drills, naval doctrine, and of course command quality with Nelson being one of the best age of sail admirals ever, and Villeneuve being an idiot. Literally everything that mattered in an Age of Sail fleet combat, was on the english side - and the spanish commanders knew it all too well, as those officers letters home talking about how they were going into battle with pride even knowing the cause was lost beforehand and that they were going to die for sure, pretty much underscore. Numbers usually matter little when your ships are firing three broadsides by the time the enemy fires their second to begin with...the rest (And there's a lot) only compouds the issue. Trafalgar was, literally, a complete crushing victory presented to the RN by Villeneuve in a silver platter. A bloody affair, but one the british had no way of losing.
The Spanish Armada was a disaster before it sailed off port. Their objective (escort an hipotetical "barge fleet" from Flanders up to England) was hillariously unachievable from the start, the ships weren't adequate for neither the planned objective, not for ship to ship combat. They were led by a noble that had never seen a fight, let alone a naval one, and had never been at sea. They were undergunned in total number of guns per ship, guns which furthermore lacked the range to shoot at anything beyond point blank, and they were unmaneouverable oceangoing ships too ungainly for the fleet maneouvers of a big naval combat in restricted waters (as the collisions of several vessels during the encounters with the british went on to prove, they couldn't even stay out of the way of each other). Preparations up to the sailing had been a disaster, crews lacked experience in naval combat. The only thing the Spanish fleet was superior at was in boarding actions, boardings that couldn't happen because the ships were slow cumbersome beasts hard to maneouver, while the british ones were fast and agile. And dozens of issues more. Most of the ships lost in the Armada were due to bad weather on the return trip to Spain - but the operation had been a total disaster from day one, and had already failed before the return trip had even began.
I'm not ruling RN out of anything. I'm just stating the obvious: WW2 british designed and made carrier aircrafte ranged from inadequate to abysmal. And british carriers themselves were exceedingly limited due to the design constraints imposed by the armored deck closed hangar principle. In tonnages within which the americans and japanese were able to fit carrier air wings of 70-80 planes, the british struggled to achieve 40-ish (more later with deck parking drills copied from the USN, but with that kind of deck parking a Yorktown could operate 90 planes with ease, so there's that). Range was limited (as became painfully obvious while Victorious was operating with the US Navy), They had very limited avgas and ordinance storages so they could operate their already limited airwing for much shorter timespans than either the japanese or the americans. And on top of that, they had plain bad planes.
To think that with those ingredients, with a handful of swordfishes against the cream and crop of the Kido Butai they could've scored a Midway, is being beyond blindly hopeful.
If last time you checked Jutland was a british victory, you checked it wrong. It was a resounding german success not only because the germans blew up three british battlecruisers on a pretty spectacular fashion while losing only one in return, but because the RN had the ideal tactical positioning to cut off the german retreat towards the Jade Estuary, and destroy the whole HSF (as they were expecting to do). Yet they utterly failed to do it due to many reasons - from poor comms, to lack of night-fighting drills, to excellent preparation of the germans in both instances. The battle was a defeat for the british in both tactical sense as much as in moral results (both the british public opinion and the Royal Navy itself were shocked that the navy had not only failed to deliver another Trafalgar, but that they had actually suffered worse losses than the germans. At the time the Lords of the Admiralty were conducting their initial investigations to understand what had gone wrong at Jutland, the Kaiser was giving Iron Crosses left at right at Wilhemshaven while the german press was talking about the victory at skagerrak. I'd qualify it as a huge moral victory indeed).
What it failed to do was to establish german strategic initiative - but that was beyond the realm of the possible given the respective correlation of forces between the Grand Fleet and the HSF. The only chance the german fleet had to turn the strategic tables on the North Sea was to find and destroy a part of the British Grand Fleet, as both sides knew that in an all out fighting match between both fleets the far inferior numbers the germans had meant they couldn't win. Yet Jutland was exactly that all out fighting match between both fleets and the germans not only were able to survive that, but they came back home after having dealt more damage than what they sustained. Had the HSF achieved a strategic victory too it wouldn't only been a RN defeat, it'd been an apocalypse, because it'd have implied the destruction of no less than half of the british battleline (bare minimum to put the HSF on an equal footing to the Grand Fleet) without losing anythign significant themselves. Which obviously was beyond the realm of the possible. Germany had lost WW1's naval war, on the strategic level, the day Tirpitz proclaimed Germany should have a fleet big enough to check Britain's, beginning not only a ruinous unwinnable naval race based on a faulty concept (that the RN would be reluctant to engage in a fight against them), while throwing an historical ally into the arms of the French and the Russians. Jutland didn't change that, but nothing could change that, nothing short of an unmitigated apocalypse that was exceedingly unlikely to happen (not to say, impossible).
Almeria was a pretty minor thing military speaking but marked the end of the days the British thought they could go and raid the shores of southern spain unchecked, for one.
as for the point I'm trying to make, it has not much to do with RTW2 itself because in RTW -YOU- decide when it comes to your navy. Still RTW2 is based on real history, and talking about history is still relevant, because RTW is an excellent tool to understand the naval forces of the time, and I expect much more from RTW2 incorporating carriers to the mix.
The point I'm making is that ,historically, carrier quality wise, doctrine wise, aircraft wise and preparation wise the RN carrier force was a good step below either the IJN or the USN carrier forces, and that it wasn't either a coincidence or an accident - it was the precise result of a long list of improper decisions at many levels (both political and military) on the between-wars period, and in the early war period aswell by the british, list of things that meanwhile, both the US and Japanese did right. The end result was that the british WW2 carrier force couldn't hold a candle either to the japanese one (until the US navy utterly destroyed it), much less to the american one. And list of things that was quickstarted, by accident, by them being pretty much forced to choose three hulls for carrier conversions that weren't suited for the task because they lacked big sized battlecruiser-like hulls being built on the shipyards like the Japanese and US did, when the Washington Treaty was signed (there is the tie-in with the topic in this thread, btw, even while it has gone far off hand by now).
Also I'm dead serious when I talk about history. I'm not the one who's trying to brush the many issues the british RN had to deal with under the rug. On the contrary I give enormous credit and respect for sailors, crews and officers that had to go to a war with underpar equipment because a careless policy and lack of preparedness of the UK governments between the end of WW1 leading up to 1939 had led them to fight with mostly obsolete or underpar equipment. Now explain me how's that "petty point scoring", and how's that disrespectful.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Sept 21, 2018 8:53:17 GMT -6
An interesting perspective, thanks for posting the link.
|
|
|
Post by britishball on Sept 21, 2018 15:08:22 GMT -6
The fore 105mm mounts of the Bismarck were of a different model than those in the aft. Both types of mount had different traverse/elevation rates, which made things a mess. The semiautomated AAA FCS of the ship gave remote orders of train/elevation to those mounts,so the different traverses and elevation rates were a serious issue unless you were firing at something static. Planes weren't static. And that was with the FCS working properly. German naval AAA FCS didn't work properly until 1943, and only tentatively so even then. Effectively Bismarck had 8 working 105mm guns, the other 8 of them being worthless for any practical AAA purposes other than putting random puffs of smoke in the air. The 37mm mounts on the Bismarck were useless. Singleshot manual reloaders, they struggled to keep a ROF of 30rpm. To engage air targets you might aswell look bad at them - the practical effect would be pretty much the same. The 20mm FlaK30s were adequate for the role, if anything. It had well known feeding problems, never fully resolved. They had a low firing rate (120 rpm) too. As light AAA they were quite bad, but then again most light AAA suites of the time were as bad or worse, which would mean they were "OK". But "Ok" is a far cry from "good enough". Specially given how few of them were aboard. We're talking a 45kton displacement ship here, btw, just to put out things in perspective. Half of the heavy AAA battery (which wasn't heavy enough compared with that of nations using DP mounts,something the germans discarded for the Bismarck even while they had a pretty decent DP mount for the 128mm gun) was useless. The 37mms were useless. And the 20mms were ok-ish...as long as they didn't have any feeding problems. On top of that the german AAA FCS at the time was renowned for being an absolute disaster. Even internal Kriegsmarine reports and correspondence talk about how bad it was. that Bismarck didn't shot any plane down wasn't an accident. The accident would've been it shooting anything down. As for trafalgar...completely off topic, not gonna insist. But no, the british fleet were far from "Should've been screwed". The only thing the combined french-spanish fleet had was numbers. All the rest was on the british side: shipman quality, ship readiness and maintainance, crew training and drills, naval doctrine, and of course command quality with Nelson being one of the best age of sail admirals ever, and Villeneuve being an idiot. Literally everything that mattered in an Age of Sail fleet combat, was on the english side - and the spanish commanders knew it all too well, as those officers letters home talking about how they were going into battle with pride even knowing the cause was lost beforehand and that they were going to die for sure, pretty much underscore. Numbers usually matter little when your ships are firing three broadsides by the time the enemy fires their second to begin with...the rest (And there's a lot) only compouds the issue. Trafalgar was, literally, a complete crushing victory presented to the RN by Villeneuve in a silver platter. A bloody affair, but one the british had no way of losing. The Spanish Armada was a disaster before it sailed off port. Their objective (escort an hipotetical "barge fleet" from Flanders up to England) was hillariously unachievable from the start, the ships weren't adequate for neither the planned objective, not for ship to ship combat. They were led by a noble that had never seen a fight, let alone a naval one, and had never been at sea. They were undergunned in total number of guns per ship, guns which furthermore lacked the range to shoot at anything beyond point blank, and they were unmaneouverable oceangoing ships too ungainly for the fleet maneouvers of a big naval combat in restricted waters (as the collisions of several vessels during the encounters with the british went on to prove, they couldn't even stay out of the way of each other). Preparations up to the sailing had been a disaster, crews lacked experience in naval combat. The only thing the Spanish fleet was superior at was in boarding actions, boardings that couldn't happen because the ships were slow cumbersome beasts hard to maneouver, while the british ones were fast and agile. And dozens of issues more. Most of the ships lost in the Armada were due to bad weather on the return trip to Spain - but the operation had been a total disaster from day one, and had already failed before the return trip had even began. I'm not ruling RN out of anything. I'm just stating the obvious: WW2 british designed and made carrier aircrafte ranged from inadequate to abysmal. And british carriers themselves were exceedingly limited due to the design constraints imposed by the armored deck closed hangar principle. In tonnages within which the americans and japanese were able to fit carrier air wings of 70-80 planes, the british struggled to achieve 40-ish (more later with deck parking drills copied from the USN, but with that kind of deck parking a Yorktown could operate 90 planes with ease, so there's that). Range was limited (as became painfully obvious while Victorious was operating with the US Navy), They had very limited avgas and ordinance storages so they could operate their already limited airwing for much shorter timespans than either the japanese or the americans. And on top of that, they had plain bad planes. To think that with those ingredients, with a handful of swordfishes against the cream and crop of the Kido Butai they could've scored a Midway, is being beyond blindly hopeful. If last time you checked Jutland was a british victory, you checked it wrong. It was a resounding german success not only because the germans blew up three british battlecruisers on a pretty spectacular fashion while losing only one in return, but because the RN had the ideal tactical positioning to cut off the german retreat towards the Jade Estuary, and destroy the whole HSF (as they were expecting to do). Yet they utterly failed to do it due to many reasons - from poor comms, to lack of night-fighting drills, to excellent preparation of the germans in both instances. The battle was a defeat for the british in both tactical sense as much as in moral results (both the british public opinion and the Royal Navy itself were shocked that the navy had not only failed to deliver another Trafalgar, but that they had actually suffered worse losses than the germans. At the time the Lords of the Admiralty were conducting their initial investigations to understand what had gone wrong at Jutland, the Kaiser was giving Iron Crosses left at right at Wilhemshaven while the german press was talking about the victory at skagerrak. I'd qualify it as a huge moral victory indeed). What it failed to do was to establish german strategic initiative - but that was beyond the realm of the possible given the respective correlation of forces between the Grand Fleet and the HSF. The only chance the german fleet had to turn the strategic tables on the North Sea was to find and destroy a part of the British Grand Fleet, as both sides knew that in an all out fighting match between both fleets the far inferior numbers the germans had meant they couldn't win. Yet Jutland was exactly that all out fighting match between both fleets and the germans not only were able to survive that, but they came back home after having dealt more damage than what they sustained. Had the HSF achieved a strategic victory too it wouldn't only been a RN defeat, it'd been an apocalypse, because it'd have implied the destruction of no less than half of the british battleline (bare minimum to put the HSF on an equal footing to the Grand Fleet) without losing anythign significant themselves. Which obviously was beyond the realm of the possible. Germany had lost WW1's naval war, on the strategic level, the day Tirpitz proclaimed Germany should have a fleet big enough to check Britain's, beginning not only a ruinous unwinnable naval race based on a faulty concept (that the RN would be reluctant to engage in a fight against them), while throwing an historical ally into the arms of the French and the Russians. Jutland didn't change that, but nothing could change that, nothing short of an unmitigated apocalypse that was exceedingly unlikely to happen (not to say, impossible). Almeria was a pretty minor thing military speaking but marked the end of the days the British thought they could go and raid the shores of southern spain unchecked, for one. as for the point I'm trying to make, it has not much to do with RTW2 itself because in RTW -YOU- decide when it comes to your navy. Still RTW2 is based on real history, and talking about history is still relevant, because RTW is an excellent tool to understand the naval forces of the time, and I expect much more from RTW2 incorporating carriers to the mix. The point I'm making is that ,historically, carrier quality wise, doctrine wise, aircraft wise and preparation wise the RN carrier force was a good step below either the IJN or the USN carrier forces, and that it wasn't either a coincidence or an accident - it was the precise result of a long list of improper decisions at many levels (both political and military) on the between-wars period, and in the early war period aswell by the british, list of things that meanwhile, both the US and Japanese did right. The end result was that the british WW2 carrier force couldn't hold a candle either to the japanese one (until the US navy utterly destroyed it), much less to the american one. And list of things that was quickstarted, by accident, by them being pretty much forced to choose three hulls for carrier conversions that weren't suited for the task because they lacked big sized battlecruiser-like hulls being built on the shipyards like the Japanese and US did, when the Washington Treaty was signed (there is the tie-in with the topic in this thread, btw, even while it has gone far off hand by now). Also I'm dead serious when I talk about history. I'm not the one who's trying to brush the many issues the british RN had to deal with under the rug. On the contrary I give enormous credit and respect for sailors, crews and officers that had to go to a war with underpar equipment because a careless policy and lack of preparedness of the UK governments between the end of WW1 leading up to 1939 had led them to fight with mostly obsolete or underpar equipment. Now explain me how's that "petty point scoring", and how's that disrespectful. And yet at Jutland the British maintained the blockade, the Germans never met them in such numbers or with such success again. The number of ships lost is irrelevant. Nelson himself was not certain of victory at Trafalgar, his famous quotation I bear as a tag states that you can't go far wrong if you stand and fight, for all the undeniable skill of the RN their firing training wouldn't offset the number of guns arrayed against them and if Nelson himself thinks it was by no means a sure fire thing then I'll take his word over yours. Besides all that have you actually looked into reports of armoured carriers versus the unarmoured style? Not only did they carry more AA for their own defence but their construction kept them safe. I've got a bit of time on my hands so lets crunch some numbers: Assuming a scenario where the Battle of Midway doesn't happen or military strategy dictates the RN should engage instead of the USN; the British Armoured Carrier design was specified that the flight deck be able to withstand a 500lb (226kg) AP bomb or a 1000lb (452kg) general purpose (HE) bomb. The biggest bomb the Japanese D3A could carry was a 250kg bomb, severely limiting manoeuvrability and range, certainly enough so that a laden D3A would be on par with a Seafire, which you quite rightly say had limited range and so stuck close to carriers. The B5N series could bring torpedoes to bear but again would have to run the screen of Seafires, AA and even then might miss, even if they do impact the RN had some of the better damage control and hull design available. Even assuming a doomsday scenario and a whole flight of D3A carrying 250kg AP bombs strike the carrier loss of life would be minimal thanks to the "limited" avgas stores which were stored with seawater around them to prevent flash fire. It took six 1100lb bombs to really damage Illustrious, which suffered 126 fatal casualties and 84 wounded on 10th January 1941. Certainly beyond the capacity of the Japanese carriers. The RN would know this, this was the point of armoured carriers, to take hits as they close in and force decisive engagement, the CAP to focus on the more potent threat of the B5N. The Carriers would of course be supported by a significant surface fleet, say 1 KGV class, a couple QE class and a handful of County class, a handful of Town class and a sizeable portion of destroyers, enough to outgun a Japanese surface fleet, or at least anything short of the Yamato or a multiple of Kongo class/Fuso class combination, though precisely how often Japan kept their entire Navy in one fleet I don't know but lets say that they engage with the same forces as were at Midway IRL, 2 Kongo class, and let's throw in the Fuso as well to make it all square with 3 Battleships a piece, seems fair. Obviously the Swordfish being a slower aircraft isn't going to want to spend too long hanging around in range of Japanese CAP so the first objective of the RN would be to close to range, use CAP to protect the fleet, and force the engagement. At best the Japanese will pull away, disengage without losing anything and Midway is won without loss, allowing a decisive battle when the RN is better supported, at worst they'll commit to battle, striking from range they'll target the Carriers but fail to cause any significant damage and lose planes in the process or target the Battleships cause some damage, far enough away from land bombers though it isn't likely to be fatal damage, especially not to the QE class. Once the gunnery begins its anyone's guess, Jutland proved that sometimes unexpected stuff happens and even with lessons learned the RN could take a pounding, but all the while the cruisers and destroyers will close in and eventually the Carriers will launch a strike against whatever Capital ship is most exposed. This 1942 scenario seems to me like (barring unexpected disaster) for the Japanese at best a minor victory in terms of losses but one where the IJN would be forced to retreat and at worst a defeat in which they lose one or two Capital ships and are forced to retreat. A 1944-45 scenario; the RN carriers come under attack from Kamikaze, RN CAP is limited in its ability to shoot down incoming Kamikaze though it is noted "US carriers and their fighters shot down more than 1,900 suicide aircraft during Operation Kikusui (the last and largest Kamikaze attack in the Okinawa campaign), versus a mere 75 for the British, yet both forces suffered the same number of serious hits (four), on their carriers. However the kamikazes made 173 strikes against other USN targets and the 4 USN carriers suffered a massive death toll, in contrast to the relatively light casualties on the RN carriers." By this later point the RN carriers could be able to field more CAP and would succeed in shooting down more Kamikaze aircraft, even ones that get through have the next problem the "good step below USN or IJN design" carriers of the RN are barely damaged. Here is a report; USS Bunker Hill and Franklin nearly succumbed (saved only by their construction and the brave men of the crew) whilst British carriers neutralised it, many kamikaze strikes missed the deck armour entirely, or bounced off the decks of both British carriers. In some cases, kamikazes either struck glancing blows that did only superficial damage that was fixed within minutes or hours, or missed entirely, due to the poor training and poorer flight experience of their pilots. The majority of kamikazes that did inflict harm caused no more damage than they would have against smaller ships. After a successful kamikaze hit, the British were able to clear the flight deck and resume flight operations in just hours, while their American counterparts often could do the same, they couldn't always; in some cases repairs took a few days or even months. USN Liason Officer aboard HMS Indefatigable once remarked "When a Kamikaze hits a US carrier it means six months at Pearl, when they hit a ***** carrier its a case of sweepers man your brooms!" HMS Formidable took two serious hits from Kamikaze off Okinawa and the total losses were 3 killed and 19 wounded, USS Bunker Hill was similarly hit by a pair of Kamikaze planes and suffered 346 men killed, a tragic loss, and more casualties than all the British RN armoured carriers combined. USS Franklin was penetrated by 1 HE and 1 SAP bomb and suffered a horrific 807 dead and 487 wounded. How you can't see the benefits of armoured carrier design is beyond me. Assuming another scenario; 1945-46 or later, the Japanese have spread unchecked across the Pacific, with Germany defeated the Allies can turn their attention to the Pacific, the USN and RN scramble to engage the Japanese but the RN are the first to find a Japanese fleet of many carriers, battleships and escorts heading for Australia. The RN have again the mustered majority of what is left from the war, several KGV, QE and earlier battleships, with 4 carriers and the majority of escorts available. Only now, as it is later in the war and development of weapons and vehicles hasn't been wound down the Japanese find themselves fighting Sea Mosquito, Firebrand, Sea Fury or even Sea Vampire jets. This would be a slaughter, I trust you won't even try and argue that Zeros could match jet aircraft or the fast strike Mosquito. Japanese AA was not the most well regarded of the war and concentrated attack from multiple carriers would overwhelm and destroy any battleship or carrier the Japanese could even theoretically wield by 1948 (unless perhaps they too adopt armoured carrier designs) and the remaining surface fleet would either be chased off or sunk. These are of course just some possibilities, but they are all grounded in fact, we all know the US could build more carriers but the Japanese couldn't afford losses like these, and given long enough the full attention of the British could be turned against them too. Our Carriers weren't there to out and out destroy the entire enemy Navy but to an engagement where our superior surface fleet could, and eventually once you get past the Swordfish the RN put forward some very powerful strike aircraft of their own, although operationally we will never be sure as there is no British midway to speak of, the likelihood to me seems that the RN could have beaten the Japanese in the pacific with only slightly more effort than the Americans and potentially less losses, though in a less timely fashion. I'm not saying we didn't mishandle our interwar policy, "this isn't a peace treaty its a 20 year truce" and all that, but as I said, many have underestimated the RN and paid the price, perhaps being in the RN has skewed my view a little, or perhaps it has given me just a little more insight than the average civilian as to what it is capable of when called upon. Thankfully we will never know, and hopefully we will never have to find out what we are capable of today because as badly handled as our interwar period was our postwar period has been handled even worse, but now I'm getting into some serious treason/Snowden **** so I'll stop right there.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 21, 2018 15:52:03 GMT -6
The fore 105mm mounts of the Bismarck were of a different model than those in the aft. Both types of mount had different traverse/elevation rates, which made things a mess. The semiautomated AAA FCS of the ship gave remote orders of train/elevation to those mounts,so the different traverses and elevation rates were a serious issue unless you were firing at something static. Planes weren't static. And that was with the FCS working properly. German naval AAA FCS didn't work properly until 1943, and only tentatively so even then. Effectively Bismarck had 8 working 105mm guns, the other 8 of them being worthless for any practical AAA purposes other than putting random puffs of smoke in the air. The 37mm mounts on the Bismarck were useless. Singleshot manual reloaders, they struggled to keep a ROF of 30rpm. To engage air targets you might aswell look bad at them - the practical effect would be pretty much the same. The 20mm FlaK30s were adequate for the role, if anything. It had well known feeding problems, never fully resolved. They had a low firing rate (120 rpm) too. As light AAA they were quite bad, but then again most light AAA suites of the time were as bad or worse, which would mean they were "OK". But "Ok" is a far cry from "good enough". Specially given how few of them were aboard. We're talking a 45kton displacement ship here, btw, just to put out things in perspective. Half of the heavy AAA battery (which wasn't heavy enough compared with that of nations using DP mounts,something the germans discarded for the Bismarck even while they had a pretty decent DP mount for the 128mm gun) was useless. The 37mms were useless. And the 20mms were ok-ish...as long as they didn't have any feeding problems. On top of that the german AAA FCS at the time was renowned for being an absolute disaster. Even internal Kriegsmarine reports and correspondence talk about how bad it was. that Bismarck didn't shot any plane down wasn't an accident. The accident would've been it shooting anything down. As for trafalgar...completely off topic, not gonna insist. But no, the british fleet were far from "Should've been screwed". The only thing the combined french-spanish fleet had was numbers. All the rest was on the british side: shipman quality, ship readiness and maintainance, crew training and drills, naval doctrine, and of course command quality with Nelson being one of the best age of sail admirals ever, and Villeneuve being an idiot. Literally everything that mattered in an Age of Sail fleet combat, was on the english side - and the spanish commanders knew it all too well, as those officers letters home talking about how they were going into battle with pride even knowing the cause was lost beforehand and that they were going to die for sure, pretty much underscore. Numbers usually matter little when your ships are firing three broadsides by the time the enemy fires their second to begin with...the rest (And there's a lot) only compouds the issue. Trafalgar was, literally, a complete crushing victory presented to the RN by Villeneuve in a silver platter. A bloody affair, but one the british had no way of losing. The Spanish Armada was a disaster before it sailed off port. Their objective (escort an hipotetical "barge fleet" from Flanders up to England) was hillariously unachievable from the start, the ships weren't adequate for neither the planned objective, not for ship to ship combat. They were led by a noble that had never seen a fight, let alone a naval one, and had never been at sea. They were undergunned in total number of guns per ship, guns which furthermore lacked the range to shoot at anything beyond point blank, and they were unmaneouverable oceangoing ships too ungainly for the fleet maneouvers of a big naval combat in restricted waters (as the collisions of several vessels during the encounters with the british went on to prove, they couldn't even stay out of the way of each other). Preparations up to the sailing had been a disaster, crews lacked experience in naval combat. The only thing the Spanish fleet was superior at was in boarding actions, boardings that couldn't happen because the ships were slow cumbersome beasts hard to maneouver, while the british ones were fast and agile. And dozens of issues more. Most of the ships lost in the Armada were due to bad weather on the return trip to Spain - but the operation had been a total disaster from day one, and had already failed before the return trip had even began. I'm not ruling RN out of anything. I'm just stating the obvious: WW2 british designed and made carrier aircrafte ranged from inadequate to abysmal. And british carriers themselves were exceedingly limited due to the design constraints imposed by the armored deck closed hangar principle. In tonnages within which the americans and japanese were able to fit carrier air wings of 70-80 planes, the british struggled to achieve 40-ish (more later with deck parking drills copied from the USN, but with that kind of deck parking a Yorktown could operate 90 planes with ease, so there's that). Range was limited (as became painfully obvious while Victorious was operating with the US Navy), They had very limited avgas and ordinance storages so they could operate their already limited airwing for much shorter timespans than either the japanese or the americans. And on top of that, they had plain bad planes. To think that with those ingredients, with a handful of swordfishes against the cream and crop of the Kido Butai they could've scored a Midway, is being beyond blindly hopeful. If last time you checked Jutland was a british victory, you checked it wrong. It was a resounding german success not only because the germans blew up three british battlecruisers on a pretty spectacular fashion while losing only one in return, but because the RN had the ideal tactical positioning to cut off the german retreat towards the Jade Estuary, and destroy the whole HSF (as they were expecting to do). Yet they utterly failed to do it due to many reasons - from poor comms, to lack of night-fighting drills, to excellent preparation of the germans in both instances. The battle was a defeat for the british in both tactical sense as much as in moral results (both the british public opinion and the Royal Navy itself were shocked that the navy had not only failed to deliver another Trafalgar, but that they had actually suffered worse losses than the germans. At the time the Lords of the Admiralty were conducting their initial investigations to understand what had gone wrong at Jutland, the Kaiser was giving Iron Crosses left at right at Wilhemshaven while the german press was talking about the victory at skagerrak. I'd qualify it as a huge moral victory indeed). What it failed to do was to establish german strategic initiative - but that was beyond the realm of the possible given the respective correlation of forces between the Grand Fleet and the HSF. The only chance the german fleet had to turn the strategic tables on the North Sea was to find and destroy a part of the British Grand Fleet, as both sides knew that in an all out fighting match between both fleets the far inferior numbers the germans had meant they couldn't win. Yet Jutland was exactly that all out fighting match between both fleets and the germans not only were able to survive that, but they came back home after having dealt more damage than what they sustained. Had the HSF achieved a strategic victory too it wouldn't only been a RN defeat, it'd been an apocalypse, because it'd have implied the destruction of no less than half of the british battleline (bare minimum to put the HSF on an equal footing to the Grand Fleet) without losing anythign significant themselves. Which obviously was beyond the realm of the possible. Germany had lost WW1's naval war, on the strategic level, the day Tirpitz proclaimed Germany should have a fleet big enough to check Britain's, beginning not only a ruinous unwinnable naval race based on a faulty concept (that the RN would be reluctant to engage in a fight against them), while throwing an historical ally into the arms of the French and the Russians. Jutland didn't change that, but nothing could change that, nothing short of an unmitigated apocalypse that was exceedingly unlikely to happen (not to say, impossible). Almeria was a pretty minor thing military speaking but marked the end of the days the British thought they could go and raid the shores of southern spain unchecked, for one. as for the point I'm trying to make, it has not much to do with RTW2 itself because in RTW -YOU- decide when it comes to your navy. Still RTW2 is based on real history, and talking about history is still relevant, because RTW is an excellent tool to understand the naval forces of the time, and I expect much more from RTW2 incorporating carriers to the mix. The point I'm making is that ,historically, carrier quality wise, doctrine wise, aircraft wise and preparation wise the RN carrier force was a good step below either the IJN or the USN carrier forces, and that it wasn't either a coincidence or an accident - it was the precise result of a long list of improper decisions at many levels (both political and military) on the between-wars period, and in the early war period aswell by the british, list of things that meanwhile, both the US and Japanese did right. The end result was that the british WW2 carrier force couldn't hold a candle either to the japanese one (until the US navy utterly destroyed it), much less to the american one. And list of things that was quickstarted, by accident, by them being pretty much forced to choose three hulls for carrier conversions that weren't suited for the task because they lacked big sized battlecruiser-like hulls being built on the shipyards like the Japanese and US did, when the Washington Treaty was signed (there is the tie-in with the topic in this thread, btw, even while it has gone far off hand by now). Also I'm dead serious when I talk about history. I'm not the one who's trying to brush the many issues the british RN had to deal with under the rug. On the contrary I give enormous credit and respect for sailors, crews and officers that had to go to a war with underpar equipment because a careless policy and lack of preparedness of the UK governments between the end of WW1 leading up to 1939 had led them to fight with mostly obsolete or underpar equipment. Now explain me how's that "petty point scoring", and how's that disrespectful. And yet at Jutland the British maintained the blockade, the Germans never met them in such numbers or with such success again. The number of ships lost is irrelevant. Nelson himself was not certain of victory at Trafalgar, his famous quotation I bear as a tag states that you can't go far wrong if you stand and fight, for all the undeniable skill of the RN their firing training wouldn't offset the number of guns arrayed against them and if Nelson himself thinks it was by no means a sure fire thing then I'll take his word over yours. Besides all that have you actually looked into reports of armoured carriers versus the unarmoured style? Not only did they carry more AA for their own defence but their construction kept them safe. I've got a bit of time on my hands so lets crunch some numbers: Assuming a scenario where the Battle of Midway doesn't happen or military strategy dictates the RN should engage instead of the USN; the British Armoured Carrier design was specified that the flight deck be able to withstand a 500lb (226kg) AP bomb or a 1000lb (452kg) general purpose (HE) bomb. The biggest bomb the Japanese D3A could carry was a 250kg bomb, severely limiting manoeuvrability and range, certainly enough so that a laden D3A would be on par with a Seafire, which you quite rightly say had limited range and so stuck close to carriers. The B5N series could bring torpedoes to bear but again would have to run the screen of Seafires, AA and even then might miss, even if they do impact the RN had some of the better damage control and hull design available. Even assuming a doomsday scenario and a whole flight of D3A carrying 250kg AP bombs strike the carrier loss of life would be minimal thanks to the "limited" avgas stores which were stored with seawater around them to prevent flash fire. It took six 1100lb bombs to really damage Illustrious, which suffered 126 fatal casualties and 84 wounded on 10th January 1941. Certainly beyond the capacity of the Japanese carriers. The RN would know this, this was the point of armoured carriers, to take hits as they close in and force decisive engagement, the CAP to focus on the more potent threat of the B5N. The Carriers would of course be supported by a significant surface fleet, say 1 KGV class, a couple QE class and a handful of County class, a handful of Town class and a sizeable portion of destroyers, enough to outgun a Japanese surface fleet, or at least anything short of the Yamato or a multiple of Kongo class/Fuso class combination, though precisely how often Japan kept their entire Navy in one fleet I don't know but lets say that they engage with the same forces as were at Midway IRL, 2 Kongo class, and let's throw in the Fuso as well to make it all square with 3 Battleships a piece, seems fair. Obviously the Swordfish being a slower aircraft isn't going to want to spend too long hanging around in range of Japanese CAP so the first objective of the RN would be to close to range, use CAP to protect the fleet, and force the engagement. At best the Japanese will pull away, disengage without losing anything and Midway is won without loss, allowing a decisive battle when the RN is better supported, at worst they'll commit to battle, striking from range they'll target the Carriers but fail to cause any significant damage and lose planes in the process or target the Battleships cause some damage, far enough away from land bombers though it isn't likely to be fatal damage, especially not to the QE class. Once the gunnery begins its anyone's guess, Jutland proved that sometimes unexpected stuff happens and even with lessons learned the RN could take a pounding, but all the while the cruisers and destroyers will close in and eventually the Carriers will launch a strike against whatever Capital ship is most exposed. This 1942 scenario seems to me like (barring unexpected disaster) for the Japanese at best a minor victory in terms of losses but one where the IJN would be forced to retreat and at worst a defeat in which they lose one or two Capital ships and are forced to retreat. A 1944-45 scenario; the RN carriers come under attack from Kamikaze, RN CAP is limited in its ability to shoot down incoming Kamikaze though it is noted "US carriers and their fighters shot down more than 1,900 suicide aircraft during Operation Kikusui (the last and largest Kamikaze attack in the Okinawa campaign), versus a mere 75 for the British, yet both forces suffered the same number of serious hits (four), on their carriers. However the kamikazes made 173 strikes against other USN targets and the 4 USN carriers suffered a massive death toll, in contrast to the relatively light casualties on the RN carriers." By this later point the RN carriers could be able to field more CAP and would succeed in shooting down more Kamikaze aircraft, even ones that get through have the next problem the "good step below USN or IJN design" carriers of the RN are barely damaged. Here is a report; USS Bunker Hill and Franklin nearly succumbed (saved only by their construction and the brave men of the crew) whilst British carriers neutralised it, many kamikaze strikes missed the deck armour entirely, or bounced off the decks of both British carriers. In some cases, kamikazes either struck glancing blows that did only superficial damage that was fixed within minutes or hours, or missed entirely, due to the poor training and poorer flight experience of their pilots. The majority of kamikazes that did inflict harm caused no more damage than they would have against smaller ships. After a successful kamikaze hit, the British were able to clear the flight deck and resume flight operations in just hours, while their American counterparts often could do the same, they couldn't always; in some cases repairs took a few days or even months. USN Liason Officer aboard HMS Indefatigable once remarked "When a Kamikaze hits a US carrier it means six months at Pearl, when they hit a ***** carrier its a case of sweepers man your brooms!" HMS Formidable took two serious hits from Kamikaze off Okinawa and the total losses were 3 killed and 19 wounded, USS Bunker Hill was similarly hit by a pair of Kamikaze planes and suffered 346 men killed, a tragic loss, and more casualties than all the British RN armoured carriers combined. USS Franklin was penetrated by 1 HE and 1 SAP bomb and suffered a horrific 807 dead and 487 wounded. How you can't see the benefits of armoured carrier design is beyond me. Assuming another scenario; 1945-46 or later, the Japanese have spread unchecked across the Pacific, with Germany defeated the Allies can turn their attention to the Pacific, the USN and RN scramble to engage the Japanese but the RN are the first to find a Japanese fleet of many carriers, battleships and escorts heading for Australia. The RN have again the mustered majority of what is left from the war, several KGV, QE and earlier battleships, with 4 carriers and the majority of escorts available. Only now, as it is later in the war and development of weapons and vehicles hasn't been wound down the Japanese find themselves fighting Sea Mosquito, Firebrand, Sea Fury or even Sea Vampire jets. This would be a slaughter, I trust you won't even try and argue that Zeros could match jet aircraft or the fast strike Mosquito. Japanese AA was not the most well regarded of the war and concentrated attack from multiple carriers would overwhelm and destroy any battleship or carrier the Japanese could even theoretically wield by 1948 (unless perhaps they too adopt armoured carrier designs) and the remaining surface fleet would either be chased off or sunk. These are of course just some possibilities, but they are all grounded in fact, we all know the US could build more carriers but the Japanese couldn't afford losses like these, and given long enough the full attention of the British could be turned against them too. Our Carriers weren't there to out and out destroy the entire enemy Navy but to an engagement where our superior surface fleet could, and eventually once you get past the Swordfish the RN put forward some very powerful strike aircraft of their own, although operationally we will never be sure as there is no British midway to speak of, the likelihood to me seems that the RN could have beaten the Japanese in the pacific with only slightly more effort than the Americans and potentially less losses, though in a less timely fashion. I'm not saying we didn't mishandle our interwar policy, "this isn't a peace treaty its a 20 year truce" and all that, but as I said, many have underestimated the RN and paid the price, perhaps being in the RN has skewed my view a little, or perhaps it has given me just a little more insight than the average civilian as to what it is capable of when called upon. Thankfully we will never know, and hopefully we will never have to find out what we are capable of today because as badly handled as our interwar period was our postwar period has been handled even worse, but now I'm getting into some serious treason/Snowden **** so I'll stop right there. Just a reminder for your virtual historical scenario; the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service stress the use of the torpedo bomber using a type 91 17.7 inch torpedo with a warhead of about 692 lbs. for one mod, with a range of 2200 yards at 41-43 knots. This means that you would have to have a combat air patrol on the surface to deal with such an attack during which time the D3A's would be diving on the carriers from high altitude. So now, how do where are your AA guns point, up or down. See the problem. Armored deck or not, the torpedoes are on the ship killers and a 500 lbs. bomb will still do plenty of surface damage to the deck and might just mission kill it. Which is just as good as sinking it.
|
|
|
Post by ramjb on Sept 21, 2018 15:57:21 GMT -6
This is straying so offtopic that I'll give brief answers, without entering in details (which I have already mentioned, for the most part in my previous posts).
Nelson might have been unsure of victory because he didn't know exactly the situation of the foe he was about to engage. The spanish admirals, aswell as the french subordinates of Villeneuves, did know about the state of unreadiness of both ships and crews, and were certain of defeat. That says it all.
Jutland didn't break the strategic ascendancy of the Royal Navy in the North Sea because it was impossible to achieve in a single stroke, so superior in numbers was the Grand Fleet. It was a tactical and moral victory. It wasn't a strategic one but important battles can be won even when they don't have a deep, lasting, strategic meaning. The fact was that the Grand Fleet was supposed...nope, it was FULLY EXPECTED to utterly crush the much numerically inferior german battlefleet in such a massive engagement (Talk about hubris), and not only it failed to achieve it, but came back to port with a far bloodier nose than what they had been able to inflict on the germans. It was a defeat in many levels and reaching far beyond the scope of WW1. Jutland was such a shock for the Royal Navy that after the many studies of the battle to understand what had gone on during the battle, they changed almost everything that involved their battlefleet: From doctrinal approach to surface actions, to design standards of capital ships ,to a complete re-consideration of the gunnery drills, a re-evaluation of the british AP shells quality, composition of their propellant ,armoring standards, and a long etcetera. Judge yourself how such a deep catharsis happened just from that "not a defeat"...and you'll understand how much of a defeat it was.
About midway: First of all, there'd been two british carriers there, not three. Yorktown was repaired (actually it was more like jury-rigged into battleworthiness) in record time after crippling damage sustained during the battle of the coral sea, that included machinery damage. British carriers subjected to crippling damage had a record of taking months to repair, at best.
But even with three CVS let's make a deep headcount here. You're assuming all three fielded Seafires. Wich most of british carriers didn't. And for the better, until the very late marks of the model, the Seafire was a quite terrible carrier plane. In fact Victorious (the ony British CV ever to operate in the PAcific proper before 1945) when loaned to the USN had a carrier air wing of 24 F4Fs (Martlets, for them), and 18 Albacores. Let's assume an homogeneous airwing composition for the hypotetical three. That's 72 F4Fs, and 54 Albacores, for a grand total of 126 aircraft, 54 of them so bad that their final fate was to be succeeded by the Swordfish they were intended to replace.
Meanwhile USS Yorktown had a carrier air wing of 24 F4Fs,36 SBDs, 13 TBDs. Entreprise sailed with 27 F4Fs, 38 SBDs, 14 TBDs, Hornet with 27 F4Fs, 37 SBDs, 15 TBDs. Grand total of 78 F4Fs, 111 SBDs, 42 TBDs, 231 aircraft. Roughly twice the number, and while the TBD was admittedly a terribly outdated plane...the fun part is that even that flying coffin was better than the Albacore.
Just keeping that in mind, whatever you wrote in that paragraph is far more than what-ifs. It's pure utter science fiction because it ignores some essential truths of WW2 carrier warfare: when your carriers can operate half the planes than other nation carriers, your carriers are at an INCREDIBLE disadvantage. During Midway Zeroes beat the living sh1t out of the american Devastator squadrons. Give me a reliable guess of how exactly the Albacores would've performed better, please. And remember - the RN carriers operated with no divebombers. The US F4F CAP was unable to keep the Japanese attacks from ONE JAPANESE CARRIER (Hiryu) at bay, which costed the crippling (again) of Yorktown.
Now give me a deep insight on how exactly would've the british carriers given any kind of meaningful barrier to a concerted attack by the whole lot of the four japanese carriers...because the americans were on the receiving end of just one because they happened to sink the other three with their SBDs dropping 1000 pound bombs on their decks (latter they applied the same medicine to Hiryu to bring the tally to four) - something the British would've never achieved with the limited number, and terrible quality, of the Albacores they carried.
I said it before, I repeat it again, to state that a fleet made out of british carriers in Midway would've achieved what the US carriers did is far more than optimism. Is hopeless ignorance.
I could go on to dismount your further works of Sci-fi but this offtopic has lasted enough. I'm done with this debate (and besides, if by this point you keep on insisting on things like the ones you mentioned in the last post, there's little reason to keep this going)
/Edit: the composition of the "escorting forces" is in a real need to a deep review by those who actually are familiar with those ships, for many reasons. Believing that operating KGVs in the mid-pacific as carrier escorts was within the realm of the possible when that class had such problems with range that the prospect of sailing PoW from Singapore to Australia was an absolute no-go, being just one of them. It would've been a riot having them happily roaming around Midway just non-chalantly while doing the constant accelerations and decelerations demanded by the needed position-keeping during the carrier constant changes of direction for air operations, not to mention the dashes at high speed needed during the air attacks... one wonders how they'd been able to reach back to Pearl Harbor without using oars...
|
|
|
Post by axe99 on Sept 21, 2018 17:51:04 GMT -6
This is straying so offtopic.... But even with three CVS let's make a deep headcount here. You're assuming all three fielded Seafires. Wich most of british carriers didn't. And for the better, until the very late marks of the model, the Seafire was a quite terrible carrier plane. In fact Victorious (the ony British CV ever to operate in the PAcific proper before 1945) when loaned to the USN had a carrier air wing of 24 F4Fs (Martlets, for them), and 18 Albacores. Let's assume an homogeneous airwing composition for the hypotetical three. That's 72 F4Fs, and 54 Albacores, for a grand total of 126 aircraft, 54 of them so bad that their final fate was to be succeeded by the Swordfish they were intended to replace. It's not straying off topic, it jumped off the topic train a bunch of posts ago on an earlier page, and the conversation has been invited into another thread (this one: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/888/development-carrier-aircraft-carriers?page=31 ), but continues here for some reason...... As an aside ramjb, a number of the statements you are making are off the mark, but I'm too busy this weekend to address them, and dorn by-and-large has you covered - but he has you covered in the appropriate thread, not here - follow the link .
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 21, 2018 19:09:47 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by britishball on Sept 22, 2018 4:04:13 GMT -6
This is straying so offtopic that I'll give brief answers, without entering in details (which I have already mentioned, for the most part in my previous posts). Nelson might have been unsure of victory because he didn't know exactly the situation of the foe he was about to engage. The spanish admirals, aswell as the french subordinates of Villeneuves, did know about the state of unreadiness of both ships and crews, and were certain of defeat. That says it all. Jutland didn't break the strategic ascendancy of the Royal Navy in the North Sea because it was impossible to achieve in a single stroke, so superior in numbers was the Grand Fleet. It was a tactical and moral victory. It wasn't a strategic one but important battles can be won even when they don't have a deep, lasting, strategic meaning. The fact was that the Grand Fleet was supposed...nope, it was FULLY EXPECTED to utterly crush the much numerically inferior german battlefleet in such a massive engagement (Talk about hubris), and not only it failed to achieve it, but came back to port with a far bloodier nose than what they had been able to inflict on the germans. It was a defeat in many levels and reaching far beyond the scope of WW1. Jutland was such a shock for the Royal Navy that after the many studies of the battle to understand what had gone on during the battle, they changed almost everything that involved their battlefleet: From doctrinal approach to surface actions, to design standards of capital ships ,to a complete re-consideration of the gunnery drills, a re-evaluation of the british AP shells quality, composition of their propellant ,armoring standards, and a long etcetera. Judge yourself how such a deep catharsis happened just from that "not a defeat"...and you'll understand how much of a defeat it was. About midway: First of all, there'd been two british carriers there, not three. Yorktown was repaired (actually it was more like jury-rigged into battleworthiness) in record time after crippling damage sustained during the battle of the coral sea, that included machinery damage. British carriers subjected to crippling damage had a record of taking months to repair, at best. But even with three CVS let's make a deep headcount here. You're assuming all three fielded Seafires. Wich most of british carriers didn't. And for the better, until the very late marks of the model, the Seafire was a quite terrible carrier plane. In fact Victorious (the ony British CV ever to operate in the PAcific proper before 1945) when loaned to the USN had a carrier air wing of 24 F4Fs (Martlets, for them), and 18 Albacores. Let's assume an homogeneous airwing composition for the hypotetical three. That's 72 F4Fs, and 54 Albacores, for a grand total of 126 aircraft, 54 of them so bad that their final fate was to be succeeded by the Swordfish they were intended to replace. Meanwhile USS Yorktown had a carrier air wing of 24 F4Fs,36 SBDs, 13 TBDs. Entreprise sailed with 27 F4Fs, 38 SBDs, 14 TBDs, Hornet with 27 F4Fs, 37 SBDs, 15 TBDs. Grand total of 78 F4Fs, 111 SBDs, 42 TBDs, 231 aircraft. Roughly twice the number, and while the TBD was admittedly a terribly outdated plane...the fun part is that even that flying coffin was better than the Albacore. Just keeping that in mind, whatever you wrote in that paragraph is far more than what-ifs. It's pure utter science fiction because it ignores some essential truths of WW2 carrier warfare: when your carriers can operate half the planes than other nation carriers, your carriers are at an INCREDIBLE disadvantage. During Midway Zeroes beat the living sh1t out of the american Devastator squadrons. Give me a reliable guess of how exactly the Albacores would've performed better, please. And remember - the RN carriers operated with no divebombers. The US F4F CAP was unable to keep the Japanese attacks from ONE JAPANESE CARRIER (Hiryu) at bay, which costed the crippling (again) of Yorktown. Now give me a deep insight on how exactly would've the british carriers given any kind of meaningful barrier to a concerted attack by the whole lot of the four japanese carriers...because the americans were on the receiving end of just one because they happened to sink the other three with their SBDs dropping 1000 pound bombs on their decks (latter they applied the same medicine to Hiryu to bring the tally to four) - something the British would've never achieved with the limited number, and terrible quality, of the Albacores they carried. I said it before, I repeat it again, to state that a fleet made out of british carriers in Midway would've achieved what the US carriers did is far more than optimism. Is hopeless ignorance. I could go on to dismount your further works of Sci-fi but this offtopic has lasted enough. I'm done with this debate (and besides, if by this point you keep on insisting on things like the ones you mentioned in the last post, there's little reason to keep this going) /Edit: the composition of the "escorting forces" is in a real need to a deep review by those who actually are familiar with those ships, for many reasons. Believing that operating KGVs in the mid-pacific as carrier escorts was within the realm of the possible when that class had such problems with range that the prospect of sailing PoW from Singapore to Australia was an absolute no-go, being just one of them. It would've been a riot having them happily roaming around Midway just non-chalantly while doing the constant accelerations and decelerations demanded by the needed position-keeping during the carrier constant changes of direction for air operations, not to mention the dashes at high speed needed during the air attacks... one wonders how they'd been able to reach back to Pearl Harbor without using oars... You call it Sci-Fi but it was the job of WATU and is still people's job to this day to fictionalise war for a better study of options. In this hypothetical scenario (just one of many, for example another would be a joint British/American task force at Midway) I was assuming that because the American ships weren't there that American planes also wouldn't have been given to FAA, so a complement of Sea Hurricanes and Seafires would be more likely, after all the carriers would have to be equipped with something if being sent to battle, we are assuming a scenario without American help then it must involve the British producing more aircraft if it intends to use its carriers. I was of course also just throwing out some basic ideas of force composition, likely the RN wouldn't have fought a Midway type battle actually at Midway for the very reason you suggest, but WATU had more than just one person working for them, I confess I don't have a huge amount of time to dedicate to this, doubtless if I had a whole room full of WRNs we could bash out a better location and force composition, I'm sorry if my casual examples offended you. As oldpop2000 said the Japanese use torpedoes as ship killers and the CAP can focus on them because the superior AA of an RN Carrier coupled with its deck armour makes it basically impenetrable from Japanese Carrier dive bombers, note this would be completely different if in range of the larger land based bombers and strategy would have to adjust accordingly, ultimately as early as 1942 I see it being untenable to carry out operations within range of Japanese land bombers due to the lack of sufficient planes for interception. You are making the mistake of judging the RN by the standards of the USN, nowhere did I say the battle would be fought in the same style, of course they wouldn't try to sink all the carriers with Swordfish or Albacore, that would be a terrible idea, I said the CAP would protect the fleet and force the Japanese to either disengage or commit to a surface battle. It was possible with determination to operate even off a damaged deck with Biplanes as they had far more lift, we would see later on that at Operation Kikusui the Kamikaze planes that struck the deck failed to cause enough damage to put the flight deck out of action for more than a few hours. The armoured deck principle would go on to be adopted by the US just as the British were finding out the actual biggest draw back of the design, and just to make this whole exercise worth while even though it doesn't pertain to Naval Treaties I can at least make this pertain to RTW2, armoured carriers built early on had real issues with shelf life, the weight of the deck was unbalanced and had a splitting effect on the spine of the ship, this did mean that whilst the ship was well protected minor damage could mean longer repair times and higher repair costs, couple that with the British post war economy and you start to see lots of armoured carriers being scrapped. That would be an important factor to implement in the designer, not just the increased cost and weight but also the increased damaged taken (if) penetrated along the waterline. Ironically the RN did such a good job of armouring the deck that the biggest worry was often 1000+lb GP (HE) bombs missing the deck (where they would cause little to no damage) and instead impacting on the water right next to the hull where they would be more dangerous. Fun as this was I must leave you all now, I take it ramjb that you are the same ramjb as the minor internet celebrity, if not it would be a strange coincidence or an unusual person to imitate, I confess I gave the channel a cursory glance and it seems you fit the type. Myopic view of the British, to me you seem to just be more than a little bit interesting in trying to flame them at every turn. Hopefully the development of RTW2 can in some way benefit from this little, diversion, as it would be a terrible waste for it to all be in vein.
|
|
|
Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 9:56:12 GMT -6
Wargaming is one thing. Making sci-fi scenarios out of thin air is another. Guess which one was WATU doing, and what are you doing here.
No it wouldn't. For one both british models had insuficient range or loiter time for proper carrier duty, specially so in the Pacific.
And for the other because when Victorious was sent to the Far East in 1941 (before pearl harbor) she was given British Lend Lease Martlet squadrons. Not Spitfires nor Seafires.
The only offense made here is with your subtle yet constant ad hominems. But more of that later. Your "casual examples" don't offend me. Sci-fi scenarios based on nothing but imagination and not on history can't offend anyone.
I guess the D3A squadrons aboard the Kido Butai were there for airshows only then.
"superior AAA of a RN Carrier". Compared to what? to an US one?. Are you serious or are you trying to make some joke I'm not getting here?.
Also, japanese D3As in antiship loads carried a 250kg SAP bomb, which was more than enough to punch through the carrier's elevators. Contrary to what you seem to think british armored decks made it tougher for 250kg bombs to punch through the decks, but wasn't anywhere close to "basically impenetrable" for them, if anything because at least two rather large areas of the deck (the elevators) didn't have by far enough armor to stop those bombs. And what's below an elevator?. The hangar. And what happens when you explode a 250kg bomb inside a fully enclosed hangar (instead of an open one)?. that the explosion effects are far worse because all the explosive force is absorbed by the ship, and not partly vented out as it happened in the american and japanese ships.
Also, that's in what regards to pure deck hits. I guess you're not too interested in speaking of the mess those bombs would make out of the island or funnel, places where a well placed bomb could cause damage to the boiler uptakes and a concurrent forced shutdown of the engines, as USS Yorktown had the displeasure of taste for herself. Nor to aircraft on the deck, either.
The aircraft on the deck part was important, btw. Because american and japanese carriers had open hangars they could (and did) start off engines on the hangar, even before of being parked on the elevator to move up to the deck. As a result the plane engines were fully warmed up as soon as those planes were on the deck. Meanwhile british carriers had to conduct pre-launch engine warming, from a cold start, on the deck, thus increasing drastically the window of opportunity where the carrier was the most vulnerable: when caught with fully armed and loaded planes on their deck.
Worth a thought or two because that scenario, exactly ,is what killed Kaga, Akagi and Soryu.
Yet the USN did conduct carrier raids on the Gilberts and Marshals, and later during 1943 and 1944 repeated the feat several times, all of them well within range of land-based japanese retaliation. Interesting.
I'm not making any mistake here, and I'm not judging the RN by standards of the USN. I'm judging the RN by the standards that won the naval war in the pacific. That the USN happened to win that war is just anechdotical - they just applied the right doctrines, practices and strategy to naval carrier warfare and had been doing so since well before the war (since the big wargames on the pacific were conducted in the early 30s they had the whole thing figured out almost perfectly) while the Royal Navy didn't.
American CAP and AAA killed roughly 70% of every single D3A or B5N inbound to the Yorktown during the attacks on that ship. She still suffered 3 bomb hits ,2 torpedo hits, and a damaged kamikaze slamming right on top of it's deck, enough to knock the ship out of action and force an abandon ship order.
And that was against a single strike group, made out of planes of a single carrier (Hiryu). That the americans didn't have to deal with four times that number of planes was because they had sunk 3 carriers by that time.
that you're somehow suggesting that the British would somehow magically been able to stop a strike force four times the size than the one that knocked Yorktown out of action, with a CAP consisting of less planes, I'll make no comment about, because no comment is needed. And the british woud've been subjected to such an attack ,because your so called "tactics" meant no strikes would've been tried on the japanese carriers and as such, that no japanese carriers would've been lost before striking with their full force upon the hapless british carriers.
I said it before, I say it again, that your sci-fi madeup stories sound fine for your (obviously by this point) limited understanding of naval carrier fighting of WW2 doesn't mean they make any sense. Because they don't.
USS Yorktown suffered a direct kamikaze hit when a japanese damaged plane intentionally smashed itself against the carrier deck. The resulting explosion caused a fire that caught a SBD loaded with a 1000lb bombs exploding the aircraft and cooking off the bomb.
Yorktown's deck was made out of planks, not british armor, yet she was fully air operation capable hour and a half after the hit.
You didn't need 3 and a half inches of armor in your deck to guarantee a fast return to air operations, even in the face of some serious damage.
That's rigurously false. The Midway class carriers had an armored flight deck, that was true, but it was not placed according to the british "armored deck principle". You don't even understand what that principle was based on to begin with, if you're making that affirmation.
British WW2 "armored deck carriers" were far more than ships with an armored flight deck. They were a "full enclosure" principle, to fully protect the hangar spaces of the ship, and not only the hull, machinery and magazines, with an armored box that covered it both on the top and the sides. To achieve that the main strenght deck of ships built according to that principle wasn't, as was usual by that time in US and Japanese the hangar's deck, but the flight deck. Furthermore, to achieve that principle of protection hangars were fully enclosed, while japanese and US ships had big openings on the hangar sides.
USS Midway had an armored flight deck, but the ship's main strenght deck was the hangar's deck, not the flight deck, and had open hangars. They had absolutely nothing to do with the british carrier WW2 design principles.
But now, conversely, and now that you bring the Midway class up...let's take a look at what was intended to be the "ultimate" British carrier designed by using wartime experience, the HMS Malta project, shall we?.
-armored deck abandoned and replaced by mild steel. Main armor deck lowered to the hangar deck and given limited side protection. The resulting armored box covered machinery spaces,but not the aircraft facilities anymore, in the same fashion of the american Yorktown and Essex designs: Plainly speaking, the british completely ditched the flight armored deck in HMS Malta.
-complete abandonment of the closed hangar principle, changing it by open hangar spaces pretty much identical to those seen in wartime japanese and american designsç
-main strenght deck lowered from the flight deck to the hangar deck, exactly identical to US and Japanese practices
-extra effort in the design to provide ample hangar and workshowp with enough roof clearance to operate any aircraft in the foreeseablefuture
-large air wing of 90 planes minimum
-hinged side elevators, similar to those in USS Essex, and enlarged deck elevators no longer constrained in size because of armor weight considerations.
Well, well, it seems that the Royal Navy learned enough about the "closed hangar, armored deck" carrier concept during WW2 to completely ditch it in their pursuit for the ultimate carrier, didn't it?.
The very fleet that had embraced and used that design principle during WW2 threw the concept out of the window as soon as wartime lessons were incorporated into their next design. Meanwhile the only other big carrier force in the world didn't even contemplate building a ship along those lines, neither during the war, nor after the end of WW2.
that says enough about the whole "British enclosed hangar, armored deck" concept.
The biggest drawback of the principle was that demanded extreme compromise in aircraft capability, hangar roof clearance, or a mix of both, on top of forcing some serious limits to the avgas and aircraft ordinance storage capacity. the Illustrious had a single hangar and were good for roughly 40 planes. The later Implacables had a double (reduced height) hangar and were (theoretically, operationally they really weren't) good for 72 planes, but couldn't operate F4Us because they wouldn't fit in their low height hangars.
While it's true that some of them were written off due to almost impossible to repair hull damage sustained during their operational WW2 life, the main reason most of the british WW2 "armored deck" carriers were discarded after WW2 was that their design compromises meant they couldn't operate the new generation of heavyweight jet fighters.
The double hangar carriers were out of the question: the new jets weren't only heavier, they also were bigger, and wouldn't fit in those hangars. The single-hangar (with decent roof clearance) were also mostly directly written off with the only exception of Victorious which was kept as an interim measure until the new Eagles came online.
The reason was simple: having the main strenght deck being the flight deck aswell had dire consequences: to allow those ships to operate the much heavier jets the flight deck had to be strenghtened, but given that it was an integral part of the ship's hull integrity, the whole hull had to be reinforced in turn. The cost was simply prohibitive. Meanwhile on "conventional" construction carriers (american and japanese designs) the main hull structure was formed by the enclosed box formed by the lower hull up to the hangar's deck, not up to the flight deck. Essentially, the flight deck was superstructure to them, so to strenghten the flight deck to enable it to operate heavier aircraft required reinforced structural bracing to support it, but not an overall hull rework involving the whole ship's hull girder. The resulting cost of reinforcing the flight deck for heavier planes was several orders of magnitude lower, and accordingly all the Midways and almost half of the Essex carriers were subjected to the required modifications, while the british directly discarded their surviving wartime carriers one after the other.
The structural weakness you mention had nothing to do with the "ship's spine" (I guess you mean the keel), but on a more complex, yet intuitive matter. Again, an US carrier hull was composed to the keel up to the hangar deck, resulting in a relatively limited hull volume. anything avobe that was essentially superstructure, and accordingly didn't compromise essential hull integrity.
A british "closed hangar, armored flight deck" carrier hull extended from down to the keep up to the flight deck. The hull was, essentially, the whole ship as seen from the exterior. Accordingly the hull volume was MUCH larger, and thus MUCH more prone to stress damage under operations, not to talk about battle damage.
On top of that, as already mentioned several times, a bomb going off in an US Carrier hangar happened outside of the hull itself, causing little or no structural damage to the hull integrity itself. A bomb going off in a brit carrier hangar happened well within the confines of the main hull structure (as the hangar was an integral part of it) - hence any damage sustained there affected the hull integrity, and again the hull integrity itself was already under compromise because of how large the volume it covered was.
To make things worse, and again this has been mentioned previously, an explosion going off in a space with openings to the exterior will see a good part of the explosion energy vented off the open sides, while an explosion going off within the confines of an enclosed room will cause the whole explosion energy to be kept inside. Think of why grenades are far more damaging indoors than outdoors - similar principle. So on top of taking the damage into the hull structure proper, british ships took a larger portion of that damage than japanese or US carriers did.
The result was a long-term mess. Just three instances:
Illustrious hull was completely torn apart by the bomb hits she suffered during her onslaught at the hands of Fliegerkorps X. During the repair process they had to cut off the central shaft because the keel itself was bent and the shaft couldn't be alligned with it. On peacetime that ship would've been sent directly to the scrappers, as it was she was kept in service but she was never able to steam at more than 22 knots again. As soon as war was over, she was sent to the blowtorch.
Similar fate happened to Formidable. An accident during operations during the Okinawa invasion caused a fire in the hangar. Being a closed space the fire was kept within - which might seem good, but having no openings at all heat had nowhere to go and mounted up quickly - in effect the hangar acted as a furnace within the core of the hull girder. The result was again irrecoverable structural damage. Formidable was deemed as a constructive total loss and accordingly she was sent off to the scrappers shortly after the war was over.
Indomitable was kept for a time after the war. Another accident caused a (quite limited) hangar fire. But being an enclosed space, and well within the hull girder, the Formidable syndrome repeated itself, the hangar acting like a blazing furnace in the middle of the hull girder - the result was irrepairable hull twisting and a constructive total loss. Indomitable (which had just gone through a modernization) was written off immediately and sent to the scrapyards.
Note that none of those things would've written off either a japanese nor US carrier. Given that their hangars were both open and avobe the hull structure itself, instead of well within it, those ships could be repaired with ease and cheaply, and their hull integrity wasn't compromised by hangars accidents or bombs exploding within their hangars. Meanwhile, out of all the "Armored hangar" WW2 british carriers that survived the war, the only two which were in relatively good shape, that allowed within reason to operate with the foreeseable future with jet aircraft were two: Indomitable and Victorious.
The rest were all written off because the paycheck of the needed repairs (not to mention the huge cost of upgrading the flight deck to take the bigger weights) was uneconomical : it costed more to repair and modernize them than build whole new carriers.
The rest of the armored carrier CVs (the double-hangar carriers, of the Implacable sub-group) were all written off because, simply stated, there was no way they could fit jets in their hangars and were useless in the jet era. but the story doesn't end here. Guess why Victorious was finally written off and retired from the Royal Navy?....
A fire broke out in her hangar during a refit in 1967. You guess the rest.
I'm a minor internet celebrity now?. Wowzers. Having a 15k sub channel qualifies me as such?.
As for my myopic view of things (nice subtle ad-hominem BTW) I'm not free from subjectivity - but at least I can claim a degree of understanding of WW2 naval warfare, and carrier warfare, that you constantly show time after time you lack with your wild "scenarios" made out of thin air, not of historical basis.
as for my myopic view of the british, I think I've stated several times in this thread (and several others) my unlimited admiration for the men and women that fought in the RN during WW2. What they accomplished with the inadequate tools they were provided, and in the extreme circunstances they faced most of the times, was nothing short of extraordinary.
Not only that, my girlfriend is british (lives in Spain but she was born in Norwich), I love british humor and I've always have had nothing but good experiences with british people. Hell, even my favorite music group ever is Dire Straits.
If I'm stating that the british government and military branches messed up bigtime during the interwar period and that as a result the Royal Navy was reduced to fight a world war with underwhelming assets (and that the Laborist party repeated the feat later on during the late 60s/early70s leading up to the desperate situation the RN found itself into when going to war against Argentina in the Falkland war) makes me myopic, let me tell you something:
Most of the british people are as myopic as I am. Because I know no englishman (nor scot, now I'm at it) that doesn't constantly make a point of complaining about how $hit the UK political leadership has been for the last 100 years - with some notable, but limited, exceptions. I guess they're myopic aswell.
being shortsighted never felt so good, let me tell ya.
|
|
|
Post by williammiller on Sept 22, 2018 10:04:23 GMT -6
I dislike repeating myself, so this will be my final suggestion before I consider more serious actions:
We are getting into political bashing territory and too close to personal attacks in this thread (and incidentally also wandering off topic) so stick to the subject, which is the Washington Naval Treaty. Also, I do very much suggest everyone chooses to be professional and polite, if there is any doubt at all that your post might not be then it is best to keep your words to yourself.
|
|
|
Post by ramjb on Sept 22, 2018 10:13:13 GMT -6
I dislike repeating myself, so this will be my final suggestion before I am forced to take more serious action:
We are getting into political bashing territory and too close to personal attacks in this thread (and incidentally also wandering off topic) so stick to the subject, which is the Washington Naval Treaty. Damn, my fault on the off-topic. Sorry, just hit the notifications link in my profile, I thought this was in the carrier thread elsewhere in the forums, not still in the WT thread. My apologies.
|
|
rdfox
New Member
Posts: 23
|
Post by rdfox on Nov 11, 2018 13:07:09 GMT -6
To get back to the original topic, would it be possible to make the treaty system in RtW2 a little more... nuanced, perhaps, is the right term? Specifically, with the ability to flat refuse to participate in a treaty conference (as Japan did with Second London in 1936) and thus not be bound by its terms, though still being bound by the terms of the previous treaty. Neptune only knows how many ships I've had scrapped when I told my politicians to take a "No treaties!" approach at a conference, only for a treaty to be imposed anyway.
Alternatively, if one isn't considered significant enough as a naval power, one might not be invited to the conference at all. An example of this being accurate to reality would be the German situation; Germany was not a party to the Washington Treaty or either London Treaty because they were already under the terms of the Versailles Treaty and thus not invited to the Washington or London conferences.
Perhaps there could also be an option of declaring ships under construction that have gotten to a certain level of completion (say, somewhere in the <12 months *and* <25% of total build time remaining range) as having already been launched and thus being allowed to be completed rather than scrapped despite exceeding the treaty limits? (If you want, this could also require that an equivalent aggregate tonnage of existing ships be scrapped--which would nicely emulate the mass scrappings of pre-dreadnoughts and early dreadnoughts that followed Washington.) There's nothing more frustrating, after all, than having a treaty decided when you're about three months from completing your first major capital ship replacement program in ten years, seeing all the new ships scrapped and you left with a fleet of legacy ships that can't compete with anyone else's ships that had just come on line when the treaty was imposed...
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Nov 12, 2018 9:29:38 GMT -6
Unless you're playing Germany under Treaty of Versailles restrictions or the Soviet Union on a more-or-less historical budget, I don't think that any of the powers in Rule the Waves or Rule the Waves 2 are minor enough or able to become minor enough in the course of normal gameplay to not be invited to something like the Washington Naval Conference. Even the worst war result you can get in Rule the Waves leaves you in a position more analogous to Russia after the Russo-Japanese War, with a temporarily-reduced fleet but the funding for an ambitious rearmament program and at worst short-term qualitative limitations on capital ships, than to Germany, Austria-Hungary and its successor states, or Bulgaria after the First World War, with navies severely limited in size for an indefinite period of time into the future by the peace treaties, or like Russia after the Russian Civil War, with a fleet in a state of dissolution and burdened by internal matters of sufficient importance to leave the reconstruction of the navy low on the government's list of priorities for much of the next decade or more.
I would also suggest that any significant naval power remaining outside or leaving a naval limitation treaty system would effectively kill the treaty system. London 1930 and London 1936 provide some evidence of this - France, limited by London 1930 to 70,000 tons of new capital ship construction* to be laid down between 1 January 1931 and 31 December 1936, instead laid down over 123,000 tons of new capital ships in that period, in part due to a chain of events triggered by the nominally-Versailles-compliant Deutschland-class cruisers (very simplified: France laid down Dunkerque and Strasbourg response to Deutschland, Italy laid down Littorio and Vittorio Veneto in response to Dunkerque and Strasbourg, and France laid down Richelieu and Jean Bart in response to Littorio and Vittorio Veneto), and London 1936 - unlike its predecessors - included no quantitative limitations on the signatories' fleets or ban on the construction of additional ships within the qualitative limitations of the treaty and included specific clauses for the loosening of certain limitations in addition to the general "the provisions of this treaty may be ignored at the discretion of the signatory powers if they deem doing so necessary for reasons of national security" clause at the end of all the limitation treaties.
* The signatory powers to London 1930 agreed not to lay down the ships which they were authorized to build in the period 1931-1936 inclusive by the Washington Naval Treaty (WNT), but France and Italy were explicitly entitled to the capital ships which the WNT had authorized them to lay down in 1927 and 1929, totaling 70,000 tons for each power. London 1930 also included a clause indicating that the terms of the treaty did not prejudice the right of signatories to replace ships lost or rendered unservicable through accident under the terms of the WNT, so France may have had the right to an additional 35,000 tons to replace the battleship France, lost in 1922 and not replaced in the 1920s, though on the other hand the US, UK, and Japan agreed in London 1930 to take out of service roughly half of the ships which were to be replaced in the 1931-1936 period under the WNT despite agreeing not to lay down replacements for them in that period and it looks to me like the WNT meant for the battleship France to be replaced by the 35,000 tons of capital ships allotted to France for 1929 anyways.
|
|
|
Post by britishball on Nov 14, 2018 10:04:45 GMT -6
Wargaming is one thing. Making sci-fi scenarios out of thin air is another. Guess which one was WATU doing, and what are you doing here. No it wouldn't. For one both british models had insuficient range or loiter time for proper carrier duty, specially so in the Pacific. And for the other because when Victorious was sent to the Far East in 1941 (before pearl harbor) she was given British Lend Lease Martlet squadrons. Not Spitfires nor Seafires. The only offense made here is with your subtle yet constant ad hominems. But more of that later. Your "casual examples" don't offend me. Sci-fi scenarios based on nothing but imagination and not on history can't offend anyone. I guess the D3A squadrons aboard the Kido Butai were there for airshows only then. "superior AAA of a RN Carrier". Compared to what? to an US one?. Are you serious or are you trying to make some joke I'm not getting here?. Also, japanese D3As in antiship loads carried a 250kg SAP bomb, which was more than enough to punch through the carrier's elevators. Contrary to what you seem to think british armored decks made it tougher for 250kg bombs to punch through the decks, but wasn't anywhere close to "basically impenetrable" for them, if anything because at least two rather large areas of the deck (the elevators) didn't have by far enough armor to stop those bombs. And what's below an elevator?. The hangar. And what happens when you explode a 250kg bomb inside a fully enclosed hangar (instead of an open one)?. that the explosion effects are far worse because all the explosive force is absorbed by the ship, and not partly vented out as it happened in the american and japanese ships. Also, that's in what regards to pure deck hits. I guess you're not too interested in speaking of the mess those bombs would make out of the island or funnel, places where a well placed bomb could cause damage to the boiler uptakes and a concurrent forced shutdown of the engines, as USS Yorktown had the displeasure of taste for herself. Nor to aircraft on the deck, either. The aircraft on the deck part was important, btw. Because american and japanese carriers had open hangars they could (and did) start off engines on the hangar, even before of being parked on the elevator to move up to the deck. As a result the plane engines were fully warmed up as soon as those planes were on the deck. Meanwhile british carriers had to conduct pre-launch engine warming, from a cold start, on the deck, thus increasing drastically the window of opportunity where the carrier was the most vulnerable: when caught with fully armed and loaded planes on their deck. Worth a thought or two because that scenario, exactly ,is what killed Kaga, Akagi and Soryu. Yet the USN did conduct carrier raids on the Gilberts and Marshals, and later during 1943 and 1944 repeated the feat several times, all of them well within range of land-based japanese retaliation. Interesting. I'm not making any mistake here, and I'm not judging the RN by standards of the USN. I'm judging the RN by the standards that won the naval war in the pacific. That the USN happened to win that war is just anechdotical - they just applied the right doctrines, practices and strategy to naval carrier warfare and had been doing so since well before the war (since the big wargames on the pacific were conducted in the early 30s they had the whole thing figured out almost perfectly) while the Royal Navy didn't. American CAP and AAA killed roughly 70% of every single D3A or B5N inbound to the Yorktown during the attacks on that ship. She still suffered 3 bomb hits ,2 torpedo hits, and a damaged kamikaze slamming right on top of it's deck, enough to knock the ship out of action and force an abandon ship order. And that was against a single strike group, made out of planes of a single carrier (Hiryu). That the americans didn't have to deal with four times that number of planes was because they had sunk 3 carriers by that time. that you're somehow suggesting that the British would somehow magically been able to stop a strike force four times the size than the one that knocked Yorktown out of action, with a CAP consisting of less planes, I'll make no comment about, because no comment is needed. And the british woud've been subjected to such an attack ,because your so called "tactics" meant no strikes would've been tried on the japanese carriers and as such, that no japanese carriers would've been lost before striking with their full force upon the hapless british carriers. I said it before, I say it again, that your sci-fi madeup stories sound fine for your (obviously by this point) limited understanding of naval carrier fighting of WW2 doesn't mean they make any sense. Because they don't. USS Yorktown suffered a direct kamikaze hit when a japanese damaged plane intentionally smashed itself against the carrier deck. The resulting explosion caused a fire that caught a SBD loaded with a 1000lb bombs exploding the aircraft and cooking off the bomb. Yorktown's deck was made out of planks, not british armor, yet she was fully air operation capable hour and a half after the hit. You didn't need 3 and a half inches of armor in your deck to guarantee a fast return to air operations, even in the face of some serious damage. That's rigurously false. The Midway class carriers had an armored flight deck, that was true, but it was not placed according to the british "armored deck principle". You don't even understand what that principle was based on to begin with, if you're making that affirmation. British WW2 "armored deck carriers" were far more than ships with an armored flight deck. They were a "full enclosure" principle, to fully protect the hangar spaces of the ship, and not only the hull, machinery and magazines, with an armored box that covered it both on the top and the sides. To achieve that the main strenght deck of ships built according to that principle wasn't, as was usual by that time in US and Japanese the hangar's deck, but the flight deck. Furthermore, to achieve that principle of protection hangars were fully enclosed, while japanese and US ships had big openings on the hangar sides. USS Midway had an armored flight deck, but the ship's main strenght deck was the hangar's deck, not the flight deck, and had open hangars. They had absolutely nothing to do with the british carrier WW2 design principles. But now, conversely, and now that you bring the Midway class up...let's take a look at what was intended to be the "ultimate" British carrier designed by using wartime experience, the HMS Malta project, shall we?. -armored deck abandoned and replaced by mild steel. Main armor deck lowered to the hangar deck and given limited side protection. The resulting armored box covered machinery spaces,but not the aircraft facilities anymore, in the same fashion of the american Yorktown and Essex designs: Plainly speaking, the british completely ditched the flight armored deck in HMS Malta.
- complete abandonment of the closed hangar principle, changing it by open hangar spaces pretty much identical to those seen in wartime japanese and american designsç - main strenght deck lowered from the flight deck to the hangar deck, exactly identical to US and Japanese practices -extra effort in the design to provide ample hangar and workshowp with enough roof clearance to operate any aircraft in the foreeseablefuture -large air wing of 90 planes minimum -hinged side elevators, similar to those in USS Essex, and enlarged deck elevators no longer constrained in size because of armor weight considerations. Well, well, it seems that the Royal Navy learned enough about the "closed hangar, armored deck" carrier concept during WW2 to completely ditch it in their pursuit for the ultimate carrier, didn't it?. The very fleet that had embraced and used that design principle during WW2 threw the concept out of the window as soon as wartime lessons were incorporated into their next design. Meanwhile the only other big carrier force in the world didn't even contemplate building a ship along those lines, neither during the war, nor after the end of WW2. that says enough about the whole "British enclosed hangar, armored deck" concept. The biggest drawback of the principle was that demanded extreme compromise in aircraft capability, hangar roof clearance, or a mix of both, on top of forcing some serious limits to the avgas and aircraft ordinance storage capacity. the Illustrious had a single hangar and were good for roughly 40 planes. The later Implacables had a double (reduced height) hangar and were (theoretically, operationally they really weren't) good for 72 planes, but couldn't operate F4Us because they wouldn't fit in their low height hangars. While it's true that some of them were written off due to almost impossible to repair hull damage sustained during their operational WW2 life, the main reason most of the british WW2 "armored deck" carriers were discarded after WW2 was that their design compromises meant they couldn't operate the new generation of heavyweight jet fighters. The double hangar carriers were out of the question: the new jets weren't only heavier, they also were bigger, and wouldn't fit in those hangars. The single-hangar (with decent roof clearance) were also mostly directly written off with the only exception of Victorious which was kept as an interim measure until the new Eagles came online. The reason was simple: having the main strenght deck being the flight deck aswell had dire consequences: to allow those ships to operate the much heavier jets the flight deck had to be strenghtened, but given that it was an integral part of the ship's hull integrity, the whole hull had to be reinforced in turn. The cost was simply prohibitive. Meanwhile on "conventional" construction carriers (american and japanese designs) the main hull structure was formed by the enclosed box formed by the lower hull up to the hangar's deck, not up to the flight deck. Essentially, the flight deck was superstructure to them, so to strenghten the flight deck to enable it to operate heavier aircraft required reinforced structural bracing to support it, but not an overall hull rework involving the whole ship's hull girder. The resulting cost of reinforcing the flight deck for heavier planes was several orders of magnitude lower, and accordingly all the Midways and almost half of the Essex carriers were subjected to the required modifications, while the british directly discarded their surviving wartime carriers one after the other. The structural weakness you mention had nothing to do with the "ship's spine" (I guess you mean the keel), but on a more complex, yet intuitive matter. Again, an US carrier hull was composed to the keel up to the hangar deck, resulting in a relatively limited hull volume. anything avobe that was essentially superstructure, and accordingly didn't compromise essential hull integrity. A british "closed hangar, armored flight deck" carrier hull extended from down to the keep up to the flight deck. The hull was, essentially, the whole ship as seen from the exterior. Accordingly the hull volume was MUCH larger, and thus MUCH more prone to stress damage under operations, not to talk about battle damage. On top of that, as already mentioned several times, a bomb going off in an US Carrier hangar happened outside of the hull itself, causing little or no structural damage to the hull integrity itself. A bomb going off in a brit carrier hangar happened well within the confines of the main hull structure (as the hangar was an integral part of it) - hence any damage sustained there affected the hull integrity, and again the hull integrity itself was already under compromise because of how large the volume it covered was. To make things worse, and again this has been mentioned previously, an explosion going off in a space with openings to the exterior will see a good part of the explosion energy vented off the open sides, while an explosion going off within the confines of an enclosed room will cause the whole explosion energy to be kept inside. Think of why grenades are far more damaging indoors than outdoors - similar principle. So on top of taking the damage into the hull structure proper, british ships took a larger portion of that damage than japanese or US carriers did. The result was a long-term mess. Just three instances: Illustrious hull was completely torn apart by the bomb hits she suffered during her onslaught at the hands of Fliegerkorps X. During the repair process they had to cut off the central shaft because the keel itself was bent and the shaft couldn't be alligned with it. On peacetime that ship would've been sent directly to the scrappers, as it was she was kept in service but she was never able to steam at more than 22 knots again. As soon as war was over, she was sent to the blowtorch. Similar fate happened to Formidable. An accident during operations during the Okinawa invasion caused a fire in the hangar. Being a closed space the fire was kept within - which might seem good, but having no openings at all heat had nowhere to go and mounted up quickly - in effect the hangar acted as a furnace within the core of the hull girder. The result was again irrecoverable structural damage. Formidable was deemed as a constructive total loss and accordingly she was sent off to the scrappers shortly after the war was over. Indomitable was kept for a time after the war. Another accident caused a (quite limited) hangar fire. But being an enclosed space, and well within the hull girder, the Formidable syndrome repeated itself, the hangar acting like a blazing furnace in the middle of the hull girder - the result was irrepairable hull twisting and a constructive total loss. Indomitable (which had just gone through a modernization) was written off immediately and sent to the scrapyards. Note that none of those things would've written off either a japanese nor US carrier. Given that their hangars were both open and avobe the hull structure itself, instead of well within it, those ships could be repaired with ease and cheaply, and their hull integrity wasn't compromised by hangars accidents or bombs exploding within their hangars. Meanwhile, out of all the "Armored hangar" WW2 british carriers that survived the war, the only two which were in relatively good shape, that allowed within reason to operate with the foreeseable future with jet aircraft were two: Indomitable and Victorious. The rest were all written off because the paycheck of the needed repairs (not to mention the huge cost of upgrading the flight deck to take the bigger weights) was uneconomical : it costed more to repair and modernize them than build whole new carriers. The rest of the armored carrier CVs (the double-hangar carriers, of the Implacable sub-group) were all written off because, simply stated, there was no way they could fit jets in their hangars and were useless in the jet era. but the story doesn't end here. Guess why Victorious was finally written off and retired from the Royal Navy?.... A fire broke out in her hangar during a refit in 1967. You guess the rest. I'm a minor internet celebrity now?. Wowzers. Having a 15k sub channel qualifies me as such?. As for my myopic view of things (nice subtle ad-hominem BTW) I'm not free from subjectivity - but at least I can claim a degree of understanding of WW2 naval warfare, and carrier warfare, that you constantly show time after time you lack with your wild "scenarios" made out of thin air, not of historical basis. as for my myopic view of the british, I think I've stated several times in this thread (and several others) my unlimited admiration for the men and women that fought in the RN during WW2. What they accomplished with the inadequate tools they were provided, and in the extreme circunstances they faced most of the times, was nothing short of extraordinary. Not only that, my girlfriend is british (lives in Spain but she was born in Norwich), I love british humor and I've always have had nothing but good experiences with british people. Hell, even my favorite music group ever is Dire Straits. If I'm stating that the british government and military branches messed up bigtime during the interwar period and that as a result the Royal Navy was reduced to fight a world war with underwhelming assets (and that the Laborist party repeated the feat later on during the late 60s/early70s leading up to the desperate situation the RN found itself into when going to war against Argentina in the Falkland war) makes me myopic, let me tell you something: Most of the british people are as myopic as I am. Because I know no englishman (nor scot, now I'm at it) that doesn't constantly make a point of complaining about how $hit the UK political leadership has been for the last 100 years - with some notable, but limited, exceptions. I guess they're myopic aswell. being shortsighted never felt so good, let me tell ya. Hey this is fun I didn't get notified of your comment; Seeing as I'm most likely going to get ban hammered if I respond in too much depth just know that: I don't see myself as WATU, both of us lack the data to make accurate predictions on this kind of stuff and part of their brilliance was a room full of brains coming up with different ideas, I'm suggesting that in a radically different scenario the British would fight radically differently to what you expect, that there are multitudes of different engagements from a 1942 to a 1946 as a possibility, and that the theory behind armoured deck carriers is sound, just look at the reports from Iceberg at Okinawa where they shrugged off damaged that crippled American carriers. There are American Navy Officers who said they preferred British carriers, there are many reasons why it could work. Yet seeing as you mention HMS Malta, it was a move towards fighting the American theory of carrier combat because we never got to use our own, the Americans had used theirs and made many improvements, they'd done all the hard work. Imagine two computer softwares, a British and an American one, the British one might be capable of developing into something better but the American one has had more bug testing, so Britain would just adopt the American system because they needed it then and couldn't afford the bug testing. It's the same with the Carriers, there was a new government and a change in military philosophy. Just like how Germany moved away from Submarine warfare, or could have chosen to divert more towards total air warfare, these were all potential ideas, changing from one to another doesn't disprove that one works. Longevity of the armoured deck was an issue, the strain it put on the ship put their service lifespan to less than half what you'd expect, a quarter even sometimes, but with investment... Perhaps the design was always doomed from a cost effective stand point, the RN I will concede has always been a history of "if only we'd spent a bit more here and hadn't had so many cutbacks" only to have cutbacks later down the line but we aren't the only country to suffer at the hands of politicians interfering in defence of the realm. Believe me we could go back and forth debating and throwing historical information about, semantics and such, discussing everything the finest minutia of what we mean but I doubt agreement will be reached, though we do seem to be arguing a little cross purposes, I do trust you aren't trying to argue the RN was a bad Navy, I'm saying that given time or the opportunity their carriers would have fought the IJN, I believe successfully but certainly with tenacity. At least we can agree on Dire Straits...
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 14, 2018 12:02:27 GMT -6
We have to remember that the British fleet developed requirements for two different geographical areas they felt they would have to fight; North Sea and Mediterranean. They would have to fight two enemies with good land based aircraft. Their carriers were designed for these two areas supported by land based aircraft from England, Malta and North Africa. Now the war development changed much of their requirements. However, they built a good navy with good ships tailored for the areas they were planning to fight in. By the time they fought in the Pacific, we had essentially destroyed the IJN and their carriers. They only had to face kamikazes and their armored decks were good designs for that warfare. However, our armored hanger decks accomplished the same purpose. We don't know how the British carriers would have performed from December 7th onward through the Solomon's and Central Pacific campaign, we can only speculate. Our fleet problems during the interwar period, focused on the Caribbean against the British, then to the Pacific around Pearl Harbor and Panama. Our requirements were developed for that environment and Japanese Naval air force based on carriers and land bases.
No matter how you develop requirements and specifications, all ships especially carriers are compromises in design. Carriers, no matter how they are designed and built are fragile instruments of war. They do not fire salvo's but pulses of power. We learned that the side that locates the enemy first and launches first, will win a carrier battle. We performed this three times and won. We failed at Santa Cruz and paid the price. We should not compare apples and oranges in regards to the British fleet and our fleet.
The British lost five carriers during the war, fleet carriers. Three were sunk by U-boats meaning torpedoes, one by gunfire and one by dive bombers. We lost Lexington to torpedoes, Yorktown to torpedoes, Hornet to torpedoes and Wasp to torpedoes. No amount of hanger deck armor or flight deck armor can protect you from torpedoes.
|
|