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Cyrano4747 posted:Look at the evolution of the b25. Starts off a retry normal medium bomber dropping bunches of bombs from internal storage, ends up a gun and cannon based anti shipping monster with a loving crazy number of barrels projecting from the nose. Strafing trenches, yes. Those were quite ineffective though, I don't think they made a lot.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:37
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Nckdictator posted:So, World War II question here (Not about tank destroyers!) Sort of, but not in the exact same way. The kinds of gunships as AC-47 and AC-130 only really work when your enemy has little or no anti-aircraft capability, so mostly against guerrillas like in Vietnam. A tactic relying on an armed cargo plane slowly circling around any regular army location would have been suicidal during WW2 apart from against partisans maybe. WW2 gunships were bombers upgunned to strafe point targets, shoot at enemy heavy bomber formations or defend your heavy bomber formation against enemy fighters.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:54
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The problem with mounting gently caress off huge poo poo like a 75mm on a plane is that the rate of fire is extremely low. Generally you aim the gun by aiming the plane, so with a higher rate of fire weapon (50-cal, 3in or 5in rocket, 20mm, hell even 37mm) you are able to "walk" the fire on to the (ground) target as you make your pass. With the 75mm, you get a couple of shots per pass, and you're almost definitely going to miss with one. Plus, the thing is god drat heavy. For the weight of the 75MM, you could stick about 6-8 additional .50s on the nose, and that is far more effective.
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Jul 23, 2014 15:42
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The problem with mounting gently caress off huge poo poo like a 75mm on a plane is that the rate of fire is extremely low. Generally you aim the gun by aiming the plane, so with a higher rate of fire weapon (50-cal, 3in or 5in rocket, 20mm, hell even 37mm) you are able to "walk" the fire on to the (ground) target as you make your pass. With the 75mm, you get a couple of shots per pass, and you're almost definitely going to miss with one. Plus, the thing is god drat heavy. For the weight of the 75MM, you could stick about 6-8 additional .50s on the nose, and that is far more effective. I really think you're over stating how inaccurate point fire on ground targets was. WW2 era reflex sights were pretty loving sophisticated for the era and more than capable of getting solid hits on stationary targets. Watch some gun cam footage of strafing attacks and you don't really see any "walking in" of shots. You will see pilots kicking the rudder around when they're trying to get an area of effect, but that's something entirely different. As for whether or not a gently caress off big gun like a 75 is more effective than a bunch of smaller guns, it all depends on what kind of target you're hunting. If you're shooting at thinly or un-armored vehicles or another airplane, absolutely. If you're going after hardened emplacements, bunkers, etc then that large gun is going to be much more effective. It doesn't take all that much reinforced concrete to render even the .50 utterly ineffective, but a 75mm will punch through a gently caress of a lot. That, and tank hunting, are basically what they were used for. Now, the major problem with them was always feeding. Most designs tried to work with a semi-auto cannon approach based around a magazine, and airplanes in general just weren't stable enough for those to function reliably with such large cartridges. poo poo, this is a problem that we still haven't really solved; most of the true gunships (e.g. the AC-130) use an actual crew-served piece for the real gently caress off big stuff like the 105s and rely on manual loading between shots. To the best of my knowledge the WW2 designs with the truly large cannons (say 75mm and up) never really solved this issue, and it was worked around by only using the weapon on the gentlest and levelest of possible approaches.
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Jul 23, 2014 16:40
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Nckdictator posted:So, World War II question here (Not about tank destroyers!) My understanding is that the 'gunships' couldn't keep up with the other bombers after the bombers had dropped their bomb loads, so they didn't have a good time. On the other hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666
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Jul 23, 2014 17:22
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Comrade_Robot posted:My understanding is that the 'gunships' couldn't keep up with the other bombers after the bombers had dropped their bomb loads, so they didn't have a good time. This. The bomber variants were suddenly several tons lighter and the machine gun ships were the same weight. The YB-40 was actually fairly effective outside of this one flaw though. If they could have found a way to make it work speed-wise it could have been a very good system.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:08
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Untold: The Story of World War 1 just kinda glances over it but why exactly was Moltke discharged from being in charge of the German militaries planning?
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Jul 23, 2014 22:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:I really think you're over stating how inaccurate point fire on ground targets was. WW2 era reflex sights were pretty loving sophisticated for the era and more than capable of getting solid hits on stationary targets. Watch some gun cam footage of strafing attacks and you don't really see any "walking in" of shots. You will see pilots kicking the rudder around when they're trying to get an area of effect, but that's something entirely different. Pretty much any hardened stationary target is better served with a salvo of aerial rockets versus a single 75mm cannon round, so (as people rapidly figured out), it makes more sense to stock up on rockets and small guns. Mounting actual artillery pieces or artillery-caliber pieces on aircraft makes very little sense, and everyone figured this out over the course of the war.
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Jul 23, 2014 22:40
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Not the least because typical minimum standard for a WW2 bunkers was to survive a direct hit by a 105mm shell or whatever was the standard for the enemy field artillery. I find the bunker busting capabilities of a 75mm shell very suspect.
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Jul 23, 2014 22:53
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As far as I know the B-25H (with the 75mm cannon) was primarily used in the Pacific to hunt shipping.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:03
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As far as I can tell most of the 50-75mm cannon mounted on planes during WWII was intended to function similarly to the A-10.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:14
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Pretty much any hardened stationary target is better served with a salvo of aerial rockets versus a single 75mm cannon round, so (as people rapidly figured out), it makes more sense to stock up on rockets and small guns. Mounting actual artillery pieces or artillery-caliber pieces on aircraft makes very little sense, and everyone figured this out over the course of the war. Rockets are inaccurate as gently caress though. The Soviets quickly figured this out when strafing armoured columns and switched to PTABs. And yeah, a cannon is a bitch to load in the air. I saw some pictures of a German 88 mm drum loader that was allegedly adaptable for aircraft, but they never got around to putting it into any vehicle at all. It would only give you six shots, anyway.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:29
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Abu Dave posted:Untold: The Story of World War 1 just kinda glances over it but why exactly was Moltke discharged from being in charge of the German militaries planning? His health collapsed, probably from extreme stress attendant on being responsible for so much important stuff that was going so wrong.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:Look at the evolution of the b25. Starts off a retry normal medium bomber dropping bunches of bombs from internal storage, ends up a gun and cannon based anti shipping monster with a loving crazy number of barrels projecting from the nose. A lot of this depends on the basic airframe, though. A really fundamentally good design like the B-25 or the Ju 88 or the Mosquito can be adapted to do all sorts of jobs.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:52
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Molentik posted:As far as I know the B-25H (with the 75mm cannon) was primarily used in the Pacific to hunt shipping. And it was pretty good at it, at least against unarmored targets. Other than that though, the thing wasn't terribly useful. 75mm is lol big for a plane but by surface standards it is pretty tiny; it never did a whole lot of damage to hardened targets. Eventually skip bombing replaced it as a more effective antiship tactic as well.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:59
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Japanese shipping was such a clown show in WWII. Can anyone go into more detail just how incompetent they were in dealing with the US submarine and air threats?
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Jul 24, 2014 00:10
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Japanese destroyer captains would just go around pinging away their sonar at random, even in the complete absence of any submarine threats.
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Jul 24, 2014 00:24
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Japanese Merchant Captains were under orders to report their position every day, because it is unpossible that the Yankees could break the code. Also, what is a radi-o tri-an-gu-lation?
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Jul 24, 2014 00:52
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Somewhat related, how much manpower was necessary to operate a merchant ship during the Second World War? Were there every any shortages?
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Jul 24, 2014 01:01
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Japanese shipping was such a clown show in WWII. Can anyone go into more detail just how incompetent they were in dealing with the US submarine and air threats? Japanese depth charges had only two settings, 25 meters and 75 meters and they never set them to 75 meters because they didn't know how deep US subs could go. So US subs would dive deep and never get hit until this jackass accidentally leaked it and the IJN started using the deeper setting.
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Jul 24, 2014 01:10
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The IJN didn't have any convoy escort doctrine really at all, besides just sail a DD or DDE around in company with a couple merchant ships. Not that it mattered anyway.
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Jul 24, 2014 03:19
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What exactly was in the superstructure of the Fuso class? Why were they so tall?
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Jul 24, 2014 05:54
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Mostly searchlights and spotter positions. These ships were built before radar was a thing. Add that to the Japanese insistence on night-fighting tactics and you get this really tall ship to help it see far as above the waterline as possible and to project searchlights onto targets at night.
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Jul 24, 2014 06:13
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SoggyBobcat posted:Somewhat related, how much manpower was necessary to operate a merchant ship during the Second World War? Were there every any shortages? Here's a breakdown of a standard Liberty Ship crew. For comparison a modern container ship sails with a crew of 15-20. [url] http://www.usmm.org/liberty_crew.html [/url] It was common to see old sailors coming out of retirement to sail on the Liberties and Victories, and the US established crash training programs for officers and crew. Deck and Engine officer training became as short as 6 months for a 4 year peacetime curriculum. There are some great histories of the US merchant marine out there. I recommend The Forgotten Heroes by Brian Herbert.
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Jul 24, 2014 06:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:Mostly searchlights and spotter positions. These ships were built before radar was a thing. Add that to the Japanese insistence on night-fighting tactics and you get this really tall ship to help it see far as above the waterline as possible and to project searchlights onto targets at night. To follow up, were the pagoda superstructures effective in helping spot targets at night? I just started reading Neptune's Inferno, and it sounds like night fighting is such a clusterfuck that any little advantage could turn the tide of battle. And I never realized it but being on the losing side of a modern naval battle is terrifying. It's like how I imagined old wooden ships fighting each other looked like, only now the paint can light on fire.
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Jul 24, 2014 07:24
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I know this might count as a silly counter-factual but how much would have putting a radar set and as many radio's as they can into their heaviest load bearing long range bomber would have helped the Japanese as a sort of proto-AWACS from the onset? Edit: Or was the power issue too much of a problem for an early awacs to have been effective? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 07:32
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The Hiei was sunk in night battles off Guadalcanal by a USN cruiser force, and the Kirishima was sunk by the South Dakota and the Washington. The rest: Fuso, Yamashiro, Haruna, Kongo, Ise, Hyuga, Mutsu and Nagato were all sunk in non-nighttime and/or non-gun-battle means. I'd say by the time these ships finally came into play, the development of radar gave the USN an edge far and above anything that the pagoda masts and searchlights could have competed with, even if we disregard things like carriers, aircraft and submarines.
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Jul 24, 2014 07:35
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Raenir Salazar posted:I know this might count as a silly counter-factual but how much would have putting a radar set and as many radio's as they can into their heaviest load bearing long range bomber would have helped the Japanese as a sort of proto-AWACS from the onset? The PB-1J and TBM-3W were basically end of the war projects for the US. I know the British had one that was getting going roughly 1943 iirc, but because it was longer wavelength it had a big goofy antenna above it and other notable downsides but I'm not as familiar with it. I don't really know if the Japanese could pull it off, but I kind of doubt it'd be all that great. The US planes took some serious systems engineering work and the best radar mid-late war America could put together. Don Gato posted:To follow up, were the pagoda superstructures effective in helping spot targets at night? I just started reading Neptune's Inferno, and it sounds like night fighting is such a clusterfuck that any little advantage could turn the tide of battle. Let's talk about why people need flash protection, and the horrors of getting cut off in a ship by a fire (or just the uptakes, that's awful too). On second thought, let's not. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 07:57
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Don Gato posted:To follow up, were the pagoda superstructures effective in helping spot targets at night? I just started reading Neptune's Inferno, and it sounds like night fighting is such a clusterfuck that any little advantage could turn the tide of battle. I remember reading a book called The Mosquito Fleet: PT boats in WWII where there was some mention that attacking Japanese ships at night with as much firepower as they'd use lead them to believe they were being attacked by destroyers, cruisers, or even a battleship task force. I mean thinking on it that must be a hell of a thing to be attacked by a group of PTs being they're damned small and quick with a bitchload of firepower and you can't see them
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Jul 24, 2014 11:46
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xthetenth posted:Let's talk about why people need flash protection, and the horrors of getting cut off in a ship by a fire (or just the uptakes, that's awful too). At Dawn We Slept is not only an excellent collection of first and second-hand accounts of the attack on Pearl Harbor, it also has a pretty comprehensive assortment of all the different terrible things that modern naval warfare can do to the soft meaty things inside the ships.
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Jul 24, 2014 15:40
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Don Gato posted:To follow up, were the pagoda superstructures effective in helping spot targets at night? I just started reading Neptune's Inferno, and it sounds like night fighting is such a clusterfuck that any little advantage could turn the tide of battle. Really I suspect being on the losing end of almost any battle is pretty damned horrifying.
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Jul 24, 2014 17:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Winning isn't exactly pretty either, when you think about it. A lot of smaller scale warfare involved attempts to not fight: individual combat, threats and boasting, one last pow-wow between leaders, or highly stereotyped fighting like the feather wars in Mesoamerica (although that was a religious thing). As some of the other posters here have mentioned, sieges had a sort of script where you demand surrender on decent-ish terms to avoid an actual assault or prolonged siege.
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Jul 24, 2014 18:16
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I need a new book. Recommendations? Any period, any topic.
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Jul 24, 2014 19:09
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I'm currently enjoying the hell out of Shelby Foote's ACW trilogy.
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Jul 24, 2014 19:11
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Fire and Stone, Christopher Duffy.
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Jul 24, 2014 19:22
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SocketWrench posted:I remember reading a book called The Mosquito Fleet: PT boats in WWII where there was some mention that attacking Japanese ships at night with as much firepower as they'd use lead them to believe they were being attacked by destroyers, cruisers, or even a battleship task force. Everyone always overestimates the forces brought to bear on them in surprise attacks, especially at night. PT boats are incredibly fragile. PT vs DD, I'll take my chances in the DD.
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Jul 24, 2014 19:51
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bewbies posted:I need a new book. Recommendations? Any period, any topic. http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/1594202273
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Jul 24, 2014 19:53
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The Jungle is Neutral by F. Spencer Chapman
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Jul 24, 2014 19:53
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Yah, Jack Kennedy was a lucky man to be killed by Lee Harvey Oswald instead of Kohei Hanami.
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Jul 24, 2014 19:57
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I'm currently enjoying the hell out of Shelby Foote's ACW trilogy. I got all 3 volumes new in hardcover for less than $50 a few years ago. They are a great read. I would love for an equally talented writer to publish a similar work with updated scholarship and research, but that will probably not happen for at least another 50 years.
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Jul 24, 2014 21:25
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