SeanBeansShako posted:

We just want to rub out battleships together, IS THAT SO WRONG!?

OpenlyEvilJello posted:

Funnily enough, I would have exactly reversed the Roman/Greek comparison. Maybe I've read too many Romans on the decadence and dissolution of Greeks.

SeanBeansShako posted:

We just want to rub out battleships together, IS THAT SO WRONG!?

PittTheElder posted:

American "neutrality" during the war never ceases to amuse.

Gnoman posted:

Normally any of the three incidents would have been enough to start a war, but while Roosevelt was trying to start one Hitler was desperately trying not to, as the US industrial might was one of the only things he ever feared.

OwlFancier posted:

That is a little confusing because, well, I didn't think that if someone torpedoed one of your destroyers, they could then say "lol sry jk" and you would then have to say "drat well I can't just declare war unilaterally"

OwlFancier posted:

Huh, that's surprising too. Hard to imagine an America that wouldn't take direct attacks on its ships as immediate grounds for invading someone.

OwlFancier posted:

Huh, that's surprising too. Hard to imagine an America that wouldn't take direct attacks on its ships as immediate grounds for invading someone.

P-Mack posted:

Many people were upset with how WWI (which the US entered due to ship attacks) worked out, and weren't eager to get another hundred thousand Americans killed so Britain and France could keep their colonial empires. It took a lot to shake the mindset that it wasn't just WWI-2.

Boiled Water posted:

I imagine it's also hard to get huffy over Belgian neutrality being violated.

SeanBeansShako posted:

I imagine the Belgians may of had a slight problem with a really rude uninvited German army just showing up out of the blue.

SeanBeansShako posted:

I like how you go straight to the psuedo toga but don't mention the cavalry helmets.

Phanatic posted:

Just the tip.

Hogge Wild posted:

Elaborate.

OwlFancier posted:

"Jean if your horse gets shot out from under you, get on all fours and pretend to be one with this hat. Pierre, you get on his back."

xthetenth posted:

You know, part of the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands being largely ignored that's really interesting is how strong the Japanese reaction was to the losses at Midway. They emptied out a strike that they had prepped overnight because of a night contact by PBY, and later, after the battle began and scouting SBDs found the Zuiho, the crews on the Shokaku and Zuikaku first stopped fueling a strike, then used everyone they had including flight crews to load torpedoes more quickly and then split a strike to get a deckload off the Shokaku as quickly as possible.

It's interesting how everyone seemed to need a really nasty carrier loss to figure out just how vulnerable the things were.

Mycroft Holmes posted:

Mycroft Holmes posted:

Gnoman posted:

Fault of the greatest president in US history aka "that socialist traitor in the White House".

quote:

General-purpose or demolition bombs had thin metal walls, a large explosive charge, and a contact fuse that was triggered by a relatively light impact. Such weapons were effective against soft targets, which included unarmored ships, infantry in the open, and most civilian installations.

The Japanese D3A "Val" usually carried the Type 99 Number 25 Model 1 Ordinary general-purpose bomb, which was designed for attacks on unarmored or lightly armored ships. This bomb weighed 250kg (551 lbs) of which about 62 kg (136 lbs) was high explosive. Its fuse was initiated by impact on ordinary steel plating and had a 0.2 second delay. This allowed the bomb to penetrate 20 to 40 feet (6 to 12 meters) before detonating. However, it had a somewhat high dud rate, with perhaps 27% of those used at Pearl Harbor either failing to detonate or giving low-order detonations. Australian troops at Rabaul in January 1942 also reported a high dud rate. Its American counterparts were fused to detonate after just 0.1 seconds in order to tear up carrier flight decks. The Americans estimated that three hits with 500 lb (227 kg) GP bombs would almost certainly sink a 1630-ton destroyer and had a 70% chance of sinking a 2100-ton destroyer. Three hits with 1000 lb (454 kg) GP bombs had a 95% chance of sinking a relatively lightly protected Atlanta-class light cruiser and a 30% chance of sinking a 10,000-ton heavy cruiser. Six hits with the 1000-lb bomb gave a 80% chance of sinking a heavy cruiser.

Nine Allied cruisers were sunk by general-purpose bombs during the Second World War. A single bomb hit required an average of six to seven weeks in a shipyard to repair, and a particularly damaging hit (such as the 500kg or 1100 lb hit on British cruiser Suffolk that forced her to beach) could take up to eight months to repair.


Although general-purpose bombs could not be expected to inflict critical damage on heavily armored battleships, they could be effective for suppressing antiaircraft fire against coordinated light bomber attacks. The Americans concluded that a 250 kg bomb hit amidships on a battleship could knock out most of the antiaircraft guns, and after the Pearl Harbor attack, high priority was placed on installing shields and gun tubs around these guns to provide splinter protection. The U.S. Naval War College estimated in March 1940 that twelve fighters armed with two machine guns and two 100-lb (45 kg) bombs could knock out 30% of a ship's antiaircraft fire for a day, while six strafing fighters would reduce antiaircraft by 50% against any attack that immediately followed the fighters. This estimate was revised downwards to three fighters in June 1944 to reflect the more powerful 0.50 machine gun armament on modern fighters.

Against industrial targets, a single Type 99 bomb might be expected to destroy an area of about 4400 square feet (409 m2). To give some idea of what this meant in practice, it would have taken almost 5000 Type 99 bombs dropped in a perfect pattern to completely destroy the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. The difficulty of destroying factories with high explosives became clear during the strategic bombing campaign in Europe and helps explain the change to the use of incendiaries against Japan.

A nasty variant of the general-purpose bomb was the daisy cutter, first improvised in the Southwest Pacific. This was a 500-pound (227 kg) bomb that had sections of steel concrete reinforcing rods welded around its waist and a section of rod added to the contact fuse to detonate the bomb at waist height above ground. This threw out shrapnel that shredded everything at ground level within a hundred yards. An early 300-pound (136 kg) version of the daisy cutter, and its effects, was described by Kenney (Gamble 2010):

To cut up aircraft on the ground we had wrapped these bombs with heavy steel wire, and dropped them with instantaneous fuses on the end of a six-inch pipe extension in the nose. They looked good. The wire, which was nearly one-quarter inch in diameter, broke up into pieces from six inches to a couple of feet long, and in the demonstration it cut limbs off trees a hundred feet away which were two inches thick. The noise was quite terrifying. The pieces of wire whirling through the air whistled and sang all of the notes on the scale and wailed and screamed like a whole tribe of disconsolate banshees.




Another variant of the general-purpose bomb was the high capacity or light case bomb, which had the thinnest possible case and largest possible explosive charge. These required a light contact fuse with instantaneous detonation, since the case would buckle on hitting even the lightest surface. These were used primarily in Europe as "block buster" bombs for destroying large areas of cities.


Armor-piercing bombs had thick steel cases, a relatively small explosive charge, and a delayed fuse that did not detonate the explosive until a few tenths of a second or more after the bomb hit a substantial solid surface. This gave time for the bomb to penetrate before detonating. AP bombs were useful against armored ships, bunkers, concrete runways, and other hardened targets.

The Japanese apparently did not develop an armor-piercing bomb until 1941. The Type 99 Number 80 Mark 5, used at Pearl Harbor, was remanufactured from obsolete 16" battleship shells. Out of a total weight of 800 kg (1760 lbs), the bomb had a charge of just 23 kg (50 pounds) of Type 91 explosive. The Type 99 had two base fuzes with 0.2 second delay that were insensitive enough to require impact on armor plate for fuze initiation. One such bomb went clear through Vestal at Pearl Harbor to explode on the harbor floor under the ship. The Type 99 was judged capable of penetrating 5.75" (146mm) of deck armor when dropped from a height of 10,000 feet (3000m). Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Type 99 had a high dud rate, due to weaknesses in the bomb case introduced during the remanufacturing process and poor quality control with the explosive fill. Of those that scored hits at Pearl Harbor, 20% failed to explode and another 40% yielded only low order explosions. The Japanese never developed an armor-piercing bomb light enough to be carried by a dive bomber, probably because they did not believe it was possible to develop a lighter AP bomb capable of penetrating battleship deck armor, and possibly also because of the shortage of the high-quality steel required for such weapons.


The Americans began the war with armor-piercing bombs that closely resembled the Type 99 Number 80 Mark 5. These came in four models varying in weight from 1000 lbs (454 kg) to 600 lbs (272 kg). Like the Type 99, they were converted shells with a relatively small explosive fill (typically about 5% of the total weight) of ammonium picrate. However, in May 1942 the Americans introduced the AP Mark 1, which weighed 1600 lbs (726 kg) of which 240 lbs (109 kg) was high explosive. The Mark 1 could penetrate a 5" (13.7cm) deck from 7500' (2900m) or from 4500' (1370m) in a 300 knot 60 degree dive. This bomb was so heavy that only the TBF Avenger or SB2C Helldiver was capable of carrying it, and it was rare for a carrier to have more than 20 Mark 1 bombs in its magazine. Much more widely used was the Mark 33, introduced in October 1942, which weighed 1000 lbs (454kg) of which 150 lbs (68 kg) was high explosive. The Mark 33 could penetrate a 5" deck from 10,000' (3050m) or from 6500' (1980m) when dropped from a dive bomber in a 300 knot 60 degree dive.

The Americans estimated that seven penetrating bomb hits would be enough to sink a battleship, while the Japanese estimated that 12 to 16 penetrating hits were required. American operational analysts later revised their estimates, concluding that the Mark 33 could sink a battleship only if it hit a magazine, which worked out to a 79% chance of sinking a battleship with six penetrating hits.

Semi-armor-piercing bombs were a compromise between the penetrating ability of an armor-piercing bomb and the large explosive charge of a general purpose bomb. They were useful against lightly armored ships and reinforced concrete structures.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Oh Christ almighty.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

my dad posted:

It's the code tags, methinks.

FAUXTON posted:

That's a cool thing to bring up when talking about the "loaded dice" bits of how their carriers turned into bonfires at Midway. I mean it's accurate to say certain aspects of IJN operations meant that the Kido Butai was playing Russian Roulette, but it isn't like they didn't immediately adapt as much as they could reasonably adapt. Carrier design isn't something that could have been fixed overnight, partly because you can't just retrofit ventilation screens on a carrier at sea but partly because it wasn't like they could just iterate on design under the materials constraints.

Not sure quite where I'm going with this line of thought but it's always useful to keep things like that in mind so you don't just fall back into great man style thinking. It wasn't like WWII was a shooting gallery full of automatons who never tried to adapt to the conditions, it's largely that the Axis powers kind of blundered into a war where one of their opponents had effectively limitless raw materials and could absorb stupid amounts of sunk costs in procurement whereas a belligerent whose supplies of iron and coal are part of a hot theater just can't just afford not to try to make do with deeply flawed equipment like the Panther.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Oh Christ almighty.

lenoon posted:

Corrected with my compliments.

xthetenth posted:

I'm still unreasonably mad that German ships weren't beefcake versions of their namesakes.

FAUXTON posted:

Prinz Eugen

OwlFancier posted:

I immediately went for Bismarck personally.



Though I guess that would literally just be Old Snake from MGS4.

OwlFancier posted:

I immediately went for Bismarck personally.



Though I guess that would literally just be Old Snake from MGS4.

FAUXTON posted:

Prinz Eugen

OwlFancier posted:

You can choose between Bismarck or Friedrich.



I can't help but imagine him making this noise.