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FrangibleCover posted:I was going for the 1937 laying down of Shokaku but fair enough :P Fair enough! I wasn't aware that Kaga sat that one out, so I'll retract that particular point. Also, from last page, but regarding the Piper Cub: Cessna posted:A quick check of Google gives a Piper Cub (used militarily for observation duties) as 33 kts. You could go up on a windy day and fly backwards. So a few of you will already know this, but the Piper Cub was used in World War II as an artillery spotter, labeled as the L-4 Grasshopper. It was decently well-suited to the role, being a light aircraft that could easily operate from forward bases and hang around the battlefield for long periods of time. American artillery being what it was, many German soldiers didn't bother shooting at them, since the last thing they wanted was to reveal their position and get a shitton of artillery knocked into them. Well, until this guy came along.  Yes, that's a rack of bazookas mounted on that Cub. Lieutenant Colonel Charles "Bazooka Charlie" Carpenter was a Cub pilot who, inspired by others who did the same, decided that he wanted to attack the Germans personally instead of just calling artillery on them. So, he mounted up to six bazookas on the wings, wired them to the cockpit, and whenever he saw a German tank or AFV would dive down to strafe it. Story goes that he had to get within 300 yards of the target before he could fire, and within 100 (!) if he was carrying any passengers—the Cub being a very slow aircraft that was absolutely not designed for this. By the end of the war he was credited with six tank kills, which is pretty good for a loving Piper Cub.
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Feb 25, 2019 20:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:and another DD cut in half by a merchantman that hit it while being escorted. I don’t know how that last one counts as enemy action but apparently it does.
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Feb 25, 2019 20:59
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Besides the Hunt for the Bismark, what other notable Atlantic naval battles happened in the Atlantic?
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Feb 25, 2019 21:00
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Tythas posted:Besides the Hunt for the Bismark, what other notable Atlantic naval battles happened in the Atlantic? There were some giant convoy vs Uboat battles.
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Feb 25, 2019 21:04
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Dunkirk evacuation and Normandy invasion weren't battles, but were pretty major operations. Norway might be the biggest surface fight outside of the Bismarck pursuit - Germany lost 1 heavy cruiser (Blucher), 2 light cruisers, and 10 destroyers, while the UK lost 1 aircraft carrier (Glorious), 2 cruisers, and 7 destroyers.
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Feb 25, 2019 21:16
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FMguru posted:Dunkirk evacuation and Normandy invasion weren't battles, but were pretty major operations. Lost Scharnhorst as well.
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Feb 25, 2019 21:40
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FMguru posted:Dunkirk evacuation and Normandy invasion weren't battles, but were pretty major operations. I'm not sure that's 'a fight' so much as a campaign, though.
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Feb 25, 2019 22:14
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FMguru posted:Dunkirk evacuation and Normandy invasion weren't battles, but were pretty major operations. sounds like the germans gave almost as much as they got
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Feb 25, 2019 22:21
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Yeah but their losses were basically irreplaceable. It also made Sea Lion even more of a pipe dream. After Norway there is just zero way the KM could even begin to pretend to think about protecting a landing.
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Feb 25, 2019 22:23
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Tythas posted:sounds like the germans gave almost as much as they got Norway was weird. Blucher was lost to an ancient Norwegian coastal fortress because the Germans tried to use it as a Troop Transport and sailed it up the Oslofjord. Effingham ran aground because some pencil marks on the navigation map obscured a shoal, and had to be scuttled. Glorious was sunk in a blunderous way where two German battleships caught it sailing with only 2 destroyers for escort (On the way to a court-martial), without Combat Air Patrol, while the captain neglected to order evasive maneuvers. The two destroyers bravely charged the German battleships and were sunk in the process. The Germans also suffered bad damage to 3 capital ships, Lutzow, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau, that took them out of commission for 6 months- a year. The end result was that the Kriegsmarine was basically kaput for the rest of 1940, and that made Sealion completely impossible.
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Feb 25, 2019 22:37
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Norway was weird. Blucher was lost to an ancient Norwegian coastal fortress because the Germans tried to use it as a Troop Transport and sailed it up the Oslofjord. This is fun. A 100-year old fort armed with a few 50-year old guns and a torpedo launcher armed with 1909 Whitehead torpedoes. The fort was commanded by an old Colonel at the end of his dead career and was manned mostly by cadets and trainees. The torpedo battery's commander was out on sick leave so they brought in a pensioner who'd served there back in '09 to take temporary command. It's pitch dark before sunrise and they see blacked-out warships sailing into the fjord towards Oslo. Norway is officially neutral so their rules of engagement say they need to fire a warning shot, but the Colonel figures a friendly ship would have lights on and he's the one they'll court martial if he's wrong. He also figures his trainee gun crews aren't going to have time to reload the ancient cannons before return fire hits them, so he orders them to just fire one shot each and run. Both score direct hits on Blucher; the second shell strikes the floatplane hangar and detonates its ordnance, starting a big fire and cutting off power to the crusier's main turrets. Two 1909 torpedoes are aimed by sight and fired by hand, in the dark, and both hit. Blucher drifts past, out of the arc of the fort's weapons, and drops anchor to attempt damage control. Then the fires reach her magazines and she rolls over and sinks, probably taking 1000 Germans with her. The rest of the little German invasion force turns back to put their troops ashore farther away. This doesn't save Norway, of course, but those were elite troops assigned to capture the king and parliament, all of which were instead able to escape. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ79i11JSnU
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Feb 25, 2019 23:01
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FuturePastNow posted:This is fun. A 100-year old fort armed with a few 50-year old guns and a torpedo launcher armed with 1909 Whitehead torpedoes.
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Feb 25, 2019 23:04
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I meant more like why was combat in India more likely to get that close? I'd been under the impression that the various Indian kingdoms had militaries that were comparable to European ones, although maybe a decade or two out of date. Not sure where I got that impression, though. Sorry, this is a really late reply. Partly it's about what feedmegin said, but this actually applies across most of British warfare in India, not just the skirmishing or the set piece conflicts. One, it's just that swords and bladed weapons were really prevalent in India at the time. You can imagine why a guy with an old school matchlock would want a tulwar and buckler as a backup, but even dudes issued European style muskets would often still carry their swords instead of bothering with bayonets. It seems that, unlike the British, many Indian soldiers (whether working for the Brits or not) didn't trust the bayonet to kill effectively or didn't feel as comfortable using it for hand to hand combat, preferring instead their own local weapons (like some kind of tulwar, or a kukri if you're a Gurkha, etc.). Maybe they found it awkwardly weighted to use in combat compared to a standard spear or sword? Anyways, British soldiers and officers wrote all the time about how they saw way more fighting up close than they did in European conflicts like the Napoleonic Wars. So I think that it's a combination of all the factors mentioned above. 1) Many Indian soldiers have swords and seem to be more okay with fighting up close than contemporary westerners, so they were more willing to stand there and mix it up blade to blade, 2) British troops are often fighting through jungles and other difficult terrain, where it's easier for attacking local forces to close in and nullify a potential British advantage in firepower, 3) lots of little skirmishes and stuff all the time with local warriors and groups that don't have tons of guns to begin with. If you're getting charged by an Afghan warrior with a sword and shield, you better get your saber out and be prepared to use it, because it's probably unwise to trust that your 1840s pistol is going to put that dude down immediately (or will even fire reliably to begin with). 4) India loves light cav, so your own cav is going to be put to the test by a bunch of these dudes all the time during any campaign.
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Feb 26, 2019 00:13
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Volcott posted:Gunners are stored in the ball turret.
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Feb 26, 2019 00:20
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I've a question: How dumb was Britain in trying to hold on to all its far east colonial possessions in WW2? Hindsight and history tells us very, and a part of my brain wants to write it off as reflexive, unthinking imperialism. Did the Brits think the Japanese attacking was going to go down like the boxer rebellion? Did they believe racist theories and just assumed one solid formation of riflemen could defend Hong Kong on its own, for months as long as the enemy ate more rice than potatoes? Clearly mistakes were made, starting with assuming that the two most modern battleships were going to be find without air cover, and continuing with some sort of hazy assumption that the Americans were down to help defend British colonial possessions. Getting Canada, Australia, and I'm presuming NZ to send forces to help fortify, yeah, that didn't work and got poo poo-tons of possible reinforcements captured, nice job It's like the British (and the Americans too in the Philippines) were picturing something entirely different than what ended up happening. I think I've mentioned this before, but in Life Magazine the buildup to Pearl Harbor focuses on MACARTHUR, THE SUPER GENERAL and the Philippines, talking about how crucially important the Philippines is and how if it falls, a war with Japan will last at least a decade And then, it falls
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Feb 26, 2019 01:39
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mllaneza posted:I'll go with this one, our ASW response right after our entry into the war was abysmal and got a lot of people killed. This. The war declaration caught America by surprise - but the U-boat fleet moved to the American east coast, and the cities were not blacked out, and there was no convoys. So they were sinking everything. This affected Guadalcanal. The reason why the USN had to pick between carriers and battleships in the operation is that so many tankers had been sunk in so short a time that it created a severe fuel bottleneck.
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Feb 26, 2019 01:45
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I disagree that it was a foolish move at all. To maintain any sort of credibility you need to fight to defend your empire. The French for instance pretty much just surrendered Indochina and that was a really huge knock to their credibility there among the local populace and contributed in a pretty major way to the loss of governing authority or legitimacy that the French had, whereas Britain would hold Hong Kong until the 90's, Malaya into the 60's and so on, whereas the French gave back their concessions in China shortly after the end of the war. Yes there are a lot of factors there and Indochina was not Malaya and so on but you have a far better claim to governance if you fought to keep and then retook the land, and that is such an intuitive concept that i sincerely doubt it didnt pass through the minds of the British. The British had to defend SIngapore and Malaya, it wasnt really an option for them not to do so. Had they held them the Japanese would never have made it to Burma and near to India, Singapore is The Port in the region. They rather tragically misestimated how the Japanese would attack, serious preparations were made to defend the city but they were pointed largely in the wrong way. Not to mention giving up colonial posessions without a fight when the British nation at the time drew a sense of pride and identity from their empire would have been a pretty disasterous morale hit.
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Feb 26, 2019 01:54
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I don't know about the British, but for the Dutch, the East Indies were a part of the country and so they fought when it was attacked.
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Feb 26, 2019 01:55
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Also Singapore really shouldn’t have fallen as easily as it did. Mistakes were made. Hell that basically sums up the entire first 2 and a half years of the war for the Allies. “Also ______ really shouldn’t have fallen as easily as it did. Mistakes were made.” Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Feb 26, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 02:15
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've a question: How dumb was Britain in trying to hold on to all its far east colonial possessions in WW2? The important thing is that the strength of the IJA and IJN was a massive shock to the Western Powers at the start of the Pacific War. Anyone that's spent much time in these threads will have seen the analyses of just how boned Japan was in terms of production capability - those analyses are not simply an ex post facto thing by armchair generals. Similar studies were done before the war, and came to a similar conclusion. There was a strong racist element to the notion as well, which assumed that the "half-blind slant-eyes" would never be able to build something that could match the Anglo-American race, but there was still solid grounds to expect that Japan simply did not have the strengthen to take those possessions as long as they were stoutly defended. Remember that, before the Pacific War, Japan's martial feats involved beating up a backwards nation's fifth rate navy (Tukishima), and waging a drawn out campaign against what might well have been the most dysfunctional nation on the planet (China). The notion that this didn't qualify them as a threat to the First and Second most powerful navies on the planet isn't that outlandish. Had the Philippines not fallen (which is probably the more likely result barring the American incompetence that was shown in actual history), the Allies would have had a dominant position in the region that Japan probably would not have been able to crack. That position is a large reason why they attacked the US in the first place.
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Feb 26, 2019 02:22
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The big mistake the British made in Singapore was that the Army assumed that the Japanese wouldn't be able to successfully get troops through the jungle, so their focus was on a naval attack. When the Japanese did get down the peninsula, most of the British defenses weren't useful. There was also the assumption that Force Z could protect the Malayan coast, not taking into account Japanese planes or that planes could be successful in sinking battleships not in harbor. The Hong Kong thing was just a mess. The British knew they couldn't defend it against a Japanese attack, but they assumed that their relationship with Japan was strong enough that they didn't expect a Japanese attack. Near the end of 1941, they did send more troops to Hong Kong, figuring that, first, it would calm down Chang Kai-Shek, and second, that, seeing that the British were expanding its garrison, the Japanese wouldn't consider it weak enough for an opportunistic attack.
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Feb 26, 2019 02:36
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Also Singapore really shouldn’t have fallen as easily as it did. Mistakes were made. It really does. Some of the stuff during the Battle of France, wow.
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Feb 26, 2019 02:57
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Polyakov posted:I disagree that it was a foolish move at all. Fair point. Given this and other responses, it sounds like a hill of 50% underestimation and 50% Political imperative. Still, I have to ask if maybe there wasn't some middle ground: hold the important strong points while withdrawing back to more easily defended areas (like India and Australia) so once the enemy strikes you can plan your counter. Too much black gay hitler? I know that had the brits suspected how thing were going to go down they would have done something about it; I'm just wondering if they had any moves aside from "defend everywhere and try to muddle through." Gnoman posted:The important thing is that the strength of the IJA and IJN was a massive shock to the Western Powers at the start of the Pacific War. Anyone that's spent much time in these threads will have seen the analyses of just how boned Japan was in terms of production capability - those analyses are not simply an ex post facto thing by armchair generals. A fair point that I forget sometimes. People more or less assuming rationality are going to be caught off-guard by a daring but not especially rational move.
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Feb 26, 2019 03:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah but their losses were basically irreplaceable. It also made Sea Lion even more of a pipe dream. After Norway there is just zero way the KM could even begin to pretend to think about protecting a landing. Ask the Japanese to send their entire navy to the Atlantic 
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Feb 26, 2019 03:22
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fartknocker posted:IIRC they never really got SAMs. I think there were some attempts to acquire them, but I don’t think they ever worked out, or at least led to them having any quantity of them if any at all. In the US the FBI caught a couple of IRA members in stings trying to buy various SAMs. It was pretty clearly something they wanted. In terms of heavier weapons, they did manage to get some M-60s and M1919s that wandered off of a US Army base. Along with a 100 M-16s. One of the M-60s was used to kill a SAS officer. Which I can only imagine caused some extremely awkward conversations.
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Feb 26, 2019 03:28
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Feb 26, 2019 03:32
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FMguru posted:Dunkirk evacuation and Normandy invasion weren't battles, but were pretty major operations. The British destroyer HMS Glowworm ran into the Hipper at short range. The Glowworm didn't manage any torpedo hits due to fancy maneuvering on the part of the cruiser, but the Glowworm did manage to ram. Her captain was awarded the Victoria Cross based on the German captain's testimony. This is not normal for WW2 naval combat: 
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Feb 26, 2019 04:00
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What were the battles between Guelphs and Ghibellines like in N. Italy? I know there were some full scale battles and a lot of street fighting, but I don’t get a good sense of what tactics, weaponry, etc were
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Feb 26, 2019 04:08
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Nebakenezzer posted:Fair point. Given this and other responses, it sounds like a hill of 50% underestimation and 50% Political imperative. Still, I have to ask if maybe there wasn't some middle ground: hold the important strong points while withdrawing back to more easily defended areas (like India and Australia) so once the enemy strikes you can plan your counter. That was the plan, except the plan was to hold at Singapore. Which absolutely should have been possible, they just hosed up really badly. A big part of the probably was that they weren't willing to spend money on it in the 30's, but another big part was just terrible execution. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Feb 26, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 04:24
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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This might be a bit too recent but how's the state of BVR in modern aerial combat? I know that back when the tech was first rolling out and BVR was boasted as the future of combat, the ability for them to identify planes in the air was a major reason why it didn't really get used (much?).
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Feb 26, 2019 04:44
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Glowworm is an excellent ship name
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Feb 26, 2019 04:51
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Another WWII Atlantic battle was River Plate. Three British Cruisers (Ajax, Achilles, Exeter) vs. the Graf Spee near Uruguay in December 1939. Dinged up the Exeter pretty badly, but the Graf Spee ended up scuttled. e: to add wikipedia posted:The Exeter was hit by a total of seven 283 mm shells that killed 61 of her crew and wounded another 23. After all of Exeter's guns had been put out of action but she was still seaworthy, Bell planned to collide with the enemy, saying "I'm going to ram the --------. It will be the end of us but it will sink him too".[18] 
FMguru fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Feb 26, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 05:05
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Jack2142 posted:Ask the Japanese to send their entire navy to the Atlantic I had a long argument with a guy who thought the Japanese could have destroyed the Soviet Union by sailing through the arctic with the carriers and linking up with the Germans. FMguru posted:Another WWII Atlantic battle was River Plate. Three British Cruisers (Ajax, Achilles, Exeter) vs. the Graf Spee near Uruguay in December 1939. Dinged up the Exeter pretty badly, but the Graf Spee ended up scuttled. River Plate is one of those atypical, but somehow typical naval battles where one ship that is supposed to be qualitatively superior to its opponents ends up crippled and worthless in the face of a psychotically determined enemy and a little bad luck. Even if Graf Spee escaped, the Germans ended up using their entire ammunition stock in the fight and would need to make a risky trip home, or a risky rendesvouz with a supply ship. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Feb 26, 2019 |
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Feb 26, 2019 05:33
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early modern venice had a word for "your crew"
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Feb 26, 2019 05:53
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HEY GUNS posted:early modern venice had a word for "your crew" thought this was the jojo thread for a second
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Feb 26, 2019 06:31
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FastestGunAlive posted:Glowworm is an excellent ship name Campbeltown is another
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Feb 26, 2019 07:44
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The best ship name is objectively Cockchafer
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Feb 26, 2019 07:55
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N00ba the Hutt posted:Oh man you ain't seen nothing yet. Behold the multi-decker designs of early experiments with carriers. Can someone please tell me what is happening in this photo, and if it is meant to be?
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Feb 26, 2019 10:34
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SeanBeansShako posted:It really does. Some of the stuff during the Battle of France, wow. The fall of France was a fluke and a combination of some excellent luck for the Germans and bad luck for the Allies. I don't think you can really fault them for anything other than not committing to the Saar Offensive, and the British not sending over more of their air force.
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Feb 26, 2019 10:40
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FuturePastNow posted:It's pitch dark before sunrise and they see blacked-out warships sailing into the fjord towards Oslo. Norway is officially neutral so their rules of engagement say they need to fire a warning shot, but the Colonel figures a friendly ship would have lights on and he's the one they'll court martial if he's wrong. Birger Eriksen included in his justification that he figured that Oslofjord Fortress, to the south of Oscarborg, would already have fired the warning shots, so he wasn't required to do so again. Though honestly given how Eriksen recounts the tale, it's pretty clear that this is an excuse: he acted on his own initiative and knew he going to be court martialed if he made a mistake. Particularly relevant here is that there was a chance whichever ship was coming up the fjord was British, and firing on a ship from a nation Norway was planning to ally in case of war would have been rather unfortunate. FuturePastNow posted:He also figures his trainee gun crews aren't going to have time to reload the ancient cannons before return fire hits them, so he orders them to just fire one shot each and run. Eriksen had enough trained crew at the ready to fully man one gun, supplemented by the light garrison and the cooking staff. He split the trained crew and the rest of the men between the guns, allowing them both to fire but sacrificing the ability to reload. There was also a third gun, which was loaded and ready to fire, and as far as I know the plan was for the crews to move to the third gun and fire it too, but before they could do that Blücher was already a burning wreck. The battle ended frightfully fast: the clip you linked from The King's Choice is nearly in real time. FuturePastNow posted:Two 1909 torpedoes are aimed by sight and fired by hand, in the dark, and both hit. The torpedoes were manned by Commander Andras Andersen, who had become a pensioner in 1927. He'd been recalled to service a month before the battle. The commander of the German landing force, Erwin Engelbrecht, incidentally managed to escape Norwegian captivity after a few hours along with several other officers (all under light guard because the Norwegian troops are trying to rescue Germans from drowning), commandeer a civilian truck at gunpoint, and end up in Hotel Continental in Oslo a mere two hours after the German forces were scheduled to invade the city. Without troops to command they couldn't accomplish much, though.
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Feb 26, 2019 10:45
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