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Beardless posted:A quick glance at the relevant bit of the wiki leads me to think that this is how it went: This is mostly right, except that the 17 pounder had a 76.2mm (3in) bore. However, this brought problems - the Allies already had a 3in gun, a 76mm gun and, of course, a 17 pounder gun. To avoid confusing the logistical system - you don't want to order a crate of 76mm shells and get one that doesn't fit in your gun - the new gun was given an inaccurate name, the 77mm.
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Dec 10, 2020 16:54
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ChubbyChecker posted:Given that the Allies invaded Iceland and Persia, why didn't they bomb Sweden who was supplying Germany with critical materials? Were there any plans for it? In 1940 the British had a plan to mine the harbour at Lulea, which was the main (summer) route for Swedish iron ore going to Germany. Called Operation Paul, it would have used Fairey Swordfish aircraft flying from aircraft carriers in the North Sea to drop mines in the harbour, or in the approaches to it. The Battle for France delayed it, as the carriers were needed to respond to it; the loss of Glorious and the deployment of Ark Royal to the Mediterranean due to the Italian entry to the war put paid to the plan for good. Randomcheese3 fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 26, 2020 21:07
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FrangibleCover posted:Fuzing, rather than maintenance, but yes. However, the Argentinians can sink every frigate in the world if they're not actually hitting the landing ships. Woodward was also a submarine specialist, and so I'm a little sceptical of his ability to know how well things would have gone. Woodward spent a lot of time during the war coming up with ideas (or supporting ideas from higher HQs) that someone more experienced with carrier warfare or amphibious warfare wouldn't have. He apparently endorsed a plan to use the amphibious ship Fearless as a decoy to draw in Argentinian aircraft, which the amphibious specialists with the Task Force had to shoot down.
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Dec 31, 2020 00:08
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bewbies posted:I mean, I guess, but an amphibious operation is going to have a really tough time succeeding if its naval support has to withdraw and/or is otherwise neutralized. The difference between Midway and the Falklands is which ships got hit; Kido Butai's carriers were vital, the RN's destroyers and frigates, while painful losses, could be replaced. Japan could not replace the four carriers lost at Midway, while the RN could replace a destroyer or frigate sunk in the Falklands by drawing down forces committed elsewhere. That said, there were chances to hit amphibious ships that were much harder to replace. Three of the six ships hit by unexploded bombs during the war were landing ships; the smaller LSLs (landing ship logistic) Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot and Sir Bedivere. All three were struck while unloading at San Carlos on the 24th May 1982. The supplies they carried were hard to replace, as were their ability to move supplies forward to logistical areas on the coast as the troops moved forward. However, at least one of the ships (Sir Lancelot) had been largely unloaded when sunk, and the RN did manage to cope after Sir Galahad was sunk and Sir Tristram heavily damaged at Bluff Cove.
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Dec 31, 2020 15:21
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bewbies posted:First, a 1:1 comparison isn't really valid. The US fleet boats were mammoth submarines compared to the Type IXs. It is like comparing a cruiser to a battleship. The U-boats had most of their successes in a relatively permissive environment as well, though. The first 'Happy Time' came at a time when the Royal Navy didn't have enough escorts available (due to diversions to anti-invasion preparations, damage from Dunkirk and other concerns), and lacked many of the technological advantages they would have later in the war. As the war progressed into 1941, the RN built more escorts, but still didn't have enough long-range ships, or practice with underway replenishment, to cover convoys throughout their journeys. Many ships were lost from unescorted convoys in the mid-Atlantic. Many more came from ships sailing independently - when the minimum speed for ships to sail out of convoy was raised from 13 knots to 15 in June 1941, sinkings of independents dropped from 200,000 tons/month to 50,000. The second 'Happy Time' came after the American entry to the war; as the USN refused to operate a coastal convoy system and coastal communities weren't blacked out, ships on coastal routes were easy targets. The RN, RCN and USN did need to commit strong forces to the Atlantic to defeat the U-boats (especially since there were so many subs constructed), but they were ultimately able to beat them.
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Feb 17, 2021 23:09
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:US and British shipbuilding is more directly comparable (free labor, economies interconnected via trade). Shipbuilding cost about twice as much per ton (iirc) in the US than it did in Britain, in no small part due to higher labor costs. I'd be interested to see these submarine comparisons with more nations. How do US boats and U-boats stack up against British, Japanese, or Italian submarines? Is this a case of Germany falling behind, or the US running ahead (slash being rich af)? In August 1941, the British captured a German U-boat, the U 570 - a technical report on her can be seen here. Generally speaking, the British thought that her passive sonar system, batteries and radios were superior to the British system, though the batteries had a shorter lifespan. Her torpedo fire control systems were more complex than the British ones - the Germans could set their torpedoes to run at a wide range of courses, while British torpedoes could only be angled at 90 degrees to either side. The British preferred their system, but recognised the advantages of the German one. The German sub also had a lower profile than her British counterparts, making it easier for her to hide on the surface. However, the German boat was a lot less habitable than the British ones. The accommodation was heavily cramped and there was little food storage. To supplement what food storage there was, one of the toilets had been used as a store room, meaning that the crew had mainly been using buckets. The British subs had much more space, and had more mechanical equipment for things like moving torpedoes. The British used better quality steels in their subs, and had better quality periscope lenses.
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Feb 18, 2021 19:29
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Acebuckeye13 posted:This is some interesting analysis, so forgive me for throwing another wrench at it—when considering what Britain could have done to squeeze out more carriers for the Pacific theater, it's also worth considering the conditions that lead to this scenario in the first place. We're presuming that the UK (Plus France and the Dutch, though they don't have any carriers worth mentioning so they obviously don't count) are able to focus their entire military attention on Japan—but if that's the case, then it likely means one of three things has happened: We have some documents that discuss the RN's plans for a war with Japan, both from the 1920s and the 1930s. The earlier documents are closer to the 'no/quick European war' concept, the later ones expect Germany to be a significant threat. In both scenarios, the vast majority of the British fleet would have been sent east to Singapore. One interesting document was written in May 1939, and gives the expected deployments in event of war beginning in 1942. In this scenario, the RN would send six carriers to the Far East: Glorious, Courageous, Ark Royal, Implacable, Indomitable and Indefatigable, plus the seaplane carrier Albatross. Up to twelve battleships would also be sent. The other three Illustrious class ships would be kept in home waters, with Furious as a training carrier and Hermes in the West Indies. The locations of Eagle and Argus isn't given, but Eagle might well have remained in the Far East. It's pretty clear from this that the RN was willing to commit a serious portion of its forces to the Far East in the event of war, even if there was a German threat. But let's assume there wasn't a German threat. In this case, while there may not have been a major naval build-up, it's equally possible that there would be one. The RN kept a close eye on the Japanese building program - British subs frequently photographed Japanese harbours and naval bases, and British naval intelligence (and codebreakers) were very active. While they missed the scale of the Yamatos, they actually overestimated the scale and threat of the building program, expecting the Japanese to build eight new capital ships by 1942, rather than just two. A modern fleet of this size posed a major threat to British interests in the Far East, and the RN would have needed to be able to respond to it. The Illustrious class carriers might have looked very different in this case. As built, they were intended for operations in Europe. Their armoured flight decks were intended to protect against an overwhelming number of land-based aircraft; their small air group could be accepted as, according to the RAF's advice, 'the bomber will always get through'. For operations in the Pacific, the RN preferred unarmoured carriers like Ark Royal, which had much larger air groups. There are other factors that might speed Britain's rearmament. The RN had to buy some armour plate from Czechoslovakia to supplement domestic production in the late 1930s; with no war, this could continue into the 1940s. Several ships were delayed or cancelled to free up manpowerand resources for construction of convoy escorts, which wouldn't be necessary with no war against Germany.
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Mar 10, 2021 01:40
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Polyakov posted:What if like in a huge quantity of situations you are at war with a superior naval power for other reasons but you too are a large power, do you. A good example of this is the US's naval operations during the War of 1812. The USN was vastly outnumbered by the British, and could not fight them in a fleet action, but privateers and naval units managed to inflict significant damage on British trade, and forced the RN to divert a large fraction of its forces towards hunting them down. This was a major factor in the British decision to seek peace.
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Mar 25, 2021 15:33
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Lawman 0 posted:Did the italians have a plan to try and block the Suez canal in ww2? The Germans used aircraft, flying from Rhodes and Crete, to lay mines in the canal in 1941—2. This never fully blocked the canal, but did result in major delays for ships carrying supplies and reinforcements to 8th Army in Egypt. Some of the ships in these traffic jams would be hit by German aircraft too. The Thistlegorm, a famous dive site in the Red Sea, was one of these ships.
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Mar 28, 2021 10:05
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The British did have a kind of proto-landing craft at Gallipoli. Called the X Lighter, it was closer in size to an LCT than the LCVP. They were flat-bottomed, had a curving bow and a ramp to bridge the gap between ship and shore. They could carry troops (up to 500 men), horses, guns or supplies, with some being given tanks to carry water or fuel. Some 200 were built, with most serving at Gallipoli, where nine were lost. They also used the collier River Clyde as a proto-landing ship, filling her full of troops and ramming Cape Helles. However, she didn't have a ramp at the bow - the plan was to use a barge to bridge the gap to the shore. However, she grounded too far out, and the barge was in the wrong place to allow the troops to land. Another method of getting ashore had to be improvised, while under fire from Ottoman guns. This delay resulted in heavy casualties amongst the troops aboard, especially since River Clyde had no easy way to suppress the Ottoman positions. The first plan to use tanks in an amphibious landing came in WWI as well, as part of a plan to land on the Belgian coast during the 3rd Battle of Ypres. The plan called for troops to be landed around Ostend from three giant pontoons, pushed by monitors. Each pontoon (plus the two monitors pushing them) could carry an infantry brigade, four artillery pieces and three tanks. The pontoons were produced, and the 1st Infantry Division allocated to make the assault. However, the ground offensive bogged down around Passchendaele, meaning that the amphibious operation was delayed until the onset of bad weather in the autumn led to its cancellation.
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Apr 24, 2021 10:57
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feedmegin posted:Bloody hell. Giant seems an understatement. Yeah, they were proper ships in their own right. Here's a picture:  The idea was to be able to put the full assault force ashore in less than 20 minutes, to ensure maximum surprise. This was hard to coordinate with a large force of small boats, but with the pontoons, it was fairly straightforward.
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Apr 24, 2021 18:53
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Libluini posted:Yeah, my first reaction to that was "But what if a German U-Boat manages to torpedo it when it's loaded up real good with all the troops?" It's probably too shallow-draft for a torpedo, really - the forward end has to come right up to the beach. The monitors were highly survivable against torpedoes. They had massive anti-torpedo bulges, which could prevent torpedo hits doing serious damage. In October 1917, Terror survived three torpedo hits, more than a couple of battleships did.
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Apr 28, 2021 19:20
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MikeCrotch posted:Didn't some kind of modified cargo ship/liner get used as an assault transport at Gallipoli? Yeah, that was a collier, the River Clyde.
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Apr 29, 2021 09:17
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Libluini posted:WWI-destroyers? So the assault barges are basically dead as soon as the fighting starts. The plan was to land on beaches to the west of Ostend. These were covered by a few German batteries, with the main one being a battery of 6in guns at Raversyde. These were to be engaged by the RN's three 15in monitors, while its force of 12in monitors pushed the pontoons to the beaches. The monitors displayed fair accuracy along the Belgian coast in 1916-17, especially in combination with air spotting. The problem with Gallipoli was that the Ottomans were able to position Army field guns and howitzers in dead ground, where they couldn't be spotted from the ships. These could do little to a battleship, but effectively prevented minesweeping, which in turn made it hard for the battleships to move into position to engage the fixed forts. Against the forts at the mouths of the straits, the battleships managed to do some quite serious damage. There's no reason to think that the fixed German batteries here would have come through it any better. The landing might well have been able to achieve surprise. It was a relatively small operation, using only the ships of the Dover Patrol, and landing ~three miles from the Allied front line. The British had kept strict security around the assault troops, the lighters and the monitors, to ensure that there were no leaks. It would have been a night landing, further reducing the effectiveness of the German batteries, and a smoke screen would have been used to keep the assault force hidden from the shore until the last minute. The German corps tasked with defending the area believed that a landing was likely to come east of Ostend; the beaches to the west were backed by a tall seawall, which would make an assault much more difficult. The beaches to the east were also better positioned to threaten key bases such as Bruges. However, the British found that the Mark IV tank could, with minor modifications, climb the seawall with little issue. The land behind the beaches was mainly marshy. This would make it hard for the Allies to advance out of the beachhead, but also made it hard for the Germans to counterattack. As far as the possibility of encountering German reserves go, this was unlikely. The operation was planned to coincide with the Third Battle of Ypres, going on further inland. There were few German reserves based around Ostend, and they wouldn't be advancing along the coast to get to Ypres. At the same time, it was acknowledged that the British were taking a risk, but since the likely maximum losses were a single division and a few monitors, the risk was thought to be relatively minor; even an absolute calamity would see fewer losses than Gallipoli.
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Apr 29, 2021 18:35
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MrYenko posted:While that was certainly a factor, most of the issues that the US torpedo bombers faced at midway were due to strike coherence issues and flying obsolete aircraft, rather than technical malfunctions of the torpedos themselves. British torpedo bombers were pretty effective, despite being largely obsolete. Part of this was because the RN was the only one of the major powers to develop night strike doctrine and techniques; its a lot easier to make a torpedo approach, even in a slow aircraft, when no fighters are airborne. Part of it comes from the fact that the British torpedo attack looked very different from the American one. The Americans came in at low level, throughout. The British attack started at 5,000 feet, diving rapidly to drop at about 100 feet at a few thousand yards from the target. This meant they had both more speed when attacking, and an ability to manoeuvre during the approach. This faster approach was enabled by their torpedoes, which could be dropped at about 50 knots higher airspeed than the Mark 13, and from a higher altitude.
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Jun 5, 2021 20:46
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Dropping torpedos requires being very close to the surface, and very slow comparatively. You didn't necessarily have to be that slow, or that low, throughout the war. At the start of the war, the British Mark XII could be dropped at speeds up to 150 knots; over the course of the war, it was strengthened to be dropped at up to 270 (as was its replacement, the Mark XV). A Mark XVII that could be dropped at up to 350 knots was in development at the end of the war. Drop altitudes similarly increased - the American Mark 13 received wooden attachments that made it much more stable and resilient in the air, permitting drops from up to 2400 feet by 1945. Japanese torpedoes had very impressive performance at the start of the war - the Type 91 in service in 1941 could survive a drop from 1000 ft at a speed of 260 kts - and improved from there.
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Jun 6, 2021 00:08
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HisMajestyBOB posted:I'm looking for a good book on life in the Navy in WWII, or around that period (say, dreadnaught era through end of WWII). Something lower level: not necessarily focused on tactics or technical details, but perhaps a memoir or narrative. Preferably US, but any country's Navy is fine. Any suggestions welcome. I'll second the recommendation for Three Corvettes, and add on a recommendation for the second volume of Monsarrat's memoirs, H.M. Frigate. There's some other good memoirs out there too that cover less well-known areas of the Navy. Mike Crosley's They Gave Me a Seafire is a great memoir from a Fleet Air Arm pilot, describing, amongst other things, his time in the Mediterranean, flying spotting sorties for the D-day bombardment, and in the Far East. It's fairly detailed, engagingly written, and pretty comprehensive as to the experiences of Britain's carrier force. Stand By for Action by William Donald is a memoir from a destroyer captain, serving mainly on the convoys running up and down the East Coast of England. Its an interesting look at this often unsung, but vital, convoy war. Ashe Lincoln's Secret Naval Investigator describes the work of the RN's mine clearance teams, and their work discovering, defusing and investigating new German mines (and other weapons). It's tense and thrilling, but not really representative of the navy as a whole. For a WW1 memoir, the memoir of Alexander Grant, the gunner of HMS Lion at Jutland is fairly vital in understanding why so many British battlecruisers blew up (and why Lion didn't). Grant reveals an almost negligent safety culture around propellants; this carelessness meant that flash fires from hits could easily reach magazines. Unfortunately, it hasn't been published in full, but the relevant sections of it can be found here.
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Jun 8, 2021 00:55
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MikeCrotch posted:Jackie Fisher wanted to invade Germany via sending an invasion fleet into the Baltic Sea - funnily enough with the High Seas Fleet still being a thing the thought of sending transports through very narrow, heavily mined waters right next to several naval bases full of battleships, torpedo boats and submarines was taken Poorly. Instead, the British decided to launch the invasion of Gallipoli which went much better This was just one of the amphibious plans that were being thrown around by the RN in the first year of the war. Churchill wanted to hit the small islands of Borkum and Sylt in the Heligoland Bight, another officer wanted to go for Heligoland itself and some thought was given to a landing behind German lines on the Belgian coast. There's some speculation that Fisher had no actual intention of going through with the Baltic Plan, but instead made it utterly ridiculous so as to kill Churchill's plans. Fisher's plan was intended as a follow-on to the landings on Borkum and Sylt. The idea was to use them to draw out the High Seas Fleet to fight a battle on Britain's terms. This would then free up Britain's fleet to fight elsewhere, such as the Baltic. If everyone thinks that the landings on Borkum and Sylt are the precursor to something so ridiculous as the Baltic Plan, then that's more reason to fight them - and the Borkum/Sylt landings were far from popular in the Royal Navy, despite Churchill's support.
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Sep 10, 2021 21:09
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Drachinifel took a deep dive into the question in this video here, which I thought was pretty good: Drachinifel is too favourable to the British in my eyes - they were equally stubborn, were tactless negotiators and took a number of aggressive actions that ultimately removed any chance of a peaceful resolution. In the weeks between the armistice being signed and Mers-el-Kebir, the British had repeatedly sought to clarify what would happen to the French Navy. Every time they asked, the French response was the same - the fleet would be scuttled if the Germans or Italians made any attempt to use it. Had the British been able to accept this entirely honest response, then everything could have been avoided. However, they could not. When the British arrived at Oran, they turned up in force. This was immediately alienating to Gensoul, as it was an implicit threat. The first action of the British was to broadcast a message to the French force by signal lamp. The signal, sent in poorly-written French, gave away any chance of keeping the negotiations private. The main British negotiator was Captain Holland of Ark Royal . While Holland had been a naval attaché in France and had good personal relationships with senior French officers, he was a relatively junior officer with no scope to make policy decisions. He was also carrying an unsigned note from Somerville. Put together, all of these implied to Gensoul that the British were not serious about the negotiations, that they were only talking as a prelude to the use of force. Had Force H stayed further out to see, with Somerville and Holland going in together to negotiate, Gensoul would have been much more receptive to the British approaches. Gensoul's messages to the French Navy's HQ in France were not especially significant in the outcome. He sent two messages. The first, sent shortly after Holland's arrival, was a simple statement of the facts as he saw them - that the British had arrived and were willing to use force if his fleet did not join them. While this message was inaccurate, it indicates how he felt about the British actions thus far. Their show of force and dismissive attempts at negotiation did not seem to be the actions of people who really wanted to reach a compromise. A later message, transmitted after several rounds of talks, raised the possibility of a negotiated solution. It described the possibility that had seemed most promising thus far, with the French force being disarmed at Mers-el-Kebir. Both messages were received by Admiral Darlan, commander of the French Navy as a whole, at the same time. Darlan's response was a simple message permitting Gensoul to respond in kind to any British use of force. He then left the Navy headquarters for a cabinet meeting in Vichy, a two hour drive away. By doing so, he washed his hands of the whole affair. Any decision, any compromise, that was made would be Gensoul's own. Meanwhile in the British camp, Somerville was under considerable pressure. The Admiralty and Cabinet wanted a swift resolution to the situation, while Holland (and probably Somerville himself) wanted to attempt to find a compromise, even with a lengthy negotiation. At about one o'clock, Somerville received intelligence that suggested that the French might be trying to leave the port. He ordered Force H to make ready to bombard, and for aircraft from Ark Royal to lay mines in the harbour entrance. Shortly after giving these ordrrs, he sent Holland back in for another round of negotiations and recalled the capital ships of Force H - but it was too late to stop the minelaying aircraft. While further negotiations were made, the mines made it even harder for Gensoul to trust the British. Even so, he was still trying to find a peaceful way out, especially since he now realised the British were truly serious about using forcd. Towards the end of the day, he showed Holland his orders, which permitted him to move the fleet to the Caribbean if seizure by the Axis (or British) seemed likely. Holland recognised this as being close to British demands and earnest negotiations to find a compromise began. By this time, it was too late. Somerville bent to pressure from above and began preparations for the bombardment. Had Gensoul been treated with tact and dignity from the start, things might well have gone better. Elsewhere, like with Godfroy at Alexandria or with the submarine Rubis in Dundee, a polite, honest approach, combined with a willingness to modify Admiralty demands, paid dividends. Had Somerville been willing to wait for an hour more at the end of the day, it might have been possible to find a way to get the French force to the Caribbean.
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Oct 23, 2021 09:02
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Foxtrot_13 posted:Gensoul had already been treated with kid gloves right from the start. Sending over Holland made sense for Somerville, yes, but using him as an intermediary can hardly be called 'treating Gensoul with kid gloves'. Thanks to his rank, Holland could not make significant decisions on his own, could not offer concessions or change British policy. The successful negotiations that took place at the same time had British officers of the same rank as (or senior to) their French counterparts leading the negotiation. Holland then made the poor decision to transmit a message about the sensitive, personal negotiations to the fleet as a whole, in poorly written French. This was hardly a move which would endear himself to Gensoul. Combine this with the fact that Force H was sitting there as a direct threat, it's not hard to see why Gensoul took his selection as an insult. Gensoul omitting details from his first message to France is also understandable when we consider his perspective. The British had arrived, mob-handed, with a strong force sitting in a threatening posture. They had sent in a relatively junior officer with what amounted to an ultimatum. As such, he sent a message which reflected his read of British intentions. When it became clear that the British were somewhat serious about negotiations, he sent a clarification, which reached his superiors at the same time as his original message. Foxtrot_13 posted:What we had was Somerville who had to make sure that the Kriegsmarine didn't get an extra four battleships and six destroyers and on the other side Gensoul who was an arrogant man who was not honest to his superiors. The French fleet at Mers-El-Kabir already had more battleships in it than the Royal Navy had in the Med and if they were added to the strength of the Italian Navy would have made it impossible for the Royal Navy to contest the Mediterranean against the Axis. It is not an exageration to say the entire course of the war would have gone differently if those ships had become Axis ships. The Force du Raid at Oran had two old battleships and the two large cruisers of the Dunkerque class. Britain had five battleships in the Mediterranean Fleet, plus two more and Hood in Force H in the Western Mediterranean. They also had the aircraft carrier Ark Royal , to which the French had no equivalent. Foxtrot_13 posted:
Force X at Alexandria had one battleship, yes, but also had four modern cruisers and several destroyers. It was not something that could be inherently easily defeated, especially by a Mediterranean Fleet that was lower on cruisers than was felt necessary. Even serious damage to Force H would not have wiped out the RN's heavy strength in the Med, because Mediterranean Fleet would still be there with its five battleships. All this is moot, though, because the majority of the Vichy French fleet had no real interest in fighting for either side. They perceived themselves as being loyal to France, and had no interest in participating in a larger war that France had been knocked out of. Fighting for Britain, or taking actions that the Germans might perceive as being too pro-British, also brought the possibility of reprisals from the Germans. They were willing to take actions up to and including scuttling their ships to prevent either side seizing them. French commanders had repeatedly assured the British of this - but equally, it is understandable why the British did not trust these. The armistice the French had signed was somewhat ambiguous about Axis plans for the French Navy, and the British could not be sure that the French would hold to their plans if pushed by the Axis.
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Oct 23, 2021 15:42
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bewbies posted:this specifically is what I'm wondering about. if he had these orders, why wasn't he moving out on them days or hours before? the British had specifically given the option of interning their ships in a neutral port. Gensoul was under orders to only do this when it looked like his ships were under imminent threat of seizure. This was also primarily aimed against Germany and Italy, who were seen as more likely and able to do so. As to the second part, there were three main reasons why. The more prosaic was that the Germans had declared that any Frenchman who joined the British to fight on would be declared a franc-tireur and therefore liable to severe reprisals. Secondly, a number of figures in the leadership of the French Navy were very right wing and were at least sympathetic to the Germans. Finally, there were questions of French national integrity at play; many in the French Navy were more loyal to France than to continuing to fight a war they felt they had lost. The French Navy was not, as they saw it, a tool to be used by the British or Axis, but part of the French nation, even in defeat. Fangz posted:You're omitting the points of Gensoul raising steam and calling for reinforcements, which signalled to the British that he was preparing for a breakout. You also miss the point that the French commanders subsequently scuttled their fleet despite being instructed by their Vichy superiors (having been betrayed by the Germans) to defect to the British to join the Free French under Darlan and DeGaulle. Gensoul had not called for reinforcements; they had been dispatched by the French High Command without his knowledge. Raising steam was more under his control. The British first got inklings that Gensoul might have been raising steam at about 13:00, and began preparing to bombard and mine the harbour, but also sent Holland back in to negotiate. They called off the bombardment when Holland's negotiations started to bear fruit, but could not cancel the mine laying. This escalation set negotiations back but they continued. There was no clear risk that Gensoul would have been able to escape or fight had negotiations continued for another hour, especially with the harbour channel mined. As far as the scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon goes, this was partly down to the threat of reprisals, and partly because the French fleet had been largely drained of fuel, and had limited time to refuel and get steam up before German forces could arrive. It had no real ability to fight off an air attack and reaching Allied forces meant steaming for hours through waters over which the Axis had relative air superiority. It's not unreasonable that the Vichy commander asked for a direct order to do so, especially since the request came not from his Vichy superiors, but from Darlan who was with the Free French at the time.
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Oct 23, 2021 17:06
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Acebuckeye13 posted:You're really underrating the French fleet here. Dunkerque and Strasbourg were undergunned compared to other treaty-era battleships, but they were still absolutely battleships, or at the very least battlecruisers, and should be considered as such. And while Bretagne and Provence were older ships, they were contemporaneous with the British vessels, if somewhat less capable—Bretagne, Provence, Resolution, and Valiant all having been commissioned in 1916. Dunkerque and Strasbourg, by role, were intended to fight cruisers in defence of trade, rather than to fight in the battleline; this is why I consider them 'large cruisers', rather than battleships or battlecruisers. In terms of armament or armour, they were outclassed by any British battleship. While they were faster than the older British battleships, Hood had them beaten in almost any category. The Bretagne-class had been commissioned starting in 1916, but they belonged to an earlier generation of dreadnoughts than the British 'R' or Queen Elizabeth classes -13.5in guns against 15in guns being the main seperator. The Bretagnes were, in terms of armament, armour and machinery, more similar to the British King George V class, all of which had been scrapped or rendered useless for war by 1939, as they were horrifically obsolete by this time. The British ships had also received more extensive refits, especially to things like fire control. In 1940, Valiant outclassed Bretagne in every single way, outranging her by ~10,000 yards, having a superior AA battery, a better armour scheme, and a higher top speed. Acebuckeye13 posted:The British did have the battleship advantage over the French, with the 3 ships in Force H and 4 ships in the Mediterranean Fleet (Malaya, Ramillies, Royal Sovereign and Warspite, all of First World War vintage), but the concern was that if the Axis took the ships, they would have an overwhelming advantage in firepower when combined with the Italian fleet of six battleships, which included the two brand-new Littorio-class ships Vittorio Veneto and Littorio. The Italian Navy was no pushover, and them gaining control of the French fleet (Or even part of the fleet) would have made it extremely difficult for the British to contest the Med, if not entirely impossible. You're right; Mediterranean Fleet had four not five battleships - that was me miscounting. There were also concerns that the French might join up with the Italians. However, there was also no evidence that they would do so, and not inconsiderable evidence that they would not, but only if you trusted the French to do what they said. Fangz posted:In the end saying "they didn't do X because of the threat of German reprisals" is just another way of saying "they didn't do X because they were cowards". You can argue that it's emotionally understandable but it doesn't become "reasonable", and once you've established that these guys were cowards, why exactly should the British trust them to stand up to future German demands under further threat of reprisals? If they are scared of bad guys doing bad things, then they shouldn't be in positions of power in the armed forces. On the one hand, yes, a failure to join the Free French forces is, fundamentally, an act of moral cowardice. However, given the scale of German reprisals, it is also an understandable one that I do not judge people for making. German reprisals were not solely targeted against those who defected, but also against their families and communities. Many who served with the Free French Army did so under noms de guerre, such as General Leclerc, to avoid putting their families at risk. This was harder to do if you were an admiral taking your fleet over to the British. Large numbers of people defecting were also harder to hide and harder for the Germans to overlook. I personally feel it is fair to ask a soldier to risk their life, or to ask an officer to risk the lives of those under their command, but I do not feel it is fair to ask them to risk the lives of innocent civilians. This was a tendency noted at the time. On the 23rd June 1940, the British Naval Liason Officer at Bizerta reported that "Officers who often themselves have lost all, would like to continue with British, but do not appear prepared to demand sacrifice from their men of loss of families, upon whom reprisals are indicated", while the Commander in Chief at Portsmouth stated that morale aboard French ships at the port was deteriorating due to the possibility of reprisals against the families of their crews. Ice Fist posted:You're deliberately downplaying the threat the French squadron at Mers posed to the British fleet in the Mediterranean. If they're cruisers - then what the hell were the Japanese doing going and sinking all those cruisers at Pearl Harbor? As noted above, the thing that made the Dunkerques large cruisers in my eyes was their intended role - trade defence - rather than any technical feature such as armour or armament. Fighting battleships was an entirely secondary role, with French naval doctrine considering them only suitable for combat against the older Italian dreadnoughts, rather than any more modern battleship. This role meant that they had compromised on armour and armament. Compared to the British battleships, they had weaker guns and armour, and Hood could outrun them. Fangz posted:I'm talking about the request made by Auphan, the Vichy Secretary of the Navy on the 15th of November. The fleet at Toulon was not drained of fuel either, the crews had specifically stockpiled enough to make it to Allied held North Africa. In the event of the scuttling, a few ships ignored the order and defected anyway, they reached the allies successfully. Having checked things rather than relying on solely memory, the decision not to sail for North Africa was made by Admiral de Laborde, established as commander of the French Fleet well after Mers-el-Kebir. Laborde was notably sympathetic to the Germans, and apparently wished to maintain good relations with them, in addition to the other factors I described. None of the major ships at Toulon sailed for North Africa. The only ships that did with any success were the submarines. with four reaching North Africa and a fifth being scuttled in the entry-way to Toulon harbour following damage from German bombing raids. Fangz posted:The excuse of the "threat of reprisals" does not wash because the Free French army was already fighting for the Allies for years at this point, and the rank and file of the French navy was plenty willing to consider defection. And like, why would scuttling not incur reprisals while defection would? You can't argue that they had not enough time either, they had two weeks from time instructions from their Vichy superiors came. The most likely conclusion given their inaction was that the intent of the French admirals was to side with the Axis as per the Raeder plan, but Hitler hosed things up. Note that Laborde had already previously advocated that the Vichy fleet sail out and attack the Allies during Operation Torch. At least in 1940, the rank-and-file of the French Navy was largely less willing to join the Allies than their officers were. The Free French Army had fought for the Allies for several years by 1942, but this largely recruited in French Africa where the Germans could not reach - where there were Europeans serving, these often either served under psuedonyms like General Leclerc or had no family ties in France like the Spanish Republicans of La Nueve. Defection was far more likely to draw reprisals than a scuttling was because of the legal language of the Armistice of Compiegnes. This allowed reprisals against Frenchmen who joined the British, but also gave the French control over their fleet. While French officers had no reason to trust the Germans to stick to this, it was at least something they could point to in their defence. Fangz posted:These guys were convicted for treason for doing the scuttling after the war, BTW. I think trying to portray their actions as heroic and loyal to France really requires a *lot* of mental gymnastics. I don't disagree with this, I'm just trying to explain how they saw themselves. Fangz posted:There absolutely was a clear risk, the air dropped mines did not close off the harbour completely - some ships (incl the battleship Strasbourg) escaped after all, if there was a longer delay even more ships would have escaped. The French was also shooting at the mining planes and downed one, killing the aircrew. Gensoul's first ship did not start to get underway until a little under 45 minutes after the last meeting between Gensoul and Holland ended. This was, not coincidentally, five minutes after the British opened fire; Strasbourg started steaming to avoid the British shelling. Somerville, meanwhile, could not act on the results of the last meeting between Holland and Gensoul, due to pressure to sink the French from the Admiralty. He received the results of this meeting literally one minute before his final ultimatum was due to end. None of the minelaying aircraft were lost, but two of the aircraft that attacked Strasbourg after she left Oran were shot down by her AA fire and a Blackburn Skua crashed due to fuel exhaustion or through AA damage, per Ark Royal's report on the action and David Hobbs' book on the Fleet Air Arm in the Mediterranean. In all cases, their crews were rescued. Uncle Enzo posted:At least one poster has said one of the British missteps was relating a message in poor written French. The problem wasn't so much about how it was written, it was more about how it was relayed. The message, which described the British negotiating position, had been sent not to the French commander, but had been sent out indiscriminately to the fleet as a whole. This implied that the British didn't trust the commander, Gensoul, which was not a good start to negotiations. It being in awful French was merely the cherry on top of a combination of things that implied that the British were not taking things as seriously as one might have wanted. Randomcheese3 fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 01:34
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait so first Gensoul was offended by the bad French, I wanna see this letter. I read French, lay it on me. David Brown, in his Road to Oran, quotes the message as: quote:La Marine Royale espère que les propositions vont vous permettre, la I should reiterate that the major problem that Gensoul had with it was that it was not a private communication to him, but a general message broadcast to the whole fleet, making public what he expected to be relatively private negotiations. It being in poor French merely exacerbated the problems, implying that the British were also not taking those negotiations seriously. Acebuckeye13 posted:Eeeehhhhhh, while I understand your reasoning, I think it's still a mistake to refer to them merely as "Large Cruisers." While each individual British battleship was certainly more capable, they were still very powerful warships with battleship-grade weapons and armor. Nothing less than a battleship is going to stand up to 13" guns, and nothing less than a battleship would have been sufficient to defeat or deter them on the open seas. There's certainly a reason the British considered it so important that they be neutralized or sunk. I generally use the term 'large cruisers' to refer to ships like the Dunkerques, Deutschlands and Alaskas. All these classes had heavy enough armament and thick enough armour to kill any treaty cruiser out there, but not quite on the same level as battleships. They were built primarily for the commerce war, protecting or attacking merchant shipping, rather than for battlefleet action as battleships and battlecruisers were. They were still powerful ships, it's just useful to have a term that distinguishes them by role. feedmegin posted:Tell me exactly what do you think the doctrinal role of a battleCRUISER is? (It's not to fight in the line of battle even if they were misused that way) Battlecruisers were built primarily to provide heavy support to a fleet's scouting cruisers; when a battlefleet action was joined, they would be attached to the battleline to provide it with a fast wing to outflank the enemy line, screen the fleet's withdrawal or chase a fleeing enemy. They were never expected to form the primary part of the battleline, and were never used that way - at Jutland, the vast majority of the damage done to the British and German battlecruisers was done by other battlecruisers. The German battlecruisers did take damage from the Grand Fleet, but this only came when Scheer deployed them to screen his second withdrawal. This role was one they had inherited from the first-class armoured cruisers that preceded them - a British 1901 exercise report, for example, stated that 'The opinion on the use of armoured Cruisers is practically unanimous, that with their speed and protection they should be utilised for attacking the van and rear of the enemy from the very commencement of the engagement'. The design document that led to the Invincibles stated clearly that the main missions of the new 'armoured cruiser' was to scout for the fleet, chase off enemy scouts and to chase and harass a fleeing fleet. She should also be able to, if needs be, sit in the line of battle. FrangibleCover posted:If Holland wasn't acceptable, who did Somerville have with him who outranked Holland and wasn't him himself? Like, this is the captain of Ark Royal, in less than a year he's going to be given Hood and PoW. He's not just some random. Somerville had Vice Admiral Wells with him; Wells was Vice Admiral Commanding Aircraft Carriers, Force H, and might have been more acceptable to Gensoul. At the same time, Holland was an emminently sensible decision from his point of view, given Holland's rank, history and so on. He could not necessarily predict how Gensoul would react.
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Oct 24, 2021 12:14
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feedmegin posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser 'The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships' Yes, they were able to catch and outgun smaller or older cruisers and outrun battleships - but they were primarily expected to do so in support of the fleet in a heavy scouting role. David Beatty described the role well in March 1914: David Beatty posted:It is now accepted that there are two principal duties for the battle cruisers to perform, viz:- This was a continuation of the earlier role that had been fulfilled by the armoured cruiser that I described earlier. feedmegin posted:Of course, the one time there was a real 'line of battle' was Jutland, pretty much, but in WW2 they were (mis)used to fight enemy battleships. That wasn't their intended role, though, their intended role was exactly that of the Dunkerque class. They could fulfil that role with good effect (at great risk), however, and so could have the Dunkerques. There were three engagements between 'traditional' battlecruisers and battleships during the war. The first was the Battle of Cape Spartivento, where Renown came up to support the British cruiser screen against Italian cruisers. When engaged by two Italian battleships, she turned away and withdrew. The second was Denmark Strait. Hood certainly did not come off well from this, but it should be remembered that she had equivalent armour to any British battleship of comparable age - the RN's main conclusion from the battle was that older capital ships of any type could not effectively engage modern battleships. Finally, there was Second Guadalcanal, where Kirishima was engaged at close range by Washington. It's hard to argue that any warship would survive such punishment. South Dakota did come off comparatively well at the same battle, but she was mostly hit by 6-8in guns or 14in HE, rather than 16in AP. If we bring in the 1930s battlecruisers/large cruisers, then there are a couple more engagements. Off Norway in April 1940, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau fought a brief action against Renown, fleeing from the British battlecruiser. During raiding voyages in the Atlantic, the two ships avoided contact with British battleships on two separate occasions. Finally, Scharnhorst would be ambushed and sunk by Duke of York while trying to attack an Arctic convoy. We can see a difference with how these ships are used. The WW1-era battlecruisers operated mainly with the fleet and were often put into situations where they had to fight battleships. The later 1930s-built ships were mainly used for commerce warfare, and avoided contact with other capital ships where possible, even in situations that were arguably winnable. Part of this does come down to doctrinal differences between the British, Japanese and German navies - but German battleships like Bismarck did have freedom to engage other capital ships on raiding voyages where Scharnhorst and Gneisenau did not. This difference in use is why I draw a line between the two groups of ships. The Dunkerques, designed to hunt 8in Treaty cruisers and the German pocket battleships in defence of trade, fall more into the second group in my eyes. feedmegin posted:I'm sorry, but downgrading these ships to just 'cruisers' to reduce their apparent threat is at odds with, like, everybody on earth and has me wondering here if you are literally the reincarnation of Pierre Laval or something. I'm not trying to downplay their power in any sense, just more accurately describe their role. I feel that classifications based on role rather than technical factors give a more useful picture of how people thought about the ships and avoids ambiguity. For a couple of examples, the Queen Elizabeth class are typically called battleships, but in 1914, Jellicoe wrote a letter arguing that they should be reclassified as battlecruisers and deployed with Beatty's force. Since they were not, it's fair to call them battleships. Hood, meanwhile, had equivalent armour thickness to the QEs and the same armament. There's an argument to be made that she was a fast battleship, but since she was almost always deployed as a battlecruiser, I would not make it. The large cruisers were generally very powerful ships in any case, with the exception of the Deutschlands. Their speed and firepower meant that they could easily destroy any of the Treaty cruisers of the 20s and 30s, and let them hold their own against smaller or older battleships, like the Italian Cavour or French Bretagne class, if needed. Against the larger battleships and battlecruisers with 14-16in guns, though, they were in danger.
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Oct 24, 2021 14:37
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Fangz posted:You'd think the seriousness of the British proposal would come from the presence of a battle fleet around his ships, not "oh no they made a few typos" That shows they're serious about taking action against your fleet, not about negotiating. Sending a message to your entire command giving the details of the private negotiations you're about to have also implies a lack of seriousness about the negotiations, especially when they haven't even bothered to check the grammar. Sending a junior officer as an intermediary suggests they're not serious about negotiations. When you look at things from Gensoul's perspective, it's not hard to see why he might have initially felt that the British were not interested in finding a compromise. Jobbo_Fett posted:What's the overall difference between the Scharnhorst as a (Fast) Battleship and the Dunkerque as a (Fast) Battleship? The two ships were built for very different roles. The Dunkerques were built for two main things. Their main role was protecting merchant shipping against German and Italian cruisers, especially the German Deutschland-class 'pocket battleships'. As a secondary role, they could supplement the French battleline in the Mediterranean against the Italians, countering the old Cavour and Andrea Doria classes. The Scharnhorsts were primarily raiders, built to be able to attack shipping in the North Atlantic and counter the Dunkerques. The Scharnhorsts were thus faster, better-armoured and longer-ranged than the Dunkerques, while the Dunkerques had a heavier armament.
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Oct 24, 2021 15:00
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feedmegin posted:No capital letters I don't use capital letters for ship designations, because they're not proper nouns. I've been consistent in using 'large cruiser' throughout. Fangz posted:Note also that this is in the same sentence as "old battleships", and a contrasting description of the british fleet that implied Hood is a battleship. The two French battleships at Oran were based on older doctrines than the British ships, which were fully adapted to the dreadnought era. Their armour scheme was designed under the assumption that the battle range would be ~6000 metres, with relatively thin vertical protection along the full length of the ship to protect against medium-calibre guns firing HE. Deck protection was minimal. Upgrades did increase the maximum range of their armament from ~18,000 to ~24,000 metres, but did little to solve their armour problems. The British ships were at least a year younger, had been designed to fit a more modern doctrine, and had thicker armour and heavier guns. They had received more extensive upgrades in the 1920s and 30s, though the 'R's were far from modern standards. Ice Fist posted:Nah. You've staked out a position in this thread where not only were the British wrong to attack Mers el Kebir, but they never really had a reason to do so in in the first place. After all, it was just a couple of antiques and a couple of cruisers. My main point is not that the British were wrong to attack Mers-el-Kebir, but that the end result was the result of mistakes made by both the British and French; to simplify things down to French stubbornness ignores the fact that British choices often encouraged that stubbornness. The large cruisers were not a definite threat to the British battleships in the Mediterranean, but did represent significant threats to British interests. Neeutralising them at Mers-el-Kebir, either through diplomacy or firepower, was far superior to having them raiding convoys in the Atlantic or having to tie down even more battleships to protect convoys. Fangz posted:The fact they haven't started shooting yet means they are serious about negotiating. Or are they just giving you time to contemplate their ultimatum? Fangz posted:And yes, the British were not interested in finding a "compromise". The options on offer are the options on offer. When a guy has a gun pointed at you saying "ur money or ur life", it is bizarrely stupid to quibble about their accent and say "well clearly you aren't willing to have a proper discussion so I'm going to just sit here and wait for the police" The British, at least on the spot, were open to a compromise. Holland and Somerville had inserted the possiblity of disarmament in place of their own accord -it was not part of the instructions they had received from London. They delayed well past the time specified for the attack in their instructions, in the hope of reaching a peaceful compromise. They had no real desire to sink the French force, and would have greatly preferred to see it fighting alongside them or disarmed in port. However, they were also well aware that they could not delay too long. The message offended Gensoul not primarily because it was grammatically incorrect - the message wasn't even aimed at him. It was aimed at the fleet as a whole, including those ashore. It implied that the British did not trust him to keep his fleet informed of his decisions, and that they did not trust him to make the right decisions. It being in incorrect French just made it even more tactless. The messages for Gensoul's eyes only were delivered in more correct French by Holland in person. Randomcheese3 fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 19:47
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Like, the clear implication there is not 'these are basically battleships', it's 'these are cruisers'.
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Tomn posted:Say, something in bewbie's battleship thread got me curious. So at Jutland, one of the things that people recognized was that the Royal Navy had an inflexible institutional culture that acted against individual initiative, arguably to its cost when multiple captains just watched the High Seas Fleet sail by at night due to a lack of orders. So after the war, and possibly after the battle even, what did the Royal Navy do about it? What changes were made, and how much of an effect did those changes have on the conduct of the Royal Navy in WW2? A shift towards a more flexible command structure began after Beatty took over the Grand Fleet in 1917. He almost immediately implemented a new signal, used to tell his junior officers that he was no longer able to effectively command the fleet due to loss of communications or situational awareness and that they should follow their own initiative in supporting the flagship's squadron. In 1918, a new set of orders for the fleet was published, replacing the 200 page Grand Fleet Battle Orders; the new Grand Fleet Battle Instructions were just two pages long (though accompanied by a longer set of Grand Fleet Manoeuvring Orders, which described how squadrons were to be handled). These orders gave a basic set of guidelines for how the fleet was to be handled in action, but unlike the GFBOs, were not prescriptive. After the war, a crop of new institutions were set up to help rebuild the navy in a more flexible form. The Naval Staff College and War College, both set up in Greenwich in 1919, served to develop and teach tactics and strategy at a higher level. The Tactical School, set up in Portsmouth in 1924, helped to develop lower-level tactics and to teach new officers their places in the naval system. These were accompanied by frequent exercises at sea, with annual exercises pitting the Mediterranean and Atlantic fleets against each other. These schools and exercises emphasised individual initiative heavily. Officers who failed to show the necessary initiative were heavily criticized in exercise reports The main document of RN interwar doctrine were the 1922 Atlantic Fleet Battle Instructions, revised in 1925 and 1927 and eventually sent around the fleet. These featured the use of aircraft carriers to find and disrupt the enemy, while the British battlecruiser squadron swept aside their screen before the battlefleet closed for the decisive action. These orders had a large amount of space for individual initiative - there was no requirement to wait for orders to open fire, with blanket permission given to fire without orders, for example. Moving into the 1930s, night action became a much bigger factor, as a way to compensate for a perceived technical inferiority as British refits lagged behind American and Japanese ones. The fleet also began to move away from the single line-of-battle towards 'divisional' tactics, where individual elements of the fleet manoeuvred and operated independently. Both of these required a lot of initiative from lower-level commanders, and by then the institutional culture encouraged it thoroughly. In WWII, officers were able to effectively apply these lessons; Bismarck's final battle, for example, saw four RN elements operating independently with minimal orders from Admiral Tovey, roughly in alignment with the fleet doctrine laid down in 1939.
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Feb 5, 2022 01:59
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Carillon posted:A small question, but where was the petrol/diesel used in Normandy and the invasion of France refined? Did Britain have enough capability to handle the process on the island itself? Was it shipped refined overseas and then just sent forward? The UK had a few small refineries, but nothing major. Most of the fuel it used was refined abroad - prewar, this usually came from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's refinery at Abadan, but during the war, it switched to Caribbean sources as this was more efficient in terms of shipping. Fuel was usually shipped into the main ports on Britain's west coast, where it entered the GPSS pipeline and storage network. This linked the ports, protected storage sites, airfields, and depots where it could be transported by road, rail or ship to where it was needed. For the liberation of France, most of the fuel was shipped across the Channel in coastal tankers.
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Feb 10, 2022 14:16
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HisMajestyBOB posted:I'm reading through Castles of Steel and really enjoying it. Is there anything similar in style that covers the WWII U boat war / battle of the Atlantic? I see Massie doesn't have anything, but maybe another author. Marc Milner's The Battle of the Atlantic is my go-to here - a wide-ranging, reasonably detailed history of the Battle from the Allied perspective. On the other side, the two volumes of Clay Blair's Hitler's U-Boat War are a good start on things from the German perspective - they're fairly comprehensive, but can be drier than Castles of Steel. Biffmotron posted:No one really had a handle on anti-submarine warfare, with the British forgetting lessons from WW1, the Americans refusing to learn from British experiences in the first years of the war, and Japan never getting it together. This isn't quite right for the British; they went into WWII using pretty much the same ASW playbook as they had at the end of WWI. The problem was that they had failed to see how the Germans might adapt their tactics from those they used in WWI, and update their tactics - for example, to cope with night surface attacks on convoys from massed submarines. They also failed to predict that the Germans would capture ports on France's west coast, extending the reach of their subs out into the mid-Atlantic. This meant their initial escort-building program lacked long-range escorts, but was also a not unreasonable failure of prediction.
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Feb 10, 2022 22:29
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Xiahou Dun posted:I don’t want to play monday morning shipwright, so can someone explain to me how this isn’t an obviously terrible idea that shouldn’t have even been written down? Cause “let’s put the fuel of the giant expensive warship on the outside, even better let’s make the tanks structurally necessary” sounds about as good as “not only am I going to use a badger as a loofah, but I’m going to give it rabies first”. The British went to the complete other extreme here, with the avgas tanks isolated from the hull structure in spaces that could be flooded with seawater. During WWI, they'd lost the seaplane carrier Ben-my-Chree to a petrol fire in her hangar (started by Ottoman artillery, making her the only carrier sunk by shore artillery), and so were very aware of the risks. By taking these precautions, no British-built carrier would be lost to petrol explosions or fires - though the American built CVE Dasher would be blown up likely by someone smoking around a leaky avgas pump. However it also meant that they sacrificed fuel capacity. Ark Royal carried 120,000 gallons of fuel, the smaller Yorktown s a little over 185,000.
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Feb 11, 2022 19:51
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Foxtrot_13 posted:British carriers also had much better armoured than American and Japanese carriers with the central flight deck and hanger being much better protected. This did sacrifice room in the hanger so the mechanics had less room to work in and the amount of planes they could store was less. The armoured flight decks were helpful, but not that significant - it was probably more important that the steel decks were fireproof, rather than armoured, when it came to kamikaze hits, though the armour certainly helped. When it came to bomb hits, they did little. During Operation Excess in January 1941, Illustrious took four bomb hits to her flight deck, all of which penetrated the deck and started a fire in the hangar, which was fairly full of aircraft and munitions. She coped with these hits much more successfully than other carriers struck by dive-bombers (for an extreme example, Akagi burnt out at Midway after a single bomb hit). This was because the British carriers were designed to resist fire much more thoroughly than those of other navies. The hangars were airlocked away from the rest of the ship, so fires couldn't spread outside the hangar. The fuel systems were better protected, so they couldn't contribute to fires. There were more fireproof subdivisions in the hangar deck, and more redundancy in the sprinkler systems. That said, provision for active damage control was relatively poor compared to the USN at the start of the war; until 1942, there was no centralised damage control school, with training for it being the preserve of individual captains. This meant that it was inconsistently applied and often lacked expert advice, with a number of key tactics like counterflooding being often overlooked. Ships also lacked spare generators and pumps early in the war, though this situation did improve.
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Feb 12, 2022 00:25
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Tomn posted:In that case, how are modern USN carriers designed, and are there places that carrier crew hate to go? Modern carriers are uniformly closed-hangar designs, as it's much harder to CBRN-proof an open hangar. Tomn posted:Edit: The RN typically carried few reserve aircraft aboard its carriers. Instead, replacements would come from specialist aircraft repair ships based in rear areas. The USN and IJN carried a lot more reserve aircraft, mostly broken down to their component parts. This difference is part of the reason why British carriers carried fewer aircraft than American or Japanese ones; the British carried slightly fewer operational aircraft, but a lot fewer crated reserves. Fleet Air Arm squadrons had more pilots than they had aircraft, allowing for pilots to be rested and rotated (or to replace losses). As a pilot, you might have a preferred aircraft, but there was no guarantee that you'd be using it throughout.
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Feb 13, 2022 00:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:edit: I mean, it's worth noting that the Germans verifiably made the first anti-ship PGM kill. They used a radio-guided armor piercing glide bomb to wreck some warships in the Med in 1943. They had deployed a proto-ASM (the radio-guided, rocket propelled HS.293) against Royal Navy anti-submarine patrols in the Bay of Biscay slightly before this, with HMS Egret having the dubious honour of being the first ship sunk by it. This came about a few weeks before the Fritz X guide bomb sank Roma in the Mediterranean. The Allies also deployed effective countermeasures against these weapons fairly quickly - by Anzio, they had systems that could jam the radio links used for guidance. The British consumer AC system also happened to be at the right frequency that leakage from unshielded circuits could jam the control signal. This meant that a stopgap countermeasure was for everyone aboard a ship targeted by one who had an electric razor to switch it on and point it at the bomb. I don't know if this was anything more than a placebo to reassure crews facing the new weapons, though there are some entertaining sea stories about it.
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Mar 17, 2022 10:12
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Polyakov posted:Is that an issue with the lexingtons or with battlecruisers as a concept? Yes Hood blowing up was monumental bad luck but her armour couldnt protect against battleship caliber shells at any range really. They attempted to refit Hood with more armour but weren't able to overcome that weakness, there were 3 or arguably 5 battlecruisers of ww2 at all, depending on whether we count scharnhorst and gneisenau. The only reason the RN maintained its 3 is because they were already completed. The G3 class was designated a battlecruiser but was really a fast battleship just that concept hadn't really been mainstreamed yet. Hood had fairly decent armour for the time she was built. In terms of thickness, her armour layout was comparable to the Queen Elizabeth class, but including the effect of the armour sloping and the backing plate behind her belt, her armour was thicker than on any previous class of British battleship. The problem was that these armour layouts worked well for a fairly close range engagement. At longer ranges, there was a greatly increased risk of hits striking and penetrating her thinner upper belts or deck armour - but in theory shells striking these areas were likely to explode before they were able to reach vital areas. However, there were also issues with her internal layout. At the time she was designed, it was felt that lyddite-filled shells were much more dangerous than cordite propellant, so the magazines were placed over the shell rooms. As it happened, the opposite was true and so this decision had exposed the magazines to much more damage. Her cancelled sister ships would have corrected this. The RN's response to her loss is illuminating as to how they saw her weaknesses. There was something of a panic because if she was so catastrophically vulnerable, so was any older British battleship. This was a major problem, as these ships were the only ones that could be detached to escort convoys against heavy surface raiders like Tirpitz. The 'R' class battleships were seen as useless against them, while the Queen Elizabeths could only engage in good tactical circumstances at relatively close ranges. Repulse and Renown, meanwhile, could engage ships like Tirpitz if bow or stern on to the target to maximise the effect of their protection.
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Mar 24, 2022 14:36
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MikeCrotch posted:I'm not an expert on interwar French economics so can't really give an answer about of any of that stuff, but a really important thing to note about the Maginot Line is that: it worked. Germany did not invade through it. Now of course it can be said that it was short sighted to not anticipate an invasion through Belgium but at the end of the day the Germans had to look at that option because they didn't want to force the forts. The French absolutely anticipated a German invasion through Belgium - the whole rationale of the Maginot Line was to force the Germans to invade through Belgium, so the new war could be fought there rather than on French soil. Once the Germans invaded Belgium, the mobile parts of the French Army and the BEF moved into Belgium, to establish a defensive line along the Dyle river. The problem with this plan was that the main force of the German invasion was coming through the less well-defended gap between these mobile forces and the Maginot Line in the Ardennes. This area was seen as an unlikely target for the Germans because it had few roads on which supplies could flow forward (and indeed, the German logistical tail ended up in a massive traffic jam) and good defensive terrain.
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Jul 20, 2022 09:36
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Tias posted:I wonder, in general wrt this case, who the hell thought it was a good idea to out-sue old German people. I mean, it worked for the British with cordite. In the 1880s Alfred Nobel (of prize fame) invents a new propellant called ballistite, which consists of a mixture of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. He sends samples to Britain for military trials. A few weeks later, some scientists in a British military lab come up with cordite, a mixture of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. Nobel sues, but loses, because the British used a slightly different formulation of nitrocellulose and a different solvent, so according to the British court, hadn't infringed his patent.
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Sep 8, 2022 14:02
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Arrath posted:Makes sense. An enemy surface group might get sunk, or slip away into a squall or the like. A beach stays where it is, doesn't sink, and infantry love air support. And, also, judging by the experience of British carriers in the Mediterranean, you've got a big fleet sitting stationary off a whole bunch of enemy air bases, so your CAP gets a workout too.
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Jul 25, 2023 14:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:Four to six months is a REALLY optimistic assessment of the USSR's ability to launch an invasion. The Soviet Navy in 1945 really, really didn't have that kind of troop lift capability. It's entirely realistic that the US would supply shipping for an amphibious invasion of Hokkaido, because they were pretty much already doing it. Under the codename Project Hula, the USN was sending the Soviets a whole bunch of shipping; mostly frigates and ASW escorts, but also a good number of landing craft. These were mainly aimed at operations on Sakhalin and in the Kuriles, but it's not far-fetched that they'd step up the project if they needed to.
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Aug 14, 2023 16:47
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:i googled a bit but it's hard to find a definitive answer. pre-dread naval warfare q: i understand that sighting rounds during the attempt to find a straddle/bracket, esp over visual sights before directors, was difficult, doubly so when multiple ships were firing at the same target. i read something about some ships using dye packets in their guns to ensure they knew whos shots were whos. anyone know when that practice started? and any other info people can share about how to sight in gun ranges in the pre-dread/very early dread era (thinking 1890 to tsushima). primitive fire control methods ae very interesting to me The first workable rangefinder was suggested in 1855. This was the 'stadimeter', which used the known height of a mast on the target to measure the range; the inverse could be done using a mast of known height on the firing ship, and measuring the depth of the target below the horizon. Neither of these methods were particularly effective. In the 1880s, a numberr of telescopic rangefinders were suggested. Most of these were two-man designs, with two operators widely separated along the length of the ship. By measuring the different angles to the target seen by the two operators, the range could be calculated - but this relied on close communication between the two operators, which wasn't always practical. In the 1890s, effective rangefinders started to become available. In 1888, the British company of Barr & Stroud introduced the coincidence rangefinder, which won British trials in 1892. This had a single tube, with mirrors and lenses at either end, producing a split image. Half the target was seen through one end of the tube, the other half from the other. By lining up the two halves of the image, the range could be derived. The German Zeiss company, meanwhile, introduced a stereoscopic rangefinder in 1893. This was similar to the coincidence rangefinder in external design, but produced a single apparently 3-D image. By moving a marker through the image until it appeared at the same place as the target, the range could be read off. However, this wouldn't see naval service until after Tsushima. Both designs were widely used until well into the 20th Century. The big problem in the 1890s-1900s was transmitting the range to the guns quickly enough. The British had developed electrical systems for this, which they had sold to the Japanese, but they hadn't been fitted to every Japanese ship. Instead, they might have to rely on passing it by voice; better than nothing, but slow and prone to mistakes. The Russians had a centralised director system, which they had been developing since 1872 - but lacked effective rangefinders, using mostly stadimetric ones. There were three other big pre-Tsushima developments in naval gunnery, at least from the RN's perspective. In 1898, Captain Percy Scott of HMS Scylla developed a new technique for, in effect, stabilising guns. Before this, the guns were kept at the appropriate elevation, and fired as the target crossed the sights, or at a constant point in the ship's roll - at the top or bottom of it. Under Scott's new system, called 'continuous aim', the guns were elevated and depressed to keep the guns constantly on target. This effectively cancelled out the effect of roll, making gunnery much more accurate and allowing gunfire to be effective at longer ranges. However, it was only practical with smaller guns, below 9.2in, until the development of powerful and responsive hydraulic machinery for elevating heavy guns in the 1910s. The next development was an early mechanical fire control calculator, invented by Lieutenant John Dumaresq in 1902. Dumaresq designed a simplified mechanical version of an engagement between two ships. Two bars represented the firing ship and the target, with the target bar being pointed along the target's course. Pins on the bars could be moved to represent the ship's speeds. Then, a dial could be turned to put a third bar along the line of sight between the two ships. This pointed to the appropriate deflection and the rate of change of the range to the target (range rate). The calculator, soon named after Dumaresq, was only one part of an effective fire control system. It needed to convert the range rate to a range. This was done using the Vickers clock, a clock which could be set to rotate at the appropriate rate, and would then point to the correct range. This was developed in 1904, trialled in 1905 and entered service in 1906. Dye packs, meanwhile, were more of an interwar concept. The USN produced them from 1928, and used them in 1930. Most other navies copied this in the following years. The French did so in 1936, with a variant that could also colour hits. The British could copy the French design after the start of WWII, while the Japanese introduced dye packs in 1941.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:48
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feedmegin posted:Advantage of being British allies as opposed to having still kinda frosty relations (something something the Great Game). Russia using its homegrown rangefinders as opposed British bang up to date stuff (as well as their ships being a bit slower) is why they ended up being the last country to run up the white flag at sea; Japan could dictate range and fire from outside of Russia's. (Russia's shells having crap fuses didn't help either which is why the earlier battle was so lopsided; Japan had realised after the problems they had during the Battle of the Yellow Sea they needed to put theirs on a hair trigger,, to the extent of a premature detonation in one case. Russia's were supposed to penetrate and explode inside the target, but they didn't do that last bit very well). There were a bunch of problems with Russian fire control at Tsushima, but rangefinders weren't the big one. Their home-grown systems were fairly effective, and they'd hurriedly procured up-to-date Barr & Stroud systems for the 2nd Pacific Fleet before it set off for its date with destiny. They'd tried to implement a fairly sophisticated centralised system for fire control, with gunnery being controlled from a central fire control station in the spotting tops. However, these were unarmoured and easily destroyed, leading to a breakdown in the system. Fire control calculations were done not by mechanical systems, but by hand or by consulting tables. This was far too slow, and resulted in a large number of errors, both in range and deflection. Doctrine had ships firing single shots to find the range, then transitioning to rapid fire. With battleships firing only single, poorly controlled shots at slow rates of fire, this was unsurprisingly ineffective - Retvizan never stopped firing ranging shots.
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Nov 1, 2023 14:56
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