Naval History Forums

For the record, I don't think invading Italy was a mistake; just the amount of effort put into breaking the Gustav line and beyond.

Wow; I don't think I'd heard of that before this, Aurora.

There are people who think the campaign up the Italian peninsula was a terrible waste of lives and material, considering the nature of the terrain and it's questionable strategic value. A lot of it is hindsight, of course.

It could be argued that all landing operations in the Med were unnecessary after Alamein, but they did give valuable experience, as you mentioned. Fighting up the boot of Italy was probably a bad idea, as was landing in the south of France. Oops ... posted simultaneously with Aurora. I can't argue a...

aurora wrote:Is that a Command and Control Centre Steve?? My thanks for the excellent story by Capt.Ben W Blee USN one time Intel. Officer in USS North Carolina BB

Combat Information Center; one of the first attempts at what we have on modern naval vessels.

But surely Steve, skippers of DD's (and Subs) would have on board-the details of any ship's displacement and how much of the hull was under water; to assist them with setting a torpedo's depth of run-I agree there was bound to be guesswork at first; but their results would dictate the success or fa...

My father-in-law served on a CVE as a radio operator and lower tail gunnery on a TBM. He wasn't at Samar, though.

I might add that North Carolina had an actual CIC. It was added at some point late in the war, and it was a large room added behind the bridge which contained about 15 to 20 men and numerous radar repeaters.

From Capt Ben W. Blee, USN(ret) "Battleship North Carolina" on kamikaze attacks (He was at that time the ship's intelligence officer): "I cannot deny the fear that gripped me and others in the CIC during a kamikaze attack. We could see nothing, so all we knew was what we could hear. F...

There was still the problem with them running too deep, but once it was realized (which took all too long) that could be solved by simply setting torpedoes much shallower than normally indicated . Of course, that could also result in large ships being hit much higher on their hull than was optimal....

Quote alecsandros NO, Pedestal was NOT a victory in any way. Their aims were to strengthen Malta , so as to become again a powerful base of operations in the Eastern Mediterannean. As it was, the supplies that got through barely ensured survival for several more months. Coupled with the atrocious l...

There was still the problem with them running too deep, but once it was realized (which took all too long) that could be solved by simply setting torpedoes much shallower than normally indicated. Of course, that could also result in large ships being hit much higher on their hull than was optimal.

US aircraft used Mark 13 torpedoes, and they were also used by USN MTBs. US submarines used Mark 14 torpedoes. US destroyers used Mark 15 torpedoes. ALL had serious defects. Mark 13 torpedoes were simply unreliable. In one test, only about 1/3 of them ran normally. I believe that pretty much all air...

I believe that was the first time in the entire campaign where US destroyer torpedoes worked, and that they set the depth to 5 feet, the minimum setting. They had finally learned that they ran much deeper than what they were set for.

neil hilton wrote:Yamato was sunk by 12" airborne torpedoes and shinano was sunk by 21" submarine torpedoes, massive difference!!!

Yamato was sunk by 22.4" Mark 13 torpedoes with warheads containing about 600 lb HBX.