Naval History Forums

...those 21 planes were actually separated into two waves, attacking an hour apart... By contrast, the Japanese had six carriers launching 355 planes, in two waves only slightly separated. This is not correct. The Japanese first wave launched at ~6:00am local and attacked at ~7:55am. The Japanese s...

Hammy, I am in the process of reading Narvik by Dickens. I just can´t think of the containers surviving a battle like that one. Shells, AA cannon straffing, fire aboard, splinters of near shells. I am serious about the fact that whenever naval battles would be back, many things will change. The Mal...

Asymmetric technologies can lead to some odd conclusions. For example, 12 WWII destroyers, under reasonably good circumstances, could sink the Bismarck. A Burke - even with missiles - could not (though it would make a mess of the upper works). However, a Burke with missiles would mop the floor with ...

I feel that, if I found myself in a med-long range gunfight, it would be prudent to fire the torpedoes just to get several hundred pounds of HE off of my weather decks . If launched on a hypothetical intercept course to the enemy, so much the better, but it's not worth closing the range if my guns a...

NO Tomahawk missiles, NO Harpoon SSMS; JUST Guns and Torpedos HMS Hood's Pros & Cons are: CONS * Deck vitals protected by 0.75 to 3 inch ( 19-76 mm) armor :sad: This is not a con if a modern 5" round cannot penetrate it. Modern warships are not well-armored, so there is little need for tru...

I recall seeing 5" projectiles ricochetting off the water. They were fired by a Mk42 5"54 mounted on a Belknap -class CG. Elevation was close to horizontal. The first splash was several k-yards out, and second splash appeared near the horizon (I was standing on the first deck, <20 off the ...

Really? How many ships have you served on? Do tell.

alecsandros wrote:What happened on board Washington that they erred so badly in observing 5" hits ?

It's almost as though they were distracted from calmly and carefully counting, evaluating and tabulating each flash that occured. Maybe something was going on at the time...

My Ideal warship: ... Not bad. The things that leap-out at me are: 1.) No area air defense. B.) No long-range anti-ship or strike capability III.) No over-the-horizon or long-range targetting. Of course, all three of these may be taken care of by escort ships. This is not a bad thing, however for m...

40%?! Looxury! :wink: Over here it's tough to get half of the voting-age public out for a presidential election. Mid-terms get maybe half that, and local elections may bring out 10%. That's how we wind-up with these crea-tards getting medieval on our schools' science books. I'll say this for fundame...

Did anyone else notice that he postulated if South Dakota had been alone, but not if Washington had been alone? Of course, if the latter, then the historical outcome would not have changed (other than BB-56 having a couple dozen more dings). And he complains about "historic manipulation".....

Yes. As I mentioned in a previous post, the radar/FC (as was hit on Scharnhorst), the fuel manifold in the bow (ditto on Bismarck) are outside the main armor. Also, a near miss could have damaged a prop shaft, affecting speed & handling, along with possible flooding around the bearings.

Correct! A lucky hit with a .50 cal could reduce Tirpitz's vaunted fire control to scrap. I do not disagree that the early-war fire control on the shore batteries would have made a hit at night improbable. However, if the proverbial lucky hit were achieved, there were enough critical facilities in u...

You just made the same contradiction. I will ask again: If the 12"ers are useless, why does Tirpitz need to stay at long range?

I would be surprized if those shore batteries had any better luck hitting TP than the Vichy shore batteries had hitting BB59 at Casablanca. Since the Germans don't need to be "surgical" in a such a raid (assuming they would ever attempt it) they are going to do it at night and from max ra...