I’ve seen and worked with a lot of people who where great at saying they would do x,w,z in a given critical situation. That they would do better, that they were braver/cleverer/superioralecsandros wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 5:32 pmIt is not about working better, it's about doing the correct thing according to tactical situation and orders. As it was, Leach was simply extremely lucky that day, firstly by not being killed on the spot by a shell that killed 9 other officers on the bridge, and secondly because the enemy had to reduce speed to 22, later to 16kts (later to 12kts) in order to effectuate emergency repairs, offering invaluable time for PoW to re-approach, and for Victorious to close to attack range.
With the information available to Leach at 6:00 ( enemy undamaged , steaming at 28kts South, while Prince of WAles was damaged and steaming at 27kts East), the enemy was simply left to roam the central Atlantic - as with the parameters then existing (Tovey at 400nm East , steaming at 27kts), there was simply no interception possible .
Leach gave ample explanation in his report to Tovey, quoting firstly "teething troubles" on his main artillery, but we now know that , during the second action, Prince of WAles was outputting at the same efficiency as Prinz Eugen was. There were no teething troubles to be blamed, or not blamed too harshly: the geometry and water poruing into turret A caused substantial problems.
The dead have no reply. We don’t really know what was going through Leach’s mind on 24/5/19 and due to his death 7 months later we have very little to go on. His son saw him briefly in Singapore prior to his death of Kuantan where apparently they talked about the progress of the war and the threat of Japan. Whether Henry Leach had and kept correspondence from his father ? Who knows. I would expect that the censor would have had to be busy if he had written down the level of detail wanted on here.
All ships had problems with their guns.A couple of years ago I read on here that there was nothing wrong with the guns of POW. We know seem to have moved along to an acknowledgement that this was, but this was a known problem with the KGV class ( though I’ll never understand why the RN could build a perfectly good twin mounting but not a triple or quad. I believe that it took 10 years to iron out The Nelson class issues to a point where they were considered reliable). We have seen official DNC documents stating the issues being dismissed in favour of a report written by the manufacturer. One is apparently “valid” the other apparently not. Why is this is the case? What is the motive behind it? The truth ? Who’s truth? Pro British or Pro German. The proposed thesis IMHO is certainly in the latter camp.
Bismarck had substantial problems with her main artillery, as described in AVKS/March-April 1941. Where they checked by mid-May ? We do not know. Prinz Eugen outputted at 85%. Hood clearly shot badly.
In other places, contemporary battleships outputted between 80 to 90% efficiency, and that includes trials.
So no, Prince of Wales wasn't far off from "normal" operting output, and if someone reads carefully her GAR of May 24th, one finds 85% efficiency for second engagement, AND a clear phrase indicating that , due to the huge efforts put up by the crew, only minor errors occured during firings and operations.
Very interesting to see how they reacted in a real event . Doesn’t tend to be as “clean” as they thought it would be when it wasn’t an exercise....
As I said it’s a very pro German thesis.