Naval History Forums

LWD, I think that the most important word in your comment was "potentially". China trade was potentially lucrative because of those teeming millions. However, my research seems to indicate that it wasn't in the 1930s. Way back when, after Marco Polo, the caravans from the middle east were ...

I have always had questions of why the Japanese persisted in China. By this, I don't mean what happened. I know the history. Japanese Army officers were basically out of control and manufactured incidents to justify escalating their involvement in China. When some in the government raised objections...

I've always felt that the Allied bombing was successful in decimating the Luftwaffe but not as a result of the bombing impact as the airpower advocates expected. Postwar analysis showed that the bombing never really interfered with the industries targeted for any length of time. They would hit a tar...

Although Bill Jurens is correct in saying that lateral dispersion is usually only a minor concern, there is one situation where it becomes enormous. Consider a chase situation aboard a smaller and thus lively ship in anything but calm seas. If the waves are coming from abeam, the ship is going to ro...

RF, I realize that many if not most historical battles would have been affected. However, I was more interested in the big picture such as complete types of battles that would be changed. I was interested in how doctrine would have evolved differently and even maybe more than tactics but strategy. I...

The other day, I thought some about the ramifications if there was no radar. By this, I don't mean that it wasn't invented but rather that it was physically impossible and so couldn't ever be invented. I found the idea interesting enough that I added it as a topic in the hypertext discussion include...

You didn't need heavy concrete bunkers; the Japanese proved that coconut logs would suffice. After Tarawa, the US conducted tests to see why the pre-battle bombardment hadn't been more effective. They built their own versions on Hawaii and subjected them to a variety of naval gunfire. They found tha...

dunmunro, you are comparing apples and oranges. You said that Albacore was a contemporary of the TBD Devastator, that is simply false. The TBD entered carrier service in 1937; the Albacore entered carrier service in 1941 (after spending a year land-based only). With the rapidly evolving aircraft tec...

Barracudas repeated their attack on Tirpitz on six later occasions with basically no success. The dates, all in 1944, were May 15, July 14, August 20 (abortive), August 22, August 24, and August 29. The initial attack worked because it was the first and was thus a surprise; subsequent attacks didn't...

The Fairey Fulmar is not a divebomber, at best it is a glide bomber much like its ancestor, the Fairey Battle. As for the Albacore, they would soon be toast. On another topic, you quoted the British author Eric Brown about another aircraft. Let's see what he says in "Duels in the sky" abou...

dunmunro says: It would appear that the Fulmar was potentially a very good dive bomber As proof, he cites some June 1942 trial which showed that the plane was capable of bombing at a 60 degree angle. That is not divebombing, it's glide bombing. Glide bombing isn't anywhere as near accurate as diveb...

Djoser wrote: Do you recall which book it was? I read 'The Great Ships Pass' many years ago and remember him discussing the clear imbalance of power in the Indian Ocean, but I wasn't aware that he had possibly written another. It was the book about British cruisers that he wrote with John R. Dominy...

dunmunro, you are misstating my assertion. I never said that British planes couldn't sink ships, I said that they rarely sank warships. There is a big difference between even the smallest warship and a merchant ship with very large holds and no possibility of nor training in damage control. You ment...

Tirpitz had exactly the same AA outfit that Bismarck had a year earlier at the time of her loss. The only difference was that Tirpitz's crew, in March 1942, had been operational longer than Bismarck's crew and so was possibly that much more experienced. However, no large German ship really had an ac...

As your table of carrier strength shows, nobody had enough carriers to be more than an adjunct of the battleline until the treaties expired. In fact, the British had more carriers than anyone else. Despite this, I have never read anywhere that they practiced operations with the carriers operating in...