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Hyrax Attack! posted:A few questions about the US in the Pacific: From what I've read, it's a mix of gloryhounds and that lust for the decisive battle. This is also why the IJN mostly went after warships with their subs. Less enemy warships = better odds for us in the decisive battle that's right around the corner.
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Aug 25, 2019 00:20
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 07:41 |
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Regarding US subs, there were some that did in fact just disappear. I think it was assumed that either the Japanese got them or they ran into some other problem and given the nature of the beast, they would disappear without a trace. There were also casualties from the circular torpedo problem - it got Tang, which had survivors including the captain who later wrote about it, and he himself discusses how it probably also got Wahoo.
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Aug 25, 2019 00:22
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One use of PT boats I'm familiar with was in the Battle of Surigao Strait, where dozens of PTs engaged the Japanese force heading for the strait for a couple hours before the battle proper. They scored no hits and two of them were lost, but their radio reports gave the American commander the exact composition of the enemy forces heading his way. Given the quality of American torpedoes for the first 3/4 of the war, it's probably not fair to judge the effectiveness of any unit firing them
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Aug 25, 2019 00:35
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Hyrax Attack! posted:-How often would a US sub go out and simply never be heard from again? Was the policy to write them off after a month or so? That's how most sub losses happen. FuturePastNow posted:One use of PT boats I'm familiar with was in the Battle of Surigao Strait, where dozens of PTs engaged the Japanese force heading for the strait for a couple hours before the battle proper. They scored no hits and two of them were lost, but their radio reports gave the American commander the exact composition of the enemy forces heading his way. They also did a lot of useful disruption of Japanese forces as well.
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Aug 25, 2019 00:39
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I guess I was thinking of using the PT boats in a fleet conflict, forgetting of course that direct fleet conflicts are very rare in warfare and commerce raiding is a much more effective use of your weapons. Submarines are pretty clearly superior for the commerce raider role. This seems like too much abstraction. 'Fleet conflicts' and commerce raiding are not the only roles carried by navies and there are many niches where patrol torpedo boats and gun boats fit nicely, because they are cheap and fast and can go places where bigger displacement boats can't. If you want to patrol around an archipelago to make sure the enemy isn't transporting troops and supplies through there, you could use subs or destroyers. But you just can't maintain a constant presence of such expensive vessels everywhere at all times, as their number is limited and they have better things to do. Fast torpedo boats however are cheap to produce and require little crew and they don't need extensive training to do their thing.
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Aug 25, 2019 01:16
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Milo and POTUS posted:
They could have, but they'd need to clear the decks while firing the big guns which would temporarily silence the much more useful AAA guns the USN was putting all over their battleships.
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Aug 25, 2019 02:05
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Nenonen posted:'Fleet conflicts' and commerce raiding are not the only roles carried by navies and there are many niches where patrol torpedo boats and gun boats fit nicely, because they are cheap and fast and can go places where bigger displacement boats can't. If you want to patrol around an archipelago to make sure the enemy isn't transporting troops and supplies through there, you could use subs or destroyers. But you just can't maintain a constant presence of such expensive vessels everywhere at all times, as their number is limited and they have better things to do. Fast torpedo boats however are cheap to produce and require little crew and they don't need extensive training to do their thing. To be clear, I wasn't arguing that PT boats don't have a role, just noting that the torpedo boat tender that FrangibleCover linked, which was a way to get the boats into areas where they couldn't normally operate, had a much more limited useful time window than I'd originally expected. Fast, cheap, hard-hitting boats clearly have plenty of utility.
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Aug 25, 2019 02:13
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Speaking of the T-44, I wanna 3D print one. Anyone happen to have any 3D models on hand for some more obscure WWII stuff? I looked on Thingiverse and Bergman's and TigerAce's profiles and didn't find the T-44  Also I am looking for 3D models of small arms to 3D print models to decorate my desk with. Particularly the DP-27; my favourite LMG from Call of Duty. I've googled but what I have found costs money. I'd just make my own model in that case but I figured I'd check here, and in the historicals thread.
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Aug 25, 2019 02:32
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I have the Zvezda kit, but that's basically no use to you if you really want the printing experience. It's a nice kit though, as all of their 15mm kits have been.
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Aug 25, 2019 02:40
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Arquinsiel posted:I have the Zvezda kit, but that's basically no use to you if you really want the printing experience. It's a nice kit though, as all of their 15mm kits have been. Oh you mean you have the real one you buy from a store? Yeah I just want to print all of my models. 
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Aug 25, 2019 02:42
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Man if I had a 3D printer I would print so much models....
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Aug 25, 2019 03:32
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Were torpedo boats in wwII full oceangoing vessels capable of multiple days journey from base or were they kind of tethered to tenders/land bases? Did it vary by country/theatre?
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Aug 25, 2019 03:46
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The US "Elco" torpedo boats were able to carry enough fuel for a 12-hour patrol.
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Aug 25, 2019 03:52
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SeanBeansShako posted:Man if I had a 3D printer I would print so much models.... The detail is also shockingly good for current consumer PLA printers.  (Pictured: My camera refusing to focus on what's in front of it) I think this is a T-54 with a 1953 turret, or the T-54 with the 1951 turret? The pack I downloaded had like 5 different variations for the T-54 and this is before I even get to the T-55/T-62. I'm working my way through the Soviet tanks, then will move on to German and American tanks; it'd be nice if there were Japanese tanks but I'm forlorn on my chances. After that I'll start MASS PRODUCTION to build legal sized point armies for the different tabletop wargames even though I HAVE NO ONE TO PLAY THEM WITH.
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Aug 25, 2019 04:06
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Are these things 3-D printing the entire tank or are they just printing out like a sheet of parts you then glue together, like an on-demand Gunpla kit, possibly with less wasted spruing?
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Aug 25, 2019 04:14
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SeanBeansShako posted:Man if I had a 3D printer I would print so much models.... Dioramas are where it's at
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Aug 25, 2019 04:23
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Nessus posted:Are these things 3-D printing the entire tank or are they just printing out like a sheet of parts you then glue together, like an on-demand Gunpla kit, possibly with less wasted spruing? It's the whole tank in two parts, the turret and the hull are whole, the hull has like a hole in it that is kinda accurate to the width of the turret ring and the turret slots into it and you can rotate the turret pretty okay, sometimes you might have to sand a protrusion. If I wanted to bump up the quality I could probably slice up the tank into separate parts and then glue them together like Gunpla but that seems like way too much effort when I already get a model that's like 90% pretty alright.
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Aug 25, 2019 05:11
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I am going to 3D-print so many warships once I have a good selection of parts to work with for my game. That's an Iowa hull with four different kinds of gun and both the correct bridge and the bridge from the Deutschland class. It's dumb as hell and I don't care. 
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Aug 25, 2019 05:22
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I am going to 3D-print so many warships once I have a good selection of parts to work with for my game. I also want to do this too!! How many hulls do you have? I'd love to print the Yamato.
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Aug 25, 2019 05:25
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I am going to 3D-print so many warships once I have a good selection of parts to work with for my game. Create the greatest pagoda mast that ever was.
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Aug 25, 2019 05:29
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Hyrax Attack! posted:-Why were Japanese shipments so unprotected? It’s crazy to read a list of “lives lost at sea by individual ships” and see how many overloaded troop ships they lost. Did they just never figure out convoys? The Japanese had enormous shipping needs and not a lot of ways to escort them, so the sort of elaborate convoy system that the Allies used was largely out of the question. They did their best, but Japan was always short on destroyers and useful escort ships. Generally, troop convoys had escorts, though. The IJN was just nowhere near where the Allies were in terms of ASW techniques, particularly later in the war. The IJA did in fact have a few escort ships of its own for this purpose.
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Aug 25, 2019 06:28
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People said last thread that the harbour defence motor launches were originally destined to sail (quite literally) to the Caribbean. Given their armament and intended destination (according to the wiki ,they eventually ended up in the Mediterranean) I guess they were meant for anti-sub patrol boats mainly. Other than general interdiction what goods were the germans hoping to stop from being trafficked? Sugar seems most obvious, right? What goods were the Caribbean holdings contributing to the war effort
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Aug 25, 2019 06:45
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Wikipedia talks about petroleum and aluminium ore. I didn’t know that such a volume of petroleum was refined in the Caribbean in those days. I was going to say “latex”, but it was mostly coming from the Atlantic ports of South America. It might have gone to some ports on the U.S. Gulf Coast, but even so, latex wasn’t a factor in HDML procurement because the boom in South America postdates the ships.
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Aug 25, 2019 07:02
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It definitely makes more sense than sugar
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Aug 25, 2019 07:08
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zonohedron posted:So the discussion of elephants reminded me: on Twitter I saw that apparently the King of Siam offered to give(? lend? sell?) President Lincoln war elephants for use in the Civil War. Assuming they'd survived the trip and the Americans weren't assigning them a gallon of wine as their rations... what would elephants have... done? How do you use an elephant at Gettysburg (or... or any of the other major battles that I don't know because I grew up in a state that wasn't a state yet during said kinetic military action)? Do this, but with an elephant  Put enough Gatling guns in the howdah and suppress the horizon.
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Aug 25, 2019 07:44
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P-Mack posted:They could have, but they'd need to clear the decks while firing the big guns which would temporarily silence the much more useful AAA guns the USN was putting all over their battleships. Also for that application a lot of little explosions are better than a few big ones. Those big AA shells tore up the lining of the guns, and I don't think resulted in a single kill. A whole shitload of 40mm was way more effective.
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Aug 25, 2019 08:04
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MrYenko posted:It’s worth noting that the Sherman specifically had a multitude of power plants, including a gas V-8, several different gasoline radial engines, a gasoline 30 (!!!) cylinder engine comprised of five inline sixes, twin inline diesels, and a diesel radial engine. "All hail Chrysler multibank, the kind of things that shouldn't work but do" - some goon
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Aug 25, 2019 08:51
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JcDent posted:"All hail Chrysler multibank, the kind of things that shouldn't work but do" Yeah that thing was insane. I like how everyone looked at it and went: "It's an utter nightmare to repair and run maintenance on, it sucks gas like no tomorrow but it never stops running." The Americans looked at how much of a nightmare it was to maintain and said "We have 3 other Sherman models using different engines, let's NOT use these." The Soviets took a look at the fuel consumption and went "What do you think we are? Rich?" The Brits looked at it having something like a 20% longer lifetime between maintenance cycles and being hard as hell to break and went "We'll take all of them." The Germans probably screamed in horror the first time they popped the hood on one.
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Aug 25, 2019 09:09
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How do you gently caress up that hard? Why didn't they blast that place arty after the first wave died?
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Aug 25, 2019 09:54
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Alkydere posted:The Germans probably screamed in horror the first time they popped the hood on one. Knowing Nazis, some engineer probably sneered at it as "some simplistic untermench design" and proposed a heavy tank with 7 inline radials
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Aug 25, 2019 09:56
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JcDent posted:"All hail Chrysler multibank, the kind of things that shouldn't work but do" It displaced twenty‐one litres and made less power than the General Motors 6046, which displaced a third the amount and had one‐fifth the number of cylinders. 
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Aug 25, 2019 10:05
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Phanatic posted:Also for that application a lot of little explosions are better than a few big ones. Those big AA shells tore up the lining of the guns, and I don't think resulted in a single kill. A whole shitload of 40mm was way more effective. Did they break up into shrapnel in the barrel? That's amazing I mean not just how amusing it is. It even sorta looks like a horse for gods sakes Milo and POTUS fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Aug 25, 2019 |
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Aug 25, 2019 10:32
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I'd heard many times about the barrel wear and just accepted it as a fact and never actually wondered why, so thanks for asking that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Shiki_(anti-aircraft_shell) quote:Even though the 3 Shiki tsûjôdan shells comprised 40% of the total main ammunition load of the Yamato-class battleships by 1944, they were rarely used in combat against enemy aircraft. The blast of the main guns turned out to disrupt the fire of the smaller antiaircraft guns. In addition the copper drive bands of the rounds were poorly machined and constant firing was damaging the gun rifling; indeed, one of the shells may have exploded early and disabled one of Musashi's guns during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Musashi quote:During this attack, Musashi fired sanshikidan anti-aircraft shells from her main armament; one shell detonated in the middle gun of Turret No. 1, possibly because of a bomb fragment in the barrel, and wrecked the turret's elevating machinery. Wouldn't bomb fragments in the barrel make any fired round gently caress up the gun?
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Aug 25, 2019 10:51
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Argas posted:From what I've read, it's a mix of gloryhounds and that lust for the decisive battle. This is also why the IJN mostly went after warships with their subs. Less enemy warships = better odds for us in the decisive battle that's right around the corner. To be fair, if there had been Tsushima 2.0 and Japan had won it, we'd all be posting in here (in German) asking why didn't America use its subs to sink Japanese naval ships rather than futile efforts to interdict Japan's transports.
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Aug 25, 2019 11:02
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The Russian fleet at Tsushima brought torpedo boats with them. I don't think they had a tender though; they just towed them behind the battleships then crewed them and cast off before action.
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Aug 25, 2019 11:12
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More like a chicken tender for the Japanese navy to eat!
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Aug 25, 2019 11:23
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Platystemon posted:It displaced twenty‐one litres and made less power than the General Motors 6046, which displaced a third the amount and had one‐fifth the number of cylinders. And for what it's worth the reduction in power resulted in no appreciable reduction in performance.
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Aug 25, 2019 11:23
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Imagine having more engines than you have tanks to do with
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Aug 25, 2019 11:31
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FrangibleCover posted:Yes, so they fitted all available 6046s to Shermans and then still had more Sherman-making capacity so they used Multibanks. The multibanks were big enough that the Shermans that used them (the A4's) were physically a bit longer and the rears of their hulls were a bit taller. It was a noticeable difference. The reason Chrysler built them like that was they simply didn't have the machinery to build the big honking engines the Shermans and other tanks needed because they were tooled to make passenger cars. So they shoved 5 passenger car engines together in a crime against engine mechanics everywhere and made their Sherman hulls have a bit more junk in their trunk. The Army kept a handful of A4's as trainers where it was easy to get replacement parts and maintain them as needed but went "Well we have all these other factories making Shermans that aren't utter nightmares to repair...let's sell them!" So they did. Soviets got a few, tested them and found they guzzled gas (and were a pain to repair) and said "We'll take any A2's you can spare". The Brits on the other hand noted how long their engines lasted and that no one else was buying them so they decided they couldn't get enough of the suckers, at which point Chrysler built thousands of A4s with Multibanks just to sell to the UK. Also the Brits seem to have a long history of hating their tank crews so the increased pain of repairing a multibank was likely a non-issue.
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Aug 25, 2019 11:51
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If you think about it, welding five small engines together to make one big engine sounds like something you hear as an explanation of why some Heinkel Uberbomber didn't fly until 1944 despite being ordered in 1938, or why an experimental British tank caught fire the first time they turned it on. Except America did it, and it more or less worked.
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Aug 25, 2019 12:20
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