KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Step one: Define clear and accurate.

Fangz posted:

Perestroika posted:

Terrifying Effigies posted:

What's funnier is they had a second go at it a few decades later with the B-58 and XB-70.

Tulip posted:

So as a person reading this thread who is not very knowledgeable about Western Naval military history during the early modern, I feel like the debate here is "navies could leave an engagement with relatively weak intel about their opponent" vs "navies usually left those engagements with great intel about their opponents." And what I'm seeing in this historical debate is that the weak intel side presents, piecemeal, a bunch of historical instances of one or both sides of a battle leaving the battle with unclear or wrong intel, and the strong intel side dismisses these as either exceptional and out of line with a first principles derived theory.

So I guess I'm saying - what are the historical instances of a naval battle where a side has clear, accurate reporting on enemy forces?

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

It's interesting that Le May talked about how they'd be tried as war criminals if the US lost the war but the Allies didn't try anyone for Axis bombing campaigns. Were there any calls internally for that or did they just think it would be hypocritical considering the Allied bombing campaigns, especially the firebombing of the Japanese home islands and Dresden?

SerCypher posted:

If the Allies lost, every general and politician would likely have been tried for war crimes.

So that statement may be more about how vindictive the Japanese/Germans would be if they won.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

In Fog of War, Robert McNamara, who served under Le May, talks about how the reduction of altitude on the bombers was something the crews hated because they were aware of the risks before and after the reduction but Le May demanded it despite the risks.

It's interesting that Le May talked about how they'd be tried as war criminals if the US lost the war but the Allies didn't try anyone for Axis bombing campaigns. Were there any calls internally for that or did they just think it would be hypocritical considering the Allied bombing campaigns, especially the firebombing of the Japanese home islands and Dresden?

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

It's interesting that Le May talked about how they'd be tried as war criminals if the US lost the war but the Allies didn't try anyone for Axis bombing campaigns. Were there any calls internally for that or did they just think it would be hypocritical considering the Allied bombing campaigns, especially the firebombing of the Japanese home islands and Dresden?

SerCypher posted:

If the Allies lost, every general and politician would likely have been tried for war crimes.

So that statement may be more about how vindictive the Japanese/Germans would be if they won.

Tomn posted:

Well, let's take Trafalgar - out of 33 French ships of the line, 21 were captured by the Royal Navy and one exploded spectacularly mid-battle. The British meanwhile lost none. While admittedly they were forced to abandon or scuttle a lot of those captured ships afterwards, and while I don't have information offhand on what the British think happened to the ones who got away in the aftermath, when you've got your own crews frantically trying to get your prizes seaworthy it'd be pretty hard to mistake the scale of your victory as anything less than it was.

Or take the Battle of the Nile, in which out of 13 French ships of the line 9 were captured, 1 exploded spectacularly again, and another was scuttled by fire, while under fire. Again, the British may or may not have known what happened to the ones who got away but the scale of the victory is again very clear.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

I honestly don't think they would have bothered with even show trials. Just concentration camp imprisonment until death or execution.

Tomn posted:

Admittedly, those are exceptional battles. But the original question was over which era of warfare saw the most misreported results of a naval engagement, and when the standard for victory is "we captured their ships" it's hard to mistake a defeat for a victory given that you could always count how many ships of yours were missing and how many new ships you got. Compare this to "Well we're pretty sure we dropped a bomb that hit a CV, or maybe it was a BB, or it might actually have been a CVL, or maybe even a DD, but anyways we hit them hard, damaged them a lot and probably left them in a sinking condition. Or at least they'll be in drydock for months. Or possibly a week. But we're pretty sure we hit them, anyways. Well, mostly sure. Maybe 60%. Point is we did well!"

I'll note also that early records like the ones you noticed may not have been spotty but part of that may well be because they simply weren't viewed as necessary because you absolutely DID trash the enemy in a glaringly obvious way and no more needs to be known or remembered. There's points now where British historians can't even find records for which British ships were in the line of battle for a given battle, which wouldn't indicate that they then had no idea how many ships their own fleet had, but rather that they didn't think it was that important to keep track of.

You're right that I'm arguing from first principles, though. I'm not a trained historian, just an enthusiastic amateur, and I'll freely admit I might very well be talking out my rear end and might have been jumping a little too far from an initial offhand remark. I do think it's worth pointing out how radically different the nature of naval warfare is when you go from the age of sail to modern warships, however - the question of naval intelligence doesn't really map one-for-one from one era to the other.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

It's interesting that Le May talked about how they'd be tried as war criminals if the US lost the war but the Allies didn't try anyone for Axis bombing campaigns.

Tulip posted:

OK yeah thank you for bringing it back to the central question, which is going to be tough to answer. Part of the issue, and for historical debate it's a pretty bad one, is that the question is not "what made it into the archive" but "what was seen outside the archive," which is much much harder. Especially since the equivalent to "IDK looks like that bomb hit" would, apples-to-apples, be something like "we fired a few cannons at a ship we saw briefly" which I imagine generally didn't go reported.

Aside, an extreme example of problems with intelligence in a naval action from a much earlier era: Chi Bi. Cao Cao claimed to have 800,000 troops, while Zhou Yu estimated that Cao Cao's forces were around 230,000. Both sides agree that Cao Cao suffered devastating casualties, but what that means numerically is going to vary wildly depending on whose initial estimate you take seriously. And Cao Cao does not have an interest in making it look like he lost near on a million dudes, but here we are. Personally I can imagine any of a number of things - the losses for Cao Cao had to be catastrophic given the political aftermath, but there's so much murkiness.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

the Allies didn't try anyone for Axis bombing campaigns. Were there any calls internally for that or did they just think it would be hypocritical considering the Allied bombing campaigns, especially the firebombing of the Japanese home islands and Dresden?

ChubbyChecker posted:

How much did an ordinary seaman get prize money from those battles?

quote:

The Convoys and Cruizers Act of 1708 laid down a division of prize-money which was in force for a century. The commander-in-chief took one-eighth, the captain a quarter, the master and lieutenants, the warrant officers and the petty officers one-eighth each, and the remaining quarter was divided among the 'private men', seamen and marines. Even this inequitable distribution gave the seamen significant windfalls. The Nile netted every man £7 18s, Trafalgar £9 9s 6d, and Strachan's action of November 1805 (when all the prizes were brought home), £10 13s - roughly half a year's pay on the 1797 scale.

quote:

The four frigates which took the Spanish register ships El Tetys and Santa Brigida in 1799 shared £652,000 net. The admiral got £81,000, four captains £40,730 each, and every seaman received £182 4s 9 3/4d - ten year's pay.

Scratch Monkey posted:

Weren't Goering's charges based in part on him being head of the Luftwaffe during the Blitz?

Cessna posted:

You're looking to the Nazis and Imperial Japan as the standard of justice?

Scratch Monkey posted:

Weren't Goering's charges based in part on him being head of the Luftwaffe during the Blitz?

quote:

1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3. Participating in war crimes
4. Crimes against humanity

Scratch Monkey posted:

Weren't Goering's charges based in part on him being head of the Luftwaffe during the Blitz?

quote:

Goering is indicted on all four counts. The evidence shows that after Hitler he was the most prominent man in the Nazi Regime. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and had tremendous influence with Hitler, at least until 1943 when their relationship deteriorated, ending in his arrest in 1945. He testified that Hitler kept him informed of all important military and political problems.

Crimes against Peace

From the moment he joined the Party in 1922 and took command of the street-fighting organisation, the SA, Goering was the adviser, the active agent of Hitler and one of the prime leaders of the Nazi movement. As Hitler's political deputy he was largely instrumental in bringing the National Socialists to power in 1933, and was charged with consolidating this power and expanding German armed might. He developed the Gestapo, and created the first concentration camps, relinquishing them to Himmler in 1934, conducted the Roehm purge in that year, and engineered the sordid proceedings which resulted in the removal of von Blomberg and von Fritsch from the Army. In 1936 he became Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, and in theory and in practice was the economic dictator of the Reich. Shortly after the Pact of Munich, he announced that he would embark on a five-fold expansion of the Luftwaffe. and speed rearmament with emphasis on offensive weapons.

Goering was one of the five important leaders present at the Hoszbach Conference of 5th November, 1937, and he attended the other important conferences already discussed in this Judgment. In the Austrian Anschluss, he was indeed the central figure, the ringleader. He said in Court: " I must take 100 per cent. responsibility.... I even overruled objections by the Fuehrer and brought everything to its final development." In the seizure of the Sudetenland, he played his role as Luftwaffe chief by planning an air offensive which proved unnecessary and his role as a politician by lulling the Czechs with false promises of friendship. The night before the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the absorption of Bohemia and Moravia, at a conference with Hitler and President Hacha he threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha did not submit. This threat he admitted in his testimony.

Goering attended the Reich Chancellery meeting of 23rd May, 1939, when Hitler told his military leaders " there is, therefore, no question of sparing Poland," and was present at the Obersalzburg briefing of 22nd August, 1939. And the evidence shows he was active in the diplomatic manoeuvres which followed. With Hitler's connivance, he used the Swedish businessman, Dahlerus, as a go-between to the British, as described by Dahlerus to this Tribunal, to try to prevent the British Government from keeping its guarantee to the Poles.

He commanded the Luftwaffe in the attack on Poland and throughout the aggressive wars which followed.

Even if he opposed Hitler's plans against Norway and the Soviet Union, as he alleged, it is clear that he did so only for strategic reasons; once Hitler had decided the issue, he followed him without hesitation. He made it clear in his testimony that these differences were never ideological or legal. He was “in a rage” about the invasion of Norway, but only because he had not received sufficient warning to prepare the Luftwaffe offensive. He admitted he approved of the attack: "My attitude was perfectly positive." He was active in preparing and executing the Yugoslavian and Greek campaigns, and testified that “Plan Marita,” the attack on Greece, had been prepared long beforehand. The Soviet Union he regarded as the " most threatening menace to Germany," but said there was no immediate military necessity for the attack. Indeed, his only objection to the war of aggression against the U.S.S.R. was its timing; he wished for strategic reasons to delay until Britain was conquered. He testified: " My point of view was decided by political and military reasons only."

After his own admissions to this Tribunal, from the positions which he held, the conferences he attended, and the public words he uttered, there can remain no doubt that Goering was the moving force for aggressive war second only to Hitler. He was the planner and prime mover in the military and diplomatic preparation for war which Germany pursued.

War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity

The record is filled with Goering's admissions of his complicity in the use of slave labour. “We did use this labour for security reasons so that they would not be active in their own country and would not work against us. On the other hand, they served to help in the economic war.” And again: “Workers were forced to come to the Reich. That is something I have not denied.” The man who spoke these words was Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan charged with the recruitment and allocation of manpower. As Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief he demanded from Himmler more slave labourers for his underground aircraft factories: “That I requested inmates of concentration camps for the armament of the Luftwaffe is correct and it is to be taken as a matter of course.”

As Plenipotentiary, Goering signed a directive concerning the treatment of Polish workers in Germany and implemented it by regulations of the SD, including " special treatment ". He issued directives to use Soviet and French prisoners of war in the armament industry; he spoke of seizing Poles and Dutch and making them prisoners of war if necessary, and using them for work. He agrees Russian prisoners of war were used to man anti-aircraft batteries.

As Plenipotentiary, Goering was the active authority in the spoliation. of conquered territory. He made plans for the spoliation of soviet territory long before the war on the Soviet Union. Two months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler gave Goering the over-all direction for the economic administration in the territory. Goering set up an economic staff for this function. As Reichsmarshal of the Greater German Reich " the orders of the Reichmarshal cover all economic fields, including nutrition and agriculture." His so-called " Green " folder, printed by the Wehrmacht, set up an " Economic Executive Staff, East." This directive contemplated plundering and abandonment of all industry in the food deficit regions and from the food surplus regions, a diversion of food to German needs. Goering claims its purposes have been misunderstood but admits " that as a matter of course and a matter of duty we would have used Russia for our purposes," when conquered.

And he participated in the conference of 16th July, 1941, when Hitler said the National Socialists had no intention of ever leaving the occupied countries, and that “all necessary measures-shooting, desettling, etc.-” should be taken.

Goering persecuted the Jews, particularly after the November 1938 riots, and not only in Germany where he raised the billion mark fine as; stated elsewhere, but in the conquered territories as well. His own utterances then and his testimony now show this interest was primarily economic — how to get their property and how to force them out of the economic life of Europe. As these countries fell before the German army he extended the Reich's anti-Jewish laws to them; the Reichsgesetzblatt for 1939, 1940, and 1941 contains several anti-Jewish decrees signed by Goering. Although their extermination was in Himmler's hands, Goering was far from disinterested or inactive, despite his protestations in the witness box. By decree of 31st July, 1941, he directed Himmler and Heydrich to bring “about a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.”

There is nothing to be said in mitigation. For Goering was often, indeed almost always, the moving force, second only to his leader. He was the leading war aggressor, both as political and as military leader; he was the director of the slave labour programme and the creator of the oppressive programme against the Jews and other races, at home and abroad. All of these crimes he has frankly admitted. On some specific cases there may be conflict of testimony, but in terms of the broad outline his own admissions are more than sufficiently wide to be conclusive of his guilt. His guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man.

Conclusion

The Tribunal finds the defendant Goering guilty on all four counts of the Indictment.

Nebakenezzer posted:

So, question about the Battle of the Atlantic: did Donitz ever 'throw in the towel'? Or did he withdraw his subs from the Atlantic and reassess? Was there always U-boat activity of some kinds, or did Donitz withdraw all forces until a new tactic/technology was ready?

zoux posted:

We talk about fair trials but I don't know how one can have a fair trial of war criminals following the bloodiest conflict in world history. Besides Doenitz did any other Major Nazis get off?

Tomn posted:

As far as I knew prize money was based on actually bringing the ship back and selling it, as well as the condition of the ship and how much you could get for it, so I wouldn't have thought every sailor in the fleet would have gotten the same amount (especially those who didn't take any prizes at all). Maybe for the purposes of those major battles they decided to divide up the value of the shares amongst the entire fleet? There was apparently some compensation money for ships sunk too based on the number of guns they had.

Tomn posted:

Again, not a historian and had to do some digging, but to quote from NAM Rodger in The Command of the Ocean...
He apparently gets this figure from "The Enemy At Trafalgar," which is apparently a collection of letters and memoirs from French and Spanish sailors who'd been in the battle so I'm not sure how he got the figures exactly. As far as I knew prize money was based on actually bringing the ship back and selling it, as well as the condition of the ship and how much you could get for it, so I wouldn't have thought every sailor in the fleet would have gotten the same amount (especially those who didn't take any prizes at all). Maybe for the purposes of those major battles they decided to divide up the value of the shares amongst the entire fleet? There was apparently some compensation money for ships sunk too based on the number of guns they had.

It's worth noting that since prize money was based on the condition of the ships and the value of the cargo battered warships after a fleet action wouldn't have been worth that much compared to plump, intact merchant vessels. From elsewhere in the book...
Major fleet actions pay in glory rather than gold. Though you might have to offset that against the value of not having to pay for drinks again for a decade or two...

BalloonFish might have better and more detailed information. Also don't ask me to interpret the wacky British currency system because I'm as lost as you are.

Tomn posted:

Again, not a historian and had to do some digging, but to quote from NAM Rodger in The Command of the Ocean...
He apparently gets this figure from "The Enemy At Trafalgar," which is apparently a collection of letters and memoirs from French and Spanish sailors who'd been in the battle so I'm not sure how he got the figures exactly. As far as I knew prize money was based on actually bringing the ship back and selling it, as well as the condition of the ship and how much you could get for it, so I wouldn't have thought every sailor in the fleet would have gotten the same amount (especially those who didn't take any prizes at all). Maybe for the purposes of those major battles they decided to divide up the value of the shares amongst the entire fleet? There was apparently some compensation money for ships sunk too based on the number of guns they had.

It's worth noting that since prize money was based on the condition of the ships and the value of the cargo battered warships after a fleet action wouldn't have been worth that much compared to plump, intact merchant vessels. From elsewhere in the book...
Major fleet actions pay in glory rather than gold. Though you might have to offset that against the value of not having to pay for drinks again for a decade or two...

BalloonFish might have better and more detailed information. Also don't ask me to interpret the wacky British currency system because I'm as lost as you are.

ChubbyChecker posted:

How much did an ordinary seaman get prize money from those battles?

Tulip posted:

Especially since the equivalent to "IDK looks like that bomb hit" would, apples-to-apples, be something like "we fired a few cannons at a ship we saw briefly" which I imagine generally didn't go reported.

Vahakyla posted:

This reminds me of the absolutely mind boggling wealth inequality of militaries just recently. The difference between officers and seamen in this is prize pool is whack.

The Command of the Ocean posted:

Two successive commanders-in-chief each made about £300,000 in prize-money during their careers, Rainer entirely and Pellew largely on this station [the East Indies]. Keith in the Mediterranean made just under £67,000 in less than three years. It was for this that admirals faced the risks of a tropical climate or, like H.C. Christian at the Cape in 1798, separation from a sick wife and a beloved family: "With my West India prize-money also, I hope we may be enabled to take tolerably good care of our dear girls. The boys will, I trust, be taken care of. This is my most anxious wish, and the reflection that strengthens and supports me in the sacrifice I have made - namely, that I am working for them."

The Command of the Ocean posted:

Mistakes were easy and expensive. "Law is a bottomless pit and I have no inclination to fathom its depths," in the words of one commodore declining to get involved with a Danish prize."

The Command of the Ocean posted:

A new division of prize-money was promulgated in 1808, in which the seamen and marines divided a half between them (petty officers and able seamen benefiting particularly), and the admiral and captain were reduced to one-tweleth and one-sixth respectively. This aroused strong protests from the captains.

Tomn posted:

I think one of the things that makes the whole thing kinda apples-to-oranges, though, is the significance of "we fired a few cannons." In WW1/2, if you hit the enemy with a single battleship shell, a bomb, or a torpedo, you had a reasonable expectation of having caused significant damage and a reasonable hope of having scored critical damage of some kind.

Cessna posted:

This may be a bit misleading. Look at Jutland, for example.

The percentage of shells fired that actually hit an enemy ship is quite low: the British only hit with about 2.2% of their heavy shells. The Germans, noted for their gunnery, had about 3.4% accuracy. (Source: Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting by Campbell.)

Some German ships took over a dozen hits and survived (Seydlitz, Derfflinger). Every capital ship sunk by gunfire (Pommern was sunk by a torpedo), including the notoriously fragile battlecruisers, took a minimum of five shots to sink.

So you're looking at an average well over a hundred shots to sink a ship, if you sink it at all.

The Command of the Ocean, again posted:

Attacking Porto Bello in 1739, one of Vernon's ships, the Hampton Court, 70, fired 400 rounds in twenty-five minutes, which suggests each gun fired about one round every two minutes, and this is probably near the upper limit of any ship's performance...There was no question, however, of being able to sustain such a rate of fire. Men running out guns weighing up to two tons each could not support such an effort for long. The captain who trained his men to fire so fast was planning to close to very close range before opening fire, or the guns' crews would be exhausted before the shot began to tell. "I do not wish the ships to be bilge and bilge," said Howe at the First of June, "but if you can lock the yardarms so much the better, the battle will be the sooner decided." That implies a fighting range of about twenty feet.

...

By contrast a captain who emphasized target practice - slow, deliberate shooting - was contemplating a long action, with less danger to his men and himself, but much less prospect of a decisive result, for both the accuracy and the destructive force of smooth-bore guns firing solid shot fell off rapidly at ranges over 200 yards or so. At the Minorca action in 1756 the French seventy-four Guerrier claimed to have fired 659 rounds in three and a half hours; engaged on one side, this implies about five and a half rounds an hour from each gun. At the Saints another French ship fired 1,300 rounds in six hours, or about six rounds an hour from each gun; faster would have been impossible, it was claimed, considering the heat and the casualties.

Thomamelas posted:

They are designed for work on rivers, lakes and seas, and were designed to fight other small boats and people on land. They have a turret from a PT76B, some rocket launchers and 30mm machine guns. It's an evolution of artillery boats that were used in WWII. But made by the Navy and designed more for port defense.

Nothingtoseehere posted:

Sure but the american civil war, especially the naval bits, was very much a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs slapping each other. It's not the best counterexample.

Tomn posted:

On the whole, to go back to your original thought I'd agree that assessing damage in naval engagements was probably most difficult - and most critical - around WW1/2. Earlier on for most of human history it's both easier to do and less important.

Tulip posted:

OK yeah thank you for bringing it back to the central question, which is going to be tough to answer.

Tomn posted:

We're looking at far more rounds fired to less overall effect at much closer range.

Milo and POTUS posted:

This lead me down a wikihole that lead me to discover gunboats aren't just "a boat/ship with guns" but a particular role of boat and ship. With guns. Pretty neat!

Would a swfitboat be a gunboat or more of a reconnaissance in force sort of thing

Xakura posted:

Sure, but the speed thing upthread was more of a "max speed didn't increase" I thought? Which makes sense, it's not like it's drastically slicker than un-fouled wood. I would think the benefit on speed is more how long can you have a max speed capable hull.

I didn't mean to downplay the woodworm thing though, royal navy (at least, probably a bunch of others) used sacrificial wood plating on hull bottoms to avoid having their ships just eaten up.

Tomn posted:

BalloonFish might have better and more detailed information. Also don't ask me to interpret the wacky British currency system because I'm as lost as you are.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

I seem to recall some references in O'Brian about visibility for prize money purposes. If your ship is in the vicinity of an engagement you share in the prize money.