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C.M. Kruger posted:Air dropped torpedoes didn't score a single hit during Midway, the wiki page for the Mark 13 has a large section about efforts taken to fix it: False! One PBY managed a hit against an oil tanker, the Akebono Maru. This was the only successful American torpedo attack during the entire battle 
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Jun 5, 2021 21:15
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Nebakenezzer posted:Nice! Why not both?  I think that's one .30 and one .50, but I can't tell. Sticking 1-2 machine guns on the Kangaroo's turret ring in addition to the machine gun in the front cupola was a pretty common technique.
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Jun 5, 2021 21:26
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C.M. Kruger posted:Air dropped torpedoes didn't score a single hit during Midway, the wiki page for the Mark 13 has a large section about efforts taken to fix it: Allllmost. There was one successful attack, by a PBY jury-rigged to carry the torpedoes on a fleet oiler the night before. Something about one-in-a-million shots.
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Jun 5, 2021 21:44
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One thing the Navy really wanted to do after the war started was reduce crew sizes, the Dauntless and Helldiver both needed a crew of 2 and the Avenger needed 3 people. They wanted one single seat plane to replace all their torpedo and dive bombers, and this didn't quite make it into service before the war ended but became the Skyraider. They also developed a single man floaplane (the Seahawk) for warships to carry to replace the 2-crew ones (Seamew and Kingfisher) and it turned out the second crewmember in those was really helpful for hooking the thing up to the ship and for rescuing someone from the water.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:17
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It should also be noted that the sky raider could use torpedoes. Most famously they did a torpedo attack against a North Korean dam. Torpedo attacks from aircraft were obsoleted by ASMs. It was a riskier attack profile but it survived for quite a while because it’s a really good way to deliver a lot of explosive below a ships waterline.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:25
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Dive bombers are murder against unarmored aircraft carriers, but consider that after the USN got total air superiority at Midway, they threw every SBD they could at the retreating Japanese, and managed to sink a single heavy cruiser and beat up another. In that era, if you want to sink surface ships that aren't strongly biased toward bursting into flame, you need torpedoes. If you can get air superiority, it seems like the optimal attack pattern was to use dive bombers to suppress flak, then send in the torpedo bombers. If you don't have air superiority, you're kind of screwed anyway, which is why the Japanese had to go to suicide tactics.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:29
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Acebuckeye13 posted:False! One PBY managed a hit against an oil tanker, the Akebono Maru. This was the only successful American torpedo attack during the entire battle That's a pretty cool fact to have. I was running on the impression that every torpedo the US had in the battle might as well have had a flag with "BANG!" painted on it, including the submarines. Well, that still might be true, but at least there's one hit now where I thought it was a complete blank. Edit: What if the torpedo bombers did dive bombing runs with their torpedoes instead?
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Jun 5, 2021 22:49
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:That's a pretty cool fact to have. I was running on the impression that every torpedo the US had in the battle might as well have had a flag with "BANG!" painted on it, including the submarines. Well, that still might be true, but at least there's one hit now where I thought it was a complete blank. Dropping torpedos requires being very close to the surface, and very slow comparatively.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:It should also be noted that the sky raider could use torpedoes. Most famously they did a torpedo attack against a North Korean dam. Yeah, the Avenger could carry one torpedo, limited by the size of its internal bomb bay. The Skyraider could carry up to three. Or about 4x as many bombs as the Avenger. I think the coolest attack aircraft developed too late for the war was the Skypirate. Able to carry four torpedoes and too big for carriers older than the Midway-class. 
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Jun 5, 2021 23:11
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I love late war US design. More is better! More size, more dakka, more planes, just... More.
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Jun 5, 2021 23:18
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A flag with "BANG" painted on it is a pro addition to all and any explosive munition. So many lols every times there's a dud.
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Jun 5, 2021 23:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:Torpedo attacks from aircraft were obsoleted by ASMs. It was a riskier attack profile but it survived for quite a while because it’s a really good way to deliver a lot of explosive below a ships waterline. Are there modern ASMs that attack from below the waterline? Or do you just lob a couple over and count on that being enough for a mission kill?
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Jun 5, 2021 23:54
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Dropping torpedos requires being very close to the surface, and very slow comparatively. You didn't necessarily have to be that slow, or that low, throughout the war. At the start of the war, the British Mark XII could be dropped at speeds up to 150 knots; over the course of the war, it was strengthened to be dropped at up to 270 (as was its replacement, the Mark XV). A Mark XVII that could be dropped at up to 350 knots was in development at the end of the war. Drop altitudes similarly increased - the American Mark 13 received wooden attachments that made it much more stable and resilient in the air, permitting drops from up to 2400 feet by 1945. Japanese torpedoes had very impressive performance at the start of the war - the Type 91 in service in 1941 could survive a drop from 1000 ft at a speed of 260 kts - and improved from there.
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Jun 6, 2021 00:08
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Edit: What if the torpedo bombers did dive bombing runs with their torpedoes instead? Wouldn't work. The whole point of a torpedo is that it hits below the waterline and causes flooding, and coming in at a dive is going to make the torpedo either hit the deck/superstructure or miss the ship completely.
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Jun 6, 2021 00:19
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Grumio posted:For the Burma theatre, I enjoyed Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser, more famously known for the Flashman books. It's not an overview of the campaign, but rather an extremely small scale look at what it was like for him and his platoon of rough characters from Cumberland. His The General Danced At Dawn is a set of comic short stories spun off the post-WWII bits of his soldiering, and his The Steel Bonnets is an absolutely dynamite history of the English-Scottish Border Wars, which I hadn't heard of except in ballads. He does a wonderful job of explaining what daily life was like for all the people trying to live their lives in between having their houses burned down and their sheep stolen. I read a lot of novels set in the Napoleonic period. Does there exist any entry-level book about the Napoleonic wars? I can't read a cavalry vs. infantry diagram, I don't know which sorts of breastworks are most effective, and I have to look up 'enfilade' every time it's used. I need a book that is accessible to people who aren't war buffs. Pictures would be nice.
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Jun 6, 2021 00:53
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FuturePastNow posted:Yeah, the Avenger could carry one torpedo, limited by the size of its internal bomb bay. The Skyraider could carry up to three. Or about 4x as many bombs as the Avenger. If a plane carries multiple torpedoes, do they release them all in a big spread on one run, or take multiple runs? Even with relatively crappy Japanese AA and the decayed state of their forces by the late war it feels like taking multiple torpedo runs must have been a harrowing prospect.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:02
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https://twitter.com/colindickey/status/1400800141548920838
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Jun 6, 2021 01:05
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I read a lot of novels set in the Napoleonic period. Does there exist any entry-level book about the Napoleonic wars? I can't read a cavalry vs. infantry diagram, I don't know which sorts of breastworks are most effective, and I have to look up 'enfilade' every time it's used. I need a book that is accessible to people who aren't war buffs. Pictures would be nice.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:07
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PittTheElder posted:Are there modern ASMs that attack from below the waterline? Or do you just lob a couple over and count on that being enough for a mission kill? No, but your modern (or even ca. 1970) ASM is just so incredibly loving destructive that it doesn't matter. It's basically a super or high-subsonic kamakazie (complete with tanks full of avgas) that is carrying a large warhead (edit: half-ton or so). The combination of speed + mass + warhead + unburned fuel means that you're just going to loving wreck whatever you hit, and doubly so if it's a top down attack. The real irony is that the Japanese kind of had the right idea with the kamakazie re: killing ships, but it took a few decades of technological advancement to iterate out the suicide bit of it. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 01:29
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Unless you're unlucky enough to be in a navy that is stuck with a fuckin Harpoon as their primary ASM 
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Jun 6, 2021 01:35
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Wouldn't work. The whole point of a torpedo is that it hits below the waterline and causes flooding, and coming in at a dive is going to make the torpedo either hit the deck/superstructure or miss the ship completely. That's why you need a way bigger torpedo with an extra strong steel casing! Heavy enough and fused to drop right through the hull before detonating. It'll be so heavy you'll have to use a heavy bomber to carry it but still  Cyrano4747 posted:No, but your modern (or even ca. 1970) ASM is just so incredibly loving destructive that it doesn't matter. It's basically a super or high-subsonic kamakazie (complete with tanks full of avgas) that is carrying a multi-ton warhead. The combination of speed + mass + warhead + unburned fuel means that you're just going to loving wreck whatever you hit, and doubly so if it's a top down attack.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:36
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PittTheElder posted:. I had no idea the warheads were that heavy. My bad, I just double checked and most of them are in the half-ton range. Still, the point is it's big warhead that's going really loving fast and attached to a missile that has a lot of its own mass.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:43
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aphid_licker posted:Unless you're unlucky enough to be in a navy that is stuck with a fuckin Harpoon as their primary ASM I know the Harpoon is lighter than a lot of foreign weapons, but wasn't there a sinkex where one Harpoon put like a 30ft hole all the way through a Perry?
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Jun 6, 2021 01:58
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I wonder if it'd be possible to build a pure-kinetic asm? Along the lines of the Starstreak or something.
The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 01:59
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I can't see either why you couldn't or why you would.
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Jun 6, 2021 02:01
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exocet was in practice
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Jun 6, 2021 02:04
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It's interesting that despite for the past few years reading about the 30 Years War on and off from Hegel's posting, but I'm learning new things from Extra History's new series which is on the 30YW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPU1-vMQOI They've decided to pick a framing device to cover more how the war affected people in general instead of covering explicitly how it started/fought/ended because each of those in their words could be its own multi-part series. The funniest thing so far is how it all kicked off by the Protestants throwing two catholics out the window; and while I had heard of "defenestration" being talked about I didn't actually look up or see it elaborated what the context was until watching the video! The interesting bit with the framing they've taken up is how a trend of Apocalypticism appears to have arised from the conflict which I find interesting especially given its relevant modern day resurgence. e to add: EH usually has a follow up episode to all of their history series called "Lies" where they go over creative licenses taken, mistakes (usually always Flags), omissions, as well as their sources and generally spend about 30 minutes or so going over the series in a retrospective which is also interesting and quite novel as its an approach I haven't really seen before, but mainly to say any inaccuracies are probably going to be covered then. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 03:03
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The Lone Badger posted:I wonder if it'd be possible to build a pure-kinetic asm? Along the lines of the Starstreak or something. Hypersonic ramjet drone, maybe? Reminds me of the Lippisch P.13a, a proposed supersonic coal-dust-powered German interceptor that would kill enemy planes by ramming into them, while counting on extensive reinforcement to keep the pilot alive.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:09
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Tbh just grab the thirty years was by peter Wilson.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:09
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FMguru posted:Mark Adkin wrote a companion book to the Sharpe novels (called, naturally enough, The Sharpe Companion) which explained a lot of what was going on (militarily) in those books. Sounds perfect, thanks. We own the equivalent O'Brian books.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:21
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I'm still amused at how much my understanding of the Napoleonic Wars were influenced by Sharpe despite reading a few history books before hand. They're damned good books and modern day "thrillers" dad-lit don't take the same sort of nuanced approached to geopolitics. Few works replicate the way Sharpe's antagonists were more often than not people in the higher ups on his own side, usually because of corruption, stupidity or both with a dose of institutional bias against people of commonfolk origin than the actual people in the French army firing at him.
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Jun 6, 2021 03:26
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Wouldn't work. The whole point of a torpedo is that it hits below the waterline and causes flooding, and coming in at a dive is going to make the torpedo either hit the deck/superstructure or miss the ship completely. Oh this isn't about the torpedo doing torpedo stuff. I'm running the assumption the torpedo wasn't going to detonate anyways. I was pondering what a 2,200 pound dead weight of a useless torpedo could do falling out of the sky on top of the ship. Of course, that's considering it's strapped to a plane that wasn't really meant to dive bomb. On the flip side, the story I get (even Wikipedia is going for it) say the torpedo bomber flights distracted Japanese defenses and gave the dive bombers some breathing space, but they also showed up earlier so they could have been a distraction dropping their scrap using an approach that didn't involve them flying straight and level with a giant bullseye. Anyways the whole tangent came up when the conversation drifted to plane composition. They took the remaining Devastators off of front-line duty after Midway, and I wonder how much of it was driven by torpedo ineffectiveness instead of outright torpedo bomber ineffectiveness.
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Jun 6, 2021 04:04
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Raenir Salazar posted:I'm still amused at how much my understanding of the Napoleonic Wars were influenced by Sharpe despite reading a few history books before hand. They're damned good books and modern day "thrillers" dad-lit don't take the same sort of nuanced approached to geopolitics. Few works replicate the way Sharpe's antagonists were more often than not people in the higher ups on his own side, usually because of corruption, stupidity or both with a dose of institutional bias against people of commonfolk origin than the actual people in the French army firing at him. Something to ponder, and this isn't directed at you specifically but it's just something to keep in mind with any kind of book like the Sharpe stories that deals with past events. How much of what you're describing here: quote:Few works replicate the way Sharpe's antagonists were more often than not people in the higher ups on his own side, usually because of corruption, stupidity or both with a dose of institutional bias against people of commonfolk origin is a reflection of the Napoleonic wars, and how much of it is a reflection of Bernard Cornwell's attitudes and opinions ca. the late 70s and early 80s? And how much of THAT is something he directly inserted because he wanted to, and how much of it is just him replicating attitudes and assumptions that he absorbed from the culture etc. that he was embedded in?
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Jun 6, 2021 04:11
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Oh this isn't about the torpedo doing torpedo stuff. I'm running the assumption the torpedo wasn't going to detonate anyways. I was pondering what a 2,200 pound dead weight of a useless torpedo could do falling out of the sky on top of the ship. Make one hell of a 'BONG!'.
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Jun 6, 2021 04:13
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Thomamelas posted:Make one hell of a 'BONG!'. Dick Bong was a fighter pilot though.
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Jun 6, 2021 04:24
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Thomamelas posted:Make one hell of a 'BONG!'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMK4cfXj5c0
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Jun 6, 2021 04:28
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Dick Bong was a fighter pilot though. I always wonder if him and Dick Best ever met up.
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Jun 6, 2021 04:34
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:They took the remaining Devastators off of front-line duty after Midway, and I wonder how much of it was driven by torpedo ineffectiveness instead of outright torpedo bomber ineffectiveness. The took the TBDs off the line because they were totally outclassed, and because they only had 39 remaining airframes after the losses at Midway. It had been out of production since 1939, and the TBF was already slated to replace it. Douglas had only built ~130 of them in the first place, and the USN flat out did not have enough airframes remaining to populate more than two squadrons, not even counting aircraft in overhaul or assigned to other duties. TBFs had success in the pacific war, sinking Ryūjō during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, and as mentioned upthread contributing mightily to the sinking of the Yamato and Musashi though notably, these last two were with near-total air superiority. Carrier-based air (with avengers likely over represented due to their employment on escort carriers) was also responsible for sinking more Japanese merchant shipping than anyone other than the US Submarine service. Torpedo attacks (even with early Mk 13s) worked, it’s just that the aircraft were far more vulnerable than was anticipated, and it took time for tactics to adjust to accommodate this.
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Jun 6, 2021 04:37
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Is it just me or does this review basically boil down to "war is absolutely immoral and therefore discussions of the relative immorality of modes of warfare are without value" without really addressing that, y'know, everything in the book is wrong?
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Jun 6, 2021 04:55
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Cyrano4747 posted:Something to ponder, and this isn't directed at you specifically but it's just something to keep in mind with any kind of book like the Sharpe stories that deals with past events. Hrm, what I mean is; the things that I like about the Sharpe novels; compared to other comparable works of fiction (Clancy) is that I felt that the writing was better. Where I feel that the Sharpe novels were more believable while fictional, in representing the real world. In this case; a nuanced perspective from someone fighting at the front lines about the problems of their own nation, recognizing that there are good things about their enemies; and many of said enemies turned out to be interesting or honourable adversaries lends itself to a more engaging work of fiction. Even better if the cause of the conflict isn't readily apparent to further establish the moral greyness of the conflict. I don't think something like, "most of the antagonists are people whose status quo is ruined by the protagonists actually getting the support they need to be making progress in winning the war" is something unique to Bernard Cornwell, his place in history and so on; but are a I think a well acknowledged writing technique of writing engaging interest characters, adversaries, and handling conflicts and themes in a satisfying way. If I had to think of an earlier example, in The Hobbit, the main conflict is actually between the Dwarves/Elves/Humans and their past grudges and acrimony which is at all why Smaug or the orcs are such a threat. Dragonlance I think was written at a comparable time to the Sharpe books; 1984 to 1981 and is written in a similar way that I find good. The adversaries are all evil and the protagonists and their "allies" aren't all good, and so on. While in contrast The Bear and the Dragon is just incredibly boring.
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Jun 6, 2021 05:10
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