Mush Morton in the Wahoo was hunting in the Sea of Japan by the latest summer of '43. O'Kane and Tang had been in Japanese waters repeatedly throughout '44. The Japanese knew US subs were about long before Shinano sailed in November of '44.
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Mush Morton in the Wahoo was hunting in the Sea of Japan by the latest summer of '43. O'Kane and Tang had been in Japanese waters repeatedly throughout '44. The Japanese knew US subs were about long before Shinano sailed in November of '44.
And the pink ones been the best ones
Only if the crew is wearing Petticoats during that Operation. Say hi to Cary Grant and Tony Curtis for me, GZ.
And shinano's zig-zag kept turning her back into Archerfish's firing profile thanks to the captain's angle of approach.
Glad someone got it
I live for double entendre and oblique references, herr frau.
To be honest, there is a difference between modernizing an interwar or WW1 battleship (which was using existing ressource) and flat out producing a new one. For BBs produced after, say, 1933, the number are pretty telling (I'm putting ships that were actually laid down, IE work started on them, whenever they were cancelled, bombed, scrapped, converted to aircraft carriers or incomplete by 1945...)
SU : Four (none completed)
Soviet Union, Soviet Russia, Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Bielorussia
(To be honest, it's pretty hard to evaluate those 60 000 tons ships, that would have been on par with the Yamato on paper but you can be a bit sceptical about the capacities of the SU to actuallly produce those ships considering the difficulties that plagued the construction. I mean, I don't want to mock Russian naval engineers, but when you start shooting workers as ''saboteurs'' over rivets...)
Two battlecruisers of 40 000 tons (none completed)
Sevastopol, Kronsdat.
(same observations).
Both for BBs and BCs, the best ships ,were around 20% done when war started, so....
Germany : Four (Schnarnost, Gneisenau, Bismarck, Tirpitz) (four completed)
Note : Scharnost and Gneisenau are count as BC in many books, but let's count them as BB)
Japan : Four (two completed as BBs, one launched as carrier)
(Yamato, Mushashi, Shinano, Unammed
(the fourth ship was scrapped early on construction)
Italy : Four (three completed)
Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Roma, Impero (Impero was never completed)
France : Five (three completed)
Dunkerque, Strasbourg
(a bit small for BBs, a bit large for BC...)
Richelieu, Jean Bart, Clemenceau (Jean Bart was completed well into the fifties, Clemenceau was scrapped as a skeleton)
UK : Eight (five completed during the war)
King George V, Prince of Wales , Duke of York, Anson , Howe
Lion, Temeraire (scrapped early on)
Vanguard (completed after the war)
United States : Twelve (ten completed)
North Carolina, Washington
South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts, Alabama
Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kentucky (last two never completed)
plus, as we count Scharnost class type as well as Dunkerque types, the Alaska-class BCs (which were qualified, in a slightly American-style overkill, as heavy cruisers despite being 34 000 tons ships...)
Alaska, Guam, Hawaii (last one never completed)
So, to summarize, for BBs and BCs,
SU = 6 laid down, 0 operationnal
Germany = 4 laid down, 4 operationnal
Italy = 4 laid down, 3 operationnal
Japan = 4 laid down, 2 operationnal
France = 5 laid down, 3 operationnal (Richelieu was very barely operational until a major US refit)
UK = 8 laid down, 5 operationnal
United States = 15 laid down, 12 operationnal.
As I said, it's very generous to count some of those ships (the SU one, the Clemenceau as potential ships) , but we arrive at 44 ships laid down and 29 , 12 of them being Americans.
As the Americans managed to produce also 150 carriers of all types (including 18 Essex carriers) , I don't think it crippled them much. On the other hand, the four Littorios, ,despite being very good ships (for daylight combat, that is...) were probably a luxury that Italy could ill afford. On yet another hand, the ships looking the most like ''good one way submarines'', the Soviet battheships, were not that a waste of ressources, since they were made with rather poor steel in the late thirties : most of that metal would have been used to produce tanks dramatically outdated for June 1941. Per Soviet Union rules, the only serious losses was with the numerous engineers and skilled workers executed for ''wrecking'' during the constructions....
SU : Four (none completed)
Soviet Union, Soviet Russia, Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Bielorussia
(To be honest, it's pretty hard to evaluate those 60 000 tons ships, that would have been on par with the Yamato on paper but you can be a bit sceptical about the capacities of the SU to actuallly produce those ships considering the difficulties that plagued the construction. I mean, I don't want to mock Russian naval engineers, but when you start shooting workers as ''saboteurs'' over rivets...)
Two battlecruisers of 40 000 tons (none completed)
Sevastopol, Kronsdat.
(same observations).
Both for BBs and BCs, the best ships ,were around 20% done when war started, so....
Germany : Four (Schnarnost, Gneisenau, Bismarck, Tirpitz) (four completed)
Note : Scharnost and Gneisenau are count as BC in many books, but let's count them as BB)
Japan : Four (two completed as BBs, one launched as carrier)
(Yamato, Mushashi, Shinano, Unammed
(the fourth ship was scrapped early on construction)
Italy : Four (three completed)
Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Roma, Impero (Impero was never completed)
France : Five (three completed)
Dunkerque, Strasbourg
(a bit small for BBs, a bit large for BC...)
Richelieu, Jean Bart, Clemenceau (Jean Bart was completed well into the fifties, Clemenceau was scrapped as a skeleton)
UK : Eight (five completed during the war)
King George V, Prince of Wales , Duke of York, Anson , Howe
Lion, Temeraire (scrapped early on)
Vanguard (completed after the war)
United States : Twelve (ten completed)
North Carolina, Washington
South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts, Alabama
Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kentucky (last two never completed)
plus, as we count Scharnost class type as well as Dunkerque types, the Alaska-class BCs (which were qualified, in a slightly American-style overkill, as heavy cruisers despite being 34 000 tons ships...)
Alaska, Guam, Hawaii (last one never completed)
So, to summarize, for BBs and BCs,
SU = 6 laid down, 0 operationnal
Germany = 4 laid down, 4 operationnal
Italy = 4 laid down, 3 operationnal
Japan = 4 laid down, 2 operationnal
France = 5 laid down, 3 operationnal (Richelieu was very barely operational until a major US refit)
UK = 8 laid down, 5 operationnal
United States = 15 laid down, 12 operationnal.
As I said, it's very generous to count some of those ships (the SU one, the Clemenceau as potential ships) , but we arrive at 44 ships laid down and 29 , 12 of them being Americans.
As the Americans managed to produce also 150 carriers of all types (including 18 Essex carriers) , I don't think it crippled them much. On the other hand, the four Littorios, ,despite being very good ships (for daylight combat, that is...) were probably a luxury that Italy could ill afford. On yet another hand, the ships looking the most like ''good one way submarines'', the Soviet battheships, were not that a waste of ressources, since they were made with rather poor steel in the late thirties : most of that metal would have been used to produce tanks dramatically outdated for June 1941. Per Soviet Union rules, the only serious losses was with the numerous engineers and skilled workers executed for ''wrecking'' during the constructions....
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Also, of the 29 ships completed...
-the 12 Americans survived the war
-4 of the 5 British ones survived the war
-1 of the 3 French ones survived the war
-0 of the 4 Germans ones survived the war
-2 of the 3 Italians ones survived the war
-0 of the 2 Japanee ones survived the war
19 surviving ships out of 29, that's not too bad for WW2 losses in ships, especially for the Royal Navy and the US Navy
The 10 losses are...
-Prince of Wales
-Strasbourg, Dunkerque
-Tirpitz, Bismarck, Gneisenau, Schnarnost
-Roma
-Yamato, Mushahi
-Gneisenau, Dunkerque and Strasbourg were scuttled.
-Roma sunk by a single air attack (either spectacular bad luck or poor design)
-Yamato, Musashi,and to a lesser degree Prince of Wales required massive air attacks to sink.
-Tirpitz tied down whole fleet groups
-Bismarck and Scharnost were cornered, crippled and sunk by RN task forces
While this not objective, it can be said that short of the Roma, those ships were usually not THAT vulnerable to air attacks or submarines. Of the 6 lost by enemy action involving aircraft, 4 (Musashi, Yamato, Tirpitz and to a lesser degree Prince of Wales) required generous helpings of bombs and torpedoes. (The sinking of Roma and Bismarck because of one or two hit shows that those beasts were vulnerable to air attacks, not helpless)
Edited : Roma was hit twice, not once.
-the 12 Americans survived the war
-4 of the 5 British ones survived the war
-1 of the 3 French ones survived the war
-0 of the 4 Germans ones survived the war
-2 of the 3 Italians ones survived the war
-0 of the 2 Japanee ones survived the war
19 surviving ships out of 29, that's not too bad for WW2 losses in ships, especially for the Royal Navy and the US Navy
The 10 losses are...
-Prince of Wales
-Strasbourg, Dunkerque
-Tirpitz, Bismarck, Gneisenau, Schnarnost
-Roma
-Yamato, Mushahi
-Gneisenau, Dunkerque and Strasbourg were scuttled.
-Roma sunk by a single air attack (either spectacular bad luck or poor design)
-Yamato, Musashi,and to a lesser degree Prince of Wales required massive air attacks to sink.
-Tirpitz tied down whole fleet groups
-Bismarck and Scharnost were cornered, crippled and sunk by RN task forces
While this not objective, it can be said that short of the Roma, those ships were usually not THAT vulnerable to air attacks or submarines. Of the 6 lost by enemy action involving aircraft, 4 (Musashi, Yamato, Tirpitz and to a lesser degree Prince of Wales) required generous helpings of bombs and torpedoes. (The sinking of Roma and Bismarck because of one or two hit shows that those beasts were vulnerable to air attacks, not helpless)
Edited : Roma was hit twice, not once.
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LOL, I loved that movie. Haven't seen it in a long time. I think that's the one where they sank a truck?
My point, incidentally, is no to say that money put in BBs was good expense (which is a non-debate) but rather than post 1930 battleships were not such easy targets. The Yamato was sunk by 380-ish aircraft-an Essex could carry 90 aircraft. (So, 4 carriers value of aircraft).
Regarding Yamato and Musashi I wonder how much overkill was there. USN wanted to be sure that they would sink these ships and they concentrated air attacks on just couple of targets. It is different thing to say that Yamato was hit by some dozen torpedoes and six bombs than how much was really needed to sink Yamato and how many of those torpedoes and bombs were there to make sure that USN would really sink Yamato.
I tend to agree, and how many dive bomber / torpedo bomber pilots don't want a direct hit on Yamato on their resume. Plus, the most telling thing of all about this is the sheer volume of aircraft the US was able to put up at will in the time and place of their own choosing.
Hitting a ship going at, what, 40 knots, with 12 torpedoes and 6 bombs required a hell lot of 1945 vintage aircraft.
Yamato had one very big weakness against torpedo bombers, her length which was around 263. Well trained torpedo bombers generally attacked against a large moving target as a well concerted team. The general idea was to make sure that couple of torpedoes would hit the target. In order to do that they need to use couple of planes to the ship´s path. Other planes put their torpedoes where the ship would be if she turn port or starboard. Ultimately what ever you do, you are going to hit by a torpedo unless someone shoots down those torpedo planes before they drop their torpedoes. That is how IJN sunk HMS Repulse in 1941.
I was reading this and was about to suggest you look at 'combing' and the way PoW and Repulse were sunk around Malaysia. In this instance, it wasn't just a couple of Torpedo bombers, but quite a number who performed a 'combing' attack. The first one (or two?) of these attacks failed because Repulse was able to turn parallel to the torpedo course. It was only when 3 (if I remember) of these combs were launched at different angles of approach were they able to hit. Now this may seem inevitable, but one of the arguments against Admiral Sir Tom Phillips is that even the most basic fighter cover (i.e. Brewster Buffalos) would have disrupted up these 'combs' and perhaps saved the ships.
I have one counter-argument to the Brewsters Buffalos giving air support to the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse, Zeroes. IJN Zeros did have a range of more than 3000 kilometers. Historically, Brewster Buffalos didn´t do well against Zeros and I am certain IJN assigned some Zeroes to escort their torpedo bombers.
I read at least once that the Yamato never recovered it's design speed after being torpedoed by an American submarine. Anyone have insight on the matter ? (USS Skate, 25th December 1943)
I think that is incorrect. In April 7, 1945 Yamato increased her speed to 27 knots which was her flank speed.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/yamato.htm
My guess is that IJN ships used the flank speed only in battles because flank speed consumed a lot of fuel. Especially in the late WWII, Japan didn´t have much fuel because crude oil needed to be shipped from Dutch East Indies and tankers were the priority targets for US subs.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm
At 16 knots cruising speed Yamato burned some 14 tons of fuel per hour. At flank speed she would burn a lot more fuel per hour.