Naval History Forums

Wow. Thank you for that very informative post. It's kind of amazing to me that none of the swordfish crashed into the water.

West Virginia was of course a 16" ship. She claimed hits on her first broadside and straddled on every broadside after that for I think over 10 in a row, and most were 7 or 8 guns. Really impressive performance. Probably quite a few hits, but of course you sink ships by letting water in, which is wh...

The three modernized BBs with Mark 8 FC radars were the only ones that had a good fire control solutions, and West Virginia actually did much of the shooting. If she had been there by herself it probably wouldn't have made much difference in terms of BB firepower. The Japanese ships were really dest...

In the USN, 5" mounts typically had a handling room directly below them and the magazine below that. That was pretty much true from BBs on down to DDs.

marcelo_malara wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 27, 2020 10:59 pm

Yes, but not every navy had a CV, so you can say that there was a need for the the torpedo yet.

Regards

Which is why the Soviet Union pioneered the development of anti-ship missiles. Of course, they also had a very large number of submarines.

I think the CV had become the chief offensive weapon system, and getting within 50 km of a CV would be a difficult proposition unless you are in a submarine.

Gentlemen, This may seem a bit of a daft question given the age of missiles, but do any warships today still carry torpedoes? Yes. Submarines, obviously. Destroyers carry ASW torpedoes for their helos, and It doesn't cost much in weight or money to install torpedo tubes near the helicopter magazine...

I'm pretty sure the USN would be more than happy for the IJN to attack their battleships while the US carriers were attacking the Japanese carriers.

When you say "Alan Zimm, in his book on Pearl Harbor, thinks otherwise.", I'm not sure what you mean. It seems to imply that he agrees with me. It's apparent to me that a CV operating at sea is difficult to attack if for no other reason than her fighters. Being able to maneuver also makes them much ...

I completely agree that Lee would not want to fight at night. He was aboard Washington at Guadalcanal, and I'm sure he realized how dangerous that situation was, especially with respect to Japanese torpedoes.

The Japanese lost nine aircraft in the first wave and 20 in the second wave. Not a huge number, but note that they lost a lot more in the second wave. This doesn't look to me like AA that was useless, as implied earlier. Of course, it was plagued by defects and other issues and was never going to be...

OpanaPointer wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:38 pm

"ships not fully manned"?

I was assuming that if the fleet was at sea, the ships would not have a significant portion of their crews ashore like they were on Sunday morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The USA was not at war, so no they weren't ready and any ships lost at sea would not be repairable. Having said that, ships at sea are much more difficult to hit with torpedoes and their compartments would not have all watertight doors open for inspection. The special Japanese bomber formations equi...

Oops, yes it certainly would! Of course I meant 35000 tons, but as i said, I wonder why the RN seemed to have difficulty in putting 12 x14 or 8x16" in the KGv's when the US managed it, was it because the KG's had more and heavier armour and were built to be faster? Speed. West Virginia was about 35...

The USN was much better at night fighting than they were earlier in the war. How could they not be? I know there was at least one case where USN DDs ambushed some IJN DDs with torpedoes at night, using radar as their primary sensor.