PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

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Antonio Bonomi
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

@ all,

it is enough to listen to Colin McMullen own voice on the Imperial War Museum recorded interview to remove any doubt about what happened that morning.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010751

The ranges on PoW were coming from the B turret range takers and have not been disturbed by the Padre prayer at the beginning of the action , ... but unfortunately they were available only when the distance was below the 24.000 yards ( Ref. Reel number 2 at counter 24 minutes and 55 seconds ).

Obviously McMullen is fair on telling that the Hood explosion changed the whole strategical scenario against the enemy, ... that everything was going fine with the gunnery until that moment, ... and about the fact that the Y turret jammed only during the Captain Leach ordered turn away to port already on retreat with the PoW circling around the Hood wreck disengaging, ... which is not what has been described by Adm Tovey ( dispatches ) to the Admiralty ( accepted and signed for being the truth ) and on the battle account on the last 77 years published books.

We do know today that immediately after the events many reports have been " adjusted " to avoid describing precisely what happened, ... and we do know today the reason for that to have happened in that way on that period.

Many years after, ... the war was over and the directly involved persons were dead.

This is the reason why Officers like Adm Tovey, Capt Ellis and McMullen finally described in details what really happened that morning.

Bye Antonio
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
Dunmunro wrote: "it'a pretty shocking when plain statements in the GAR are claimed to not to state what they plainly do state."
The PoW GAR nowhere says that the radars were not working during the battle. The GAR plainly says that they were not providing ranges before the engagement.

McMullen letter explains that after 5:56 (20000 yards) the 284 (clearlyt identified vs the 281 by the director tower) provided good ranges and this does not contradict the GAR in any way. Why the GAR was written the way it was written (not specifying the 284 worked after 20000 yards) is another story (I have my view about it of course :wink: ).
The letter of McMullen is precise, in sync with the GAR and with his IWM interview. It just gives us another interesting information that cannot be an invention of the ill memory of an old sailor...
It just destroys another excuse to justify Leach's decision. Full Stop.

McMullen_PoW_Radar_Ranges.jpg
McMullen_PoW_Radar_Ranges.jpg (14.99 KiB) Viewed 1534 times

Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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wadinga
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by wadinga »

Hello All,

As usual, the important qualification redacted
"The story as far as I can remember is as follows
. "

ie thirty years after it happened. Once again ancient recollections presented as incontrovertible truth, although in this case not fantastic assumptions of a guilt unburdened as in the case of Ellis. Paddon who actually operated the radars disagrees, and once the Radar office was destroyed by the Crane hit shell there were no ranges from radar.

All the best

wadinga
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by dunmunro »

From the GAR:
3. The rangefinders failed to develop a satisfactory range plot before opening fire; the fore D.C.T. 15-ft rangefinder was the only rangefinder which had a reasonable chance; the closing rate was very high and "A" and "B" rangefinders were able to see the enemy's superstructure for a short time only before "table turning." Conditions for ranging on the enemy's masts were not easy. As a result it required two down ladders to find the target.

4. No results were obtained from either Type 281 or 284 R.D.F.; it is understood that Signal School Officers are now of the opinion that Type 281 suffered interference and Type 284 was defective, although it appeared at the time that 284 was also suffering from interference.

5. Fire was opened at 0553, half a minute after Hood. A list of fire control signals made prior to opening fire is attached, as is also the zone time of each salvo fired by Prince of Wales on Form S.1148(f) with the number of guns fired in each salvo.
3) discusses events before and after 0553 (open fire) = some ranges obtained in the later stages of the engagement.
4) Discusses events before and after 0553 (open fire) = no ranges obtained from either radar.

Paddon's highly imaginative accounts of type 281 ranging states that there were three KM ships on his radar screen so clearly his account is flawed but if he did see three targets that indicates interference of some sort:
My position was in the 281 receiving office
and I personally manned the display tube. In
those days we had no gyro repeats; we had to
give bearings by red or green, but we did have
M-type transmission units, little counterdrums
on which we could transmit range. The
transmission counterdrum that I controlled had
as its counterpart a receiver on the wall of the
Transmitting Station, the TS. This had to be read
and placed by someone into the calculations
which were being carried out on the plot.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that I transmitted
these ranges, no one even knew they were coming
in on the counterdrum and no radar ranges were
used by our gunnery people. We had had only
one previous shoot, and had not developed any
drill. This was unfortunate because I had three
distinct echoes of three ships at 26,000 yards,
clearly portrayed on the radar screen and A-scan
with a linear blip. I was able to follow them in
with complete accuracy and complete detail,
religiously giving the range as I have described.
The third ship turned out later, on investigation,
to have been a supply vessel in company with
the Bismarck and the Prince Eugen. I have never
seen any reference to this supply vessel in
anything I have subsequently read...
and 3 radar targets but only two actual targets = worthless information. Paddon makes no mention of type 284 ranges being obtained during the first action but does state:
From the radar point of view I think there
were two points worth mentioning. While
operating the 281 I was able to observe the blip
of the sixteen inch shells that were being fired at
us come towards us on the radar screen. Also, a
certain amount of interference occurred. None
of the ships in company had radars of the same
frequency as the 281 on the Prince of Wales, yet
I was able to lock onto radar transmissions of
some kind which I reported to Admiralty. Their
scientists visited the ship later to discuss what I
had seen. Subsequently, the decision was that
Bismarck had some form of radar of comparable
frequency to our 281, which was operating at
86 megacycles.
The damage done to the radar systems was
extensive. As my 281 receiver mast had been
shot away, I was denied the use of 281...
Again, the failure of the radar systems was carefully investigated and as stated by Roskill, no radar ranges were obtained during the first action.
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,

unfortunately, it was not the imaginative Paddon, nor Roskill who directed the fire of PoW on May 24. It was a certain McMullen.

The letter of the Gunnery Officer of the PoW is very detailed in explaining how radars worked and why the ranges were not provided by the two sets.
http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarks ... letter.htm

How can we imagine that the PoW G.O. invented that the 284 was limited in range at 24000 yards (therefore unusable anyway at the beginning of the action) and that, only when the range was below 20000 yards, it was able to provide its input to the T.S. ? Had he dreamed about these figures ? Could he confuse the fact that 284 provided ranges during the most important action he ever fought ? :negative:
Let's try to be serious and admit that McMullen letter is crystal clear, in line with his IWM interview and it confirms and complements the PoW GAR, not contradicting it. Please let's forget the old excuse of "poor old sailors" and "ancient recollections": we have already seen this attitude too many times already. :stop:



PoW GAR point 3 accounts for the difficulties of estimating the initial range and for the 2 ladders (ending at 05:56, when range was finally found), therefore before the range was under 20000 yards and before the 284 started providing a "good range plot", not after .

In no place (surely not at point 4) the PoW GAR says that no radar range was obtained during the whole action. Points 3, 4 and 5 refer to the very first minutes of the action.



To be fair, I admit however that the fact that radars were not helping at open fire was a big handicap for PoW, as the main value of the radar (in a good visibility battle) is the precise initial range estimation. Also Hood seems to have had problems to her 284 (surely not a problem linked to the fact that the ship was a green one...), because McMullen was expecting to receive ranges from Hood and he did not.
On the other side, nobody knows whether Germans obtained radar ranges in the initial stages of the battle, therefore no comparison can be done, even if the fact that witnesses account for a first salvo from Bismarck falling quite close to Hood points to a radar having provided the initial range.
If this is the case, we have to admire even more the PoW gunnery performance: she hit the enemy after only 3 minutes from open fire, while Bismarck took slightly more (first hit quite some time after the PG deck hit, this one happened not before 05:57:30) despite having had an initial radar range.



Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by dunmunro »

RA Burt provides a lengthy quote from Hood's type 284 radar trials in March-April 1941 at Scapa flow, which can be summarized briefly that continuous ranging was possible from 25000 yds and "spasmodic" ranging was possible out to 27200 yds using KGV as a target. The plot using the ranges beyond 25000 yds was still very accurate, showing that the ranges were still accurate. Hood's type 284 performance was very similar to KGV's during Bismarck's last battle.

From PoW's GAR:
D - Events during the Third Action

25th May. - One double salvo was fired at 0131 at a range of 20,000 yards at an enemy ship which might have been Bismarck or Prinz Eugen. A good R.D.F. range was obtained but the target was then lost in funnel smoke and mist and fire could not be continued.

It is possible that a hit was obtained from these two salvoes as in addition to enemy gun flashes, a different type of explosion was seen at the same time as shots were due to fall. The splashes of our own salvoes were not seen due to the visibility.
Mcmullen obviously confused the use of radar during the 3rd action and didn't to remember that it failed in the first action.
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
still no range was probably acquired by Hood radar during the first action, because McMullen was expecting Hood to pass a range to PoW and this did not happen. Therefore 2 different Type 284 were most probably unable to obtain a range from 27000 yards (for both ships) till to 20000 yards (for PoW). The Hood was not a "green ship", had no "civilians" on board and the whole story of the poor PoW inexperienced also in the usage of the radar with her "failures" is therefore simply proven wrong once again.


Regarding McMullen who would have confused the first notable action with the third ineffectual one, it's clear this is not possible and just another attempt to refuse to accept what the G.O. of PoW (who was not suffering any mental problem...) wrote to Kennedy: in the letter McMullen speaks only about the first action in a very detailed way, focusing precisely on rangefinders and radars.
It appears that the 284 in May 1941 was able to get ranges only at relatively short distances or that the "switching on" the the 2 apparatus was too short to allow the tubes to warm up correctly, or both.
It is enough to read the whole letter to see that McMullen refers surely to the first action: http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarks ... letter.htm


The really interesting questions are:
  • why did Kennedy intentionally ignored this very precise letter (including the interesting way McMullen estimated the range using the "cards") and preferred to write a "happy ending fairy tale", avoiding to speak about the radars at all (he did not dare to mention radar failures, of course, after having received McMullen letter, but he carefully avoided to mention it and to use its content) ?
  • Why did he decide not to counter Roskill statement in "War at Sea" , having received these new info ?
  • Why he even avoided to mention the letter to Roskill in his correspondence (that I have got in full) during the review of "Pursuit" and later (there are letters between the two of them re. the Bismarck Operation until 1982), asking him why he had supported the false story of the "radar failures" ?
  • How could Roskill (after his own inspection of the radars) conclude that a 284 broken in the morning (first action) was however perfectly working in the evening (third action) ? Does anybody have the Roskill report after his inspection ?
  • Why wasn't Roskill (who got McMullen letter to Kennedy only in 1979) surprised at all about the 284 "good range plot" obtained under 20000 yards and, thanking McMullen, did he avoid to ask McMullen why he stated the 284 was working already during the first action (preferring to ask him about the scale of the 284 screen, instead) ?... :think:

Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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wadinga
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by wadinga »

Hello All,

The letter of the Gunnery Officer of the PoW is very detailed in explaining how radars worked
McMullen:
This set had a more or less unlimited range.
How can we imagine that the PoW G.O. invented that the 284 was limited in range at 24000 yards
McMullen was clearly completely ignorant about how radar worked, and because he was in the DCT had no idea whether any ranges at all were delivered to the Transmitting Room. No set has unlimited range. The constraint of 24,000yds was simply the outer limit of the calibration scale on the A scope display. Paddon was an expert, Roskill was an expert. They both knew Type 284 was disabled throughout the first action.

Even Vic Dale in 2009, who was quite as prepared to fabricate evidence in support of fantasy allegations as A&A are today, quoted:
Lt Murphy the "Dagger Gunner" controlling the TS and the Fire Control Table writes;

When "enemy in sight"was passed to the TS I was most anxious for a range of any description, but none was forthcoming from any source. The 42ft RDF in A (turret) was largely under water, the other in Y would not bear. So I felt entirely dependent on radar. When nothing showed on the dials I ordered the operator to contact the 284 office by telephone and so far as I can remember from the growing tenseness, he was told the radar was jammed...[infact, by the high powered radio signalling "enemy report" to the Admiralty.
At no time during the action did I see a radar range.
Let's try to be serious and admit that McMullen letter is crystal clear, in line with his IWM interview and it confirms and complements the PoW GAR, not contradicting it
Of course the expert information in the GAR factual report, contradicts the fuzzy 30 year old memory, poorly expressed in the letter, just as Ellis' detailed contemporary report is more reliable than the hazy, unchecked, unedited, unpublished recollections of his memoir.

4. No results were obtained from either Type 281 or 284 R.D.F.; it is understood that Signal School Officers are now of the opinion that Type 281 suffered interference and Type 284 was defective, although it appeared at the time that 284 was also suffering from interference.
does not specify when. It says
no results
and at no point suggests 284 suddenly stopped being defective, or that 281 stopped being affected by interference.

More fabricated allegations about cover-ups will follow until this dreadful theory is exposed to the rightful and universal derision it deserves, and its authors duly castigated, by being published internationally.

All the best

wadinga
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
Wadinga wrote/quoted: "This set had a more or less unlimited range....
...How can we imagine that the PoW G.O. invented that the 284 was limited in range at 24000 yards....
McMullen was clearly completely ignorant about how radar worked"
...possibly Mr.Wadinga has not even understood that "this set" in McMullen letter (http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarks ... letter.htm) is NOT the 284 (gunnery radar) we are speaking about, but the 281 (air warning radar)...
Instead of accusing a gunnery officer to be ignorant, he should try to read, study and understand the difference before posting just for the urgency to deny what is written by McMullen and published on the Hood website....

McMullen may have been not very knowledgeable (less ignorant then many else, clearly) about radar functioning but, as PoW G.O., he was sure the ranges were provided by the 284 below 20000 yards, generating a "good range plot" already during the first action and the fact that, during the third action, surely the 284 worked confirms that the gunnery radar (284, not 281....) of PoW started working below 20000 yards, despite Vic Dale, Murphy, Roskill and Paddon.


Mr.Wadinga should try to answer a few simple questions: a radar working in the evening may had been defective in the morning ? Was the "green" PoW crew so expert to repair a radar at sea in few hours ? How Roskill could detect with precision a "morning malfunction" days after it happened, when the apparatus worked fine in the evening of the same day ? Why didn't Roskill ask to McMullen to confirm that the 284 was working during the first action, just asking him whether he was sure about the scale of the screen ?

Simply this radar did not provide any range over 20000 yards on May 24, but worked fine below that range.


Wadinga shamefully wrote: "More fabricated allegations about cover-ups will follow until this dreadful theory is exposed to the rightful and universal derision it deserves, and its authors duly castigated, by being published internationally. "
The only rightful and universal derision has already been well deserved by this kind of deniers at any cost, when left without any argument.

Who knows whether the moderator will for once, finally call him by name as well, to stop this kind of hysterical attacks (revealing his impotence) that he is writing each time the shame of that day is put under its correct light by evidences and surely the whole story will be published because well proven by now, like for the very annoying (for Mr.Wadinga at least apparently as he mention it each time...) Captain Ellis' autobiography, anticipated (by geometry) in Antonio's reconstruction + confirmed by F.O.Busch bearing (15° true) and range (176 hm)... :think:


Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by wadinga »

Hello Alberto,
he was sure the ranges were provided by the 284 below 20000 yards, generating a "good range plot"
Murphy who was actually supposed to generate this plot said he received no radar ranges. So McMullen's 30 year old memory is wrong, because he wasn't actually there in the transmitting Room.

This repeated obvious and deliberate misrepresentation of evidence to prosecute your contentious and unproven theories are why you are "named" so often, as well as your frequent use of personal insults.

BTW Tovey also reports his Type 284 being wiped out by Main Transmitter power and emphasizes such transmissions should be avoided during action to avoid interference. I have cured similar problems aboard ship by pouring hot water over aerial insulators to dissolve conducting sea spray salt crystals and avoid short circuit of the transmitter to the ship's structure, inducing spurious currents in sensitive electronic equipment. :cool:

All the best

wadinga
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,

once established that Mr.Wadinga, in his urgency to deny the facts, had not even read the letter and confused the 281 with the 284 radars,
the fact that apparently Murphy (how was his memory ? how many years after ? in which context ? what is the source ? who is Vic Dale ?....please post sources and dates !) said that he did not see any radar range, cannot anyway counter the PoW G.O. precise account of facts, perfectly matching what he wrote in the GAR (where there is no radar related sentence referred to the later stages of the battle).
McMullen was not in the T.S. but before writing his GAR, he had to inspect all the range plots from his subordinates and apparently he found the one provided by the 284 (under 20000 yards) as being a "good range plot", annoying as it can be for the PoW "fairy tale".

McMullen's memory was very, very good (as well as Tovey's one), not only for radars but also for Court Martials, despite Mr.Wadinga pitiful attempts to discredit it.
The fact that Roskill did not ask him about these 284 radar ranges after having stated the exact opposite in his "War at Sea" but having discussed with him the content of his letter, speaks for itself about the level of reticence in unveiling the cover-up within the Royal Navy.

The fact that the 284 worked in the evening engagement excludes of course any "hardware" problem in the morning: the only "problem" was that the fast approach of the two divisions prevented all British radars (including apparently Hood's one, we don't know about German ones) to provide the initial open fire range, possibly also due to the fact they were switched on too late, but this has absolutely nothing to do with PoW readiness to combat and to his crew experience.
Once the range was acquired "manually", the radar was of course of very limited value in such a short, good visibility and progressively shorter range battle (therefore the radars were not mentioned anymore in the GAR).



The word "derision" and "castigated authors" (inspired by personal anger and sense of impotence) have been used above (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8491&start=15#p82224) by this guy and I expect a "super partes" moderator to ask him by name to abandon immediately such mocking attitude (especially after having embraced so many imaginative and unsupported theories in these last months...).


Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Bill Jurens »

Regarding reliability and reception issues I think it's important to realize that those who may be familiar with electronic performance today might not fully appreciate exactly how unreliable and unpredictable old-style type-type electronic devices were. The units were complicated to fix, and repairs -- rather than just involving 'swapping boards', often involved digging through mazes of hard-wired connections to locate and replace a single component individually. Older equipment like this quite regularly went 'on the fritz', with troubleshooting and repair a rather unpredictable process. Nowadays we tend to just assume that electronic equipment just 'works' when turned on, comes on more or less instantaneously, and can be relied upon to work, essentially trouble-free, for years-on-end. It certainly wasn't like that in 1940. Further, back in the 'good-old-days' when everything was analog, units had to be continuously tuned and adjusted; acquiring and maintaining a good signal required at least as much art as science. To take a home-grown analogy, there was a time -- which many may have forgotten or never known -- when your television or radio took fifteen seconds or more to come 'on' after the switch was flicked, and often required more-or-less continuous fiddling with various and sundry knobs and dials to maintain any sort of reasonable signal thereafter. Until a tube blew or 'went gassy', or slightly worked its way out of the tube socket due to vibration or as the result of various heating and cooling cycles.

In that regard, I am not surprised that radars of the day presented as somewhat erratic and cantankerous pieces of equipment which could work well one day, or even for one hour, then inexplicably almost fail to work properly, or actually fail to work at all, even fifteen minutes later.

This sort of erratic performance would make it difficult for anyone to remember, with any accuracy, precisely how a device would have been operating on any particular day, or over any particular time frame, particularly months or years in the future. It's a bit like trying to remember precisely how good the weather might have been on, say, April 5th of last year. Radio logs were kept in order to keep track of this sort of thing, and notations were made in real time, or slightly later, in order to help with future troubleshooting or explain why signals might have been misinterpreted or even entirely missed after the fact. When multiple units, each of somewhat different construction, were involved (at least ONE of the radars might work today!) it would be very easy indeed to confuse things quite dramatically.

In that regard, I would consider memories recovered years later to be highly problematical at best. As before, "the weakest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory..."

Bill Jurens
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Dave Saxton »

Bill Jurens wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 6:22 pm Regarding reliability and reception issues I think it's important to realize that those who may be familiar with electronic performance today might not fully appreciate exactly how unreliable and unpredictable old-style type-type electronic devices were. The units were complicated to fix, and repairs -- rather than just involving 'swapping boards', often involved digging through mazes of hard-wired connections to locate and replace a single component individually. Older equipment like this quite regularly went 'on the fritz', with troubleshooting and repair a rather unpredictable process. Nowadays we tend to just assume that electronic equipment just 'works' when turned on, comes on more or less instantaneously, and can be relied upon to work, essentially trouble-free, for years-on-end. It certainly wasn't like that in 1940. Further, back in the 'good-old-days' when everything was analog, units had to be continuously tuned and adjusted; acquiring and maintaining a good signal required at least as much art as science. To take a home-grown analogy, there was a time -- which many may have forgotten or never known -- when your television or radio took fifteen seconds or more to come 'on' after the switch was flicked, and often required more-or-less continuous fiddling with various and sundry knobs and dials to maintain any sort of reasonable signal thereafter. Until a tube blew or 'went gassy', or slightly worked its way out of the tube socket due to vibration or as the result of various heating and cooling cycles.

In that regard, I am not surprised that radars of the day presented as somewhat erratic and cantankerous pieces of equipment which could work well one day, or even for one hour, then inexplicably almost fail to work properly, or actually fail to work at all, even fifteen minutes later.

This sort of erratic performance would make it difficult for anyone to remember, with any accuracy, precisely how a device would have been operating on any particular day, or over any particular time frame, particularly months or years in the future. It's a bit like trying to remember precisely how good the weather might have been on, say, April 5th of last year. Radio logs were kept in order to keep track of this sort of thing, and notations were made in real time, or slightly later, in order to help with future troubleshooting or explain why signals might have been misinterpreted or even entirely missed after the fact. When multiple units, each of somewhat different construction, were involved (at least ONE of the radars might work today!) it would be very easy indeed to confuse things quite dramatically.

In that regard, I would consider memories recovered years later to be highly problematical at best. As before, "the weakest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory..."

Bill Jurens
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Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by wadinga »

Hello Alberto,

Paddon also confirms:
no radar ranges were used by our gunnery people. We had had only one previous shoot, and had not developed any drill.
As does KG V's official report |Para 17
"The failure of Prince of Wales' RDF to get results in her first engagement and the fact that KG V's type 284 set was put out of action by shock of gunfire after half an hour...…."
This was the first serious use of radar in gunnery combat and PoW's system performance was scrutinized closely. The conclusion is clear, her radars failed to provide any data to the Transmitting Room and Roskill was privy to that information. Since Roskill was personally responsible for checking the vessel's system before she sailed he was personally very interested. He says in
In the Official History of the War at Sea; SW Roskill on page 404 writes;

"In the PoW no results were obtained with either of her sets throughout the action.
McMullen was "very, very good" at remembering things 30 years later, that didn't happen, especially when he was told things about invented Court Martials that also didn't happen.

Hello Bill and Dave, Thank you for your understanding clarification about 1940's experimental electronics. Personally I find it hard to believe that anyone who has served at sea at all, especially in complex warships, could make a naive statement like:
The fact that the 284 worked in the evening engagement excludes of course any "hardware" problem in the morning
I guess that, maybe in the catering department for instance, equipment is highly reliable whilst "State of the Art" weapons and electronics are far less so.

Especially since we have already established it was likely PoW's own full power transmissions which were overwhelming the sensitive electronics of the Type 284.

Murphy would have generated a range plot, anyway, based on enemy inclination estimation and speed relative to own ship,the over and short estimations of the Spotting Officers, and as the range came down the optical rangefinders. The fabrication of evidence of non-existent accurate radar ranges by A&A is purely designed at this point to allow the generation of a further speculative "definitive and perfectly accurate map" of the action after 06:00, on some other thread, based on their intuitive interpretation of the vagaries of the Salvo Map, and thus "proving" their unfounded assertions of Cowardice, Conspiracy and Cover-Up.

All the best

wadinga
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,

if anyone prefers to think that, for whatever reason (never definitely understood...), the 284 did not work correctly in the morning engagement and that McMullen invented a non-existing "good range plot" from the 284 under 20000 yards during the same engagement, so be it: their problem.
As I said, after the range was found, very little value could come from the radar anyway and PoW hit the enemy before Bismarck could do.

Please don't forget also to ask to the Hood site webmaster to remove this poor old sailor's letter (http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarks ... letter.htm) or to amend it deleting this sentence
McMullen_PoW_Radar_Ranges.jpg
McMullen_PoW_Radar_Ranges.jpg (14.99 KiB) Viewed 1333 times
or at least to add Roskill's paragraph as a "caveat" (possibly explaining why the same Roskill was not surprised reading the letter and did not ask to McMullen about the ranges obtained by the 284 when discussing the same letter with its author: I have not yet seen a valid "excuse" invented for this annoying detail by anybody...) :kaput:



However, for the future, please avoid carefully to list the alleged radar problems of PoW as an argument to support the "fairy-tale" of the brand-new and inexperienced battleship because, according to McMullen, also Hood had no initial range and she was not a green ship.
Therefore no more whining about the poor PoW not having a functioning radar vs the perfect German war machines (for which we have no evidence anywhere re. any radar range obtained during the battle).



Wadinga wrote: "The fabrication of evidence of non-existent accurate radar ranges by A&A is purely designed at this point to allow the generation of a further speculative "definitive and perfectly accurate map"....thus "proving" their unfounded assertions of Cowardice, Conspiracy and Cover-Up."
Unfortunately for Mr.Wadinga and his "indeterminateness fan club", there is no need at all for any further precision in reconstructing the battle: we have both gun ranges and true ranges from PoW, in addition to all the other information from the other ships (mostly the cross-bearings), we can do without PoW radar ranges (not reported anyway).
As I see the "moderator" is not interested anymore in a fair debate (having repeatedly allowed Mr.Wadinga to mock and provoke), I can repeat to this guy that his (and his supporters') own inability to propose any different credible scenario (or worse, his ridiculous attempt to sell the story of a Bismarck turning on course 270° at the beginning of the engagement using a proven wrong map...) demonstrates that Antonio's reconstruction is already precise enough to allow to judge who acted as a coward, who was a liar and who did his duty that day.



Bye, Alberto
Last edited by Alberto Virtuani on Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:28 pm, edited 4 times in total.
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

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