Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Drachinifel"
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@Johnnycdrums The Colt Mark 12 20mm cannon was designed for aerial combat and did fine in aircraft other than the Crusader. No other jet could pull as a high a G force maneuvers a Crusader, and the cannon feed mechanism couldn't keep up. It would have done better with a M39 revolver cannon since the feed wasn't subject to high G failures like the Mk 12, and the heavier shell was less likely to get sideways in the feed tray. Nevertheless, the light, high velocity round, with its larger bursting charge, was devastating to opponents when it scored hits. With its 1,000 rpm firing rate, a five second burst generally enough to bring down an opposing fighter. Its main weapon was the Sidewinder and HARM missiles, with only four air to air kills with the cannon.
The Phantom's main advantage was its fighter-bomber role. There was no other naval aircraft with the load carrying ability of an F-4. Its biggest problem, ironically, was the lack of a built-in cannon and lead computing gunsight. This was finally solved with the F-4E carrying the excellent Vulcan cannon.
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@kemarisite The US did a great job of propagandizing not only the B-17, which actually was in service at the outbreak of the war, but also the B-19, the Global Bomber. It too existed, but only one of them, and it was on show all over the country in the fall of 1941. We made quite a show of the Norden Bombsight as well, mostly by making sure there were many photos of B-17's guarded by heavily armed troops, and showing bombardiers taking the bombsights off the plane in heavy locked bags while being armed with .45's. There were even special bombproof magazines to store the bombsight when it was off the plane. The Norden Company itself engaged in intense self promotion while attempting to keep the bombsight itself secret. The US certainly believed its own hype. On December 2, 1941, the acting chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics enthusiastically wrote to the secretary of the Navy, “The Norden bombsight is considered to be the principal single factor of superiority which the air forces of this country possess over those of potential enemy countries.” By 1944, enough had fallen into German and Japanese hands from shot down wrecks that it was finally shown to the American public while still blurring out certain features.
Most level bombing of moving ships was conducted from 12,000 to 15,000 feet since few Japanese antiaircraft weapons had accurate effective ceilings above about 12,000 feet. When the bombsight was working right and with a well trained bombardier, the Norden was no slouch. Out of a dozen bombs dropped in practice, ten could be placed with 50 feet of the center of the aim point. This may not have been accurate enough to always put a bomb on the deck, but it was close enough to cause damaging and sometimes fatal near misses. The problem was the Norden was so complex that, in the days of vacuum electronics, it needed constant maintenance and adjustment. It was just as difficult to train comptent bombsight maintainers as it was bombardiers, both requiring eighteen weeks to learn the trade. As the war intensified, those training periods went from 18 to 14 to 12 and finally to 10 weeks. Consequently, bombers were flying with improperly maintained bombsights and poorly trained bombardiers. It was that situation that contributed the poor reputation of the Norden at the end of the war.
After the war, with improvements to the Norden and time to properly train maintainers and bombardiers, the Norden was able to achieve that 50 foot CEP again. It was still our standard bombsight in the B-47 and b-52, not being retired until 1967, when radar bombsights that were more accurate and easier to use had been developed. The Norden was neither magic or junk, and the Japanese did indeed fear the combination of the B-17 and the Norden, right up until the aluminum storm of B-29's, each dropping nearly the weight of an empty B-17 worth of bombs, over the homeland.
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The wholesale scraping of useful RN WWII ships hadn't even begun in 1956. You weren't betrayed by the US. You were betrayed by Anthony Eden and Louis Mountbatten. You were betrayed by vacillation about how to seize the canal that lasted for over three months, thus putting the invasion at the same time as the Soviet invasion of Hungary. You were betrayed with the appointment of Stockwell as task force commander. You were betrayed by an operation with insufficient amphibious craft to quickly seize the canal and carry forward Operation Musketeer before any other protests mattered.
The US warned Britain and France that they didn't support military force in regaining control of the canal. Regardless, the British, French, and Israelis secretly planned to do just that. After not supporting the operation to begin with, and being put in the position of supporting an operation to reimpose British and French colonialism on one hand and oppose Soviet colonialism on the other, the US had no other choice to oppose both.
The British didn't "stand" with the US in Korea. It was an operation of the United Nations, and they were required to assist in Korea. The combined numbers of troops from the much smaller Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand equaled the number of British troops that served in the conflict. The number of US troops committed was 326,000 compared to the British contribution of about 40,000. The only aircraft on the ground from the Commonwealth came from Australia and South Africa. The RAF didn't contribute any aircraft except for a single Sunderland unit. The RN was the only service that had a major British commitment of aircraft.
Your understanding of history seems to be colored by your vitriolic hatred of the United States. Given the fact you could write unironically that the US only gave Britain a "little help" from 1939 to 1942 suggests your hatred of the US runs deeper than the just the Suez incident.
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I have written about the Laconia incident previously. While the results of the sinking of Laconia and the later attack by a USAAF B-24 was terrible, and I'm in no way defending the ultimate decision to attack made by the pilots, there were a number of "fog of war" issues surrounding the entire incident. Please take the time to read The Origins of the Laconia Order at https://preview.tinyurl.com/sybm439. It gives a much clearer picture of what was happening before, during, and after the attack than most accounts.
Drach, I have a read a lot about the Laconia Incident, as I know you have. I have never read in anything authoritative that the U-156 was attacked by a B-25. As far I know, it was that one B-24 that was the only US aircraft to attack her. An A-20, one of four flying escort for a Stratoliner carrying a British admiral, reported the day previous to the sinking of the Laconia , being fired on by two surfaced U-boats. None of the five B-25's dispatched to look for the U-boats made contact, and they were at the extreme end of their range in any case, so could not loiter in the area to look. The B-24 that ultimately carried out the attack was dispatched to try to find those two U-boats because it had the range to conduct a useful search. The pilots had no idea Laconia had been sunk or that she was even in the area. If you have more information on this B-25 attack, I'd like to have a link.
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What a great video history! An interesting side story with USN destroyers were the experiments with mounting seaplanes. The first attempt was with the USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294) mounting a TS-1 floatplane in 1923. The fixed platform was inconveniently mounted directly in front of the bridge. This not only obstructed vision from the bridge but also greatly interfered from the field of fire from the forward 4" gun. Several successful flights were conducted, but the inadequate crane capacity, being needed to lower the plane and retrieve it, and the fragile nature of these early seaplanes, made the experiment generally a failure. The seaplane and platform were removed in early 1924 with the Ausburn being restored to the configuration of other Clemson class vessels.
The next attempt was aboard the US Noa (DD-343), yet another Clemson class. I realize this is slightly outside the 1939 limit of the discussion, but the plans for the seaplane mount were started in 1938, and Noa was originally scheduled for recommissioning in 1939, so close enough. Frank Knox, then Secretary of the Navy, was a great believer in the idea of using destroyers as seaplane carriers to extend their range for fleet protection and commerce raiding. To test this concept again, the Noa was taken in hand when she was recommissioned in April, 1940. She had an XSOC-1 seaplane mounted this time on a rotating platform, displacing the aft bank of torpedoes. She also had a boom with a much greater lifting capacity, and the XSOC-1 was a much more robust aircraft than her predecessors. This time the experiment was more successful, with many flights, and the ability to retrieve the plane while underway, a difficult task for a relatively small Clemson class ship. Noa retained her seaplane until November, 1941, and the generally successful experience with Noa led to Knox mandating the construction of six Fletcher class destroyers with seaplane capability, this time with catapults (!). However, as Drach would say, that's a story for another day.
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I hope everyone is tolerating their time in prison as well as can be expected. I'm looking forward to a gradual opening up of at least the US economy over the next month. The high here in S Alabama reached 90 yesterday, so maybe the heat will at least make life difficult for the virus.
The big issue in using the so-called "Persian Corridor" was expanding the marshalling yard capabilities and then constructing hundreds of miles of double tracks and increased length sidings to haul enough freight to come close to Arctic convoy tonnage, even with all the sinkings. When the British first took over operations of the Trans-Iranian Railway in 1941, the entire line had the capability of moving one 60 car freight train a day. Due to mostly the superhuman efforts of the Royal Engineers, the line was expanded to the point where it was handling up to 10 80 car freights a day. The most important problem once the line itself had sufficient capacity was where were the locomotives and freight cars (wagons) going to come from to move all the freight. Between the British and Americans, over 15,000 freight cars were built, 310 steam engines were constructed or diverted from British and American sources, and over 100 diesel-electric locomotives from the US were supplied for use on the difficult northern division. It was an engineering wonder, going over three mountain ranges, through 100 tunnels, with blasting heatmost of the year, and very little water. Diesel operations on the Trans-Iranian proved the efficiency and economy of the internal combustion engine. While this was great for the war effort, it was also the beginning of the end for our beloved steam engines.
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The US navy's goal by mid-1944 was to have all destroyers assigned the Pacific theater that retained their twin quad torpedo launchers to be be fitted with at least ten 40mm barrels, those with a single quad launcher to have at 12 barrels, and the complete anti-kamikaze ships with no torpedo launchers were fitted with between 14 and 16 barrels. The most heavily armed were some Gearing class ships with a pair of quad 40mm mounts amidships in the same positions as the landed torpedo launchers, a pair of twin mounts opposite the bridge, and another pair of twin mounts aft ahead of the depth charge tracks replacing the previous three to five single 20mm mounts at the same location. This was a total of 20 barrels. At the same time, all the remaining single 20mm mounts were replaced with twin mounts. Most of these ships were used as radar pickets that were heavily attacked by Japanese aircraft once they realized ot importance of their early warning role. The ability of these ships to send up a hail of antiaircraft fire was a surprise to Japanese pilots and caused many suicide attacks to be broken up, especially when there were enough destroyers available to assign pairs to a radar picket station.
The problems with this kind of heavy armament was not the stability issues that have been written about, it was where to berth and feed all the extra crew. Each quad mount required a crew of 8-10 and twins 4-5. that was a total additional crew just to man the mounts of 32-35 men compared to the original three twin mounts. This doesn't count the additional crew needed for ammunition handling, magazine manning, and machinist and gunners mates to repair and maintain the mounts. The additional electronics and Combat Information Centers already required an additional ten to fourteen men before the armament changes, so even the Grearings were hard pressed to find space for these crew, and it was even worse for the converted Fletchers and Sumners. Even the amount of extra provisions required was estimated to add some thirty tons to the displacement, not to mention the additional cooks and stewards needed. The USN before the kamikaze threat prided itself on every crew member having their own berth. By April, 1945, hot bunking, hammocks, and even deck sleeping was the norm.
Many more complaints by the men centered more around the difficulties of getting a hot meal than the rough berthing. Letters home from Pacific theater destroyer crews told of waiting for up to two hours to get through the mess line, only to have that disrupted by general quarters for another air attack. Some gun and CIC crews ate nothing but sandwiches and coffee for days on end. If you want to start sailors to bitching, don't feed them hot meals, and the bitching from crews extended from letters to their families all the way to letters to their Congressmen and Senators.
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Of the eight preserved US battleships, all but one (Texas) is a "modern" era ship. The Iowas were always considered ready reserve ships up until the mid-2000's. They were in excellent material condition when they were finally retired. The Navy knew that any plan to scrap the ships was unthinkable so they actively worked with the states and ultimate museum anchorages to preserve the ships, even to the point that the agreements with the museums was the ships had to be maintained in "as-delivered" condition and were subject to repossession by the Navy at a time of national need. Even though only one of the four was the namesake of a coastal state, the value of preservation as tourist attractions was already well in place by the 1990's
Of the four South Dakotas, the two preserved ships (Alabama and Massachusetts) are named for coastal states that fought for their preservation. The two that were scrapped (South Dakota and Indiana) are inland states with nowhere to display the ships. Both states preserved many pieces of the ships before scrapping, and they are now displayed in suitable monuments in their respective states.
The name ship of the North Carolina class is displayed at Wilmington NC. Starting from 1960, when the donation fo $331,000 collected by schoolchildren to purchase the ship, to being a self-supporting museum today, North Carolina has done a remarkable job of preserving her "Showboat". North Carolina was a donor ship for parts needed to renovate the Iowas when they were being refurbished in the 1980's. Unfortunately, many of her mechanical systems were removed at the time, along with the barbette of turret #1, but the parts live on in the Iowas. North Carolina is still a cosmetically beautiful ship and well worth the visit.
This brings me to the shame of the state of Washington. While other states were already preserving or taking steps to preserve their ships, Washington simply didn't seem to care. At the same time that NC school kids were collecting pennies to buy their ship, the Washington legislature seemed to think the same $330,000 was an outrageous price and refused to fund the purchase. Vets attempted to get the same kind of schoolkids campaign going but, once again, no one seemed to care. The ship was decommissioned in June, 1960 and towed away for scrapping in May, 1961, probably a modern record between the two events. The ship's bell and a few other mementos are on display in the Bremerton Naval Museum, and that's only because of the efforts of the late Helen Devine, museum curator, digging through crates and boxes in a dusty warehouse in Olympia to find them and bring them to the museum. Other than this one corner of the museum, there's no real memorial to the ship, and certainly no memorial commensurate with the ship's historical value. Another move is underway to construct a proper memorial, but most of the ship's crew have passed on, and only some lonely naval historians and buffs have taken up the cudgel. The last Ship's Reunion was in 2005, and even the ship's website (http://www.usswashington.com/) is now mostly a mass of broken links.
As you may be able to tell, I'm more than a little ill with the state of Washington and the shameful way they have treated "their" ship and the veterans who sailed on her. I've visited all the other battleships, and just thinking about the fate of Washington sets my teeth on edge.
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