Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. Not only the Italians had torpedoes with magnetic pistols ("S.I.C." torpedo "Siluro Italiano Calosi", from the name of the designer, Ing. Calosi), but they sold 4000 of them to the Germans, because they were more reliable than the German ones. The Italian solution to the magnetic fuse was innovative. Instead of trying to only passively detecting the weak magnetic field of the ships (a thing that made the torpedo sensible to the variability of the earth's magnetic field), the torpedo used its own compressed air steel tank as an electromagnet. This made the torpedo insensitive to the variability of the earth's magnetic field. The torpedo's own magnetic field was deformed when passing under the metal mass or the ship, and that triggered the explosion.
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  2. Live-scale tested by the Soviets, the Pugliese TDS performed better thant the standard spaced TDS, that's why they chose it for the Sovetsky Soviet class. It's also pretty ridicolous than, among the defects of the system, it's often cited the "difficulty of repair", when the Littorios had always been repaired in record time in respect to other BBs hit by a torpedo.
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  3. There was nothing wrong with the ammo. It simply had always been fired at extreme ranges and/or on smaller ships that were manuvering to not be hit (in that case, it had been amply demonstrated that it needed thousands of shells to hit something).
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  4. 17:44 all the Italian naval guns were made for cold barrel swap. So their barrel life was 1/2 of the others, but the time needed to change the barrel was 1/30. It only needed a pair of days of work in port without any special facility to change the barrels of all the main guns of a ship while, for who didn't design his guns that way, it needed to remove the armor of the turret, remove the guns from the cradle, file the barrels in a gigantic lathe, put the guns in a specially built vertical furnace, insert the new internal barrel, etc...
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  5. Not only the Italians had torpedoes with magnetic pistols ("S.I.C." torpedo "Siluro Italiano Calosi", from the name of the designer, Ing. Calosi), but they sold 4000 of them to the Germans, because they were more reliable than the German ones. The Italian solution to the magnetic fuse was innovative. Instead of trying to only passively detecting the weak magnetic field of the ships (a thing that made the torpedo sensible to the variability of the earth's magnetic field), the torpedo used its own compressed air steel tank as an electromagnet. This made the torpedo insensitive to the variability of the earth's magnetic field. The torpedo's own magnetic field was deformed when passing under the metal mass or the ship, and that triggered the explosion.
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  6.  @jwadaow  It worked very well actually, with limited damages and record-time repairings every time it had been hit by a torpedo. The Soviets, after having full-scale tested the Pugliese and the standard layered protection, chosen the Pugliese for the Sovetsky Soviet class battleships. The results of their tests are available online.
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  7. The underwater protection was fine. Tested by the Soviets in real scale, it actually wored better than the standard spaced system. That's why they decided to use it in the Sovetsky Soyuz class. The "quality control" issues on the charges and shells, and all the "excessive dispersion" bullshit have a single source (Adm. Iachino), amply disproved at the time, but repeated again and again.
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  8. The Pugliese system's task was not to avoid torpedo hits, but to contain damages. A thing that it did very well.
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  9.  @anelstarcevic696  The G.55 is MORE armed than a Bf109G. It carries three 20mm guns and two HMGs (Bf109G has three guns only if two are in external pods) and more ammos for all the guns.
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  10.  @ducadan81  They were producing biplanes in 1944 because the Luftwaffe commissioned them for THEIR pilots.
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  11. The single type aircraft was a great feature. The Reggiane 2001 was a good fighter bomber, and 51, or even less, aircrafts capable to cover all the roles (with the limitation of not being capable of dive-bombing at 90°) and defend themself after launching are plenty. As a comparison, the Graf Zeppelin was supposed to carry 12 Stuka, 10 Bf109 (awful choice, due to the weak undercarriage) and 20 Fieseler Fi 167 biplanes.
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  12.  @usableten8991  Six months or less on average.
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  13.  @jamesthurstans1378  Ironically the Italians did the right thing by replacing the Enigma-D with the C-38m in 1940. The C-38 was not really more complex than Enigma, so obviously could be cracked, but British cryptanalysts were more set to decipher Enigma coded messages, and gave precedence to them, so a C-38 coded message could last days, or even weeks. The main source of information for the British in the Mediterranean and North African teaters were the messages of the Luftwaffe, encrypted with the three wheel Enigma.
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  14.  @ducadan81  Italy stopped using the Cr.42 as first line fighter pretty much when the Brits stopped using the Gladiator in the same role.
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  15. Analyzing the damages it received, it worked quite well, with good containment and short repairing times. The Soviets tested it in real scale against the traditional spaced system, and chose the Pugliese for the Sovetsky Soyuz class battelships. The results of their tests are available online. The Navweaps critique of a "dam mistakenly built bowing downstream" doesn't make any sense. If that's true, the traditional systems are dams with an outward 90° angle, that's even worse. Conte di Cavour and Caio Duilio at Taranto had not been hit in the Pugliese System. The torpedoes, ricocheting from the surface to the bottom of the harbor, exploded under the keel, in the worst location possible (is to purposedly achieve similar hits that magnetic fuzes had been later introduced).
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  16.  @bkjeong4302  Actually there was nothing wrong with the Italian 381/50, nor with their shells. The only complain of the excessive dispersion of the 381/50 came from Adm. Iachino. A pretty suspicious source since he had to justify his fiasco at Cape Matapan. The 381/50 actually shown a 2% distance longitudinal dispersion in actual battles fought in 1940-1941, that, at that time, was considered good by any navy even in tests. All the Littorios received delay coils for the central guns in winter 1942/1943, further tightening the patterns.
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  17.  @bkjeong4302  The source of the inconsistency of the shell as an explanation for the inexistent excessive dispersion is Iachino too. On the dispersion of the 381/50 in battle at Gaudo (that's the example always taken of an excessive dispersion of those guns), we have both the direct testimony of the 1st Fire Director of the Vittorio Veneto, Capt. Luciano Sotgiu that, in his relation, in contrast with Adm. Iachino, did not see any out of the ordinary in his guns' salvos, and the pictures taken by the British of the salvos aimed at the HMS Gloucester that, knowing the dimension of the ship, and the range (from 23 to 26 km) clearly show a longitudinal dispersion of about 2% of the distance, that was pretty good considerig that the Vittorio Veneto was steaming at 28 knots. The Vittorio Veneto did not hit anything at Gaudo because, firing from 23.000 to 26.000m on a pair of light cruisers entering and leaving the smokescreens, it could have hit them only for a lucky chance. It had been already amply demonstrated that, even at far closer distances and with much more rapidly firing guns, it was practically impossible to hit a ship that was only manuvering to not being hit, if not firing some thousands of shells.
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  18. Also as tonnage sunk / submarines lost rate, Italian and German ones are pretty close. Simply, having the Germans a far larger base of submarines, some "superpredator" emerged, in a pyramidal scheme, but at the cost of far larger losses.
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  19.  @bkjeong4302  The "poor shell quality control" is anoter invention of Iachino. Tested by the Allies, the Italian shells proved to be more reliable than the German ones.
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  20.  @BHuang92  Actually the machines of the Littorios were ultra-reliable. Only the Trento, with its 150.000 hp installed, had reliability problems. But exactly the experience gained with the Trento made so that the subsequent ships had very reliable engines. The German high-pressure engines were known to be pretty unreliable.
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  21. To fire over the secondaries. The Littorio's rear turret had an unmatched 320° firing angle. The ship could fire a 9 gun salvo angling just at 20°.
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  22.  @lexington476  I can be wrong, but i'm not aware of any ship that had been torpedoed by a battleship in battle. In general, since battleships are vulnerable to torpedoes, and torpedoes can be carried even by very small ships, if a battleship came at torpedoing distance form another ship, it means that something went really wrong. That's why, while torpedoes were paramount for small ships like destroyers (that had not the firepower to threaten the bigger ones), they were a liability for the big ones, since to have torpedo launchers means to have several tons of unprotected explosive on the ship's deck.
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  23.  @richardmartin8998  The Littorio class never shown the "teething problems" of the King George V class, nor any particular problem to the machinery, and, compared to the aforementioned KGV and Bismarck, it tanked torpedo damages remarkably well.
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  24. Not only the Italians had torpedoes with magnetic pistols ("S.I.C." torpedo "Siluro Italiano Calosi", from the name of the designer, Ing. Calosi), but they sold 4000 of them to the Germans, because they were more reliable than the German ones. The Italian solution to the magnetic fuse was innovative. Instead of trying to only passively detecting the weak magnetic field of the ships (a thing that made the torpedo sensible to the variability of the earth's magnetic field), the torpedo used its own compressed air steel tank as an electromagnet. This made the torpedo insensitive to the variability of the earth's magnetic field. The torpedo's own magnetic field was deformed when passing under the metal mass or the ship, and that triggered the explosion.
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  25.  Infinite Plain  It was not. The Littorio Class shown a longitudinal dispersion of 2% of the range in real battles, that at the time was considered good by any navy (even more remarkable, since the Littorios were very "new". IE it took many years to solve the dispersion problems of the Nelson class, not to speak of those of the Richelieu). All the Littorios received delay coils for the central guns in winter 1942/1943, further tightening the patterns. RN gunnery proved superior where? Actually, in Italian reports, they had never been impressed by RN gunnery. IE in the Second Sirte Battle, the Regia Marina hit 5 times (plus several near miss damages) out of 1325 shells fired. The RN had one hit out of 2790 shells fired.
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  26.  @ducadan81  If we are talking about production and not use, the Fairey Swordfish was in production in 1944. The Cr.42 ceased to be used as a first line fighter in early 1941. It remained in production mainly to be used as a fighter-bomber, that's the same use the Luftwaffe wanted it for, after discovering they would have wanted more Henschel Hs 123, but it would not be economical to restart production.
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  27.  @ducadan81  Only the US didn't use biplane fighters in WWII, and they entered it in dec. 1941. The selection of the Cr.42 in 1939 was simply due to the fact that the Fiat G.50 and Macchi C.200, as tested, both required modifications, while the Cr.42 had no defects and could have immediatley mass produced as it was. Fiat had no preferences in manufacturing the Cr.42 or the G.50. The "monopoly" of FIAT is overstated. It's "monopoly" IE, had not been enough to have the Cr.25 selected over the Breda Ba.88 or the Caproni 300 series. Everything can be explained with "bribes" and "influence", but most of the times there are logical explanations for the facts.
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  28. 1. Doctrine. The Italians wanted a major engagement, so didn't want to divide their fleet in smaller sections to defend the Adriatic coastal cities, even more so because the Austrian actions didn't make substantial damages. The Austrians instead formed raid parties for rapid actions against them, that's why they were usually in numerical superiority in those early actions. 2. Amnesia of the author. Some situation not so favourable to the Austrians had been omitted. IE: a) contemporary to the initial Austrian raid on the Adriatic coast of Maj. 24 1915, the Italian destroyer Zeffiro penetrated in "Porto Buso", destroyed the ships present, bombarded the installations and captured the Austrian garrison (11 dead, 48 captured). It probably made more damages alone than the entire Austrian expedition. b) In the morning of Dec. 29 1915 the Austrian light cruiser Helgoland and four destroyers attempted to force the port of Durazzo. Welcomed by a new coastal battery they didn't know the existence of, attempting to manuver to avoid the fire, they ended on a minefield. The destroyer Lika, struk by two mines that caused the explosion of the magazines, sunk immediately with the loss of 71 men. The destroyer Triglav, struk by a mine and crippled, was abandoned by the crew and later sunk. c) In 1916 The Regia Marina finally commissioned the kind of ship more fit to operate in the Croatian coast, the MAS. In june 1916 begun the operations of the MAS boats against the Austrian ports, with the sinking of several transport ships. etc...
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  29. To fire over the secondaries. The Littorio rear turret had an unmatched 320° arc of fire. https://forum.warthunder.com/uploads/monthly_2020_05/8-3.jpg.2d47bac477b8b0b46bf882d933901b2f.jpg
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  30. The Rodney was believed to have torpedoed the Bismark in the clash in the night before the final engagement, however, from later interwiews of the Bismark's survivors, it seems it was more probable the Rodney's crew mistaken a fire that broke out on the Bismark's bow for the effects of their torpedo.
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  31.  @aker1993  They were considered to be very effective. Despite not being a Nazi, or even a Fascist, Calosi was awarded the Order of the German Eagle, and the German GK3 pistol copied his own. After the Italian Armistice Calosi was hiding, to not be deported in Germany, and he was considered so important that the Allies devised the "Operation McGregor" (later recalled in the book and movie "cloack and Dagger") to exctract him form the German occupied part of Italy. The operation was successful and Calosi, on his own request, was employed in the Newport torpedo Station, to develop a countermeasure to his own pistol. As recalled in Stanley P. Lowell book "Of Spies & Stratagems" Calosi gave spectacualr demonstrations, in live tests, of the effectiveness of his countermeasure in making the torpedoes explode off-target, but I don't know how much it had been employed by the US during the war since, a that point, we were pretty late in it.
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  32. 280mm, + 70mm decapping plate, + 250mm concrete foam, +36mm splinter plate.
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  33. No battleship, or other class of armored ships, could repair or replace its armored plates at sea. Considering that practically no battleship had been hit by another batleship on the belt in all WWII, what were the chances for it to happen twice in the same spot? there were MUCH more chances for two torpedoes to hit the same spot, but battleships had no mean to repair their torpedo defenses at sea as well.
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  34. The Sparviero was a far simpler construction and MUCH more economical to operate. It was an escort carrier (While the Aquila was more similar to a fleet carrier) capable of escorting convoys for cheap (projected air complement of 34 Reggiane 2001 was plenty for the task), since it had 4 diesel engines capable of 28.000 hp and 20 knots speed, while the Aquila, with its 4 turbines and 151.000 hp, would have realistically been inoperable due to the lack of fuel. Fuelling problems apart, the Aquila's single type aircraft was a great feature. The Reggiane 2001 was a good fighter bomber. 50 aircrafts capable to cover all the roles (with the limitation of not being capable of dive-bombing at 90°) and defend themself after launching. As a comparison, the Graf Zeppelin was supposed to carry 12 Stuka, 10 Bf109 (awful choice, due to the weak undercarriage) and 20 Fieseler Fi 167 biplanes.
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  35. It had been filmed partly in the Littorio and partly in the Giulio Cesare.
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  36. Not only motor yachts. Fincantieri is one of the world's shipbuilding giants (1st in Europe and 4th in the world).
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  37. To fire over the secondaries. The Littorio's rear turret had an unmatched 320° firing angle. The ship could fire a 9 gun salvo angling just at 20°.
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  38.  @bluemarlin8138  And the source for this tale is?
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  39.  @danielefabbro822  I already stated that the accuracy of the 381/50 was not worse than the main calibers of other powers, and that they barely hit anything (they did only in the second battle of the Sirte) because they had been used, or at extreme ranges, or on targets that were only manuvering to not be hit (in this case, it had been amply demonstrated that, even at far closer distances, and with much rapidly firing guns, you can hit something only spending thousands of shells). But there is a reason why about 25.000m is the longest battleship hit ever recorded in action. Beyond that distance the salvo, not only the Italian, but of all the WWII battleship guns, were too disperse to have real chances. Mind that, IE, in the battle of Denmark Strait, all the battleship hits happened between 18.500 and 15.000m distance.
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  40. Launched but never finished. After the launch there were still a lot of components to install.
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  41.  @abrahamedelstein4806  Bismark had been crippled beyond usability by a single aerial torpedo, Litorios had been hit multiple times in action by aerial torpedos and heavy submarine torpedoes, and none prevented them to return to port on their own power. It was a design mistake in the stern area not only of the Bismarck, but of several German warships. Bismarck (26/5/1941), Lutzow (June 1941) and Prinz Eugen (April 1942) were all torpedoed once in the stern and the stern section failed in each case.
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  42.  @abrahamedelstein4806  In the first Swordfish attack, Bismarck was hit by two torpedoes, one amidship that worsened the flooding caused by HMS Prince of Wales, that had still not been perfectly contained (in the battle against the POW, the Bismark received worse damages than it caused) and the one in the stern section, that practically ended it's life as a fighting unit.
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  43. The steel was not stainless. Painting them prevented rust.
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  44. It's a case of "success for later propaganda". As a matter of fact, the Brits didn't try it again. Malta was resupplied that little that prevented it to starve by submarines (that so were distracted by anty-shipping duties), but cased to be an operative base until nov.42.
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  45.  @Shutterbug5269  It worked ONLY on the Roma, and only in one out of two bombs that hit the ship. Because in ALL the other cases the bomb overpenetrated. It needed the full height and sturdiness of a modern battleship to stop it INTO the ship.
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  46.  @kimj2570  I don't doubt that the Savannah took a beating. But, IE, it needed only two Bf109 bombs to sink HMS Fiji, a very modern ship of similar size. Due to the general lack of an armored deck (apart for a pair of classes) Cruisers tended to not react well to aerial bombs.
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  47.  @bkjeong4302  The only complain of the excessive dispersion of the 381/50 came from Adm. Iachino. A pretty suspicious source since he had to justify his fiasco at Cape Matapan. The 381/50 actually shown a 2% distance longitudinal dispersion in actual battles fought in 1940-1941, that, at that time, was considered good by any navy even in tests. All the Littorios received delay coils for the central guns in winter 1942/1943, further tightening the patterns.
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  48. The Italians also had the only really reliable magnetic proximity fuse of the war. The most interesting thing about it however probably is how the designer,Carlo Calosi, the day of the Italian Armistice, destroyed all of his papers, to avoid them to be kept by the Germans, and joined a resistance group in the mountains. Then the Allies devised a daring operation (that inspired the novel and then the movie "cloak and dagger") to extract him from beyond the lines and transfer him to the US, to design a countermeasure agains his own invention (that he did).
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  49.  @mikhailiagacesa3406  That would have passed through the hull and exploded in water without causing much damage like it did almost all the times. It needed a battleship to stop it into the hull.
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  50.  @deidryt9944  Wait a moment. the USN HAD torpedoes. They only had to figure out the Japanese had longer range ones. The Italian navy knew the concept of radar. They had to figure out the Brits developed it, installed it on ships and used it in combat. The first task was easier.
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