Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Drachinifel"
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The Caribbean could have been a virtual US lake, from 1922. Arthur Balfour sent a letter to the French ambassador to the UK in 1922, which was openly published by the UK government, saying that, if it was up to the UK, they would cancel the debts owed it by the allies, and forego reparations from Germany, but, as the US was demanding debt repayment in cash, the UK had no choice but to demand repayment from it's allies, in cash. As an exercise, some time ago, I looked in to the market value of all the British colonies in the Caribbean circa 1920. Using the price per square mile that the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands in 1917, I found the value of all the British held islands, plus British Honduras, almost exactly equaled the entire UK war debt to the US, specifically equal to all the loan principle and about half of accrued interest. Coincidentally, the war debts owed by the other allies to the UK almost exactly equaled the UK's debt to the US. Hypothetically, if the UK had bartered it's West Indies colonies to the US, which would make the Caribbean approaches to the canal a virtual US lake, the UK could then cancel the debts owned it by all the other allies as it would be a wash with the cancellation of UK debts to the US. What a different world the interwar years would have been if all that debt had vanished. There was a lot of chatter about a US/UK land for debt swap in US newspapers at the time, but President Harding said no, Lloyd George said no, so that was the end of it.
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@observationsfromthebunker9639 This is from the record of the US Senate, 1930: "Of the enormous total of $118,000,000, we have already spent or have been obligated to spend about $38,000,000, leaving $80,000,000 still to be appropriated if we are to modernize our battleship fleet, and then we do not obtain parity with Great Britain. According to the testimony, a new battleship would cost approximately $39,000,000. Hence we could match the Rodney and Nelson and make up our existing deficiency in battleship strength, which can not be done by modernization, by building two ships like the Rodney and Nelson with the money which it is proposed to spend for modernization." There you have it. Modernizing old BBs does not make them the equal of new-build. As we know, the Tennessees and Colorados never saw a rebuild, so were even farther off the pace compared to the Nagatos and modernized Kongos and Ises. Sure, a Tennessee or Colorado can hurt you, so you are better off sinking it into the mud of Pearl, but they are less of a threat than a KGV or North Carolina, because they are so obsolete. Of course, if I was in command in Japan, I would never have attacked Pearl in the first place. I would have taken the Philippines, preferably by infiltrating the Philippine government that was established in 1935, and rolled the dice that the US population would not support a war over the Philippines.
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@Cbabilon675 As we know, the Japanese had a relationship with Vickers, covering everything from battleships, to building the 2 pounder pompom under license. The Japanese also had a relationship with Hotchkiss. Besides the Type 96 AA gun, the Japanese Type 92 and Type 3 heavy machine guns were based on the Hotchkiss Mle 1914, changing out the original 8mm Lebel cartridge for the 6.5 Arisaka in the Type 3, and 7.7mm in the Type 92. As these guns were licensed from Hotchkiss, getting them into production was no doubt much easier than trying to reverse engineer captured Bofors. The Russians bought some examples of the 25mm Bofors, which preceded the 40mm version, in 1935. They reverse engineered it, increasing the bore to 37mm, test firing the prototype in late 1938. If the Japanese took as long to reverse engineer Bofors captured in late 41, it would have been late 44/early 45 before they could get it into production. I would venture that, if Vickers had produced a modern AA gun, to replace the pompom, in the mid 30s, the Japanese would have licensed that, rather than the Hotchkiss.
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@rickyc8958 The RM's issue seemed to be more a matter of fuel and leadership. Some things I have read about the Caracciolo class are not very complimentary, like that the torpedo protection was inadequate. That being said, after all the money spent updating the Cavours and Dorias in the 30s, they were well short of state of the art too. At lease the Caraccoilos started out with better speed capability. It's doubtful that the Caracciolos could have been completed before the Washington Treaty went into effect. The Caracciolo was built up enough to launch, to clear the ways, in the spring of 20. If Italy had had the money, which it didn't, that one could probably have been completed by the end of 21. Ansaldo had Columbo about 5% done, overall. The Orlando and Odero yards had made even less progress on their ships. If Italy had the money, which it didn't, it could have argued at the Washington conference that, as the US and UK were both allowed to complete two ships after the treaty went into effect, Italy should receive the same courtesy, but if they did that, then Italy would not have had the 1927 and 1929 BB construction windows, which they used to build the first two Littorios. Given a choice between two updated Caracciolos and two Littorios, I would go with the Littorios every time. The other issue with completing the Caracciolos is most of the 24 guns that had been made for them had been diverted to other uses. 7 of the Ansaldo built guns had been transferred to the army, which mounted 4 of them on railroad carriages that were on the firing line for almost 2 years. The other two Ansaldos were mounted on a monitor of particularly eccentric design, and spent a few months on the firing line. Two of the Terni built guns were installed as shore batteries near Venice, which left one Terni as a spare. Four of the Pozzuoli built guns were used as shore batteries at Brindisi. Two Pozzuolis were installed on an improvised monitor that foundered in a storm. Two more Pozzuolis were installed on improvised monitors that survived the war. So, of the 24 guns built for the Caracciolos, there were only 3 Ansaldos, 1 Terni and 4 Pozzuolis that were in new condition and could be made available. This is where it gets complicated. The guns were supposed to all have the same ballistic performance, but they were different designs. The Pozzuolis were designed by Armstrong, the Ternis by Vickers and the Ansaldos were a monobloc design by Schneider. By 1919, I don't think this mess could have been cleaned up at anything resembling reasonable cost to get even two Caracciolos built, and if they did, they would have lost authority to build two Littorios a dozen years later. And that is probably far more than you anticipated learning about the Caracciolos.
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@brendonbewersdorf986 ever read "The Enemy Below"? I did, about fifty years ago. The book was written by Denys Rayner, who spent the war variously commanding a Corvette or a Destroyer, hunting subs, so I suspect some of the details in the book may be accurate. I remember one passage in the book where the CO is frustrated because his Destroyer is so long it can't stay with the U-Boat in a turn. The CO recalls that his old Corvette was so short it could easily stay with a U-Boat in a turn, but the Corvette was so slow, the U-Boat could surface, and run away from the Corvette on it's diesels. With nothing other than that tidbit, and taking U-505's length of 251feet and surfaced speed of 18.2kts, I eliminate the Flower and Castle class Corvettes because they can barely crack 16kts. I eliminate full sized DDs, as too long, Mahan 341' and Fletcher 376', for instance. Best combination of small size and high speed, at least in USN inventory, would probably be a Buckley class DE: 306', 24kts.
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@tjokflots before GPS, they used celestial navigation: to find latitude, use a sextant to measure the angle of elevation above the horizon of Polaris, if in the northern hemisphere, or the Southern Cross, if in the southern hemisphere. Finding longitude was a much tougher nut to crack, which brings up your other question, the revolutionary invention. To find longitude, use the sextant to find noon where you are, then compare local noon to GMT shown on a chronometer (hyper accurate clock) which shows how many hours, and degrees of planet rotation, you are away from GMT. The chronometer was the revolutionary invention. The first practical chronometer was invented by John Harrison, in England, around 1761, after several years of working the problem and several previous failed attempts.
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@jlvfr two German commerce raiders, armed former ocean liners, Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Kronprinz Wilhelm steamed into Newport News, Virginia for fuel and repairs in 1915, when the US was neutral. The first to arrive, the Friedrich, received a lot of play in the newspapers of the time. British and French warships arrived just outside the US' three mile limit in short order, should the Friedrich attempt a breakout. The USN maintained a reserve fleet of old pre-dreadnoughts with skeleton crews, so men were transferred from other reserve ships to bring the complement of one at the Philadelphia Navy Yard up to full strength, and it steamed down to Newport News for neutrality enforcement, should the British and French think about steaming into Newport News to attack the Friedrich. The Captains of both ships decided to accept internment in the US. When the US entered the war, both ships were seized and used as troop transports for the duration. After the war, they were sold into commercial service.
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@richardcutts196 my favorite scenario for the three Mackensens that were in the water was for France to claim them as war reparations and tow them to Brest for completion. The incomplete Normandies that France had in the water had been obsoleted by the war, but many of the guns intended for the Normandies has been completed, and the Normandie guns were just a hair smaller than what Mackensen was designed for 13.4" vs 13.8" and 5.5" vs 5.9". Of course, the WNT would interfere with that plan, so then two are completed as fast BBs, instead of France receiving the licenses to build two new ships, which became the Dunkerques, and the third is converted to a carrier, instead of Béarn. But France was broke. The US was pressing for repayment of war debts, in cash, and the UK was pressing France for repayment of war debts, in cash, so the UK could use the cash to pay it's debts to the US, and France had a huge reconstruction job ahead of it as it had "hosted" the front line for the entire war.
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@bkjeong4302 Yes. Devastators did fine prior to Midway. At Coral Sea, the strikes were properly coordinated, with dive bombers and fighters attacking at the same time as the Devastators. From everything I read, at Coral Sea, losses were taken by the dive bombers and fighters, that came in at the altitude where the CAP was, but the Devastators attacked without loss. There were 6 Avengers at Midway. Only 1 returned from their attack on the fleet. The Brits had the same issues: catastrophic losses of Beauforts and Swordfish when attacking ships with a DD screen. During Operation Cerberus, the first Brit force to intercept the Germans was 6 Swordfish. The Swordfish had a squadron of Spits as escort. The Swordfish could outmaneuver the Fw190s that intercepted them, but, while all six made it over the DD screen to line up to attack the battleships, only two survived to make it back out past the DD screen. Those two survivors were flaming wrecks who ditched a couple minutes after clearing the DD screen, with the surviving crewmen picked up by Brit MTBs. Pat Gibbs commanded a Beaufort squadron on Malta and demonstrated that the way to attack ships was first: in overwhelming numbers to saturate the enemy defenses, and, second, bring along aircraft to strafe the escorting ships to suppress AA fire.
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Something I have been playing with over the last few days: the fleet tonnage quotas of the WNT seems to have ended with Second London, as the RN laid down four new treaty max carriers in 1937, which would put the RN far over their quota, if it was still in force. If the US had delayed ordering Wasp until after the Second London conference, and the end of the fleet quotas, the ship could have been redesigned as a 23,000 ton treatymax ship. With that new 23,000 ton design in hand, when Congress authorized two more carriers in 38, that new design would have been used for Hornet, rather than the obsolescent Yorktown design. That matters because, after the Yorktowns, the USN went to staggered boiler and engine rooms, for better survivability. What doomed Hornet was total loss of power. If Hornet had been built to a design with staggered boiler and engine rooms, she may have still had partial power for damage control and propulsion.
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wrt to the question about a fleet of Vanguards. in the Q&A section on Queen Mary post a few days ago, my reply to a question of what if the RN had completed all four Admirals followed the repercussions on the fleet due to treaty tonnage limits, resulting in the R-class ships going to the breakers for the fleet draw down called for by the First London Treaty in the early 30s. That opens up the possibility of the Admiralty having a very large number of dual 15" turrets on hand when the battleship construction moratorium ended at the end of 36. Using four turrets per ship, as Vanguard, requires a long hull, which would exceed the treaty 35,000 ton limit. The thought crosses my mind that, a KGV using 3 twin 15" turrets, instead of the 14" layout historically received, would result in lower displacement due to the smaller turrets and, because fewer guns, less ammunition carried, which might result in more speed. Additionally, the cost savings of using existing guns and turrets may make it possible to build more than the five KGV class ships that were built. But, would the RN really be comfortable building a battleship that would assuredly be outgunned by any other individual battleship, because such a KGV would only have 6 guns vs potential adversaries having 8 or 9. Or, would they take a compromise route and remount the used 15" guns in new triple turrets?
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@dougjb7848 the Admiralty did not have sufficient quantity of 16" guns of any sort laying in a warehouse. I am proposing the 13.5" as a stopgap, if there was a design or production problem that prevented new 14" being built to equip all the KGVs in a timely manner. For that matter, there appears to have been close to 200 15"/42s built. With the Revenges, QEs, Renowns and Hood, that totals 100 afloat at any given time. With, say, 16 or 24 held in inventory for rapid replacements for serving ships, there would be plenty more available to equip the KGVs, at 8 or 9 guns per ship, if a new 15" suffered design or production delays. The bias at the Admiralty at that time was for more, smaller, guns, hence the shift to 14", of which they also had roughly comparable replacements in inventory.
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@Enterprise One if you want to see a good sub movie, check out "The Enemy Below". The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name, written by Denys Rayner, who spent WWII commanding Corvettes and Destroyers, hunting subs. Cracking good story, so good, that the plot was stolen, virtually point by point, for an episode of the original "Star Trek". The movie also features a real, Buckley class DE, a specialized sub killing machine. If you want to view more from the German/sub side, watch "Das Boot", but the critics were more enthusiastic about that one than I.
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@admiralrover74 in general, that would be the case. I looked up the specific information for the 14"/45 and 15"/42, and it almost looks like the 14" was designed to replicate the performance of the 15", in a smaller, lighter package, rather than exploiting twenty years of advances in technology to produce a higher performance gun. The tables on Navweaps for these guns are expressed in degrees of elevation required to reach a specific range. For the 14": 13.75 degrees reaches 20,000yds, 19.25 degrees reaches 25,000. For the 15": 13.8 degrees reaches 20,000, 19.2 reaches 25,000. For the 14" striking velocity at 20/25K are 1563fps/1459. For the 15" @ 20/25k: 1556fps/1461. Angle of fall 14" @20/25K: 18.2/26.4. For the 15" @ 20/25K: 18.3/26.3. Armor penetration: 14" @ 20/25K: 11.2"/9.5" 15" @ 20/25K: 11.7/10.2". What was a 14" capable of in 1935? The USN rebuilt it's 14"/50s in the mid 30s and significantly improved their performance over their 1915 configuration. Performance of the rebuilt Mk 11 guns: range: 12 degrees yields 20,000yds and 17.6 gives 26,000 (not a typo, the tables do not give an elevation for 25K for an AP shell) Impact velocity (muzzle velocity was 2700) @ 20K/25K: 1588/1455. Penetration @20/25K: 13.75/11.27". Angle of fall at 20/25K: 16.33/24.8. According to the footnotes of the tables, the penetration data for both US and UK guns were calculated using a USN formula, so they should be comparable to each-other. Bottom line, for the typical BB armor belt of 13-14", the US 14" can penetrate at longer range than either British gun, and it's flatter trajectory will produce a wider danger space, improving the odds of a hit. The cost of the higher performance for the US gun is higher barrel wear due to the higher muzzle velocity, barrel life being on the order of 200 rounds, vs 340 for the 14"/45.
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@Rdeboer that question came up in a FB group, specifically, why did Warspite retain most of her 6" secondaries in her rebuild, as the twin 4"/45s that were installed were capable of performing as dual purpose guns. Removing all the 6" and replacing them with twin 4"/45s would triple her heavy AA armament, potentially resulting in the ship taking less damage from aircraft. A question along the same lines came up, if Bismark had gone all in on the 105mm gun, instead of dividing deck space between the 105s and 150s, that would greatly have improved the probability of splashing a particular Swordfish. Seems that the roadblock to going all in on 4"-5" DP secondaries was a consensus that heavier secondary guns were needed for dealing with attacking destroyers. The one dissenter to that consensus appears to be Jackie Fisher. Jackie held that a quick firing 4" was perfectly fine for dealing with light surface targets. The two classes Jackie had a hand in designing during WWI, the Renowns and Courageouses, had low angle 4" secondaries, while the QEs, Revenges and Nelsons all had 6". To directly answer your question, yes, the adoption of DP guns greatly increased AA firepower. Had more navies abandoned the concept of dedicated, heavy, low angle, secondary armament, more deck space would have been available for armament that could perform in the AA role, as well as anti-surface.
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@vixtontitano2394 I started looking through newspapers from late 1915 when the bids for BB 43 and 44 were opened. The two low bids, under $7M were from the New York and Philadelphia Navy yards, while Mare Island bid $7.4M. Neither Philadelphia or Mare Island were presently equipped to build battleships. Mare's bid included the money for needed improvements, Philadelphia's did not. Ballpark estimates for improvements in Philadelphia ran from $200,000 to $400,000, which, on top of the construction bid of $6.774M was still less than Mare Island's. SecNav Daniels asked Congress for $175,000 to extend the slipway and dredge the channel in Philadelphia to allow battleships to be built, on December 6. Then Daniels met with President Wilson. Suddenly, the estimate for improvements in Philadelphia jumped to $1M on December 10th, which made Mare Island cheaper. At that time, BB44. the one to be built in Mare Island was unnamed. Then Assistant Secretary of the Interior Jones was given the credit for changing the name of the ship building in New York from California to New Mexico in early 16, freeing the name California for BB44. Thanks for asking that question. Newspaper reports of this sequence of events made for fascinating reading.
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