Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "World War 2 Anti-Aircraft Guns - Enforcing the No-Fly Zone" video.

@MrDoctorCrow in general, "caliber" as it applies to naval guns is the multiple of bore to barrel length. So a 4"/40 would have a barrel 40 x 4" long.
3
@ric8868 I have not seen that film, but your observation is correct. AA mounts tend to be open, so the crew can see the aircraft they need to shoot at. Aircraft attacks, especially torpedo planes, make the aircraft very vulnerable to AA fire. I read an account of RAF Beaufort torpedo bomber ops in the Med. The Beauforts suffered horrific losses, until they hit on the idea of bringing a couple Beaufighters along to strafe the ships, to suppress AA fire, while the Beauforts made their attack.
2
@aaronbasham6554 they do look very formidable, when they are running. There is color footage of Midway on youtube, that include about three short glimpses of a 1.1" in action. In the first couple glimpses the gun in the foreground is barking away and looking very good. In the last glimpse of that mount, only the gun on the right end is still working. US PT boats had a lot of trouble with armored Japanese barges as even the 20mm had trouble penetrating the armor. Occurred to me that a 1.1", cut down to 2 barrels to reduce weight, would have been helpful on a PT, until it jammed.
2
@arandonmusicvenue9431 my first thought is a 3.7" is pretty wimpy for shooting at ships. With the Bofors for mid-weight AA, it could be that guns 4" and larger were preferred at sea, for their dual purpose potential. I have read that the Admiralty was figuring out, buy the turn of the century, that the usual 3" bore 12 pounder was completely inadequate for defense against torpedo boats, and gun escalation continued through 4", 4.7" and larger. Then the larger guns were installed in high angle mounts so they could be used against both air and surface threats.
2
As the video points out, early in the war, German intermediate AA was miserable and Japanese was non-existent. The Italian twin 37mm had been in production since the early 30s. If Bismark had the Italian guns, life would have been very much more difficult for the Swordfish pilots. Why did the Germans and Japanese not license production of it? Hyper-nationalistic "not invented here" syndrome gone counter-productive?
1
@taynor22 The USN got over BuOrd's "not invented here" syndrome, and was open to whatever solved the problem, regardless of the origin. iirc, the USN's shoot-off of AA gun candidates was before the US was in the war, but they had already realized the 1.1", which had been in development for most of the 1930s, was not up to the job.
1
@ric8868 probably not "data", as much as the pilots saying "we're getting slaughtered, what can we do to knock down the AA fire?" Some AA guns had shields, so, if they were facing the strafing plane, the crew had some protection. Some AA mounts, like USN Bofors, would be mounted in a tub, so the crew could duck behind the tub wall. A lot of AA crews simply ran for cover. I have read accounts of crews of Italian escorts running for cover, as the 20mm shells from a Beaufighter tore into them. The tactics of combining Beaufort torpedo bombers, strafing Beaufighters, and Blenheim bombers all hitting a convoy at once, were developed by Pat Gibbs (DSO, DFC & bar) while he was stationed on Malta.
1
@bradleyjames1340 The British Dept of Miscellaneous Weapons Development came up with a couple interesting concepts. One was a huge flame thrower, intended to set aircraft on fire. Totally ineffective. Another was a rocket that trailed a cable. The idea was to fire the rocket up in front of the aircraft, so the cable would damage the aircraft. That did work to a degree. The DMWDs work wasn't all daft. They invented the Hedgehog. If you find a copy "Secret Weapons of World War II", by Gerald Pawle, pick it up. It's a fascinating read. I see there is another book out with the same title. The Pawle book is the one entirely about the DMWD, and the one I read some 50 years ago.
1