USS Gerald R Ford, another huge win for Trump

Lexicus said:
Kinda...but the answer doesn't please me since "annihilate the coast of Iran" sounds a lot like a war crime to me...
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Stuff happens. Based on the first pass at the simulation annihilating the coast sounds more like an 'unfortunate strategic necessity' than a war crime to me.
 
Farm Boy said:
The USN torpedo bombers at Midway were already obsolete. They couldn't drop at angle, had to fly long flat straight approaches, and pivotally, launched their attack against an entire carrier group alone and unescorted. They were butchered. The USN dive bombers at Midway attacked by surprise and luck in the middle of an armament swap when the decks of the carriers were packed with explosives obligingly supplied by the IJN.
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Yeah, Midway was more or less the end of the line for the TBD Devastator, since it was 5 years old and only proved to be good for baiting the Zeroes down to low level so they couldn't get in the way of the dive bombers. Like I said before though, the US had a problem with torpedoes in general at the beginning of the war that took a little while to fix.
 
Thing to keep in mind about Midway was that the outcome didn't fall out that way because of the hardware, but rather because of operational difficulties. The torpedo bomber planes were a model that was due for replacement. But at the same time, it wasn't intended for them to go in alone. This was a failure in timing on the part of the air crews and the planners. The torpedo bombers arrived first, and the Japanese fighters saw them and all dove down to low altitudes and shot them all down. But that meant that all the Japanese fighters were down low, when just a short time later the dive bombers arrived on the scene. So the dive bombers had an unrestricted attack against undefended targets. Since all the Japanese were looking elsewhere. Had the Japanese needed to split their defenses against both the torpedo and dive bombers at the same time, it wouldn't have been nearly as one sided in which type of plane survived, and which type sank the ships.

When the Japanese battleships Yamoto and Musashi were sunk, they each took a large number of hits from both bombs and torpedoes. Those were the largest and most powerful battleships ever built.
 
I believe the firing pins tended to break, rather than cause detonation, when the torpedoes collided with a ship under combat, rather than test, conditions? If I remember my WWII USN torpedo woes correctly.
 
Farm Boy said:
I believe the firing pins tended to break, rather than cause detonation, when the torpedoes collided with a ship under combat, rather than test, conditions? If I remember my WWII USN torpedo woes correctly.
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Early war torpedoes had a low detonation rate. I don't recall the technical details. But that's not the story of the Battle of Midway, where the planes were just shot down before they could complete their attacks.
 
I dunno if the air dropped torpedoes had the same problem as the submarine launched torpedoes, but early in the war submarines had a lot of problems with their torpedoes running off their intended depth and just passing harmlessly under their targets.
 
The US Navy did not properly test their torpedoes before the war. Each one was too expensive. But they resolved the problem at some point. US submarines ended up sinking some 1400 Japanese ships.
 
Cutlass said:
The US Navy did not properly test their torpedoes before the war. Each one was too expensive. But they resolved the problem at some point. US submarines ended up sinking some 1400 Japanese ships.
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Oh, no doubt the problem was solved eventually. Early on it was 'solved' by firing more of those expensive torpedoes per target than was really necessary...or should have been necessary, anyway.
 
it was technical innovation , magnetic exploders that would break the backs of targeted ships , with no defence available . Instead of all those weird crushable torpedo spaces in big military ships . They failed as much as German ones did . The Germans indeed returned to the standarts of WW I or something when this U-boot took careful aim at HMS Nelson and nothing happened , just like with the rest of many other torpedos fired in the Norway campaign of 1940 . ı think they were about 50 . And am pretty sure everybody could make a back breaking torpedo in 70s , even if the Belgrano was still sunk by a WW II weapon , no doubt saving more improved types against Russians , Americans or Nazis from Neu Schwabenland .
 
Farm Boy said:
The USN torpedo bombers at Midway were already obsolete. They couldn't drop at angle, had to fly long flat straight approaches, and pivotally, launched their attack against an entire carrier group alone and unescorted. They were butchered. The USN dive bombers at Midway attacked by surprise and luck in the middle of an armament swap when the decks of the carriers were packed with explosives obligingly supplied by the IJN.
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american torpedos did not like fast drops ; Japanese had the best . As befits a nation hellbent on fighting powers greater then itself , with all fighting concentrated into a period as short as possible .
 
Cutlass said:
Thing to keep in mind about Midway was that the outcome didn't fall out that way because of the hardware, but rather because of operational difficulties. The torpedo bomber planes were a model that was due for replacement. But at the same time, it wasn't intended for them to go in alone. This was a failure in timing on the part of the air crews and the planners. The torpedo bombers arrived first, and the Japanese fighters saw them and all dove down to low altitudes and shot them all down. But that meant that all the Japanese fighters were down low, when just a short time later the dive bombers arrived on the scene. So the dive bombers had an unrestricted attack against undefended targets. Since all the Japanese were looking elsewhere. Had the Japanese needed to split their defenses against both the torpedo and dive bombers at the same time, it wouldn't have been nearly as one sided in which type of plane survived, and which type sank the ships.

When the Japanese battleships Yamoto and Musashi were sunk, they each took a large number of hits from both bombs and torpedoes. Those were the largest and most powerful battleships ever built.
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Fair enough. Though the SBDs probably would have done more damage even in that case, given the aforementioned problems with early US torpedoes.

Battleships in general, but the Yamato and Musashi in particular were heavily protected against shell fire by design, and from dive bombers by result. Dive bombers did contribute to their sinking, but the lion's share of the fatal hull damage was done by the TBF/Ms.
 
musashi was hit maybe 19 times , Yamato maybe 25 . Cumulative effect and no amount of armour would have protected from that much firepower . A better area of investigation would be how the USN did not lose a battleship after Peral Harbour and the Japanese were hard triers .
 
r16 said:
musashi was hit maybe 19 times , Yamato maybe 25 . Cumulative effect and no amount of armour would have protected from that much firepower . A better area of investigation would be how the USN did not lose a battleship after Peral Harbour and the Japanese were hard triers .
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Did they have any left after Pearl Harbor? :mischief:
 
The US more or less kept their pre-Washington Naval Treaty battleships away from the front lines after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, on the other hand, sent their dreadnoughts into battle, and got slaughtered accordingly.
The Battleship classes the US built after the WNT (North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa) were designed with much better AA systems than dreadnoughts, making them much more durable in the era of naval aviation. All of the Japanese capital ships in WWII were horribly outdated, save the aforementioned Yamato & Musashi, which sank without ever seeing a US Battleship.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
Did they have any left after Pearl Harbor? :mischief:
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The US only lost 2 battleships are Pearl Harbor. And "officially" only 1. Oklahoma was eventually refloated. But never returned to service.

And after Pearl Harbor the US commissioned 10 new battleships before the war ended.

danjuno said:
The US more or less kept their pre-Washington Naval Treaty battleships away from the front lines after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, on the other hand, sent their dreadnoughts into battle, and got slaughtered accordingly.
The Battleship classes the US built after the WNT (North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa) were designed with much better AA systems than dreadnoughts, making them much more durable in the era of naval aviation. All of the Japanese capital ships in WWII were horribly outdated, save the aforementioned Yamato & Musashi, which sank without ever seeing a US Battleship.
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US battleships in WWII didn't see much combat against other battleships. In the naval battles around Guadalcanal 2 US battleships eventually got into it, and 2 Japanese battleships were sunk. These were new American ships, not ones that were at Pearl Harbor. 5 of the battleships which were 'sunk' at Pearl Harbor fought in the last ever battleship on battleship Battle of Surigao Strait.
 
My bias was showing there. To me battleships are just like any other target. Maybe a little bigger than most.
 
danjuno said:
The US more or less kept their pre-Washington Naval Treaty battleships away from the front lines after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, on the other hand, sent their dreadnoughts into battle, and got slaughtered accordingly.
The Battleship classes the US built after the WNT (North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa) were designed with much better AA systems than dreadnoughts, making them much more durable in the era of naval aviation. All of the Japanese capital ships in WWII were horribly outdated, save the aforementioned Yamato & Musashi, which sank without ever seeing a US Battleship.
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Were the Iowa's build to WNT limits, or were they built after it was obvious to everyone but the British the WNT was dead in the water?
 
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