Ironically, this is one situation where the Blackburn Roc might have actually been an asset. After all, it doesn't matter if a Roc can't make altitude in time, because all its guns can point upwards anyway. Also, it doesn't matter than the Zero can out-turn it in a dog-fight, because its turret can out-turn the zero. Oh, and a few of then getting on the flank of a torpedo run will really upset things.
Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.
- Thread starter allanpcameron
- Start date
Yes, and it is amazing the deterrent affect a Swordfish in the sky had on an U boat.
Supposedly a Swordfish with torpedo had such high aero drag that it could dive vertically at full throttle from any altutude without exceeding its max speed.
And, had so much control authority that it then could pull out just above the surface, and be traveling slow enough that it could immediately drop its torpedo and do an Immelmann...taking advantage of the pop upward from the torpedo drop...to depart the area.
And, had so much control authority that it then could pull out just above the surface, and be traveling slow enough that it could immediately drop its torpedo and do an Immelmann...taking advantage of the pop upward from the torpedo drop...to depart the area.
Those were the arguments that were made to justify the design. But, in actual practice, the Roc and every other turreted fighter turned out to be ineffective.
The wiki article mentioned the 1940 'auxiliary fighter carrier' - In 1940, Captain M. S. Slattery RN, Director of Air Material at the Admiralty, proposed a scheme for converting merchant ships into aircraft carriers as a follow-up to the CAM ship project.[2][3] Slattery proposed fitting a flight deck equipped with two arrester wires and a safety barrier onto an existing merchant ship hull. The resulting 'auxiliary fighter carrier' would be capable of operating six Hurricane fighters while retaining its cargo-carrying ability.
Does anyone know if there was any difference between this and what ended up as the MAC ships, was it the same as the Empire Audacity?
You might have a point. ITTL - neither side really yet knows the strengths/ weaknesses of the other. Or themselves for that matter. Roc is a "srupirse I can shoot you backwards" ... but pretty much good for a one time party trick.
I'm sure the Allies have an inclining of the Zero but the long range of the Kates and Vals, and their high attack speed is going to be unpleasant. Pearl attack a clue but PoW still afloat and was never attack from a massive distance away. Allies have yet to see a Kate launch a torpedo at full speed on open seas, so they don't yet know that's possible. No Naval exchange at all, so nighttime fighting ability of IJN surface fleet will be also be a nasty surprise (IJN just embarrased USN/ RAN at Savo island .. as per usual IJN/IJA infighting meant there was no follow up) and OTL it took 2 years to figure out the range of the longlance and that the US Torpedoes were rubbish.
Previously I wrote that May '42 a peak for IJN, actually without Midway losses and damage from other operations.. they will get the Hiyo and Jinyu about now. OTL Hiyo was active in June'42. These aren't their best, both were converted liners, but are definetly fleet size at 24K tons and with 50+ aircraft. Not escort carrier slow but 25 knots instead of 35 knots of Zuikaku. IJN strategy has been consolidate power in massive single body.. these two take it to 8 carriers but are a bit slower. ITTL they were made front line fleet carriers post Midway and did work alongside them. My guess is they would be a division and a but secondary alongside Shoho. Still it's a LOT of carriers that Japan has in Summer '42.
MAC ships were fitted with flight decks only (no hangers), but maintained their cargo capacity, while the Empire Audacity and her sisters were full-on conversions.
Mostly, though it could give decent protection to torpedo bombers on final approach if it flew on their tails. Or picking off enemy torpedo bombers by flying alongside them.
The British have radars on their ships, so they can trade evenly with the Japanese at night, plus launch carrier operations in support, a capability utterly beyond the Japanese.
The number of decks doesn't matter if they can be kept blind.
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You are correct against the aircraft carriers of the Germans and Italians both the Swordfish and Albacore faired quite well. Shot down to man as soon as even some older Me-109s turned up. HMS Victorious took off all her Albacores, probably out of sheer embarrassment when she was "converted" to USS "Robin" just a few months later.
Radar helps. But if 400 planes are attacking you, and all your planes to defend are both fewer in number and rubbish, it does not win the day. Cunningham will only try anything at night, but if gets the range/ timing/ spotting wrong and his pants hanging out in daylight.....It's going to make PoW/Repulse look like a good result. For now, holding tight and just not getting sunk/ building up strength and time is the Allies best option. Of Course Winston might get drunk and do something "interesting". Icebergs anyone?
Except not, because scouting is what you need to find the enemy, and the British definitely have advantage, on both the outgoing and incoming sides of the equation. For a target at 20,000 ft, the Type 281 has a range of ~125 miles, while the ASV Mk. II can see a ship 60 miles away. That means that, even without constant radio contact, the British can maintain semi-constant observation on the Japanese at up to 180 miles away. That 125 mile range also means that the CAP can swat Japanese scouts tens of minutes before said scouts could even hope to catch sight of the fleet. Sure the Japanrese might put things together and figure out vaguely where you are, but 'vaguely' isn't good enough for a strike force.
You're clearly missing the point, so I'll state it clearly. WITH THE BRITISH HAVING RADAR, THE JAPANESE WON'T BE ABLE TO FIND THEM. CAP can't stop a 400 plane strike on an approach, sure, but a single scout 50 miles away (the Type 281 radar can see aircraft out to 125 miles at 20,000 ft.)? No problems. And preventing the enemy pinpointing your location is good way of stopping them sending strikes out.
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Matt, Here is the rub. 50 miles is nothing. Especially given the heat/ reliability and lack of service / spares for Electronics even in beautiful Singapore. Midway was 250 miles apart. Also , none of these RN carriers would have 281 radar ITTL in May '42 and aren't going to get it unless the go home to Blighty. . None of them. They would have Type 79Y. Why? Because Lusty didn't get bombed in the Med and sent for refit like OTL. . Ark Royal might possibly have been relieved from Force H early ..but given everything else going on, even though the Med had been quiet the Atlantic has not. OTL / ITTL right now HMS Victorious is fighting a losing battle with the Luftwaffe on arctic convoys, and getting to Singapore isn't exactly a 12 hour flight. The fact that Lusty/Dom/ Ark are there already suggest she /they had not gone through a 3 to 4 months refit . 'Dom was commissioned with Type 79Y and has been operating out of India ever since. It simply could not be there with 281 since Singapore was attacked , if it had gone back to UK and refitted. So 281 exists but Lusty was the first carrier to have it OTL but only cos she was crippled by luftwaffe and sent for repairs. This is the far east. Now Type 79Y isn't bad. It's better than the Japanese type 21 which is just rolling out - 100MHz and limited speed ie "turn". Type 79 was better at 40MHz and had seperate transmitter and reciever.
That said , on a plus, yes plus they wouldn't have Albacore but Swordfish still. And least not Lusty. She attacked Madagascar OTL about now and with SWORDFISH. On a another plus she was fited with a small deck park.. had 5 martlets and a Swordfish. Ready to go. Shame neither can climb for shit but at least saves on the unfolding in the tight "lift". Why Swordfish on a plus? Well as someone else wrote, albacore/ swordfish kind of doesn't matter. If they have fighters you're screwed - everyone is dead and you will be soon. BUT if they don't / its night they are getting through. And Swordfish had higher numbers of ASV I and limited ASV II deployed. Lusty also kept a few Fulmars and ONE, that's right ONE fulmar that had ASV. That will be useful. But the problem with Airborne ASV is they have the awful choice of radioing in (and giving away position..everyone had radio detection) or maintaining radio silence flying back and reporting in. Slowly.
That said , on a plus, yes plus they wouldn't have Albacore but Swordfish still. And least not Lusty. She attacked Madagascar OTL about now and with SWORDFISH. On a another plus she was fited with a small deck park.. had 5 martlets and a Swordfish. Ready to go. Shame neither can climb for shit but at least saves on the unfolding in the tight "lift". Why Swordfish on a plus? Well as someone else wrote, albacore/ swordfish kind of doesn't matter. If they have fighters you're screwed - everyone is dead and you will be soon. BUT if they don't / its night they are getting through. And Swordfish had higher numbers of ASV I and limited ASV II deployed. Lusty also kept a few Fulmars and ONE, that's right ONE fulmar that had ASV. That will be useful. But the problem with Airborne ASV is they have the awful choice of radioing in (and giving away position..everyone had radio detection) or maintaining radio silence flying back and reporting in. Slowly.
Midway was an island. They're kind of difficult to miss. And like I said, the Type 281 could pick up an aircraft at 125 miles or so (110 nmi), while said scout spotting the fleet would need to be within 20 miles or so.
Prince of Wales had one installed in January 1941, and according to Wikipedia, Illustrious got hers installed at some point in 1941 as well.
Illustrious got hers installed after her repair, not during it.
So you have one ship that almost certainly doesn't have a set, one that definitely does, along with one that probably does, and three more that are possibles.
As to the Type 21, that was first installed in April of 1942, and the two ships with it (Ise and Hyūga) got sent to the Aleutians.
Ark Royal has Swordfish with ASV Mk. II while hunting Bismarck, so she definitely does here, unless she's upgraded to Albacores.
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You are thinking in terms of moping around the middle of the Pacific. The South China Sea is more like the Mediterranean. Much harder to hide, greater density of force.
Somewhere between the two. Not nearly as big as the Pacific, but an bit larger than the Mediterranean. It's still 600 odd miles between Vietnam and Borneo.
Now the ownership of the Riau Islands is going to be important in the southern part of the SCS. And right now I'm not sure who holds them.
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Another thing you might not know, the Swordfish was, according to Eric "Winkle" Brown quite a performer in a dog fight. He undertook tests to see if it could survive in the Pacific and was surprised at how he could throw it around the sky when unloaded. It might have had to drop it's torpedo but it could give a good account of itself against the Zero.
My understanding is, the reason why turreted fighters were ineffective in WWII wasn't because the aircraft against which they fought were too tough to be taken out by the turret-guns. Instead turreted fighters were ineffective because they got too few hits...and that was the case because the aiming dynamics of turreted guns were too difficult for human gunners.
Bombers with defensive turrets typically were flying straight-and-level, or mildly curved flightpaths at most, while their gunners were trying to defend them. Being a defensive gunner, by many accounts, was difficult. Often when it succeeded, a significant factor was that bombers often flew in formations, and many gunners simultaneously engaged each enemy fighter that came within range. With regard to the statistical likelihood of accuracy by any individual gunner, by all accounts with which I'm familiar, the percentage of rounds fired at bombers that hit those bombers was much greater than the percentage of rounds fired by those bombers at their attackers that hit those attackers.
Fighter pilots, though, never flew straight-and-level in combat. They tried their hardest to avoid being in front of enemy guns, and likely did their best to create good firing situations for their gunners. But that meant that the gunner had to deal with double dynamics...two simultaneous maneuvering frames of reference.
The evidence indicates that that on average was too difficult to master, and that's why turreted fighters all were failures.
And putting the Zero into that equation would make it worse for the turreted fighter, not better...because the Zero often was flown with highly dynamic maneuvering, compared to German fighters that...sometimes...used boom-and-zoom tactics.
A turreted fighter's best situation would be defending against either boom-and-zoom from high astern or high speed overtaking from level astern, where the gunner could have eyes on the attacker from well outside gun range. AFAIK, Zeroes were unlikely to attack those ways, because their maneuverability and climb rate gave them more-lethal options.
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Fair enough. Mind you, many Zeros lacked such basic amenities as radios and self-sealing fuel tanks, so could be pretty vulnerable to even MG fire.
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Lovely though the constant back and forth over radar, swordfish, deck parks, range etc etc etc is please take it to a thread that is about that and not this one about tank development.
Please, please, please.
I could post multiple entries asking you to stop till you are fed up with it as much as i am about aircraft carrier stuff......get the idea ????
Please, please, please.
I could post multiple entries asking you to stop till you are fed up with it as much as i am about aircraft carrier stuff......get the idea ????