# Improved Skua for FAA?



## Admiral Beez (Nov 6, 2019)

When the Blackburn Skua was removed from fleet service in 1941 the RN didn't have a monoplane dive bomber until mid-1943 when the Barracuda enters fleet wide service. Removing the Skua made sense, since RN CAGs were small in number and if you have single-role fighter, DB and TSR types, and if the TSR can also carry bombs for slight glide slope attacking, the DB has to go.

But if the Skua can be made into something more, perhaps it's worth keeping some onboard. We need it to be faster and with a higher bomb load. Basically the FAA needs a Douglas SBD Dauntless. What can we do to the Skua in a Mark III version to get it there? Our starting point is the Mark II Skua that was in service until 1941.

For starters, looking at these pics.... fix the aerodynamics. The vertical canopy has to go, and all the lumps and protrusions need to be smoothed out. What can we replace the 890hp Perseus with? Hercules is not ready, likely too big and never intended for single engine use. There was a 1,200 hp version of the Perseus, Bristol Perseus - Wikipedia 







Just look at how streamlined the Japanese divebomber Yokosuka D4Y Suisei, first flown 1940 is in comparison.


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## tyrodtom (Nov 6, 2019)

I've often wondered what was the reasoning for that vertical windshield ?
Less glare when you're flying into the sun ?
Very few other aircraft tried that approach to windshield design.


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## tomo pauk (Nov 6, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> When the Blackburn Skua was removed from fleet service in 1941 the RN didn't have a monoplane dive bomber until mid-1943 when the Barracuda enters fleet wide service. Removing the Skua made sense, since RN CAGs were small in number and if you have single-role fighter, DB and TSR types, and if the TSR can also carry bombs for slight glide slope attacking, the DB has to go.
> 
> But if the Skua can be made into something more, perhaps it's worth keeping some onboard. We need it to be faster and with a higher bomb load. Basically the FAA needs a Douglas SBD Dauntless. What can we do to the Skua in a Mark III version to get it there? Our starting point is the Mark II Skua that was in service until 1941.
> 
> ...



The Suisei from the pcture 1st flew in 1943?

There was no 1200 HP version of the Perseus until too late, basically it was a Centaurus cut in half (a gross generalization, I know), and used a far better fuel than it was the case with the vanilla Perseus.

Aerodynamics were excellent when compared with Stuka or the Val. What was not excellent was engine power indeed, especially once above 5-6 thousand feet due to the as-used Perseus having the superchager gearing set for low level. At 15000 ft, it was making ~670 HP. There was no 2-speed supercharged Perseus in production (probably not even as a prototype). The hi-alt Perseus, the Mk.X, was good for 880 HP at 15000 ft, but just 750 HP for take off (so our bomb load will badly suffer with that engine).
What can be done is installation of a better engine. The Pegasus was a decent engine, it was available as a 2-speed supercharged version, that gave ~970 HP for take-off, but also 1000 HP at 3000 ft, and 885 HP at 15000 ft. A 1-speed supercharged version, gearing being for 'mid' level, will give 840 HP for take off, and 930 HP at 10000 ft - that is just a slight gain vs. Perseus.
The Taurus is another engine worth a look. Never known as dead reliable, it was also just a low-level engine, power of about 1100 HP down low. Taurus is much heavier than the 9-cyl radials, it is also of smaller radius, but then again the big Skua will not became a Spitfire if we install a smaller radial on the Skua itself.
US engines can be used, Cyclone or Twin Wasp.
A more speculative engine for the Skua is the Merlin. Installaed weight will be probably two times of the Perseus.

Wing should gain Fowler flaps to help out with increased aircraft weight.


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## nuuumannn (Nov 6, 2019)

The reasons why the Barracuda took so long to enter service was not because the navy were slow to act, but because it was a troublesome airframe that required changes before it was fit for service. The Barra was built to the pre-war requirement for a Skua replacement, which was for a torpedo bomber, dive bomber and general recon platform - incorporating too much into one airframe, which resulted in the massive piece of ironmongery that was the Barra. This was the same with a new single-seat fighter for the navy; the Firebrand was supposed to be the aircraft, but it was a dog's breakfast and eventually ended up as a less than adequate torpedo bomber.

The Skua was a dead end in development terms - might as well investigate a new airframe altogether. It was a big aeroplane, bigger than the Suisei, which is quite svelte by comparison and is more of a contemporary with the Barracuda.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 6, 2019)

Tomo is correct on the Perseus 100 engine. It used a 178mm stroke (same as the Centaurus) instead of the 165mm stroke of the older Perseus engines. I am not sure it ever flew in a production aircraft. It used the better fuel to allow 9lbs of boost. A Centaurus 57 only used 11.5lbs of boost while using water injection. 

easiest and cheapest way to get a good engine into the Skua was buy P & W R-1830s.

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## Admiral Beez (Nov 6, 2019)

nuuumannn said:


> The Skua was a dead end in development terms - might as well investigate a new airframe altogether. It was a big aeroplane, bigger than the Suisei, which is quite svelte by comparison and is more of a contemporary with the Barracuda.


I didn’t realize the Skua was so large, until I saw the tiny crew.


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 6, 2019)




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## PFVA63 (Nov 6, 2019)

Hi,
Similar to what Adm Beez notes above, I didn't realize just how large this plane was either. Looking at Wikipedia it appears that it was just a little longer than the SBD Dauntless (10.85m vs 10.1m), a bit wider in wing span (14.1m vs 12.7m), but with a slightly smaller wing (29.6m2 vs 30.2m2) and a lighter empty weight (2498kg vs 2905kg). 

Overall, other than trying some clean up of the body and maybe looking at a P&W or Wright Cyclone engine (if a vailable) I'm not really too sure what else could be done. And overall I wouldn't expect those changes to make a radical improvement in performance. 

Pat


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 6, 2019)

PFVA63 said:


> Overall, other than trying some clean up of the body and maybe looking at a P&W or Wright Cyclone engine (if a vailable) I'm not really too sure what else could be done.


What about ditching some of the elements from the Skua’s fighter role? Remove some or all of the forward armament. I’m not sure what else a fighter has that a DB doesn’t need, maybe gunsights or some armour?


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## tyrodtom (Nov 6, 2019)

I think a dive bomber might need armor at least as much, if not more than a fighter.

I doubt that any gunsight is enough of a weight penalty to worry about.
And there's not many dive bombers, if any, without some forward firing armament.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 6, 2019)

Four .303 guns weigh just under 100lbs and 500rounds per gun weighed about 120lbs. I don't remember how much ammo the Skua carried, adjust accordingly. 6lbs per 100 rounds. Mounts ammo boxes, etc.. extra.. 50 guns in the SBD went over 70lbs each and .50 cal ammo is 30lb per hundred rounds. 
Gun sights are 3-5 lbs.


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## Greyman (Nov 7, 2019)

600 rounds per gun for the Skua.
248 pounds would be saved by taking out the guns, ammo and ammo boxes.
283.5 if you tore everything out (accessories, mountings, firing mechanisms, etc.) 

For what its worth the Lewis gun and 6 mags was 95.5 pounds (mountings, sights, stowage pegs, everything).

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## Admiral Beez (Nov 7, 2019)

The biggest flaw in the Skua is the paltry 500 lb. bomb load, compared to 2,225 lb. on the Douglas SBD Dauntless. If we can increase the Skua’s bomb weight we can forgive its other failings.


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## Kevin J (Nov 7, 2019)

The Albacore circa 1940 like the Barracuda could perform the dive bombing task. I don't think the FAA needed a fast dive bomber as it's targets were warships not IJN aircraft carriers. The Fulmar II, 1941 onwards, could carry a 500 lb bomb in a 70 degree dive, but no dive brakes, although some were tested. Unless the RN has lots of Ark Royal configuration carriers for operation in 1941/42 against IJN carriers, I can't see the point of a fast dive bomber, and my choice would be the Fulmar II, maybe even Fulmar III with Merlin 32 and dive brakes for 1942/43 but that requires the two Implacable class carriers to be completed. The only way you're going to get more carriers available is to retain and modernise the 4 Iron Duke class battleships and Tiger and to build 5 Ark Royal type carriers instead of the King George V class battleships. If you want an even faster dive bomber then you need to start with the Defiant, replace the turret with a gunners position, move the radiator to under the nose, put a bomb rack under the fuselage and install upward folding wings.


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 7, 2019)

Kevin J said:


> but that requires the two Implacable class carriers to be completed. The only way you're going to get more carriers available is to retain and modernise the 4 Iron Duke class battleships and Tiger and to build 5 Ark Royal type carriers instead of the King George V class battleships.


My ideal RN carrier is a faster and slightly longer Centaur class. Single hangar, skip the Majestic/Colossus and even the two Implacables. So it's Ark Royal to Illustrious/Indomitable to Centaur to Audacious.


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## Kevin J (Nov 7, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> My ideal RN carrier is a faster and slightly longer Centaur class. Single hangar, skip the Majestic/Colossus and even the two Implacables. So it's Ark Royal to Illustrious/Indomitable to Centaur to Audacious.


So you want the 1959 Hermes in 1941?


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 7, 2019)

Kevin J said:


> So you want the 1959 Hermes in 1941?


No, angled deck and deck edge lift are too far a leap for 1941.

Basically this, HMS Centaur, but with straight deck paint. Cheaper and faster to build than an AFD carrier, far more useful than a Majestic/Colossus CVL.


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## Kevin J (Nov 7, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> No, angled deck and deck edge lift are too far a leap for 1941.
> 
> Basically this, HMS Centaur, but with straight deck paint. Cheaper and faster to build than an AFD carrier, far more useful than a Majestic/Colossus CVL.
> 
> View attachment 559780


It's a result of design evolution, you won't get it by 1941. You might get an Ark Royal development with a deck edge lift.


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 7, 2019)

Kevin J said:


> It's a result of design evolution, you won't get it by 1941. You might get an Ark Royal development with a deck edge lift.


Centaur is essentially a single level Ark Royal or an Illustrious without the armoured box. Nothing really evolutionary there. But I am suggesting the Centaurs follow the Illustrious, so when the four Illustrious/Indomitable start in 1937 the follow-on design should be Centaurs.

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## Kevin J (Nov 7, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> Centaur is essentially a single level Ark Royal or an Illustrious without the armoured box. Nothing really evolutionary there. But I am suggesting the Centaurs follow the Illustrious, so when the four Illustrious/Indomitable start in 1937 the follow-on design should be Centaurs.


You've clearly never had to design anything in your life, it's a learning process, and when you look back you think, wow, that was either crap, or cobbled together.


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 7, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I think a dive bomber might need armor at least as much, if not more than a fighter.
> 
> I doubt that any gunsight is enough of a weight penalty to worry about.
> And there's not many dive bombers, if any, without some forward firing armament.


Perhaps a single forward mg, but removing fighter parts doesn't seem to get us there. With such a wingspan and overall size, what was driving the poor bombload? Ability to get into the air I suppose, but the engine is running about 900 hp, which isn't huge but it's not a 500 hp Aquila.


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## Dinger (Nov 7, 2019)

The Skua had a few things that could be improved on to make it a better all-round combat aircraft. The one thing that everyone misses in their appraisal of it is that long nose - It is mostly air! Look at the photographs of the first prototype (photo on one of a series of webpages devoted to the type - halfway down see Link Images of the Blackburn Skua ). It initially had a much shorter nose (not unlike the Douglas Dauntless), but the prototype was found to have stability problems and one of the cures was to extend the nose. That added extension is almost completely empty! So the most obvious enhancement you could give the Skua in 1941 is not a more powerful radial - but a liquid-cooled engine. The obvious choice would be a Merlin XX with a neat under-chin radiator (like the Hawker Henley). That would fill up that nose nicely! The added power should enable it to easily lift a 1,000 lb bomb. The next major improvement would be its radio equipment. The Skua had no speech-based radio set, making it impossible to readily co-operate with other aircraft, pretty essential in the dive-bomber and fighter roles - So an improved radio fit is essential. Then make the fuel-tanks self-sealing with a modicum of armour protection at the rear, at the same time perhaps make the two fuel tanks between the pilot and gunner a bit bigger (plenty of room to do so) to make up for the increased fuel consumption of the Merlin. Give the pilot some armour protection at his back and bulletproof glass in the front windshield. The steep windshield is one thing I would not change, it accommodated the wide range of movement of the pilot's seat up and down that gave him an excellent view when landing (see Eric "Winkle" Browns description of the Skua). Give the gunner/WT operator a proper seat to sit on with a proper harness to keep him safe while dive-bombing (he only had a bench and a single strap to stop him being thrown out, lots of Skua crewmen were injured by being thrown about in the cockpit). Improve the dingey release mechanism (which often failed). Improve the anti-spin parachute deployment and release mechanisms so that they don't run outside the fuselage and cause drag. Likewise take advantage of fitting a Merlin engine to replace the ludicrous Blackburn "quick release" keyring mechanisms for holding the engine covers in place for the more streamlined type used on the Hurricane and Spitfire, to cut down on drag. Lastly, if resources will stretch to it, get rid of the upturned wingtips and give the Skua proper dihedral across the whole of its wings (as they did in the Roc) which cures the instability problems of the misplaced C of G. Doing this in 1941 is problematic since the production line has already been moved over to produce Bothas, unless you are going to rework the existing remaining Skuas (and there were never very many to start off with).

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## Shortround6 (Nov 7, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> Perhaps a single forward mg, but removing fighter parts doesn't seem to get us there. With such a wingspan and overall size, what was driving the poor bombload? Ability to get into the air I suppose, but the engine is running *about 900 hp*, which isn't huge but it's not a 500 hp Aquila.



Please remember that British flight decks were a bit shorter than American flight decks.

as for the bolded part. Most American radials early on were rated at take-off power and the vast majority (after 1940 at least) were 2 speed.

The older British radials were single speed. While the Perseus XII was good for 905hp at 6500ft it was only good for 830hp for take off, not sure if it was ever rated for 100 octane fuel. 
While the RAF had 100 octane for fighter command during the summer of 1940, other commands were not so lucky, 87 octane hung on a while longer and the Skuas went out of front line service in 1941.
I have no idea if the Skua was stuck with a 2 pitch prop pr had a constant speed, it two pitch it explains a lot about the lightbomb load.

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## Kevin J (Nov 7, 2019)

Shortround6 said:


> Please remember that British flight decks were a bit shorter than American flight decks.
> 
> as for the bolded part. Most American radials early on were rated at take-off power and the vast majority (after 1940 at least) were 2 speed.
> 
> ...



The Perseus 100 used 100 octane but it was a single row Centaurus.


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## Clayton Magnet (Nov 7, 2019)

whatever its other shortcomings may be, she was certainly no looker


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 7, 2019)

Clayton Magnet said:


> whatever its other shortcomings may be, she was certainly no looker


I guess its ugliness makes for easy recognition.

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## Shortround6 (Nov 7, 2019)

Kevin J said:


> The Perseus 100 used 100 octane but it was a single row Centaurus.


The Perseus 100 was a very late war if not post war engine. In fact a Photo was not available in Feb 1946 for the 1946 edition of "aircraft engines of the world"
I know of no production plane that used this engine (or even planned to). 
Bristol may have been desperate to sell but I don't think there were any buyers, the engine certainly seems to be well out of the way for any 1941-42 aircraft.


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## Greyman (Nov 7, 2019)

Shortround6 said:


> I have no idea if the Skua was stuck with a 2 pitch prop pr had a constant speed, it two pitch it explains a lot about the lightbomb load.



Two-pitch only.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 7, 2019)

Thank you


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## stug3 (Nov 9, 2019)

Skua cockpit






Skua rear gunner

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## PFVA63 (Nov 9, 2019)

Hi,
Thanks for posting those images. They are very interesting and infomative.

Pat

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## stug3 (Nov 9, 2019)

Skua Mk. II Bristol Perseus


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 9, 2019)

PFVA63 said:


> Hi,
> Thanks for posting those images. They are very interesting and infomative.
> 
> Pat


This photo of the fuel tanks between the pilot and gunner surprised me. No fire protection for the crew, just gas tanks essentially in their laps.

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## Kevin J (Nov 10, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> This photo of the fuel tanks between the pilot and gunner surprised me. No fire protection for the crew, just gas tanks essentially in their laps.
> 
> View attachment 560196


My improved Skua would be a Fulmar.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 11, 2019)

The best idea for improving the Skua would be to fit a P & W R-1830 to it. 
Even with 87 octane fuel and a single speed supercharger it gives about 200hp more for take-off and about 50hp more several thousand feet higher than the Perseus fitted.

Ideas for the Merlin require Merlins to begin with, and unless you steal them from Battles or Defiants they are in short supply. Then unless you use the Merlin VIII or some variation of it you haven't solved much of anything. Merlin and radiator weigh 5-600lbs more than the Perseus and a Merlin III on 87 octane has 880hp for take-off, only about 75hp more. Granted it will be _lot _faster at 15-18,000ft but that is not where the enemy torpedo bombers and low level horizontal bombers and fleet shadowers are going to be. 
Using the Merlin X would be a nice solution but prying Merlin X engines from bomber command (or from their adherents in the air ministry) would be a most difficult task. There is no substitute for the Merlin X in the British heavy bombers in 1939/40. 

2nd best idea is using the Pegasus. At lest with a two speed supercharger you do get a very usable boost in take-off power to increase the loaded weight of the aircraft. However you are in competition with the Hampden and the Wellington (and others) for engines.

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## yulzari (Nov 11, 2019)

The improved Skua was with a Merlin engine: closely followed by a Fairey Fulmar airframe. As Fulmars came into service they displaced the Skuas. A more productive search would be for an improved Fulmar with a Griffon actually following the OTL Fulmar on the production line. There were 3 Griffons on test by the end of 1939 and it had moved on to the MkII by the summer of 1940. It would save the far too long delay to get the OTL Firefly into general service. 

The Skua production line had been taken down by Blackburns at the end of the initial contract and Boulton Paul had to make the Roc so there would have been a shortfall in Skua airframes anyway whilst the Fulmar production line was current. With the extra torque and power of the Griffon the Fulmar would then be able to lift a decent war load off the deck and deliver it in a steep dive or low level shallow dive as required whilst being able to defend itself thereafter.


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## Glider (Nov 11, 2019)

I admit to believing that the Skua has a reputation that it doesn't really deserve. As an early war dive bomber it was as good as most of the rest and was also able to better defend itself than most.
Had the British replaced the Battle with the Skua then the RAF would have had a GA aircraft it sorely needed in the first two years of the war

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## Admiral Beez (Nov 11, 2019)

Glider said:


> I admit to believing that the Skua has a reputation that it doesn't really deserve. As an early war dive bomber it was as good as most of the rest and was also able to better defend itself than most.
> Had the British replaced the Battle with the Skua then the RAF would have had a GA aircraft it sorely needed in the first two years of the war


Had the RN not lost HMS Courageous and Glorious through misuse the Skua might have scene action at Taranto. Dive bombing at night? Perhaps a dawn follow up strike against the tank farms?


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## Admiral Beez (Nov 11, 2019)

stug3 said:


> Skua Mk. II Bristol Perseus
> View attachment 560194


Looks like there’s space to put another Perseus behind the first one. Attach the two Perseus by a shaft.






No, I don’t mean make a new double banked engine, just connect two existing Perseus.


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## Kevin J (Nov 12, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> Looks like there’s space to put another Perseus behind the first one. Attach the two Perseus by a shaft.
> 
> View attachment 560506


I guess if you can put a RR Vulture in a Henley then you can put a Centaurus in a Skua, but what about the effect on c.g? Would you need a B.P. turret on the back to compensate for the heavier engine on the front? Now maybe that may have made the Blackburn Roc workable.


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## RCAFson (Nov 13, 2019)

Admiral Beez said:


> The biggest flaw in the Skua is the paltry 500 lb. bomb load, compared to 2,225 lb. on the Douglas SBD Dauntless. If we can increase the Skua’s bomb weight we can forgive its other failings.



No carrier launched SBD ever carried more than a 1000lb bomb. The SBD-1/2/3/4 (1000hp for TO) had a lower power to weight ratio and higher wing loading than the Skua. The SBD-5 and 6 with uprated engines might have carried more than that when operating from shore bases, but that's unlikely. Total bomb load on the Skua is 500lb plus 8 x 30lb bombs under the wings.


Compared to the SBD-1/2/3/4 the Skua was probably a better all round carrier aircraft, especially as it had very efficient folding wings. The Roc was essentially an updated and improved Skua, that was cripplied as a divebomber by the quad turret. It is a shame that Skua production wasn't continued after only 190 aircraft were built, since this was the aircraft that the RN FAA and RAF needed for the defence of Malaya, Burma, India and Ceylon.

The SBD-5 SAC data shows the 1600lb bomb as the maximum weapon load, but to carry this bomb fuel must be reduced to 165USG. To carry 2250lb, fuel load would have to be reduced to ~60USG!!! That's barely enough for TO and a few circuits around the airfield! The conclusion from this is that a 2250lb bomb load is impossible.

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## Admiral Beez (Nov 13, 2019)

RCAFson said:


> It is a shame that Skua production wasn't continued after only 190 aircraft were built, since this was the aircraft the the RN FAA and RAF needed for the defence of Malaya, Burma, India and Ceylon.


100% agreed. Slower than almost everything the IJAF strapped bombs to, it’ll be a poor fighter, but as a CAS dive bomber would have been very useful. IIRC, the Skua didn’t have a voice radio, so that would need to be addressed.

Per Bloody Shambles, there was already a Fleet Air Arm station at Singapore, with a few Stringbags, so the experienced FAA crews might carry on rather than turn them over to the RAF. When the colony falls hopefully some of the Skuas can make it to India, and then onto HMS Hermes. If they transfer to the RAF they may be repainted.







The Skua carried 8 × 30 lb practice bombs under the wings. Make these incendiary and the IJA will have a challenge. But it looks like the 30 lb. phosphorus bombs were not yet available. http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index....30lb-incendiary-bomb&catid=43:bombs&Itemid=60

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## Shortround6 (Nov 13, 2019)

RCAFson said:


> The SBD-5 SAC data shows the 1600lb bomb as the maximum weapon load, but to carry this bomb fuel must be reduced to 165USG. To carry 2250lb, fuel load would have to be reduced to ~60USG!!! That's barely enough for TO and a few circuits around the airfield! The conclusion from this is that a 2250lb bomb load is impossible.


The 2250lb bomb load consisted of a 1600lb armor piercing bomb (which had less HE content than a 500lb GP bomb) and a pair of 325lb depth charges, hardly a combination of weapons that most people would combine in one mission. May US carriers only carried about 20 or fewer 1600lbs in their magazines. 
The Manual for the SBD-3 does NOT list anywhere near this bomb load but the SAC sheets with later dates do, they also give a much higher gross weight than the manual does. 

We can argue if the later Dauntless could carry that bomb load and 100 gallons or 60 gallons but you are correct, the 2250lb bomb load was a pretty scarce if not non existent weapons load in service.

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## keithwwalker (May 22, 2022)

It may be the reason the Skua was dropped was that the Perseus was totally unreliable in service. Every native Perseus application was a disaster & pulled from service.
They should of re-engined with 1820 or 1830 radials to keep commonality with Martlet motors, the Skua could of soldiered on to 1944 til the Firefly arrived.

Just think of the resourcing that would of been saved if the Fulmar & Albacore were skipped if the Skua was kept - the Barracuda & Firefly could of showed up sooner

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## nuuumannn (May 22, 2022)

keithwwalker said:


> Just think of the resourcing that would of been saved if the Fulmar & Albacore were skipped if the Skua was kept - the Barracuda & Firefly could of showed up sooner



Hmm, Different aircraft built to different specifications, the outcome of the Skua would not have been any different if either the Fulmar or Albacore were not built. It's a fact that even by 1937 when it entered service the Skua was considered to be bordering on obsolete by both the Admiralty and Air Ministry. The type had no development potential, as useful as it was in FAA service. It was a good dive bomber but was built to a flawed specification as a fighter dive bomber, which as a fighter was far too slow and too big. The Fulmar, for its limitations was a better fighter, but it was only intended as a stop-gap. The Air Ministry was hoping in the late 1930s in the efficacy of a turret fighter (the Roc was _not _a dive bomber, but the naval equivalent of the Boulton Paul Defiant bomber interceptor) and the Fulmar was put forward as an interim catapult fighter.

The Albacore was a torpedo bomber that could be converted with a water undercarriage as a replacement for the Swordfish, not building it doesn't help the Skua at all. The Barracuda was a hot mess of too many requirements into the same airframe, the aerodynamic issues behind which delayed its entry into service. The Firefly only happens if the Fulmar happens; their specifications are linked.

If we really want Fairey to do something useful, in 1938 the Admiralty tried and failed to get Richard Fairey to build navalised Spitfires under licence - make this happen. As for a better dive bomber than the Skua, make a navalised Hawker Henley. It was a purpose built dive bomber that incorporated the same construction techniques and minor componentry as the Hurricane, offering savings in manufacture cost and time.

As for the Barracuda, make the dive bomber and torpedo bomber two separate aircraft. A torpedo bomber needs size on its side, but a dive bomber doesn't. As I've pointed out in another thread, the Dauntless and Aichi D3A were around the same size as a T-6 Texan (Harvard), give or take (length of around 33 ft, wingspans around 40 to 42 ft), whereas the Barracuda was a big aeroplane of larger dimension (length of around 40 ft, wingspan of nearly 50 feet). Interestingly, the Skua was bigger than the Dauntless and Aichi D3A by several feet in overall dimension, but not as big as the Barracuda, but then it wasn't a torpedo bomber.

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## keithwwalker (May 23, 2022)

The US Navy thought the SBD was obsolescent, but it carried on until 1944. The Skua, with an engine upgrade would of been functionally equivalent to the SBD.
Leave the fighter responsibilities to the Grumman Martlet which was much faster than the Fulmar. That would leave the Skua as a dedicated dive bomber.

Albacore was so awful (recall it had the Bristol Taurus, another unreliable motor), they kept the Stringbag. Again, my point is that not engineering the Albacore, and Fulmar - it would of sped up the Firefly and Barracuda into service.

I don't see your point about a float based Albacore - another dead end.
The Henley, too, was a dead end as it wasn't designed as a dive bomber to my knowledge. The Skua beat it to service anyway. Fighter command by late 1938 were reserving almost every Merlin for Spitfires and Hurricanes.

It wasn't that the craft was so bad, but the FAA's concepts of just what they should have were so wrong. 2 man fighters proved out of date, and it was 1946 by the time they got back on track, just in time for the jet age.

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## EwenS (May 23, 2022)

The only reason that the SBD soldiered on as a carrier dive bomber into 1944, was the delays in getting its successor, the SB2C Helldiver, sorted and into service.

The SB2C was ordered in May 1939, first flew in Dec 1940 before crashing in Feb 1941. Engine problems, structural weaknesses, poor handling, directional instability and poor stall characteristics all needed addressed before it was deemed acceptable for use around a carrier deck. The result was that it was late 1943 before it became operational with VB-17 on the Bunker Hill.

That was another aircraft that, like the Barracuda, saw a significant weight increase between initial spec & design and final service entry.

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## nuuumannn (May 23, 2022)

keithwwalker said:


> Albacore was so awful (recall it had the Bristol Taurus, another unreliable motor), they kept the Stringbag. Again, my point is that not engineering the Albacore, and Fulmar - it would of sped up the Firefly and Barracuda into service.
> 
> I don't see your point about a float based Albacore - another dead end.
> The Henley, too, was a dead end as it wasn't designed as a dive bomber to my knowledge. The Skua beat it to service anyway. Fighter command by late 1938 were reserving almost every Merlin for Spitfires and Hurricanes.
> ...



There's a lot to unpack here, so let's get started.

The Albacore was _not _awful. In fact, pilots assessment was that it was a very good aircraft, just a little anachronistic in its biplane layout. It could do the job of the Swordfish, which it was intended on replacing, with better conditions for the crew. It had flaps, an enclosed heated cockpit, variable pitch airscrew and was of all metal construction. It was a modern aircraft but for the biplane layout and fixed gear, but there was a rationale that dated back to the Great War and the first aircraft carrier based torpedo droppers behind that. As for the Taurus, initially the Albacore had problems with it, but its issues were eventually solved, so it's failure rate was no worse than other FAA aircraft.

In service, Albacores were replaced by the Barracuda as a torpedo bomber, _not_ the Swordfish, it graduated to being used for anti-submarine duties from 1942 on and spent less time as a torpedo bomber. Again, the Firefly doesn't happen without the Fulmar. Its specification was released in 1938, then revised in 1939 and re issued in 1940. It ain't appearing any earlier.

Once again, the Barracuda _was _a dog. Why do you want it in service at all? It's too big to be a dive bomber and too complex to be a good torpedo bomber. As for Albacores on floats, they were _designed_ to be operated on floats so they could be used aboard ships other than carriers, just like Swordfish. In fact, British battleships of the Queen Elizabeth Class before WW2 were slated to operate Albacores from catapults, as Swordfish were also designed to do.

The Henley _was _designed from the outset as a dive bomber! It was only a dead end because the RAF showed no interest in it. Its performance was very good for a single-engined bomber, it could almost reach 300 mph, which is good in the late 1930s. Converting it to a carrier based aircraft would not have been too difficult, the Hurricane was, as was the Spitfire, which was a big undertaking! It was also smaller and had better performance than the Skua, and, as I mentioned the Skua was considered as being near obsolete when it entered service, so why not bring in a better aircraft to do the job?

As for Merlins, let's not forget the Fairey Battle, Beaufighter Mk.II, Handley Page Halifax and Fulmar, which all had the Merlin, but you're right, Fighter Command's needs took precedence over the FAA's, which is why it never got Spitfires before the outbreak of WW2 despite the Admiralty asking for them. which neatly brings us to the next thing you mentioned.

The FAA's concepts were not strictly the navy's. Before 1939 the FAA was a branch of the Royal Air Force, not the navy, so its needs were met by the Air Ministry, _not _the Admiralty. There is a common misconception that the navy didn't care for single-seat fighters. That's simply not true. The Air Ministry brought in the concept of the two-man fighter, firstly with the Skua, being a fighter dive bomber, then the Fulmar and Roc and lastly Firefly, although the latter was re-released when the Admiralty regained the FAA in 1939.

In the early 1930s the Air Ministry decided that modern aircraft were becoming too big for carriers, so the decision was made to incorporate disparate tasks into the same airframes. This brought about the fighter dive bomber specification and the Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance role. Before the Skua, the FAA had plenty of single-seat fighters, from the Nieuport Night Hawk to the Flycatcher and the Hawker Nimrod. The Sea Gladiator was brought in as a stop-gap because the Skua was considered too ungainly as a fighter.

Between the mid 1930s and 1942 the admirals did all they possibly could to get a decent single-seat fighter. Letters flew between the Air Ministry in White Hall and Admiralty House about this subject, lots of them. In 1937 admirals began decrying the lack of modern single-seat fighter when the RAF was getting the Spitfire _and _Hurricane and at a meeting the Hurricane was put forward as a possible naval fighter. As mentioned in my previous post, the Spitfire was considered for modification to the extent that Joe Smith of Supermarine even drew up a proposal for a "Sea Spitfire" in 1938 powered by the Griffon engine. It was this that the admirals asked Richard Fairey to build during a meeting at Admiralty House that same year. Fairey couldn't be persuaded at any rate, so the Admirals tried requesting Spitfires from the Air Ministry, who said no, Spitfire production was prioritised for the RAF.

In 1939 the navy regained the FAA from the Air Ministry and sought to redraw the specifications that had been issued, including a replacement two-seat turret fighter for the Roc, which was canned in favour of a new single-seat fighter specification, which was issued to Blackburn, which was to be the Firebrand. The two-seat specification that became the Firefly was kept as a heavy fighter attack aircraft.

The Skua, Roc, Fulmar, Albacore and Barracuda were all ordered from specifications issued by the Air Ministry before the Admiralty took over the FAA in 1939 and couldn't be halted as all these types were either in service, being delivered or under advanced development. The Firebrand proved to be a disaster and ran into delay after delay, but the intent was that it was to go into service in 1942 as the FAA's high performance single-seat fighter. In the meantime, an interim solution was sought.

The Hurricane became the Sea Hurricane from late 1940, the FAA received ex-Aeronavale Grumman Wildcats in mid to late 1940 and Lord Beaverbrook, Minister for Aircraft Production proposed that the Miles M.20 should be modified as a naval fighter. Under trial in 1941, this idea proved a dead end as it wasn't a good fit for carrier operations. Next of course was the Seafire, which became a reality in 1942. Hawker also proposed the Sea Typhoon, but couldn't offer a prototype until 1942, which at the time it was proposed, the Admiralty believed the Firebrand could match the time schedule.

So, the thought that the navy did not want single-seat fighters is frankly, misguided. All the evidence is there that the admirals really didn't like the fact that they didn't have a decent one at the beginning of the war and did all they could to rectify the problem.

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## Shortround6 (May 23, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> The Henley _was _designed from the outset as a dive bomber! It was only a dead end because the RAF showed no interest in it. Its performance was very good for a single-engined bomber, it could almost reach 300 mph, which is good in the late 1930s. Converting it to a carrier based aircraft would not have been too difficult, the Hurricane was, as was the Spitfire, which was a big undertaking! *It was also smaller* and had better performance than the Skua, and, as I mentioned the Skua was considered as being near obsolete when it entered service, so why not bring in a better aircraft to do the job?


The Henley was a bit of a dog itself and the Skua gets a bad rap.

The Skua was a poor fighter, but yanking the guns wasn't going to change much. 
The Skua only carried about 100lbs worth of fixed guns and since you have to leave some sort of forward firing gun/s in the plane you are only going to save 50-75lbs plus the ammo. 
About 160lbs for 600rpg for 4 guns. 

The Henley needed a host of modifications before it would have been a good naval dive bomber. Or even a good land based dive bomber. 
Some of this was due to poor specification writing. 
The Henley was "stressed" for "dive recovery with full bombload" which is not quite the same as dive bombing (The Battle could do the "dive recovery' bit). 
The Henley was never fitted with dive brakes, or bomb crutches, or bomb sights and according to Wiki, was limited to attack angles of 70 degrees. 
The first two prototypes were fitted with Hamilton standard propellers but I don't know if they were constant speed or older two pitch versions. The Henley's fate was sealed when they decided that there were not going to be enough Rotol or DH constant speed propellers to fit them with as the heavy bombers and fighters were going to need all available planned production and the Henley was going to get two pitch props which made over speeding the props while diving a very real possibility with the accompanying wrecked engines and lost aircraft. 
The Henley as originally built had a small bomb bay for a pair of 250lb bombs side by side. This was hardly ship killer armament. 

There appears to be nothing that could not have been changed given enough time and desire. It really wasn't that hard considering some of the modifications that other planes went through in their early stages. 

1. Fit a low altitude Merlin instead of the 16,250ft model, give the bomber several hundred more HP for take-off even on 87 octane fuel.
2. Get the needed propellers.
3. Rip off the bomb bay doors and fit a bomb crutch that will hold a 500lb (or larger?) bomb. Get hammers to modify the lower fuselage. 
4, Fit a radiator that will suit the intended low altitude high speed flight ( for at least 10-15 minutes) missions. 
5. Fit some sort of dive brake. 
6. Figure out a bombsight or attack profile that has a better chance than sticking gum on the windscreen and trusting to the pilots "instinct" (USE the "force" Luke!)
7. Fit folding wings
8. Fit protection
9. Increase fuel tankage. 
Of course the nearly 300mph speed at around 16-17,000ft goes away but that was not a realistic altitude for a dive bomber to be flying anyway. 

Of course we can go back to the Skua and do.

1. Fit a low altitude Merlin (_Pegasus_) give the bomber several hundred more HP for take-off even on 87 octane fuel.
2. Get the needed propellers.
3. Rip off the bomb bay doors and fit a bomb crutch that will hold a 500lb (or larger?) HE bomb 
5. Fit some sort of dive brake. Already done
6. Fit protection

The Skua was actually a few inches shorter and a few inches less wingspan than the Henley and about 23 sq ft less wing. You won't gain or loose a single hanger space if the Henley wing fold gets done right.


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## Admiral Beez (May 23, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> So, the thought that the navy did not want single-seat fighters is frankly, misguided.


Agreed. Dual role Skua aside, in the history of British carrier aviation out of more than two dozen fighters there have been a total of five two-seat fighters: Fulmar, Firefly, Sea Venom, Sea Vixen and the American Phantom II. Every other FAA operated carrier fighter: Pup, Camel, Nightjar, Flycatcher, Nimrod, Sea Gladiator, Sea Hurricane, Seafire, Sea Fury, Sea Hornet, Firebrand, Attacker, Sea Hawk, Sea Vampire, Scimitar, Sea Harrier, plus the American Martlet, Hellcat, Corsair and now Lightning II have been single seaters. The FAA and Admiralty weren’t stupid, but they had to deal with the cards they had.

If the Sabre could be made to be reliable and plentiful earlier on and the chin scoop relocated along with landing speed adjusted, the Hawker Typhoon might have made for a superb carrier fighter for 1941-42 onwards. Imagine flying in your daintily built, lightly armed A6M and this beast comes diving from above at 400+ mph, four 20 mm cannons blazing.

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## nuuumannn (May 23, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The Henley was a bit of a dog itself and the Skua gets a bad rap.



Actually, the Henley wasn't a dog at all and its subsequent service career does nothing to prove that it might have been a formidable combat aircraft if it had the opportunity to be so. The Merlin was not designed for the plod of target tug duties and the engine failures the type suffered in service were largely due to the engine protesting its use. The Merlin was a high performance engine and putting one into a target tug is like putting an LS into a Honda CRV, really pointless, but you know this already. The aircraft itself was fine and airframe wise bore sufficient commonality to Hawker's previous multi-seat aircraft, such as the Hart family, as well as the Hurricane, with which it shared considerable structural commonality. This of course means lower manufacturing and maintenance costs and less time to manufacture by a suitably trained workforce.

As for conversion to naval use, they did so with the Spitfire, which arguably converting the Henley would have been much easier. It's construction method meant that it could have received the necessary fuselage strengthening and wing folds without much modification. It was the same metal Warren-truss type structure under the skin, with fabric rear covering as the Hurricane and almost all other Hawker aircraft of that vintage. It was of entirely metal construction and its wing centre section comprised the main structural load bearing unit of the aircraft and the outer panels bolted on outboard of the undercarriage units. This makes for a natural wing fold position, so again, nowhere near as difficult to try and figure out a workable method of doing this.

As for the specification, P.4/34, to which the Fairey day bomber that spawned the Fulmar was built, states that "the aircraft is to be fully stressed for dive recovery with a full bomb load (500 lb fully stowed)", which we are not talking a light descent angle, SR, let's be serious for a moment, dive brakes or no dive brakes.

The big problem with the Henley was not the aircraft itself, it was the lack of faith in pursuing the specification by the Air Ministry. Hawker handed development and production over to Gloster while it got on with the serious business of building fighters.

As for the Skua, yes, in 1937 it wasn't a bad aeroplane; it was certainly the most advanced onboard British carriers at that time, but it had a very short built-in lifespan. There was to be no modifying it simply because there was no growth in the design subsequent to undertaking redesign and the performance advantages would not have been sufficient to warrant it. Besides, the FAA placed its hope in the Barracuda being good, but we know how that turned out. The Skua was smaller than a Barracuda, which is the size point I was making; the Barra was a big aircraft for a dive bomber.

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## Admiral Beez (May 23, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> As for the Skua, yes, in 1937 it wasn't a bad aeroplane; it was certainly the most advanced onboard British carriers at that time, but it had a very short built-in lifespan.


The Skua was very innovative for its day being the first carrier dive bomber of any navy to combine all-metal construction, folding wings, retractable undercarriage, and a monoplane layout. But yes, its day was brief.

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## Shortround6 (May 23, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> The Merlin was not designed for the plod of target tug duties and the engine failures the type suffered in service were largely due to the engine protesting its use. The Merlin was a high performance engine and putting one into a target tug is like putting an LS into a Honda CRV, really pointless, but you know this already.


 Strangely enough the Merlin managed to not have quite the same trouble powering target tugs in Defiant airframes. 
Or powering Whitley bombers. 
Or A few hundred Wellingtons.
Or a few thousand Fairley Battles.
Any other Merlin powered _slow_ aircraft? 
like the first 23-30 Barracudas? 

You get the idea. 
Blaming the engine for a poor radiator set-up seems like a copout. 




Not exactly a low drag radiator set up but strangely the Merlin managed to drag around well over a 1000 of these for some years.
some of them towing Horsa gliders although many aircraft had trouble towing large gliders. Maybe the Whitleys were no different. 

See this for some Henley pictures. 





Hawker Henley


Aviation photographs of Photographer: Joe Barr Collection :



ww2aircraft.net





That and perhaps the lousy propeller had something to do with. 
Like driving your highly tuned sports car using only 1st and 5th gear in the transmission and then bitching about the engine either overheating or fouling the plugs. 



nuuumannn said:


> As for the specification, P.4/34, to which the Fairey day bomber that spawned the Fulmar was built, states that "the aircraft is to be fully stressed for dive recovery with a full bomb load (500 lb fully stowed)", which we are not talking a light descent angle, SR, let's be serious for a moment, dive brakes or no dive brakes.


I was serious. 
The JU 87 could dive at 90 degrees, some (but not all) US dive bombers could dive at 90 degrees. They pulled out at lower altitudes, in large because of the dive brakes. They could carry the normal bomb load during recovery. Loosing aircraft in training due to a bomb crutch/release malfunction seems to be skating in the thin edge. Most countries figured their dive bombers would do a lot of practice dives and metal/structural fatigue over the live of the plane should be factored in. Patting themselves on the back for designing a plane that 
did not break-up, crash or or be written off on landing due to a bomb crutch/release malfunction in training is setting a low bar. 
Biplane dive bombers got away not using dive brakes because the biplane had enough drag to keep the speed within reason. 
I never said the British used "light descent angle" but limiting dive angles to 70 degrees or less and having to pull out at higher altitudes that dive brake equipped planes means your accuracy is not as good as the steeper diving but slower diving planes. 

Hawker could have fixed a lot of things on the Henley if they had been told to and they had built a few more prototypes. 
Again a naval Henley wouldn't have been that hard. But it also wouldn't have made that big a difference of a Pegasus Skua. 
A Naval Henley with a Merlin VIII from a Fulmar I would have had 1080hp for take-off instead of 880hp, which would be needed to get off the flight decks. 


The Skua had that crappy 500lb SAP bomb. You want more target effect, you need to change that bomb and the bomb crutch/recess in the bottom of the fuselage. 
British don't even really have 1000lb bombs of any type in 1939/part of 1940. 
Doesn't matter which dive bomber you use if you are using crappy bombs. 

The whole army close support effort during the late 30s was a fiasco. Substituting Henley's for Battles wouldn't have made much difference in France because the doctrine/ training was faulty. Some other countries weren't any better but for the British without changing the target selection, identification, escort procedures and the like Henleys would have made very little change in the outcome over France.


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## nuuumannn (May 23, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> That and perhaps the lousy propeller had something to do with.
> Like driving your highly tuned sports car using only 1st and 5th gear in the transmission and then bitching about the engine either overheating or fouling the plugs.



Surely you jest. The Henley prototype was fitted with a Hamilton Standard Hydromatic constant speed prop. Here we go again, making a drama out of this apparent British "shortcoming" of its bad propellers when Britain had C/S props on its fighters before anyone else in Europe at least. As previously mentioned on _numerous_ occasions, only the Spitfire and Hurricane had those big wooden props fitted. US fighters of the period had C/S props before anyone else's but they still lagged behind European ones in outright performance and maximum altitudes, so the basis of your bias needs to be reassessed.

The Henley suffered engine failures as a target tug, perhaps radiator design had something to do with it, perhaps it was a combination of factors, the radiator layout, the performance envelope and so on. One example that can be promoted is that of the Avro York, whose Merlins suffered considerably during the Berlin Airlift because of the nature of operations; short runs at high power settings did nothing for the engines and failures were common. The Canadair Argonaut passenger transport suffered the same issues with its Merlins... The Halifax suffered engine failures in action owing to radiator design and consequent overheating... I can provide other examples as a counterpoint to yours.

As for the doctrine behind the use of the single engined day bomber, yup, you got that one right at least. It was flawed, but again, you are totally missing the fact that following the disaster in France the Desert Air Force under AVM Coningham became the archetype and model for tac air support in a combat environment equipped with the right aircraft. So let's not labour the point about the poor performance of the Fairey Battle in France. No other air force in the world including the USAAC and its equipment at the time could have provided a successful counter to the German advance through Europe with their existing tactics and no, the Henley wouldn't have done anything to stop that failure, but that doesn't mean it would have been totally worthless.

As for armament fit, stating that the Henley would not be great in combat because you know British bombs were crap doesn't fly. When the war happened, the military machines of all the combatants were exposed for what they were, flaws and all. Basically, the British went to war with what weapons they had. If that was what they had to work with with the Henley, then they would have to do it. As you know however, the British have a tendency to learn from their mistakes and developed bombs and other weaponry with considerably better effectiveness.

My proposition was as a carrier based dive bomber, for which there is no doubt it could have been modified to carry out based on its structure - this is a what-if after all.

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## don4331 (May 23, 2022)

You're letting the Admiralty off too lightly.

HMS Ark Royal was going from a design aircraft capacity of 72 airplanes to 50 because of the increased size of planes in the late 30s. And the armoured carrier concept reduces that further (to 36). So, combining roles to recover the "lost" 30-50% in air frames make a lot of sense on paper. And in '34, when the specification for Skua is drawn up, there is no shipborne Radar or IFF and with range of the new monoplanes/range of in-service radios/weather in North Atlantic/Sea, having a navigator made sense. Note: There are no Hurricanes/Spitfires/Bf.109/Zeros/Widcats (not even a Claude or F3F) for reference. So, the fact that the specification tried to include too much/wasn't aggressive enough isn't just Air Ministry's fault.

Yes, fast forward to '38, with shipborne radar, IFF and latest fighters for reference, the Skua looks bad, but the ABH on carriers does too, IMHO*. Replace the carriers with carriers ones without and you gain back the "lost" capacity" Then taking advantage of fact that metal aircraft are less susceptible to weather and can be operated from deck park. Combined with the other technical improvements and single engine fighters makes a lot of sense. But hindsight is often 20/20 and FAA/RN got to go to war with decisions by combination of Admiralty and Air Ministry from 5 years before.

Switching gears:
Is it a failure of radiator design when a 300mph airplane has issues towing a target at 200mph. Or is it simply using wrong aircraft for the job. My truck has over heating issues towing trailer at 70 km/h, but none when driving 100 km/h without.

In '39/mid '40, Germany has ?2? Battle Cruisers that justify heavier bombs than 500lb SAP?

*While the ABH did serve the RN well, I can't help by wonder if an additional 30+ fighters wouldn't have done just as well.

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## Shortround6 (May 23, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Surely you jest.


Don't call me Shirley 


nuuumannn said:


> The Henley prototype was fitted with a Hamilton Standard Hydromatic constant speed prop. Here we go again, making a drama out of this apparent British "shortcoming" of its bad propellers when Britain had C/S props on its fighters before anyone else in Europe at least.


Hawker Aircraft since 1920 by Francis Mason says that the Henley Prototype used a Hamilton Standard Hydromatic propeller. 
However the 2nd prototype and all production versions got DH 3 blade 2 position (two pitch) propellers. 
Doesn't matter what the British fighters had in this discussion. The Henley's, as built, had the two pitch propellers. 
So did the Battles, so did the Blenheim's. 
So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940. 


nuuumannn said:


> It was flawed, but again, you are totally missing the fact that following the disaster in France the Desert Air Force under AVM Coningham became the archetype and model for tac air support in a combat environment equipped with the right aircraft. So let's not labour the point about the poor performance of the Fairey Battle in France. No other air force in the world including the USAAC and its equipment at the time could have provided a successful counter to the German advance through Europe with their existing tactics and no, the Henley wouldn't have done anything to stop that failure, but that doesn't mean it would have been totally worthless.


I am not missing anything because I am talking about the Spring of 1940. What happened after that is a different story. And I believe I have stated, not only here but in other threads that the US or any other Western force wouldn't really have done any better. 
Considering the amount of time the RAF spent "policing" tribesmen in a number of different places they didn't seem to take much of their experience to and go forward with it. 



nuuumannn said:


> As for armament fit, stating that the Henley would not be great in combat because you know British bombs were crap doesn't fly. When the war happened, the military machines of all the combatants were exposed for what they were, flaws and all. Basically, the British went to war with what weapons they had. If that was what they had to work with with the Henley, then they would have to do it. As you know however, the British have a tendency to learn from their mistakes and developed bombs and other weaponry with considerably better effectiveness.


I think my assessment of the British bombs flies very well indeed. 

It really wasn't rocket science. As I have state before the British had done a study of British bombs and the damage they had done to the Germans in WW I. They had also done a separate study of German bombs and damage they done in England in WW I. They had also done a study to assess the damage done in some of the bombings in the Mid East and tribal territories. 
They had at least some idea of what worked and what didn't, at least as far bombs up to and including 500lb bombs and some larger. 
Nobody else had the experience the British had access to. The Germans knew what British and French bombs had done to them. They didn't have access to the damage records of their own bombs had done to the British in WW I. They did not have an officer on the ground examining the bomb craters and the damage to structures in the mid east. 
The Germans (and others?) may or may not have done more extensive tests on test ranges/proving grounds. 
The British seemed to ignore the knowledge they did have until around 1938-39. Which in some cases was almost too late. The Early 30s decision that a 500lb bomb would be all that would be needed flew in the face of all three existing studies/reports. However convenient it made bomb stowage spread across the wing span of bombers. 
The British standard bombs had about the worst ratio of explosive to bomb weight. It made them cheap to build/buy. But you have to use more of them to get the same effect. Which was know to the men who made the reports and to any group who studied bombs or artillery shells in any other countries. The British, as I have noted before, built among the lowest capacity artillery shells of modern armies. In part because they could use cheaper steel. Now maybe cheaper bombs and shells are better than no bombs or shells but at what point does having to use a lot more of them turn the cost upside down? 

With the Henley the bomb bay using a pair of 250lb bombs with no ability to use a single 500lb simply boggles the mind. The US had been sticking a single 500lb bomb under a variety of naval single bombers (Dive and otherwise) well before they put pencil to paper on the Henley. French were using a 440lb bomb? 
The Skua being rigged to hold that 500lb SAP bomb without the option to use a fatter 500lb with more explosive should the situation warrant it turns the Skua into a one trick pony. 
OK two tricks if you count the eight 20 or 30lbs(?) bombs under the wing. 
Some of the US scout bombers could trade their 500lb bomb for four 116lb bombs. I am not holding up the US a paragon of virtue. It is just common sense. The German HS 123 Biplane could carry a 550lb under the fuselage or four 110lb bombs under the wing. Take your 500-551lb bomb and split the load up 4 ways using whatever bomb/s of the appropriate size your air force uses. 
None of this uses the retrospectroscope. I have not used what the Italians or Japanese were doing as it was not well known at the time. people knew they bombing people in Africa or China but the details don't seem to have been common knowledge.


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## Shortround6 (May 23, 2022)

don4331 said:


> In '39/mid '40, Germany has ?2? Battle Cruisers that justify heavier bombs than 500lb SAP?


It was the wrong thinking. 
A "good" 500lb HE bomb could carry about 2 1/2 times the amount of explosive that the 500lb SAP bomb carried. 
The British 500lb GP bomb was not a "good" HE bomb. 
While you weren't going to sink Battle cruisers with 500lb SAP bombs the HE bombs were much more effective against merchant ships, destroyers, light cruisers and quite possibly heavy cruisers and shore installations. 
Going to a 1000lb (or 1100lb) HE bomb might very well fail to penetrate the armor deck but a 450-500lb charge of HE going off in the superstructure or even under the non armored deck but over the armored deck of the Battle cruisers is going to end their "cruise" pretty quick and require weeks/months of work in a shipyard. 

The British 500lb SAP bomb held 90lbs of HE.


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## nuuumannn (May 24, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940.



Again, not true, by June 1940, a _lot _of British fighters, Hurricanes and Spitfires had Rotol constant speed props, Hurricanes had these fitted from late 1939. We've been over this before and thanks to forum member Mike Williams, who has done a lot of research on the subject and provided plenty of links confirming dates and so forth, the RAF fighters had C/S props before the majority of mainland European fighters. Yes, their installation was a bit haphazard, but, not surprisingly enough, so was the case in France, with VP props being hastily fitted to frontline aircraft at the time of the invasion in May 1940. As mentioned in another thread, the Germans were not much better in terms of consistency, although the first Bf 109s with C/s props arrived on the scene in June.

I noticed you didn't include July, since that's when Spitfires began receiving the de Havilland kits and as recorded in the Big Book of Spitfires by Morgan and Shacklady, every in-service Spitfire had a C/S prop by August 1940. The Bracket props served the British well until the arrival of C/S props, which proved easy to fit. The travesty here is that you refuse to budge on this, not that Britain had bad props!



Shortround6 said:


> Considering the amount of time the RAF spent "policing" tribesmen in a number of different places they didn't seem to take much of their experience to and go forward with it.



Again, so what of it? What does that add up to in this case? Are you going to tell me that Britain was hopelessly unprepared for war? So tell me something I don't know. Was any country opposing the Germans in 1939/1940 ready for war?

Again with the British bombs, to use your example, what does the bombing of tribesmen with small calibre weapons actually teach you? Let's not forget that British bombs sank the Konigsberg, caused a whole lot of damage to German shipping and Axis infrastructure, so it can't have been as bad as you make out. Again though, you work with what you've got. You need to lower your expectations and be fairer since your anti-British bias has little foundation.


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## Geoffrey Sinclair (May 24, 2022)

SBD Performance Charts Standard Aircraft Characteristics Arcive


MakerBlackburnBlackburnNameSkuaSkuaTypeDive Bomb.FighterEngine, Number1​1​Engine MakePerseus XIIPerseus XIIEngine CoolingAirAirHorse Power905​905​At Height (feet)6,500​6,500​Span (feet, inches)46'46'Length (feet, inches)35'35'Height (feet, inches)12.5'12.5'Wing Area (square feet)319​319​Crew2​2​Armament Forward Wings4 Browning4 BrowningArmament Dorsal1 Lewis1 LewisRounds Per Machine Gun Wings600​600​Rounds Per Machine Gun Dorsal6 Magazines6 MagazinesBomb Load Normal (pounds)500​500​Bomb Load Maximum (pounds)n/a500​Tare Weight (pounds)5,839​5,839​Normal ConditionWeight (pounds)8,215​8,115​Take Off (Over 50 ft) (Yards)670​650​Climb to Height (feet)15,000​15,000​Climb to Height Time (Mins)22​21​Service Ceiling (Feet)19,000​19,300​Maximum Speed (m.p.h)212​213​Max Speed Height (Feet)15,000​15,000​Cruising Speed (m.p.h)193​194​Cruise Speed Height15,000​15,000​Bomb Load (pounds)500​50 Minutes allowance Range (miles)466​906​50 Minutes allowance Endurance Hours2.93​4.67​Fuel (for range, pounds)706​1,080​Fuel (for allowance, pounds)142​142​Fuel (Total, pounds)848​1,222​Fuel (Total, Gallons)163​163​Miles per 100 pounds fuel80.2​83.9​Overload Weight pounds Max bombs or Fuel if same8,625​8,115​Take Off (Over 50 ft) (Yards)770​650​Climb to Height (feet)15,000​15,000​Climb to Height Time (mins)25​21​Service Ceiling18,000​19,300​Maximum Bombs conditionCruise Speed (m.p.h)190​Height (feet)15,000​Bomb Load (pounds)500​Range (50 mins allow.) (miles)890​Endurance (50 mins allow.) Hrs4.7​Fuel (for range, pounds)1,080​Fuel (for allowance, pounds)142​Fuel (Total, pounds)1,222​Fuel (Total, Gallons)163​Miles per 100 pounds of fuel82.5​Maximum Fuel Capacity (Gallons)163​163​Maximum Fuel (Economical Cruise)Speed (m.p.h)157​156​Height (feet)15,000​15,000​Bomb Load (pounds)500​Range (50 mins allow.) (miles)980​1,025​Endurance (50 mins allow.) Hrs6.25​6.57​Fuel (for range, pounds)1,080​1,080​Fuel (for allowance, pounds)142​142​Fuel (Total, pounds)1,222​1,222​Fuel (Total, Gallons)163​163​Miles per 100 pounds of fuel91​95​

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## EwenS (May 24, 2022)

don4331 said:


> You're letting the Admiralty off too lightly.
> 
> HMS Ark Royal was going from a design aircraft capacity of 72 airplanes to 50 because of the increased size of planes in the late 30s. And the armoured carrier concept reduces that further (to 36). So, combining roles to recover the "lost" 30-50% in air frames make a lot of sense on paper. And in '34, when the specification for Skua is drawn up, there is no shipborne Radar or IFF and with range of the new monoplanes/range of in-service radios/weather in North Atlantic/Sea, having a navigator made sense. Note: There are no Hurricanes/Spitfires/Bf.109/Zeros/Widcats (not even a Claude or F3F) for reference. So, the fact that the specification tried to include too much/wasn't aggressive enough isn't just Air Ministry's fault.


Yes increasing aircraft size was a problem. By the time Ark Royal entered service at the end of 1938 she was operating up to 36 Swordfish and 24 Skua (with 42 Albacore and 18 Skua envisaged). The Illustrious class were designed around 30 Swordfish and 6 Skua, total 36. By the time they entered service in 1940 it was 21 Albacore and 12 Fulmar, total 33 as the new types were c4ft longer.

Lest it be thought that the problem was unique to the RN, the same problem afflicted the USN, but with their doctrine of maintaining deck parks to less overall effect. The Yorktown class were designed for an air group of c90. By 1941 that was reduced to 72.


don4331 said:


> Yes, fast forward to '38, with shipborne radar, IFF and latest fighters for reference, the Skua looks bad, but the ABH on carriers does too, IMHO*. Replace the carriers with carriers ones without and you gain back the "lost" capacity" Then taking advantage of fact that metal aircraft are less susceptible to weather and can be operated from deck park. Combined with the other technical improvements and single engine fighters makes a lot of sense. But hindsight is often 20/20 and FAA/RN got to go to war with decisions by combination of Admiralty and Air Ministry from 5 years before.


Problem is that ignores the timelines and necessary lead times for development and construction of ships and radar.

Illustrious class. Design developed in 1936 taking account of the RN experience in the Med during the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935. Final design signed off on 14 Dec 1936. Orders placed Jan-Jul 1937. Laid down April-Nov 1937. Build time for Ark Royal and Illustrious was 39 and 37 months respectively.

Radar. Elsewhere I posted the timeline on CH development (4 transmitting and 4 receiving masts 240-360ft high) plus all the associated huts etc for filter rooms etc, starting in early 1935. Development of shipborne radar presented a different set of challenges, if only that of size, and began a few months later with funding granted in Dec 1935. It was the responsibility of the RN Signals School and was initially given a low priority. Through most of 1936 only 4 people were working on it.

Radar at that time was classified Most Secret and could only be discussed with named individuals on an authorised list (reportedly <200 in the entire country). Were the ship designers even on that list?

The very first naval radar trial took place on 15 Dec 1936, the day after the Illustrious class design was signed off. It’s range was 18 miles against an aircraft, 4-5 miles against surface “targets”. But it was range only, no bearing information was possible. The first two prototype Type 79X sets were not at sea in Rodney and Sheffield until July 1938. On 3rd Sept 1939 they remained the only radar equipped ships in the Fleet. Only another 4 ships were equipped with radar by the end of the year.

Fighter direction on ships only began with Ark Royal off Norway in April 1940. That consisted of Lt Commander Coke, a specialist FAA Observer, and a telegraphist, sitting in the bridge wireless office receiving radar reports from other ships (Ark Royal was never radar equipped) by either flag or light signal or morse code. He then plotted those on an aircraft observer’s Bigsworth Board, before passing information to patrolling fighters, again in morse code, and leaving them to interpret that to carry out the interception. As experience built up in May and June he was able to begin to direct fighters to carry out the interceptions.

It would be a very brave ship designer indeed that was prepared to forecast in 1936 that an “experimental shipborne gadget” that had yet to even be demonstrated could be predicted to have the effects that radar did in WW2. And that is if he was even on the list to have that knowledge. And look at how RN fighter direction evolved between April 1940 and Operation Pedestal in Aug 1942.

As for IFF well it didn’t see the light of day experimentally until 1939 in Mk.I form that only operated with CH radars. It was not put into production. The IFF Mk.II, which worked with RAF, Army and RN radars, went into production at the end of 1939 but it was only towards the end of the Battle of Britain that it began to be fitted to aircraft generally.

So a awful lot of gazing into the retrospectroscope is needed if you think radar should have influenced the design of the Illustrious and Implacable class carriers.


don4331 said:


> Switching gears:
> Is it a failure of radiator design when a 300mph airplane has issues towing a target at 200mph. Or is it simply using wrong aircraft for the job. My truck has over heating issues towing trailer at 70 km/h, but none when driving 100 km/h without.





don4331 said:


> In '39/mid '40, Germany has ?2? Battle Cruisers that justify heavier bombs than 500lb SAP?





don4331 said:


> *While the ABH did serve the RN well, I can't help by wonder if an additional 30+ fighters wouldn't have done just as well.


And that is the argument that still goes on today 85+ years after the Illustrious class were designed. On the 1936 London Treaty limit of 23,000 tons, and operating without permanent deck parks, you can have 60/72 aircraft (Ark Royal) or an Armoured deck to protect 33/36 (Illustrious) but not both.

Different countries chose different routes for their own reasons and for the war they expected to fight. As they did with the mix of their air groups, which changed over time due to war experience. It doesn’t make one right and another wrong.

In terms of fighter complements on fleet carriers most increased over time. The RN went from 12-24 in 1939/40 (33-40%) to 36-48/60 (60-66% or 74-84% depending on whether you class Fireflies as fighters or strike aircraft) in 1945. The Japanese seem to have stuck to c27 (one third of the air group). The USN increased from 18 to 70 (25% to 70%) but with larger carriers taking over. Your solution of another 30+ fighters takes things towards a mid-late war complement and the hindsight of war experience.

To get both an Armoured deck and a large air group you need the Audacious class (31,600 tons std; 57-69 aircraft hangar capacity as designed in 1942), or an IJN Taiho (29,770 tons std, 53-82 aircraft) or a Midway (45,000 tons; c130 aircraft including the deck park standard for the USN).

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## Shortround6 (May 24, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Again, not true, by June 1940, a _lot _of British fighters, Hurricanes and Spitfires had Rotol constant speed props, Hurricanes had these fitted from late 1939


lets see. What I said is not true according to you. 
"So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940."

and then in the next paragraph you state.


nuuumannn said:


> *July, since that's when Spitfires began receiving the de Havilland kits* and as recorded in the Big Book of Spitfires by Morgan and Shacklady, every in-service Spitfire had a C/S prop by August 1940.


So for my statement to be _not true_ either Morgan and Shacklady are wrong or only a few dozen aircraft were refitted. It can't be both ways. 

The British had fighters (both Hurricanes and Spitfires) that were equipped with both Rotol and DH props. they had hundreds of each type of prop. In June (and working into in July) they converted the DH props to constant speed in the field. Given the total number of Hurricanes and Spitfires in June of 1940 you had hundreds that had constant speed props and you had 
" scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June" that did not which caused the big change over. Again, it can't be both ways. Either there _was_ a big change over with DH teams traveling across Britain with truck loads of parts installing the 1st conversion on a squadron fighter with squadron mechanics being instructed, and then the squadron mechanics taking over and converting the rest of the squadron aircraft while the DH factory team moved to the next squadron or air field and so on until the DH teams (more than one) had reached all the required squadrons...............................or _*there was no big change over. *_You can't have it both ways.


http://www.spitfireperformance.com/Flight_DH_CSP_9_Dec_1943.pdf



Article states (and it is Flight magazine and it may be in error) that by the time Paris fell DH had supplied 1,250 two pitch propellers for Hurricanes, 1000 two pitch props for Spitfires and 325 two pitch props for Defiants. 

That doesn't mean that all those propellers had been installed at the factories or even that all those propellers had been supplied to the factories, some may have been supplied to maintenance/repair units. 

This isn't all black or or all white. You could have (and did) hundreds of Hurricanes and Spitfires in service with the constant speed props at the same time you had hundreds of Hurricanes and Spitfires in service (or in depot) with the two pitch props. 

What I am blaming the British (which is actually blaming some government officials) for is the circumstances that lead to this big change over. 


nuuumannn said:


> The travesty here is that you refuse to budge on this, not that Britain had bad props!


The travesty here is that you refuse to acknowledge my position and misrepresent it. 
Britain was behind a number of other nations when it came to propellers, They were trying hard to fight government officials with DH and Rotol and Bristol and RR knowing what was needed but not being allowed to buy (or tool up for) the needed production capacity.


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## Shortround6 (May 24, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Again with the British bombs, to use your example, what does the bombing of tribesmen with small calibre weapons actually teach you? Let's not forget that British bombs sank the Konigsberg, caused a whole lot of damage to German shipping and Axis infrastructure, so it can't have been as bad as you make out. Again though, you work with what you've got. You need to lower your expectations and be fairer since your anti-British bias has little foundation.


They actually, at least a few times, dropped 500lb bombs on the "tribesmen". 

It wasn't just 20lb and 40lb bombs as they were trying to punish the tribesmen by destroying buildings. Some (many?) of the operations were not against tents but towns/settlements with the "mud" walls 3-5 ft thick. If your 116lb to 250lb bombs don't do much more than blow the shutters off windows of a "mud" building with a near miss what are such bombs going to do to a European brick or stone building? 
Officer in the study measured miss distances and made notes of damage like cracks in the walls. 

The British may have been able to sink the Konigsberg with non SAP bombs. 
Without knowing the location of the hits it is hard to say. Some sources say the Konigsberg had 40mm armor deck but it is doubtful that they had that thickness over much of the ship. 
one diagram has this





Yes we all know that armor thickness varied over the length of a ship. 
The Konigsberg was a little bit longer than a Arethusa or Dido and within inches of beam. 



nuuumannn said:


> Again, so what of it? What does that add up to in this case? Are you going to tell me that Britain was hopelessly unprepared for war? So tell me something I don't know. Was any country opposing the Germans in 1939/1940 ready for war?


So we are to ignore all the mistakes the British made during the 30s?
A lot of countries made mistakes, a lot of countries were not able to build/buy what they wanted. And this is for a number of reasons. 
Perhaps Britain gets a bum rap because some of her mistakes or the effects of them, are spread out over a number of years instead of being concentrated into a few weeks or months like Poland or France. The US certainly can be picked on as they had over 2 years to observe the British and Germans at war and were suppling all sorts of weapons to the British with feed back on results and the US still managed to make a number of mistakes. 

But some of the British mistake were the direct result of ignoring the results/lessons of WW I and following too many pretty theories that came up during peace time without even testing things out on a firing range or trying to use cameras to see if the ideal actually worked.


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## Admiral Beez (May 24, 2022)

EwenS said:


> To get both an Armoured deck and a large air group you need the Audacious class (31,600 tons std; 57-69 aircraft hangar capacity as designed in 1942), or an IJN Taiho (29,770 tons std, 53-82 aircraft)


Now that would have been a match-up had expeditious construction and better luck allowed both ships to engage one another in 1945.

HMS Ark Royal (R09) with Hellcats, Barracudas and Tarpons vs. Taiho with A7M Reppūs and B7A Ryusei.


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## EwenS (May 24, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Now that would have been a match-up had expeditious construction and better luck allowed both ships to engage one another in 1945.
> 
> HMS Ark Royal (R09) with Hellcats, Barracudas and Tarpons vs. Taiho with A7M Reppūs and B7A Ryusei.


An Admiralty study at the end of 1941 that looked at the projected build times for different types of ship, estimated 46 months for a fleet carrier. So with 3 Audacious ordered Mar-Aug 1942, and Audacious laid down in Oct, the forecast completion dates for the first two was March 1946. That betters the estimates from the study by 5 months. So a 1945 completion was never on the cards. With Ark Royal laid down 7 months after Audacious 1946 would have been highly unlikely even if everything had gone right.

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## GregP (May 25, 2022)

I know, let's improve the Skua, even though it is British!

Put in a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp with a constant-speed prop and let a third-grader improve the windscreen or use one from a racing airplane. Next, remove all the little lumps and bumps, add a spinner and paint on Swastikas. It would be invincible.

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## keithwwalker (May 25, 2022)

GregP said:


> I know, let's improve the Skua, even though it is British!
> 
> Put in a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp with a constant-speed prop


If there were a warbird Skua flying today, it would be running an R-1830 or 1820

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## GregP (May 25, 2022)

Sounds like someone needs to build a Skua ...

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## SaparotRob (May 25, 2022)

I'll come up with the new windscreen. I did manage to graduate the third grade, barely.

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## MikeMeech (May 25, 2022)

Hi
The book 'The Dawn of Carrier Strike' by David Hobbs, pages 246-247, has a combat report of the attack on the Konigsberg:




The Douglas SBD Dauntless was not really a 'contemporary' of the Skua, the former was just entering service(with USMC from late 1940 and USN by the end of 1941 on the USS Enterprise and Lexington) as the Skua left operational service (as dive bomber until November 1940 and as fighter until February 1941). More 'contemporary' aircraft were the Curtiss SBC Helldiver, in service from 1937 with two squadrons still on the USS Hornet in December 1941 apparently. Also the Vought SB2U Vindicator, in service from 1937 to 1942.

Mike

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## Shortround6 (May 25, 2022)

MikeMeech said:


> The Douglas SBD Dauntless was not really a 'contemporary' of the Skua, the former was just entering service(with USMC from late 1940 and USN by the end of 1941 on the USS Enterprise and Lexington) as the Skua left operational service (as dive bomber until November 1940 and as fighter until February 1941). More 'contemporary' aircraft were the Curtiss SBC Helldiver, in service from 1937 with two squadrons still on the USS Hornet in December 1941 apparently. Also the Vought SB2U Vindicator, in service from 1937 to 1942.


Thank you for your post..

The Dauntless falls into a gray area time wise as you left out the Northrop BT-1 of 1936.




"The U.S. Navy placed an order for 54 BT-1s in 1936 with the aircraft entering service during 1938. BT-1s served on USS _Yorktown_ and _Enterprise_."
This was pretty much a disaster even though 55 were built.
However the last plane built was modified into the Northrop XBT-2 by April of 1938.





After testing Douglas, which had taken over development from Northrop, got a contract for 144 aircraft in 1939 although no production planes were completed until 1940.
The Plane in the lower photo had a 800hp (?) Wright R-1820. The last SBDs in 1944 had 1350hp Wright R-1820s. 
The SBD-1 and SBD-2s of 1940 had 1000hp Wright R-1820s. 

Maybe the Skua had development potential and maybe it didn't. It doesn't seem like they tried?

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## GregP (May 25, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I'll come up with the new windscreen. I did manage to graduate the third grade, barely.



No fair using cellophane (not bulletproof) or Aluminum (can't see through it) ...

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## Admiral Beez (May 25, 2022)

MikeMeech said:


> the Skua left operational service (as dive bomber until November 1940 and as fighter until February 1941)…


At which point they should have been sent to ”back water“ FAA or RAF squadrons in Malaya, India, PNG and Ceylon. Send all the Rocs too, for that matter.


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## Admiral Beez (May 25, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I'll come up with the new windscreen. I did manage to graduate the third grade, barely.


It is odd that its designers thought to semi-recess the bombload but make a near vertical air brake windscreen.

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## nuuumannn (May 25, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> But some of the British mistake were the direct result of ignoring the results/lessons of WW I and following too many pretty theories that came up during peace time without even testing things out on a firing range or trying to use cameras to see if the ideal actually worked.



So, Britain didn't learn lessons from the Great War then? Well, it seems no air force did, because no one was prepared for what happened, so that kind'a levels the playing field a bit more. Let's put it this way, I sincerely doubt that in the face of the German onslaught in 1940 that _any_ other country's pre-war tactics would have been able to overcome and defeat the German advance with the equipment these armed forces chose to arm themselves with in the late 1930s - certainly not the USA, if America is your benchmark. 

So again, you need to reassess your bias against Britain, its bad bombs, its inadequate propellers its terrible early war bombers and every other prejudice you have against British stuff, because it seems that very few other countries _could_ provide better examples. Britain was at the very least contemporaneous with worldwide expectations at the time, with examples that put them ahead in some technologies, such as gun turrets, radar and other things that get lost in your uneven assessments. Let's not forget that one of what was quite probably the two best fighters in service in 1940 was British, so they weren't doing everything wrong. The Bf 109 and Spitfire, in case anyone's curious. 

SR, I generally value your input because you have a blatantly realistic view of things, but when it comes to Britain you drop the ball on objectivity. You have been proven wrong in your assessment of British early war bombers, your claims about British propellers have proven to be unfounded and as for your claims about British bombs, well, in the early war years, whose other bombs were being used and could be held up by comparison, Germany? They probably led the world in bomb development, but and I can't confirm this, the rest of the world's bomb stocks were probably not a whole lot better than Britain's.

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## nuuumannn (May 25, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> lets see. What I said is not true according to you.
> "So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940."
> 
> and then in the next paragraph you state.



You know the point I'm making, SR; don't cloud the issue. Admit it. You're wrong in your assessment of British propeller use at the outbreak of the war. I will agree with you that the fitting of the big wooden clubs to
Spitfires and Hurricanes when every other British frontline aircraft that came from a specification released in the late 1930s had VP props was a curious decision (daft idea is probably appropriate!), but as mentioned sooo many times before, British fighters had VP and C/S props before most in Europe that were not licenced manufactured variants of Hamilton Standard props, if not the world.

Apologies for dragging this out, everyone...


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## Reluctant Poster (May 25, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Don't call me Shirley
> 
> Hawker Aircraft since 1920 by Francis Mason says that the Henley Prototype used a Hamilton Standard Hydromatic propeller.
> However the 2nd prototype and all production versions got DH 3 blade 2 position (two pitch) propellers.
> ...


From "The Ordnance Department: Planning for Munitions for War" a discussion of British bomb design philosophy

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## don4331 (May 25, 2022)

E
 EwenS


OK, perhaps '38 is too aggressive, and '40 would have been better date.

But if you remove the "spook" the RN received during Abyssinian Crisis of 1935, and RN builds 3or 4 repeat Ark Royal (91); you have carriers which will operate ~60 aircraft. And then that has knock-on effect on what aircraft you are ordering.

When FAA/AM ordered the Skua, they knew the ABH carriers would only have room for 36 aircraft. If you split that 33/33/33 with TSR/DB/F, you're limiting to <12 of each once you account for in-serviceability. And everyone felt those numbers weren't sufficient so you get hybrid fighter/dive bombers that does neither great.

With Ark Royal (91) carriers, even if you split that 50/25/25 to give the TSR boys the 30 planes they want, you still have enough planes to split into dedicated DB and high performance single seat fighter*. And when RN realizes (and gets enough pilots/air frames) that they can operate deck park without planes being destroyed by 1st squall, the numbers improve further.

There are also knock on effects to the carrier itself - a carrier for 36 planes doesn't need a lot of aviation fuel storage; one that is operating double the number of aircraft and at higher tempo, needs at least double, maybe triple, which serves the carrier well when 800 hp engines become 1,600 hp ones.

The other solution is the French one:
High performance single seat fighter - 35 to 40%​Twin TSR/DB - 60-65%​
The issue being TB needs to be able to deliver a >2,000 lbs piece of ordinance, so you need a large enough airplane to lift that weight, while DB needs to be stressed for high g's while delivering its ordinance which means large, heavy airplane which will be slow unless you have lots of power. As La Royale saw it given the engines available that meant a twin, the Bréguet 810.

Not sure if a twin TSR/DB is a better solution or not to the Skua. And even if FAA was ordering its own high performance fighters, would RAF have appropriate them ahead of BoB, leaving RN with nothing.

*We also need to correct the RAE wind tunnel issues to get rid of the biplane TSR, but that isn't critical.

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## Shortround6 (May 25, 2022)

I don't really care about the wooden clubs on the early Hurricanes and Spitfires since they either went away well before the shooting started or any Hurricane or Spit that had them in Sept of 1939 it was in an OTU. And maybe all of them were gone. 

I didn't cloud the issue, 
I made a statement "So did scores if not hundreds of British fighters in June of 1940."

it was true. In fact if anything it underplayed the situation because De Havilland got a contract/order for 500 conversion units. That is nice round number so I will assume the number of planes that needed converting was a bit less. 

Clouding the issue is countering that the British were fitting Rotol props months earlier. They were, I never said they weren't, but if they need to place the order for 500 conversion units then there were scores or hundreds of fighters that needed the constant speed props. From some of the letters/memos is seems (could be wrong) that not ALL new production was being fitted with constant speed props or at least 100% fitting of constant speed props (either Rotol or DH) was relatively new. 
The British probably thought they had more time. 

Hamilton Standard had 4 different propeller designs they were licensing to a number of countries. We do have to be careful as to who was producing what. The Constant speed prop dates to late 1935/1936. The HS controllable pitch prop (Two pitch?) dates to the early 30s. There was a ground "adjustable" pitch prop earlier but since you couldn't adjust it in flight it's actual advantage over a wooden club may have been marginal? Assuming the wooded club actually suited the particular aircraft. 
The last one was the Constant speed prop with full feathering which was announced in April of 1938 and this one may not have been in use in many countries. It was in use, as I have said before< in at least air lines in the US by the end of 1938. 

It doesn't really matter if the French or the Italians or whoever was using HS license props or not in combat planes. There were no "bonus" points for using a home designed propeller. 
What matters was aircraft performance, aircraft reliability, and the odds of a crew of a multi engine aircraft making it home with one engine (and later with two) not operating. 

America was not perfect, the early Curtiss electric props gave a lot trouble (some of the later ones gave trouble, just not as much) and were noted for the governor mechanism not operating fast enough which allowed the engine to over speed which could lead to wrecked engines. 

On the bomb issues. 
The British, in the 1930s, made a poorly reasoned decision to not use bombs over 500lbs. They changed their minds before the war actually broke out but it but them behind the curve production wise. 
The Germans made two major series of bombs, the SC series in variety of sizes that held around 50% explosive by weight. Minor variations. Then they had the SD series had thicker walls and around 30 explosive by weight. Actual AP bombs had less and the Germans also, eventually, had quite a Varity of special purpose bombs, probably too many. But they were designing and building 500kg and 1000kg bombs. 

The US changed bomb sizes just before the war, the 300, 600 and 1100lbs were used early on but quickly replaced but 250, 500 and 1000 bombs. However since the US didn't start bombing anything until 1942 they were using their "old" bombs well into the war compared to everybody else. 
However the older American bombs used about 55% HE by weight. 1940 they were convinced by the British that fragmentation was more important than blast and that their new bombs should be about 30% HE. Like the British GP bombs. This was reversed in late 1941 and American bombs standardized on a filling of about 50%.

Now we get into production capacity. In order to make bombs that will carry 50% explosive and not split open on impact you need bomb bodies made of good quality steel forgings. 
The British had problems with this both pre war and early war which helps explain the the British GP bombs. They did get more capacity to make high quality steel forged casings later (the Medium capacity bombs). 

The British 500lb SAP bomb carried by the Skua may have been a very good 500lb SAP bomb. Any SAP bomb is probably going to have 20% or under HE content. My problem with it isn't so much the bomb, it was that the British arranged the bomb crutch to retract into a recess under plane and hold the bomb in a semi-exposed position. Better streaming? 
However it appears that this limited the Skua in that it could not carry a 500lbGP ? bomb and the 500lb MC bomb didn't exist at the time. You might have been able to mount the 250lbs GP bomb but that carried a bit less HE than the 500lb SAP. 
You build a dive bomber and then restrict the_ size_ of the bomb it can carry and thus limit the potential types targets you can engage? Or engage effectively?
The action report on the Konigsberg says the the 500lb SAP bombs caused extensive damage from the near misses. One wonders what kind of damage a near miss from a bomb with 250lbs of HE would have caused compared to the 90lb Fillings used in the actual attack? 
The 500lb SAP bombs did the job in this attack. A better choice of bombs may have offered better results in other attacks if the British had built more Skuas and used them in other places. 

The British Army used lower quality steel for artillery shells than most other armies and just about every British Artillery piece (or battery) had to fire more shells to get the same destructive effect.

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## SaparotRob (May 25, 2022)

GregP said:


> No fair using cellophane (not bulletproof) or Aluminum (can't see through it) ...


Dang!


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## nuuumannn (May 25, 2022)

Interesting logic, Don. How the RNAS/RN/RAF handled the carrier issue before the FAA was established in the early 1920s, was by dividing the carriers into role specific air groups. Argus for example was designated a torpedo carrier equipped with Sopwith Cuckoos. Furious had fighters - this was before the reconstruction into a full deck carrier, but after the rear gun had been removed, when it still had a flying off deck on the bow and landing deck on the stern. The Furious' "F" Sqn as it was known was equipped with Sopwith ship's Camels and Deck Pups specifically, but obviously that all changed once it emerged after its refit. also the aircraft were bigger by the 1930s.

The problem lay with the FAA's budget - it was a branch of the RAF, so funding was limited between the wars, the issue of aircraft size was a big one of course, enough to make the Air Ministry prompt these mixed role specifications, but budget also plays are role there. That all metal aircraft could be smaller and still effective hadn't really been revealed when the Skua was being designed. Again I turn to the Dauntless' size as an example. Ultimately it depends on what the Air Ministry and Admiralty want to do with this power. Britain had a mixed bag of carriers between the wars, with little commonality between them since only one was built from the keel up as a carrier.

The Ark design was a good one and was designed to incorporate what the admiralty believed a carrier needed and for Britain's needs, this was probably different to the other carrier operators because of its far flung territories across the world - long range, overseas deployments, force projection, flag waving etc, etc, so its air group has to fulfill these needs. The FAA put a lot of emphasis in long range reconnaissance and it was a theme that ran through the post Great War FAA equipment. Spotting was considered a vital role and almost every specification, except that of single-seat fighter had the spotter role incorporated into it. This was purely to serve as the fleet's eyes at sea beyond the ships' crews' eyeline, obviously, but the role also encompassed fall-of-shot spotting as this was considered vital to enhancing naval gun aiming. Naturally, making a fighter a two-seater and giving it a spotter role because the likelihood of encountering an enemy single-seater far out to see was low made sense, but it set back the FAA going into the forthcoming war...

Nevertheless, British carriers had to be able to carry a quantity of every type with them because of British maritime policy at the time, which kinda restricts the number of each role-specific aircraft on the carriers...


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## nuuumannn (May 25, 2022)

don4331 said:


> And even if FAA was ordering its own high performance fighters, would RAF have appropriate them ahead of BoB, leaving RN with nothing.



I doubt that, why would they? The issue with not letting the FAA get Spitfires was production, rather than in service aircraft. The admirals reasoned that if another manufacturer, i.e. Fairey built them, then RAF number isn't compromised. By August and September 1940 fighter production was matching pre BoB numbers of fighters and by the end of October the RAF had more fighters in service than what it began the BoB with, so it compensated for its losses and added to its overall number. This meant the calls for stop-gap fighters went unanswered simply because they weren't needed, so if the FAA had its own single seaters, I'm pretty sure they'd probably assist the RAF and base them at RAF airfields, as the FAA did with its torpedo bomber units. The Swordfish that attacked the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Channel Dash were temporarily shifted to RAF Manston.



don4331 said:


> Not sure if a twin TSR/DB is a better solution or not to the Skua.



Probably not, it depends on whose building it. The Barracuda was a dog's breakfast aerodynamically and that was the result of combining the two requirements. As mentioned, dive bombers don't need to be big. Torpedo bombers do. The bigger the dive bomber the greater the amount of structural strengthening, which adds weight and complexity in undercarriage and dive brake design etc, which requires more power to get the heavier frame off the carrier deck, so a bigger, thirstier engine, which reduces fuel consumption, thus reducing usable range etc, etc... An extreme example is the He 177 as a dive bomber and the issues that had.

Let's put it this way, in my opinion, the Skua is not worth modifying and history proves me right on this, it was retired after only a few years in service and it wasn't modified beyond the basic design in multiple variants. The alternative is to create something else within an appropriate time period.


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## nuuumannn (May 25, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> It doesn't really matter if the French or the Italians or whoever was using HS license props or not in combat planes. There were no "bonus" points for using a home designed propeller.
> What matters was aircraft performance, aircraft reliability, and the odds of a crew of a multi engine aircraft making it home with one engine (and later with two) not operating.



It kinda does when assessing the situation in context. Your criticism was that Britain lagged behind in prop use. Behind whom, exactly? It didn't and evidence from what other countries were doing provides necessary context.

Great post, by the way.

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## keithwwalker (May 26, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Let's put it this way, in my opinion, the Skua is not worth modifying and history proves me right on this, it was retired after only a few years in service and it wasn't modified beyond the basic design in multiple variants. The alternative is to create something else within an appropriate time period.


Actually, I would put the lack of Skua development down to the the fact the Air Ministry's penchant for issuing specifications instead trusting manufacturers to develop & improve their existing designs. It was a pre-war practice that thankfully was reduced (but never eliminated) during the war.


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## don4331 (May 26, 2022)

keithwwalker said:


> Actually, I would put the lack of Skua development down to the the fact the Air Ministry's penchant for issuing specifications instead trusting manufacturers to develop & improve their existing designs. It was a pre-war practice that thankfully was reduced (but never eliminated) during the war.


I would put the lack of development of the Skua down to lack of improved engine availability/foresight to implement said improvement

Mitchell and team's initial design the Spitfire required a few blocks of lead on the engine bearers as they surmised adding a constant speed propeller was in the future. They also designed it so you could add a couple blocks of lead in the tail to counter balance a Griffon (or 2 stage Merlin). The Blackburn team didn't have that kind of fore thought.​​And there is no 1,200hp engine waiting anyways: Hercules is too heavy; Taurus was having troublesome development path and Perseus wasn't developed that far (the post war 1/2 Centaurus not withstanding)​
p.s. That vertical windscreen is a function of paying too much attention to customer desires. Yes, it allowed a terrific view of the deck while landing, but it compromises performance at top end too much.

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## SaparotRob (May 26, 2022)

don4331 said:


> I would put the lack of development of the Skua down to lack of improved engine availability/foresight to implement said improvement
> 
> Mitchell and team's initial design the Spitfire required a few blocks of lead on the engine bearers as they surmised adding a constant speed propeller was in the future. They also designed it so you could add a couple blocks of lead in the tail to counter balance a Griffon (or 2 stage Merlin). The Blackburn team didn't have that kind of fore thought.​​And there is no 1,200hp engine waiting anyways: Hercules is too heavy; Taurus was having troublesome development path and Perseus wasn't developed that far (the post war 1/2 Centaurus not withstanding)​
> p.s. That vertical windscreen is a function of paying too much attention to customer desires. Yes, it allowed a terrific view of the deck while landing, but it compromises performance at top end too much.


I always wondered about that windscreen. I chalked it up to one pint too many. Very informative post Don.

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## GregP (May 26, 2022)

Generally, you don't "pay attention" to customers specs. You meet them or you don't and, if you don't, you generally don't sell the airplane. Sometimes not even if you DO meets specs and are the best-performing entrant. 

Look what happened to the Northrop YF-23. It met the stealth spec and performed better than the YF-22 Raptor. But politics meant the F-22 "checked more boxes" for the people who BUY the airplanes, not the people who operate the airplanes.

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## Shortround6 (May 26, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> It kinda does when assessing the situation in context. Your criticism was that Britain lagged behind in prop use. Behind whom, exactly? It didn't and evidence from what other countries were doing provides necessary context.
> 
> Great post, by the way.


The Italians were using going by the 1938 Jane's
Breda 64 controllable pitch
Breda 65 not stated
Breda 82 2 engine bomber, not stated but photo seems to show constant speed. (Counter weights and cylinder out the front)
Breda 88 no details and no photo
Cant 501 seaplane, no details, photo has spinner over the prop
Cant 506 seaplane. photo shows adjustable/controllable props (counter weights and cylinder)
Cant 509 photo is at a distance and has small spinners.
Caproni Ca 124 photo is at a distance. Prop looks like it had some sort of adjustment with bare hub
Caproni Ca 134 prop has spinner but the base of the blades look like a fixed pitch (or large cuff)
Caproni Ca 135 liquid cooled engines, photo has spinners. descriptions says controllable pitch props.
Fiat Cr 32 fixed pitch
Fiat G. 50 photos show hydraulic cylinder, description says constant speed.
Fiat B. R. 20 description says constant speed props. Photos are consistent but are at a distance.
Fiat G. 18V transport. description says constant speed props. Photos are consistent but are at a distance.
Macchi M.C. 77 pusher airscrew, photo is from the front, appears to have at least clamps on the prop blade (ground adjustable)
Macchi C. 94. Adjustable pitch airscrews, photo at a distance with trees behind, could be ground adjustable or controllable?
Macchi C.99 controllable pitch airscrews.
Macchi C.100 controllable pitch airscrews.
Macchi C. 200 No details released but photo shows at least a controllable pitch prop (counterweights and cylinder out the front of the hub)
Meridionali Ro 37 bis, no details but photo appears to be ground adjustable.
Meridionali Ro 43, no details but photo appears to be ground adjustable.
Meridionali Ro 51. controllable pitch propeller.
Piaggio P-32, controllable pitch propellers.
Reggiane Ca 405 controllable pitch propellers. photo from rear of plane, no help.
Savoia-Marchetti SM 75. either constant speed electrical propellers or two-position hydraulically controlled propellers
Savoia-Marchetti SM 79 two-position Savoia-Marchetti variable pitch propellers.
Savoia-Marchetti SM 83 either Savoia-Marchetti or Fiat (Hamilton Standard) two position controllable pitch airscrews.

This is for the high powered aircraft, not counting trainers and small civil aircraft.

France is the only other country to look at using the 1938 Janes as the information from Japan is sketchy, 8 pages compared to 13 pages for the Netherlands.
Russia has 7 pages.

I don't know the month of publication of 1938 year book, pages say information was correct as of Sept 30th 1938.

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## don4331 (May 26, 2022)

GregP said:


> Generally, you don't "pay attention" to customers specs. You meet them or you don't and, if you don't, you generally don't sell the airplane. Sometimes not even if you DO meets specs and are the best-performing entrant.


Sometimes (Bf.110), you largely ignore the customer spec, come up with something the customer (RLM) decides they have to have. And they rewrite the specification around what you're selling.

FAA might have taken 25 mph better top speed for a more aerodynamic windscreen.


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## keithwwalker (May 26, 2022)

don4331 said:


> And there is no 1,200hp engine waiting anyways: Hercules is too heavy; Taurus was having troublesome development path and Perseus wasn't developed that far (the post war 1/2 Centaurus not withstanding)


R-1820 1000HP Dry weight: 1,184 lb (537 kg) 29L
R-1830 1200HP Dry weight: 1,250 lb (570 kg) 29L
Perseus 900HP Dry weight: 1,025 lb (465 kg) 25L
Taurus 1050HP Dry weight: 1,301 lb (590 kg) 25L

The Skua had a lengthened nose to account for CoG issues, so there was about 18" or so to slide a heavier motor back to maintain aircraft CoG balance.
Putting a 38L Hercules motor in is not a serious proposition.
The Taurus had a higher specific weight than the American motors, the 3rd best choice.

The Martlet I's had the R-1820 (rated at 1200hp), heck, they were even modified *at *Blackburn from French to British specification. I am surprised that engineers at Blackburn didn't 'borrow' a motor to rig up onto a Skua, just as the Mustang and Rolls Royce Merlin were mashed up. Probably at that time, they were tied up with the Botha or some other inconsequential aircraft.
Martlet II's were R-1830.

So I disagree about the motor situation. An up-motored Skua would have been close enough to a Fulmar in performance, would attain motor commonality with the Martlet, and would of released Fairey to other manufacturing tasks (Seafires, etc).
There was too much nepotism going into 1940 with the Air Ministry - design a plane, build 100 of this 100 of that, move onto the next design....


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## Shortround6 (May 26, 2022)

don4331 said:


> And there is no 1,200hp engine waiting anyways: Hercules is too heavy; Taurus was having troublesome development path and Perseus wasn't developed that far (the post war 1/2 Centaurus not withstanding)





keithwwalker said:


> R-1820 1000HP Dry weight: 1,184 lb (537 kg) 29L
> R-1830 1200HP Dry weight: 1,250 lb (570 kg) 29L
> Perseus 900HP Dry weight: 1,025 lb (465 kg) 25L
> Taurus 1050HP Dry weight: 1,301 lb (590 kg) 25L


The Wiki numbers are bogus. 

The R-1820 is close, the 1000hp engine in the SBD went went 1255lbs Had a two speed blower
The R-1820 that made 1200hp was just about 1300lbs. had a two speed blower. 
R-1830 went over 1400lbs for a 1200hp version even with a single speed blower. The 1250lb version was good for about 950hp.
Perseus that made 905hp at 6,500ft went over 1100lbs
Taurus is about right 

Pegasus XVIII 1135lbs? using either 87 octane or 100 octane you got.
take-off........................965hp/87....................1050hp/100
low gear................1000hp/87/3000ft............1065/100/1250ft
High gear..............885hp/87/15,500ft.......... 965hp/100/13,000ft

You could get single speed Pegasus engines if you don't need the altitude range.

The two speed Pegasus is the best bet for improved Skua.
Assuming you could have pried Pegasus engines out of the hands of Bomber Command in 1939-40-41, Primary engine for Wellingtons and Hampdens.


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## don4331 (May 26, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The two speed Pegasus is the best bet for improved Skua.
> Assuming you could have pried Pegasus engines out of the hands of Bomber Command in 1939-40-41, Primary engine for Wellingtons and Hampdens.





keithwwalker said:


> An up-motored Skua would have been close enough to a Fulmar in performance, would attain motor commonality with the Martlet, and would of released Fairey to other manufacturing tasks (Seafires, etc).



The improvement between an 890hp Perseus and a 1,050hp Pegasus isn't going to be very much: <20 mph. I'm aware it might be better at 13k', but how often is Skua operating there? And would RN be getting 100 octane in any quantity in '39-'41?
The Skua needs well over 1,300hp to match Fulmar in performance (probably over 2k hp).​
FAA was prying Pegasus engines off BC for Swordfish and Walrus planes, so another 100 out of >30k should have been possible.

On other hand, h3ll would freeze over before Fairey would have manufactured Seafires.


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## nuuumannn (May 26, 2022)

keithwwalker said:


> Actually, I would put the lack of Skua development down to the the fact the Air Ministry's penchant for issuing specifications instead trusting manufacturers to develop & improve their existing designs.



Nice idea, but Blackburn wanted to remain in the game, so putting that onto Blackburn isn't gonna fly. As Greg mentioned, if you want your aeroplane built, you do what the customer asks for. Doing what the Air Ministry wanted made sense; in 1934 when the specification was released, few had much idea of how an all metal monoplane dive bomber should perform, but if the Air Ministry is to be blamed it was due to the dual specification.

Look, you can hypothesise all you like about why the Skua wasn't advanced on, but at a meeting held on 22 October 1937, members of the Admiralty and Air Ministry all agreed that "the Skua and Roc will be obsolescent by 1939". The Skua was beyond redemption, which leads nicely to my next point...



keithwwalker said:


> So I disagree about the motor situation. An up-motored Skua would have been close enough to a Fulmar in performance, would attain motor commonality with the Martlet, and would of released Fairey to other manufacturing tasks (Seafires, etc).



Yeah, nah, just putting an up-engined motor isn't going to give the Skua even Fulmar performance. I think you're clutching at straws. Induced drag doesn't just go away with more power, it increases with speed. The Skua is big and although similar in dimension to the Fulmar, the latter's frontal area is arguably more streamlined. Again the Fulmar is a stop gap and was put into motion pretty quickly and the fact it entered service so soon (by British standards) was because of the fact it was based on the Fairey P.4/34. Nevertheless, to get Fairey building Sea Spitfires, something has to give. I'd stop the Barracuda!

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## Shortround6 (May 26, 2022)

I guess it depends on what the goal is for the Skua.

If you want a better dive bomber, (bigger bomb/more range) off the small British flight decks then using a Pegasus will give you a useful improvement.

If you want a radial engine Fulmar you better start figuring out how to put rockets on the poor Skua. Large rockets.

A P-36 with a R-1830 14 cylinder radial engine had 22 % more drag than an early P-40. The British radial installations were not as good as the P-36 installation. 
A 1300hp Hercules isn't going to come close to a Fulmar with a Merlin VIII. Once the Fulmar gets the Merlin 30 engine you are are going to need a 1600-1700hp Hercules. 

The Skua may have been beyond redemption for other reasons, flying characteristics? I don't know. 

The "dual" use excuse seems a bit lame, At worst, absolute worst, the Skua was carrying 178lbs more guns and ammo than a "bomber" carrying a single .303 gun and 500rounds of ammo. Yanking those 178lbs out of a 8230lb airplanes (or trading it for fuel or ???) isn't going to change the flight performance very much for other roles. 

Now if you want a "fighter" but you want to to keep the guy in the back (with the homing beacon gear) and you want to carry double the ammo the Hurricane carries you are not going to come close to Hurricane performance, You might do a bit better than the Defiant though? And if you keep the radial engine???? the goal for the fighter is to provide carrier or fleet protection, not provide target practice for the enemy.


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## nuuumannn (May 26, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> If you want a better dive bomber, (bigger bomb/more range) off the small British flight decks then using a Pegasus will give you a useful improvement.



Make it smaller. It doesn't need a 46 foot wingspan. In fact it might have been a better fighter if it was smaller. The Dauntless had a 41 ft 6 in span. Interestingly though, although dimensionally the SBD was smaller than the Skua, it had a bigger wing area.



Shortround6 said:


> The "dual" use excuse seems a bit lame,



It's a pretty convincing reason why its performance was so poor as a fighter.



Shortround6 said:


> The Skua may have been beyond redemption for other reasons, flying characteristics?



Not really, it's handling was deemed acceptable for service, whatever that especially omits to tell us. It had a few stability issues, the prototype wasn't very stable below 140 kts and tended to nose up in the stall and although the stall was not vicious, if uncorrected it dropped a wing and entered a spin. If that happened you weren't getting out of that spin except in a body bag. The stall issues were by and large cured with modifications from the second example built. To improve the stall characteristics, it had lengthened wingtips that canted upwards as well as other modifications here and there, which included lengthening the nose over the prototype. Aerobatics were prohibited below 5,000 ft and spinning was prohibited.

On the plus side, visibility in particular was praised during testing. In the dive it was stable and its maximum speed reached was only 280 kts. Eric Brown recorded that it matched the Stuka and Dauntless in stability in the dive, so it got the dive bomber bit right. The type had a very low, slow landing speed, despite this, Brown stated that it didn't have very good landing characteristics. Overall, its performance was criticised from the moment it entered service and the fact it couldn't carry a bigger bomb than 500 lbs was criticised once the bang bang started. Also, not living up to expectations as a fighter was never gonna help it, go figure, so bearing all this in mind it's not surprising it didn't last long in service.

Information from Blackburn Skua and Roc by Matthew Willis and Wings of the Navy by Eric 'Winkle' Brown.

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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

don4331 said:


> Sometimes (Bf.110), you largely ignore the customer spec, come up with something the customer (RLM) decides they have to have. And they rewrite the specification around what you're selling.
> 
> FAA might have taken 25 mph better top speed for a more aerodynamic windscreen.


Or, like in the case of the Swordfish, you build as a private venture and then try to sell it.


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Nice idea, but Blackburn wanted to remain in the game,


Post-war Buccaneer aside, did Blackburn ever make a competitive aircraft? They must have had some friends in government procurement.

Just look at this POS for example, the ridiculously named Blackburn Blackburn.

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## ThomasP (May 27, 2022)

Blackburn Shark can be said to have been competitive with the Swordfish. If they had been able to use the Pegasus engine (or some other reliable engine of equivalent performance) on the original prototypes and early production airframes, the Swordfish might have had to share the limelight with the Shark.


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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Post-war Buccaneer aside, did Blackburn ever make a competitive aircraft? They must have had some friends in government procurement.
> 
> Just look at this POS for example, the ridiculously named Blackburn Blackburn.
> 
> View attachment 671066


D H Clarke author of "What Were They Like to Fly" flew a large number of different aircraft. I have a number of his articles in RAF Flying Review from the late 50's early 60's. He thought the Blackburn Shark was a better aircraft than the Swordfish. He did hate the Botha. He actually tried to use a Botha to drop a mine off the coast of France which was not a good idea. He flew a Roc in air-to-air combat with a Heinkel He 59 which ended in a draw.
He listed the Skua as one of his six favorite aircraft to fly. Fury (biplane), Gauntlet (if I recall correctly), Harvard, Spitfire (of course), Macchi 200.





STORMO! "Acid Test" by D.H. Clarke, D.F.C, A.F.C


The Model Magazine of the Regia Aeronautica and ANR




www.stormomagazine.com




He flew Skua at night during the Dunkirk evacuation towing flares to illuminate any E boats attempting a nighttime attack.
Overall, I would say the Blackburn wasn't the A team but did manage to produce some serviceable designs, however the misses outnumbered the hits. I would not have wanted to be a Blackburn test pilot.

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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> He listed the Skua as one of his six favorite aircraft to fly.


I do think the Skua had potential. The Taranto Raid would have done nicely with a squadron of Skuas dropping incendiary bombs, for example. And two or three squadrons at Ceylon could have wrecked havoc on Nagumo's force in April 1941 - of course benefiting by Nagumo's lack of CAP, preparedness and situational awareness. Imagine, swapping out the Bristol Blenheims that approached undetected from 11,000 feet from which level they dropped their bombs and missed, with Skuas diving from 11,000 feet onto Nagumo's decks.

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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I do think the Skua had potential. The Taranto Raid would have done nicely with a squadron of* Skuas dropping incendiary bombs,* for example. And two or three squadrons at Ceylon could have wrecked havoc on Nagumo's force in April 1941 - of course benefiting by Nagumo's lack of CAP or situational awareness.


And that is part of the problem with Skua in real life. 

Bomb selection on carriers was limited. There was only so much magazine space. 

The Skua was a bit too closely tailored to the 500lb SAP bomb. 






The 500lb SAP may have been just the ticket for the Graf Spee and her sisters, it was overkill on the 6-7000 ton light cruisers and destroyers and merchant ships. 
It may have been a bit on the small side for the Scharnhorst and sister. 
I am talking about armor penetration. Too much penetration can (but not always) mean the bomb exiting the bottom/side of the ship and exploding outside. Damaging but not the damage of a bomb going off inside the ship. Too little penetration can mean the bomb breaking up impact, bouncing off the armored surface or otherwise exploding in a less than ideal position. 
Even naval guns are supplied with 2-3 kinds of shells to suit them to the target. 

The Skua may have been a very good basis for a dive bomber or even scout-dive bomber but that is not what they wanted. Since it couldn't perform the fighter function that overlooked what they had and went shopping for new toys. 
With a Pegasus and upgraded to carry a 1000lb bomb (or several different 500-1000lb bombs) the Skua may have proved useful until 1942-43. 

It doesn't seem like the Skua was fundamentally flawed for the roles of scout/recon and dive bomber/strike aircraft. The RN seemed to want a plane with different roles/missions with their limited deck parks.

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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

"Fighters Over the Fleet" by Norman Freidman is a must read to understand procurement strategies pre WWII. We should never forget that aircraft technology was in the midst of a major upheaval and that crystal ball reading is difficult at the best of times. According to Freidman:
"From a fighter point of view, the Skua was the victim of rapidly changing policy."
"The Skua had not yet flown, but production was urgent because the existing Nimrods and Ospreys would soon have to be retired:.... Limited Skua performance, including in a dive, was considered acceptable because by this time the dive-bomber fighter was considered no more than a stop gap until a more capable dive bomber reconnaissance (DBR) aircraft became available."
The surprising part is that the Roc was to be the replacement for the Skua in the fighter role (actually fighter -observation). It was crippled by the turret fighter concept but also by the requirement to be capable of being catapulted from battleships with floats attached.
We should always bear in mind that the Gun Club ruled in all navies at that time and aircraft carriers were definitely subordinate to the line of battle. Spotting fall of shot on the enemy battle line and shooting down enemy spotters was a prime function. Dive bombing aircraft carriers was important as it took enemy spotters out of service and allowed your spotters to perform unhindered.

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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

The Skua may have looked pretty good on paper with a speed 30-55mph faster than the Nimrod or Osprey, trouble was that in the time it took to go from paper to production the speed of the target aircraft had also changed. 

In the 1930s it was pretty much a given that by the time a plane entered squadron service with the first squadron the replacement aircraft should have already started design, not just requirement issued. Sometimes you could have 3 generations in the works, 1st plane entering service, 2nd plane close to or starting prototype flights and 3rd plane being sketched on paper. 
If you are using an existing engine on a new airframe things can go a bit quicker. But if you use an old engine you may get caught and not be able to upgrade.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I do think the Skua had potential. The Taranto Raid would have done nicely with a squadron of Skuas dropping incendiary bombs, for example.



How effective would that be against the Italian BBs?


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> How effective would that be against the Italian BBs?


I was thinking tank farms for the incendiaries. The Skuas 500 lb. AP bomb will penetrate any vessel at Taranto. Here's the day after the Nov 1940 raid.







Just look at those juicy fuel tanks. Mind you it's a night attack, so the Skua pilots will need to be well briefed and prepared.

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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> How effective would that be against the Italian BBs?


No one in any navy thought dive bombers would be effective vs battleships. Torpedoes and/or gunfire would be required.

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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I was thinking tank farms for the incendiaries. The Skuas 500 lb. AP bomb will penetrate any vessel at Taranto. Here's the day after the Nov 1940 raid.
> 
> View attachment 671104
> 
> ...


I don’t believe a 500 lb bomb was a threat to a battleship. Also the Skua bomb was SAP not AP. Also diving bombing at night was not possible.


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## yulzari (May 27, 2022)

One has to factor in that Blackburn was too occupied with the Botha to continue to make Skuas so the Roc was farmed out to Boulton Paul so a better Skua might be Defiant based rather than Skua based. Less turret, to carry the bomb load.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> No one in any navy thought dive bombers would be effective vs battleships. Torpedoes and/or gunfire would be required.



Exactly my point. Incendiary bombs even less so than SAPs etc.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I was thinking tank farms for the incendiaries.



That makes sense, but couldn't Swordfish also pull that trick off?



Admiral Beez said:


> The Skuas 500 lb. AP bomb will penetrate any vessel at Taranto. Here's the day after the Nov 1940 raid.
> 
> View attachment 671104
> 
> ...



And will need flares to aim by as well, I bet. As for the 500# SAPs, sure, they could damage the BBs, but to sink a ship you've got to let water in. Poking holes in the topsides is inefficient at that task, barring a lucky hit _a la_ USS _Arizona_.

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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I was thinking tank farms for the incendiaries. The Skuas 500 lb. AP bomb will penetrate any vessel at Taranto.





Reluctant Poster said:


> I don’t believe a 500 lb bomb was a threat to a battleship. Also the Skau bomb was SAP not AP.


The 500lb SAP might not be able to go through more than 2in. it may also depend on the speed of the dive and height of the release.
The 500lb SAP might do OK against most cruisers. It can also go through the upper deck of a battleship and go off between the upper deck and the armored deck.
Armored deck keeps bombs and shells out of the magazines and engine rooms. It doesn't make bombs, shells bounce over the side.




The 500lb SAP bomb could reach the Ponte di batteria, it was not going to get through that deck. 
You would need a 1500-2000lb AP bomb to do that. and dropped from the right height. 

500lb HE bombs might well explode on the upper deck (forecastle deck) and would pretty effective in disabling/disrupting the AA guns if in the superstructure area.

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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

yulzari said:


> One has to factor in that Blackburn was too occupied with the Botha to continue to make Skuas so the Roc was farmed out to Boulton Paul so a better Skua might be Defiant based rather than Skua based. Less turret, to carry the bomb load.


You need to get the plane both on and off the carrier deck.
Cutting the wing from 319 sq ft to 250sqft does not bode well for a carrier Defiant. So now you have to enlarge the wing in addition to making it fold. 

Some dive bombers were built even heavier than fighters to allow for airframe fatigue. You might figure a fighter is going to do 5-6 Gs on some of it's flights. 
A dive bomber is going to do 5-6 Gs on an awful lot of it's training flights and a lot of it's combat flights.

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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> barring a lucky hit _a la_ USS _Arizona_.


Lucky hit on the Arizona was by 796.kg (1757lb) bomb that was a converted 16in AP shell.
Japanese rated it as going through 150mm of armor, angle of impact not specified and drop height not specified.

the nose was 486.8mm thick and the bomb only held 2.8% explosive. (just under 50lbs)

You can sink battleships with bombs, but you need big bombs and lots of them. 
A 1000lb HE bomb that hits within 10-20ft of the ships side will have a similar effect as an 18in aerial torpedo.
But you need a lot of bombs dropped to get 2-4 hits in that narrow band around the hull. if you double the miss distance the ability of the bomb to spring the ship's plating goes down by at least 4 times and closer to 8 times. A hit on the deck is going to get tangled up with multiple armor decks.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Lucky hit on the Arizona was by 796.kg (1757lb) bomb that was a converted 16in AP shell.
> Japanese rated it as going through 150mm of armor, angle of impact not specified and drop height not specified.
> 
> the nose was 486.8mm thick and the bomb only held 2.8% explosive. (just under 50lbs)



Right. The luck was in hitting so close to the magazine, with results for all to see.


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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Right. The luck was in hitting so close to the magazine, with results for all to see.


And a 500lb SAP bomb even if it hit the exact same place was not get through the armored decks and was going to explode several decks higher in the ship.

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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Right. The luck was in hitting so close to the magazine, with results for all to see.


3 times the size, AP not SAP and dropped from sufficient altitude to attain enough velocity to penetrate. Not possible at night.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> 3 times the size, AP not SAP and dropped from sufficient altitude to attain enough velocity to penetrate. Not possible at night.





Shortround6 said:


> And a 500lb SAP bomb even if it hit the exact same place was not get through the armored decks and was going to explode several decks higher in the ship.



Exactly. Expecting 500# SAPs to have the same effects as torpedoes from the Stringbags seems to me unrealistic -- much less a modified 16" AP shell.

You gotta put holes in the hulls to sink a ship, and 500-lb SAPs ain't gonna do that.

Even the _Nevada_'s beaching was forced by its torpedo hit, rather than the three (four?) 250kg bomb-hits.


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## tomo pauk (May 27, 2022)

don4331 said:


> Sometimes (Bf.110), you largely ignore the customer spec, come up with something the customer (RLM) decides they have to have. And they rewrite the specification around what you're selling.



IIRC it was the Bf _109 _that went against the spec (predominantly against the specified wing loading) and won, while the _110_ was following the spec.


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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Exactly. Expecting 500# SAPs to have the same effects as torpedoes from the Stringbags seems to me unrealistic -- much less a modified 16" AP shell.
> 
> You gotta put holes in the hulls to sink a ship, and 500-lb SAPs ain't gonna do that.
> 
> Even the _Nevada_'s beaching was forced by its torpedo hit, rather than the three (four?) 250kg bomb-hits.





Shortround6 said:


> The 500lb SAP might not be able to go through more than 2in. it may also depend on the speed of the dive and height of the release.
> The 500lb SAP might do OK against most cruisers. It can also go through the upper deck of a battleship and go off between the upper deck and the armored deck.
> Armored deck keeps bombs and shells out of the magazines and engine rooms. It doesn't make bombs, shells bounce over the side.
> View attachment 671106
> ...


A 500 lb US SAP wont penetrate 2' of amour if dropped from below 4,000 ft. I doubt the RN 500 lb SAP would be significantly better.






As for near misses the following is from a USN paper I posted previously. Near misses don't have much effect on a battleship






The underwater protection of the Italian battleships wasn't as good as US battleships so if we assume it was as good as a US heavy cruiser






Even then the 500 lb SAP doesn't rate a mention. As I have stated in the past, torpedoes are the most effective weapons against large warships. Note that these are US torpedoes. The Japanese 24 inchers with their much large warhead were more effective. Japanese torpedoes sunk just about every large USN and IJN warship in 1942-43 if you include those scuttled. The USN tried to scuttle the Hornet with their torpedoes but the Japanese had to finish it off. The Japanese carriers at Midway were sunk by their destroyers.

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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Exactly. Expecting 500# SAPs to have the same effects as torpedoes from the Stringbags seems to me unrealistic -- much less a modified 16" AP shell.


Which is why I suggested the Skuas go for softer targets.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Which is why I suggested the Skuas go for softer targets.



Sure. But I think the point of the raid was the battleships.


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Sure. But I think the point of the raid was the battleships.


The Swordfish took care of them. My idea was if Skuas are available we can hit additional targets.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> The Swordfish took care of them. My idea was if Skuas are available we can hit additional targets.



You're gonna need another carrier, then.


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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

Setting fire to fuel oil isn't as easy as some people think. 
Bunker C is closer to tar than gasoline. Ships use steam lines in the fuel tanks just to get it flow. 
Setting fire to a tank farm with just a few hits is like hitting the lottery.


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> You're gonna need another carrier, then.


Perhaps, but Illustrious launched 21 Swordfish. I assume that’s her total complement. The Fulmar was introduced in May 1940, so I’m not sure how many were on Illustrious that day in Nov 1940.


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> I don’t believe a 500 lb bomb was a threat to a battleship. Also the Skua bomb was SAP not AP. Also diving bombing at night was not possible.


How about at Ceylon in place or along with the undetected Blenheim raid? SAP should penetrate IJN carrier decks.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Perhaps, but Illustrious launched 21 Swordfish. I assume that’s her total complement. The Fulmar was introduced in May 1940, so I’m not sure how many were on Illustrious that day in Nov 1940.



I thought we were talking about Skuas and not Fulmars. And yes, so far as I know the _Illustrious_ launched only Swordfish for that raid. With only one carrier, you're going to bite into an already very limited torpedo attack against the battleships if you decide to replace some Swordfish with Skuas.

If you've got a second carrier with Skuas, perhaps attacking the tank farms could work. Or if you'd prefer, diverting some Faireys from attacking the BBs to attacking the tank farms, at the risk of making both strikes too light to matter.


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I thought we were talking about Skuas and not Fulmars.


We are. If Illustrious has 21 Swordfish aboard and we want to add Skuas without adding another carrier, then we need to clear the hangar of any other aircraft, which by Nov 1940 must have been Fulmars. That’s why I mention them, in a failed attempt to get ahead of contrarianism.


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## Graeme (May 27, 2022)

The Australian Beaufort, SAP bombs and torpedoes...

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> We are. If Illustrious has 21 Swordfish aboard and we want to add Skuas without adding another carrier, then we need to clear the hangar of any other aircraft, which by Nov 1940 must have been Fulmars. That’s why I mention them, in a failed attempt to get ahead of contrarianism.



Oh, now I get what you're saying. According to Armoured Aircraft Carriers, the loadout for the _Illustrious_ was as follows:

_
HMS Illustrious (Flag Rear Admiral Lyster)
806 Squadron: 15 Fulmar MkI
815 Squadron: 9 Swordfish
819 Squadron: 9 Swordfish
813 Squadron*: 4 Swordfish, 2 Sea Gladiator
824 Squadron*: 2 Swordfish
* Detached from HMS Eagle_









Armoured Aircraft Carriers


In just one night, HMS Illustrious changed the balance of the war and cemented the aircraft carrier at the core of the battlefleet.




www.armouredcarriers.com





The Fulmar was a bit larger than the Skua, so perhaps a couple more Blackburns could be crammed in, at the expense of better daytime air-cover from the Faireys?

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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> The Fulmar was a bit larger than the Skua, so perhaps a couple more Blackburns could be crammed in, at the expense of better daytime air-cover from the Faireys?


A full 36 crate CAG of twenty-one Swordfish and fifteen Skuas would make for a solid maritime strike package… provided the target is not defended by fighter aircraft and the Skuas aren’t expected to defend Illustrious from anything faster than 200 mph. Forget about intercepting a 290 mph SM.79 Sparviero or even a 235 mph B5N.


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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> The Swordfish took care of them. My idea was if Skuas are available we can hit additional targets.


The Skua, as built, carried a single bomb. Historically it was 500lb SAP with 90lbs of HE. 
In the _what if_ maybe we can use the 500lb GP bomb with 144lbs of HE. 
Now how far can we push the _what if_?
The British bring the 1000lb GP bomb to the party rather late. They are ordering the production versions in Dec of 1939 and only about 160 are dropped in 1940 (11,000 had been ordered.) It does hold 357lbs of 60/40 Amatol/TNT.
The higher capacity MC bombs don't show up until 1942.

If you want to try for the oil tanks a Swordfish will hold six 250lbs bombs in the under wing racks. Range may be a bit shorter than the torpedo planes due to drag?




Each 250lb GP bomb will hold 67-68lbs of HE and even just 4 planes could put 2 dozen bombs into the tank farm.



Admiral Beez said:


> How about at Ceylon in place or along with the undetected Blenheim raid? SAP should penetrate IJN carrier decks.


I don't believe the Japanese used armored flight decks. A standard 500lb GP bomb should penetrate the flight deck. 
The 500lb SAP might be able to penetrate the hanger deck. 
One or two 500lb GP bombs might very well not sink a Japanese carrier (depends on damage control) but a pair of 500lb GP bombs in the hanger is going to need dockyard repairs.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> A full 36 crate CAG of twenty-one Swordfish and fifteen Skuas would make for a solid maritime strike package… provided the target is not defended by fighter aircraft.



That would work for the Taranto raid at night too, using the Skuas to bomb the tank-farms as you mentioned above -- but you'd damned well better be on full retraction before the RA can put bombers in the air in the morning.


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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The Skua, as built, carried a single bomb. Historically it was 500lb SAP with 90lbs of HE.
> In the _what if_ maybe we can use the 500lb GP bomb with 144lbs of HE.
> Now how far can we push the _what if_?
> The British bring the 1000lb GP bomb to the party rather late. They are ordering the production versions in Dec of 1939 and only about 160 are dropped in 1940 (11,000 had been ordered.) It does hold 357lbs of 60/40 Amatol/TNT.
> ...


The only Japanese carrier with an amoured flight deck was the Taiho. No Japanese fleet carrier was sunk by bombs not even the grievously damaged carriers at Midway which were still afloat and were scuttled by Japanese torpedoes. And contrary to popular opinion Japanese warships were tough, ask any USN cruiser captain. Any carrier caught with fueled up and bombed up aircraft on board was in deep trouble.


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## Reluctant Poster (May 27, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The Skua, as built, carried a single bomb. Historically it was 500lb SAP with 90lbs of HE.
> In the _what if_ maybe we can use the 500lb GP bomb with 144lbs of HE.
> Now how far can we push the _what if_?
> The British bring the 1000lb GP bomb to the party rather late. They are ordering the production versions in Dec of 1939 and only about 160 are dropped in 1940 (11,000 had been ordered.) It does hold 357lbs of 60/40 Amatol/TNT.
> ...


How are the swordfish delivering the bombs and how are they aiming them. Bombing a night with real bombsights wasn’t easy. Bombing by sighting over the nose would be even more inaccurate. Also a 250 lb bomb isn’t going to cause any damage with a near miss


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## Admiral Beez (May 27, 2022)

The big flaw in the Skua is a lack of top speed. This is what we need to address, either with more horsepower, less weight or less drag. How did the Air Ministry of 1938 think that a 225 mph Skua was capable of serving as a fleet defence fighter?


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## don4331 (May 27, 2022)

tomo pauk said:


> IIRC it was the Bf _109 _that went against the spec (predominantly against the specified wing loading) and won, while the _110_ was following the spec.


Bf 109 specification was for a monoplane fighter of high maneuverability and greatest speed possible, with good diving and spinning performance. Messerschmitt aircraft pretty much meeting that. Now originally, Messerschmitt wasn't invited to bid due to issues with his earlier M-20 aircraft but that is different issue.

Bf110 was for a monoplane kampfzerstorer with 2-7.9mm &2-20mm forward guns, internal bombay for 2-250kg bombs and transverse-able armament (aka turret) for side and rear defense. The closest to meeting the spec initially was the Fw.57. The Bf.110 skipped the internal bombay and the mg17 for the rear gunner wasn't really what RLM was thinking of. Noting Messerschmitt built the Bf.162 to carry bombs to compliment the Bf.110 in attempt to completely meet the requirement. But other than a couple prototypes it went nowhere.

Messerschmitt finally met the specification with the Bf.210 but we know the saga of that plane.

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## don4331 (May 27, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Perhaps, but Illustrious launched 21 Swordfish. I assume that’s her total complement. The Fulmar was introduced in May 1940, so I’m not sure how many were on Illustrious that day in Nov 1940.


Admiral Beez; 
You are aware Illustrious could only stage 12 Swordfish for the 1st 'strike' and the remaining 9 then had to be make ready and launch on the Taranto Raid? (Other's have pointed out it was actually more than her regular 'full' compliment, and ~10% wind up being un-serviceable).

So if you attempting to add Skua's to the raid you are adding at least a 3rd staging (and maybe a 4th). Which is going to mean your carrier needs to get *much* closer, and will not be able to retreat until *much* later.

In '38, the RN_ knew _no fighter could provide fleet defense. By the time you saw the enemy bombers with eyeball mk. 1, you only had time to batten down the hatches, and man the AAA guns. That's the primary justification for the ABH carrier. The fleet fighter was to shoot down the MAP seaplane providing enemy with your location/float planes calling out the fall from enemy battleships shooting your BB/calling the shot for your battleships as they destroyed the enemy fleet.

As EwenS chastised me, its really '41 before a CV can launch fighters effectively in fleet defense. Now, the Admiralty had read the tea leaves and wanted a fighter in place by that time but Fulmar really wasn't it.

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## EwenS (May 28, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Oh, now I get what you're saying. According to Armoured Aircraft Carriers, the loadout for the _Illustrious_ was as follows:
> 
> 
> _HMS Illustrious (Flag Rear Admiral Lyster)
> ...


Skuas and Swordfish are a few inches short of 36ft long so are interchangeable in terms of hangar deck space. Illustrious was designed around 6 Skua and 30 Swordfish in her 456 ft long hangar. With 3 aircraft abreast, which is all that will fit, that is 12 rows. (You need to allow working room around each aircraft. In WW2 the RN worked to a minimum of 1.5-2ft).

The successor aircraft, Albacore & Fulmar, are around 40ft 2in long. So hangar capacity with these types drops to 33. Usually 15 Fulmar & 18 Albacore in 1940/41.

With 15 Fulmars aboard the Swordfish capacity is the same as it would be for Albacores -18.

At Taranto Illustrious operated a deck park for the extra aircraft she had aboard. The two non-folding Sea Gladiators were kept tucked out of the way, starboard side immediately aft of S4 Pom-Pom. The long round downs fitted to the Illustrious class as designed limited the numbers of aircraft that could be ranged at any one time for free take offs. That was especially so at Taranto where the Swordfish were very heavy all with fitted with overload fuel tanks in the Observer’s cockpit (no TAGs on that mission).

While 10 of the Swordfish were equipped with bombs the plan called for them to be delivered in a shallow dive as the aircraft dropped from their approach altitude of c8000ft to about 500-1500ft. They had great difficulty picking out their principal targets (the heavy cruisers) in the dark even with the light from the flares, so most dropped their bombs on other targets instead.

The only reference I can think of reading of about night time dive bombing in WW2 was when the Barracuda crews in 11ACS in mid-1945 were asked to experiment with it. The crews were none to happy at the prospect and it didn’t get very far. Then the war ended so they never had to try it out on operations.

If you want full on dive bombing at Taranto in 1940 then i think it becomes a day mission and you need to accept far higher losses from flak & fighters.

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## Reluctant Poster (May 28, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> How are the swordfish delivering the bombs and how are they aiming them. Bombing a night with real bombsights wasn’t easy. Bombing by sighting over the nose would be even more inaccurate. Also a 250 lb bomb isn’t going to cause any damage with a near miss


I must confess I am wrong. Actually they did bomb the oil tanks. The 4 flare droppers bombed them on the way out. Since they carried flares they only could carry 4 x 250 lb bombs for a total of 16. It seems they did damage although I have seen differing opinions on how much damage. The bombers tasked to attack warships did score hits although some of the bombs failed to explode, an all too common occurrence in WWII. The Swordfish was able to bomb with some accuracy at night.


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## Geoffrey Sinclair (May 28, 2022)

Details from Taranto by Don Newton and A. Cecil Hampshire, first published in 1959.

Illustrious lost 3 Swordfish on patrol, one each on the 9th, 10th and 11th all probably due to contaminated fuel, reducing the attack to 21 aircraft, with one of these completing repairs from a heavy landing about an hour before take off. 

First wave take off 20.35, 12 aircraft, 6 with torpedoes, 4 to bomb ships in the inner harbour, 2 to release flares then bomb the oil storage tanks.
Second wave take off 21.20, 9 aircraft, 5 with torpedoes, 2 to bomb ships in the inner harbour, 2 to release flares then bomb the oil storage tanks.

Bombers each had 6x250 pound SAP bombs, flare droppers each had 4x250 pound SAP bombs and 16 flares. The torpedo droppers also had a flare each but did not use them. Torpedoes armed with magnetic and contact pistols.

Thanks to recent storms and high winds the balloon barrage was only 27 strong, after around 60 recent losses.

The patrolling Sunderland was detected by sound after 8 PM and the alarm sounded, a little later one of the AA batteries engaged the aircraft which seemed to drive it away, the alert was cancelled, but reinstated around 9 PM after more engine noises were detected, this stayed in place, at 10.25 more engine noises were heard, at 10.50 air raid sirens were sounded, the approaching Swordfish saw the AA barrage begin at 10.52. One of the torpedo carriers had lost touch with the formation and proceeded alone, arriving "30 minutes" earlier than the rest of the aircraft before rejoining. A still working lighthouse enabled confirmation of where the aircraft were. The first attack lasted 23 minutes.

Second wave had 2 aircraft collide in a taxi accident, one was able to launch after a short delay, the other needed repair and launched 24 minutes later.

Bombs were dropped from between low level and 1,500 feet. 6 dropped near the oil depot, all exploded, supply pipe fractured. Bombs hit Trento and Libeccio, the latter did not explode. Near misses or hits seem to have opened up the fuel tanks of two heavy cruisers. Some bombs hit houses in Taranto.

Deteriorating weather meant the idea for a strike the next night was abandoned.

The Moon was half way between first quarter and full, at London rising 14.58 on the 11th, setting 04.14 on the 12th.

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## Admiral Beez (May 28, 2022)

So, how do we get more speed out of the Skua? In addition to improving the canopy, how about reducing its 46 ft wingspan to something closer to the SBD Dauntless‘ 41.5 ft span? And retract the tail wheel along with reducing lumps and protrusions.


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## tomo pauk (May 28, 2022)

don4331 said:


> Bf 109 specification was for a monoplane fighter of high maneuverability and greatest speed possible, with good diving and spinning performance. Messerschmitt aircraft pretty much meeting that. Now originally, Messerschmitt wasn't invited to bid due to issues with his earlier M-20 aircraft but that is different issue.



Thank you, you're probably right on that one.



don4331 said:


> Bf110 was for a monoplane kampfzerstorer with 2-7.9mm &2-20mm forward guns, internal bombay for 2-250kg bombs and transverse-able armament (aka turret) for side and rear defense. The closest to meeting the spec initially was the Fw.57. The Bf.110 skipped the internal bombay and the mg17 for the rear gunner wasn't really what RLM was thinking of. Noting Messerschmitt built the Bf.162 to carry bombs to compliment the Bf.110 in attempt to completely meet the requirement. But other than a couple prototypes it went nowhere.



German-language Wikipedia says this, on the 'Zerstoerer' entry:

_Die Bomberrolle entfällt vorübergehendAls das RLM 1935 eine neue Anforderungen für einen Schnellbomber definierte (500 km/h, 500 kg Bombenlast) und Junkers ein Konzept vorstellte, das sogar 500 km/h Höchstgeschwindigkeit und 1000 kg Bombenlast versprach, wurde nicht länger vorgesehen, den „Kampfzerstörer" auch als Bomber einzusetzen. Messerschmitts aus der Bf 161 entwickelte Bf 162 und Henschels aus der Hs 124 entwickelte Hs 127 unterlagen in der Schnellbomberausschreibung aber schließlich der Junkers Ju 88. Damit entfiel die Rolle des Bombers für das Zerstörerflugzeug vorübergehend. _

Meaning, roughly, that by 1935, due to the new _Schnellbomber _spec that called for 500/500 capability (and with Junkers promising 500/1000), it was no longer required that 'Kampfzerstoerer' is required to also bomb things. MTT started developing the Me 162 as a _Schnellbomber_, Henschell the Hs 127 (from the Hs 124) and Junkers company designing the Ju 88.

Zerstörer (Flugzeug) – Wikipedia , FWIW

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## EwenS (May 28, 2022)

*Combination of roles fighter & dive bomber*
This is what Friedman wrote in "Carrier Air Power" about the Skua away back in 1981.

_"The Skua is often described as an unsuccessful attempt to combine in one airplane the features of two very contradictory types, the fighter and the dive-bomber. In its time, however, it would appear to have been a perfectly logical consequence of Admiralty policy concerning Fleet Air Arm tactics. By the mid-1930s British naval fighters were in effect strike support aircraft designed to accompany the torpedo bombers attacking enemy battleships. Their primary role was twofold: attack on enemy anti-aircraft weapons, particularly those aboard screening ships; and neutralization of enemy carrier aircraft, preferably by strafing them while they remained on their flight decks. In each case machine-gun fire was likely to be more effective than conventional bombing, given the ability of the target ship to escape damage by radical maneuvering. Only with the advent of the dive-bomber could bomb hits be assured. Even then the tactic was confined to attacks on lightly armoured ships: the bombs still did not attain sufficient terminal velocities to penetrate the protective decks of capital ships. The Osprey and even the Swordfish could dive with light bombs carried underwing, and in effect the Skua carried the Osprey's light bombing role further by providing a crutch for a heavier under-fuselage weapon. It would appear then, that, to the Royal Navy dive-bombing attack on enemy carrier decks and screening ships was a natural extension of fighter-attack doctrine, rather than an attempt to combine in a single aircraft two incompatible roles. The major air superiority role of the fleet fighter, denial of reconnaissance and spotting to an enemy fleet, would not require very high performanace."_

So the purpose of the dive-bomber in the RN was not to sink capital ships merely disable the AA firepower of an enemy fleet and to put their carriers out of action. And for that bombs up to 500lb are perfectly adequate. And strike support means being able to find its way back to a parent carrier requiring the second seat.

*Combination of roles Dive bomber and torpedo bomber*
Earlier the RN was being criticised for combining the dive and torpedo bomber roles in the Barracuda. Actually this makes complete sense due to the tactics that the FAA adopted during the 1930s. It has been discussed before on other threads. I can't do better than quote from Hobbs "The Dawn of Carrier Strike" with my emphasis:-

_"The classic RN aerial torpedo attack did not involve a long, low approach like that employed by the USN. It involved radical changes of height and bearing intended to make an enemy ship's anti-aircraft gunfire control solution more difficult to achieve.; it did, however, make the attack itself more difficult, and the technique required extensive training and constant practice. The *approach* to the target by a twelve-aircraft squadron was made at *about 10,000 feet *in four flights of three aircraft, each in a V formation. They would set themselves up to attack from different directions so that whichever way the target ship turned it would find it difficult to evade every torpedo once they were running. The leader would manoeuvre into a position a mile or two ahead of the target and order his own numbers 2 and 3 into line astern by hand signals. They would drop back into positions 300 and 600 yards behind him and when they had taken up positions *they would dive, in sequence, vertically onto the target.* The other flight leaders would take up positions at 90-degree intervals around the target and carry out similar diving procedures in synchronisation with the overall leader. From roughly 2 miles high the *descent took about half a minute* during which time individual pilots had to maintain their position relative to their leaders, identify the target and estimate its course and speed and make the torpedo ready for release. *Below 1,000 feet pilots would ease their aircraft out of the dive,* retrimming as necessary, and use the sights to aim-off before release to allow for target movement as the weapons ran towards it. The ideal release point was at about 1,000 yards, half a nautical mile, from the target. At the *moment of release* the aircraft had to be at *about 200ft*, straight and level with no side slip so that the weapon entered the water cleanly with no risk of breaking up...."_

So a torpedo attack was being set up exactly the same way as a dive-bombing attack. Medium altitude and a steep dive. With bi-planes like the Swordfish and Albacore there was sufficient drag on the airframe that diving speeds never exceeded about 200 knots. That changed with the advent of monoplanes. The only difference is where you position the aircraft relative to the target. But with the same stresses on the airframe from both types of attack combining the roles then makes some sense. In fact it can be argued that the FAA was ahead of the field.

Over in the US Curtiss designed the SB2C Helldiver for the USN from 1938. Along the way between prototype and production it gained the capability to drop the MK.13 torpedo. It was never used in combat in WW2 but attempts were made to resurrect it in 1945 as the shape of CAGs was being changed to reduce the numbers of TBM Avengers being carried. I've got a recollection somewhere that USN torpedo tactics changed by late war with Avengers starting attacks from higher altitudes, but with the inability to carry out a steep dive like the FAA.

Over in Japan from 1941 the IJNAF combined the torpedo and dive-bomber roles in the Aichi B7A Ryusei "Grace" that finally entered service in small numbers in late 1944.


*Low production volumes for the FAA*
When the entire front line strength of the FAA on the 5 operational carriers (Ark Royal only entered service in Dec 1938 and Argus was in reserve for most of the decade) in the 1930s was only about 160-170, and aircraft are evolving quickly, there is no room for large orders. Even with the Swordfish the orders from 1935-37 only totalled c430 (c130 required at any one time to equip the carriers). It was only from 1938 that orders began to take off with the prospect of the expansion of the FAA.

The story was the same over in the US even though their carriers had larger airgroups. Most orders by the USN in the 1930s were for 50-100 aicraft of each model at a time. Look at the Douglas TBD Devastator. 130 ordered to equip 4 x 18 plane squadons plus attrition replacements. Order sizes only begin to increase in 1941.

It is also worth remembering that in the early 1930s the torpedo as an air launched weapon fell right out of favour in the USN. It only recovered with the TBD in 1937.

*Dive bomber dimensions*
Everyone is comparing the size of the Skua adversely against the SBD. Some comparisons (wingspan / length / wing area):-

USA
Curtiss SBC Helldiver - 34/28/317
Vought SB2U Vindicator - 42/34/305
Douglass SBD Dauntless - 42/33/325
Curtiss SB2C Helldiver - 50/37/422
Douglas AD-1 - 50/38/400

Britain
Blackburn Skua - 46/36/319
Fairey Swordfish - 46/36/607
Fairey Albacore - 50/40/623
Fairey Barracuda I-III - 49/40/367
Fairey Barracuda V - 53/41/435
Fairey Spearfish - 60/45/?

Japan
Aichi D3A Val - 47/33/376
Yokosuka D4Y Judy - 38/34/254
Aichi B7A Grace - 47/38/381

Germany
Ju87 Stuka - 45/36/343

So yes the Skua has a winspan of 46 feet v 42 feet for the SBD. But look at the wing area. The SBD has a whole 6 feet extra wing area. So it is the difference between a short broad wing in the SBD v a slightly longer but narrower chod wing in the Skua. And when you compare the Skua's wingspan with other dive bombers of the period it does not seem excessive. The Judy on the other hand was a particularly small aircraft. But that brought its own problems as it was never able to operate off Japan's smaller carriers.

I've included the various British torpedo bombers of the period because they were, as noted above all used as dive-bombers at some time or other.

Edit:- And in the Skua you have to meet the relatively low landing speeds stipulated by the RN to get an aircraft on and off a carrier.

Edit 2:- another WW2 dive bomber to consider size wise.
Vultee Vengeance - 48/40/332

Edit 3:- In 1934 the Japanese ordered the biplane Aichi D1A as its carrier dive bomber for the rest of the decade. Its dimensions were 37/31/374 and it was capable of carrying a 250kg (550lb) bomb under the fuselage plus 2x30kg (66lb) under the wings.

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## Admiral Beez (May 31, 2022)

I expect the single role SBD shot down more enemy aircraft with its forward armament than the Skua.


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## Shortround6 (May 31, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I expect the single role SBD shot down more enemy aircraft with its forward armament than the Skua.


Skua = 192 built 
SBD = 5,936 built

Comparison of "scores" actually tells us nothing.
The SBD was NOT single role. It's designation tells you that.
*Scout Dive Bomber *

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## nuuumannn (Jun 4, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Post-war Buccaneer aside, did Blackburn ever make a competitive aircraft?



The Dart, derived from the Swift was the FAA's first new torpedo type and its concept in turn was derived from the Sopwith Cuckoo, which Blackburn built under licence during the Great War. From the basic design of the Dart came the Baffin and Ripon, although these evolved from the Dart in that it was a single-seater without armament, as was the Cuckoo, to having an observer and defensive gun armament. Both the Baffin and Ripon were very much products of their day and served with the FAA without fuss. Obviously, Blackburn was competing with an ever resourceful Fairey to become the FAA's primary supplier of equipment - Robert Blackburn making it clear during the Great War he wished to become the principal supplier of aircraft to the Admiralty. From what I've read, there were many reasons why the Shark was superior to the Swordfish, and that production of the latter was ceased by Fairey during WW2 and was taken over by Blackburn must have been a bit of a bloody nose for that company. Neverthelss, the Blackburn Blackburn was matched in hideousness by the Avro Bison, both types outward appearance reflecting the navy's desire to provide a big space for the observer and his radio equipment.









Avro Bison - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org







Reluctant Poster said:


> The surprising part is that the Roc was to be the replacement for the Skua in the fighter role (actually fighter -observation). It was crippled by the turret fighter concept but also by the requirement to be capable of being catapulted from battleships with floats attached.
> We should always bear in mind that the Gun Club ruled in all navies at that time and aircraft carriers were definitely subordinate to the line of battle. Spotting fall of shot on the enemy battle line and shooting down enemy spotters was a prime function. Dive bombing aircraft carriers was important as it took enemy spotters out of service and allowed your spotters to perform unhindered.



That's right, the turret fighter held a particular curiosity in the mid 1930s and the gun turret in particular promised accuracy that was unknown beforehand. How hindsight treated this theory is well-known. Of course, during the 1930s, power operated turrets were incorporated into a wide variety of British specifications, for transports, maritime patrol aircraft, bombers, fighters...

As for gunnery spotting using aeroplanes, The legacy of the aerial spotter in RN service has its roots in the Dardanelles campaign in 1915. The British pioneered this when destroying the forts that lined the coast of the stretch of water. Experiments during the war proved that attacking shore targets was not so easy because the fall of shot couldn't be seen, unlike splashes in the water, so the idea that aircraft be used for spotting took hold and the Ark Royal, the 1914 seaplane tender was rushed to the Dardanelles to serve that purpose. Also, the very first warships with aircraft facilities incorporated into their design on the drawing board were heavy gun monitors, the Abercrombie Class ships, equipped with US built 14-in gun turrets. On completion these were sent to the Dardanelles, although they didn't have their own aircraft, having machines supplied from a small pool of equipment spread among naval vessels operating in the Aegean Sea.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 4, 2022)

In the manual section there is a manual for the Douglas SBD-3






upload pilots handbook for sbd-3 dauntless


Hi All, uploaded pilots handbook for sbd-3 dauntless cheers Jerry



ww2aircraft.net





The manual is from 1942 ( bit after the heyday of the Skua) but gives a number of weight charts for the SBD with both unprotected tanks and protected tanks. 
It also clearly shows the difference between the bomber function (1000lb bomb and 100 gallons of gas or 500lb bomb and 140 gallons of gas) and the scout function, up to 310 gallons of fuel in unprotected tanks or 260 gallons in protected tanks and up to 19 gallons of oil. ALL fuel tanks were internal, no drop tank/s. 

This is the 3rd version of the SBD and there is no doubt from the manual that there were two different missions (roles) planned for the SBD. 

Weight charts, statement as to roles. Cruising speed charts for the different roles and weights and labeled as such. 

The SBD did NOT have folding wings. How this worked with USN carrier decks I don't know but could very well be a reason for the 42ft wing span. 

The difference in wing area from the SBD to the Skua was 325 sq ft to 319 sq ft. or just under 2%

The Performance figures in the Manual are for the 1000hp T-O engine, the 1200hp engine showed much later.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 4, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Of course, during the 1930s, power operated turrets were incorporated into a wide variety of British specifications, for transports, maritime patrol aircraft, bombers, fighters...


The Hawker Demon has a lot to answer for 










It was just the 2nd (?) British aircraft to be fitted with a power turret, plenty more were in the planning stage.
Unfortunately they didn't seem to know when to stop. If four .303s are good then four 20mm guns in _each_ turret must be better?

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## nuuumannn (Jun 4, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> It was just the 2nd (?) British aircraft to be fitted with a power turret, plenty more were in the planning stage.
> Unfortunately they didn't seem to know when to stop. If four .303s are good then four 20mm guns in _each_ turret must be better?



The Nash & Thompson FN.1A Lobster Back was in fact the first entirely British designed hydraulic power turret, with hydraulic working gear by Frazer Nash. You can go back even further to the success of the Bristol F.2B two-seat fighter during the Great War if you wanna look for what was responsible for this trend.

The British did go a bit crazy with their power turret ideas at one stage, some of them were a bit bonkers and thankfully were not built, but the essence of the idea was that it provided better means of aiming gunfire than by the old open-topped Scarff ring style mount that everyone else was using. The fact was, by the mid 1930s defensive fire hadn't changed much since the Great War and faster aircraft represented a threat that the old style of defensive position couldn't match. The power turret offered many advantages, such as quicker response in aiming, more accurate aiming and a better (enclosed) environment for the gunner (with the exception of that Lobster back turret). By the time the British were fitting turrets on everything in the late 1930s, only Russia had done the same, but its turrets were not fully powered in azimuth, elevation and loading, unlike the British ones.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 4, 2022)

A number of companies submitted designs for a specification that called for both a dorsal and ventral turret with four 20mm guns each. In some cases they reached mock up stage. 
Unfortunately the size and weight of the proposed turrets required them to be fitted very near the center of gravity fighting it out with bomb stowage. 
If some people are wondering what happened to the British bombers that were supposed to come after the Beaufort or the Lancaster or the Halifax, it was this series of designs that gives a large part of the answer. Thousands if not not tens of thousands of hours of design work that went no further than wooden mock ups. 
The older bombers with their .303 guns could operate at night at slower speeds and carry as much or more bombs. 

The BP Overstrand was the first British plane with a power turret (not hydraulic) 




and was a very useful improvement in bomber defense or at least showed the way. 

The Bristol F2B was often misinterpreted. When initially flown as a normal two seat aircraft (steady flying so the gunner could aim) they suffered high losses. 
Using the power of it's RR Falcon engine the pilots could turn, climb and maneuver to bring the fixed machine gun to bear while the rear gunner did help defend the rear.
The two guns in the back were not however the key to the F2Bs success, plenty of other two seat aircraft with twin Lewis guns on Scarff mountings didn't fare so well. 
The RR Falcons giving around 275hp gave the F2b enough performance mix-it up with the single seaters and the Bristol airframe was strong enough not to break under such treatment. The German 6 cylinder engines in their single seat fighters weren't that much lighter than the RR V-12 and had worse power to weight ratios for the power plants.

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## nuuumannn (Jun 4, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> A number of companies submitted designs for a specification that called for both a dorsal and ventral turret with four 20mm guns each. In some cases they reached mock up stage.



The big round four-cannon turret was the work of Boulton Paul and originated with its P.92 twin engined-bomber interceptor concept. Nash & Thompson designed a similar installation to be fitted to bombers that preferred its designs. The designs reached the mock-up stage because they were designed to fulfil an official specification.



Shortround6 said:


> If some people are wondering what happened to the British bombers that were supposed to come after the Beaufort or the Lancaster or the Halifax, it was this series of designs that gives a large part of the answer. Thousands if not not tens of thousands of hours of design work that went no further than wooden mock ups.



Nothing uncommon about that, certainly not a British only issue, if that's what you're insinuating. Every country in that period was pumping out designs that made it no further than the drawing board - again, a complete nothing-burger when placed into context. The Beaufort was a torpedo bomber, but hey ho. The design in the image came from Specification B.1/39, which was deemed "The Ideal Bomber" and the model was the Handley Page HP.60 submission.

As for the turrets, the Overstrand was the first in service with a power turret, but the Handley Page Harrow brought in the first hydraulic power turrets fitted to bombers in 1937 following the Hawker Demon's Lobster Back turret. Handley Page designed the turret, but Frazer Nash supplied the working gear. Vickers did the same in the Wellington Mk.I, providing its own barbettes with FN supplied gear, before the fitting of Nash & Thompson turrets in the Wellington Ia. The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was the first British bomber fitted with a Nash & Thompson turret, not a barbette designed by the framer with FN working gear, although Armstrong Whitworth designed its own unpowered turrets.

A bit of background, Frazer Nash was initially a different company to the Nash & Thompson turret manufacturer and continued subsequently as a motor car manufacturer. Obviously the "Nash" in Nash & Thompson is the same Archie Frazer Nash, who was a race car driver. Capt A. Gratton-Thompson was the other party and the two were on the board of Parnall Aircraft at Yate, forming Nash & Thompson in 1935. The hydraulic working gear fitted to British turrets was developed by Frazer Nash the guy and supplied by Nash & Thompson the company, so N&T turrets have the suffix "FN" to denote the use of Frazer Nash working gear.



Shortround6 said:


> The Bristol F2B was often misinterpreted. When initially flown as a normal two seat aircraft (steady flying so the gunner could aim) they suffered high losses.



Only at the very beginning of its combat career, with 48 Sqn and only for about three weeks, so not long at all. The man responsible for leading the Bristol Fighter into combat for the first time was none other than William Leefe-Robinson VC of 48 Sqn RFC on 5 April, who got a lot of stick for losing Brisfits on its first outing because of his flying the aircraft in a defensive posture. On his first operation, he was shot down and taken prisoner. Manfred von Richtofen managed to claim two of four Bristols lost on that day. 48 Sqn pilots began flying the aircraft offensively individually within that first three weeks, the change of tactics proving the aircraft's credentials and being roundly adopted from the 30th April onwards.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 4, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Nothing uncommon about that, certainly not a British only issue,* if that's what you're insinuating*


Excuse me for referring to a few other threads around here, like





Bristol aircraft after the Blenheim


Same drill as with similar threads: once they have contract for the Blenheim (September 1935), what kind of aircraft Bristol should've been designing and producing? For the upcoming war, and up until ~1955 when the Mach 2 is the next 'target' for the aircraft-producing companies. Engines of the...



ww2aircraft.net





You will be happy to hear I will try my best not to let it happen again to save your sensibilities.

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## nuuumannn (Jun 4, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> You will be happy to hear I will try my best not to let it happen again to save your sensibilities.



Why, thank you good sir. I expect nothing less 

I'm catching up with what's going on so haven't read through a lot of stuff yet, Studying at the moment, with exams in two weeks, so not much time spent on more important things, like this, for example.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 4, 2022)

Delete post


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 5, 2022)

For someone like me not so up on the details, were there recognizable advantages/disadvantages regarding electrically-powered/hydraulically-powered turrets?


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## EwenS (Jun 5, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> From what I've read, there were many reasons why the Shark was superior to the Swordfish, and that production of the latter was ceased by Fairey during WW2 and was taken over by Blackburn must have been a bit of a bloody nose for that company. Neverthelss, the Blackburn Blackburn was matched in hideousness by the Avro Bison, both types outward appearance reflecting the navy's desire to provide a big space for the observer and his radio equipment.


When WW2 broke out Fairey's factories at Hayes in Middlesex and Heaton Chapel, Stockport were fully occupied.

Hayes was in the process of finishing up its pre-war Swordfish orders and tooling up for the new Albacore. The first production Albacore rolled off the line in Oct 1939 and the last Fairey produced Swordfish in Feb 1940.

Blackburn seem to have become involved with Fairey designs in Nov 1938 when the Air Ministry suggested that they should build 100 Albacores in a purpose built workshop at at their Brough factory. In 1939 the Admiralty sought, and obtained, Treasury approval for Blackburn to build 400 Albacores (with 480 Taurus engines) to be produced at a rate of 40 per month (alongside 50 per month from Fairey). By 25 Oct 1939 the Admiralty and Air Ministry had had further talks and it had become apparent that, if the Blackburn order was changed to Swordfish, the required production rate could be achieved 4 months earlier. This was because the Swordfish tooling at the Fairey Hayes factory could be transferred to Blackburn and, as the Swordfish used less metal alloys, the materials would be more readily available.

While the Admiralty considered that the "performance of the Swordfish is substantially inferior to that of the Albacore in several respects", it meant getting the aircraft earlier and saving resources and approx £2 million. So the order became 400 Swordfish and 480 Pegasus engines in Oct 1939. Blackburn then began production of Swordfish at its new Sherburn-in-Elmet shadow factory, with the first rolling off the production line in Dec 1940. Orders for a further 1,900 followed (last 600 cancelled) and production by Blackburn continued until Aug 1944.

In Nov 1934 Fairey had acquired the old WW1 National Aircraft Factory No.2 at Heaton Chapel, from Crossley & Willys Overland the vehicle builders. It began by building all 14 production Fairey Hendons in 1936/37 and from 1937 the Fairey Battle, production of which went on until Sept 1940. Production of the Fulmar was due to start in late 1939 (the first rolled off the production line slightly late in Jan 1940). By the outbreak of war plans were already calling for Barracuda production to start there by April 1941 in succession to the Fulmar. The factory also reconditioned 100 Swordfish in 1940. Barracuda production finally commenced in April 1942 continuing until 1947, while the last Fulmar was produced in Feb 1943. Fairey expanded the site by taking over the adjoining Crossley Motor Works in 1940 and went on to build Beaufighters and Halifax bombers there through to the end of the war.

Blackburn also went on to build 700 Fairey Barracudas at its Brough factory between Oct 1942 and June 1945.

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## GregP (Jun 5, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Skua = 192 built
> SBD = 5,936 built
> 
> Comparison of "scores" actually tells us nothing.
> ...



You might check out: U. S. Naval Aircraft Designations 1939-45

SBD meant "Scout Bomber Douglas." SB is Scout Bomber and D is Douglas.

The SB2C was Scout Bomber, 2nd type (2), Curtiss (C).

The Privateer was a PB4Y-2. PB is Patrol Bomber, 4th type (4), Consolidated (Y), -2 second variant.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 5, 2022)

GregP said:


> You might check out: U. S. Naval Aircraft Designations 1939-45
> 
> SBD meant "Scout Bomber Douglas." SB is Scout Bomber and D is Douglas.
> 
> ...


Thank you for the correction. 

I Knew that...........................once upon a time

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## SaparotRob (Jun 5, 2022)

I now remember lots of stuff that never happened.

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## GTX (Jun 5, 2022)

The RN FAA was certainly not unfamiliar with the SBD:

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## SaparotRob (Jun 5, 2022)

I just love that plane.

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## ThomasP (Jun 5, 2022)

My understanding is that the UK ordered a number of SBD early-war (pre-US entry?), but supply was slow to build up and the US would not release any in the time frame they were wanted. By the time enough SBD became available the SB2C was coming online - the FAA tested the SB2C-1 model but found them unsuitable for their use.


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## EwenS (Jun 5, 2022)

GTX said:


> The RN FAA was certainly not unfamiliar with the SBD:
> 
> View attachment 672407


Only 9 SBD-5 received and used for trials only in 1943/44 by both the FAA and RAF.

At least the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver reached squadron service with a single squadron, even if it never reached operational status. 450 ordered. 26 received.


1820 Naval Air Squadron


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## Greyman (Jun 5, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> For someone like me not so up on the details, were there recognizable advantages/disadvantages regarding electrically-powered/hydraulically-powered turrets?



Oversimplifying and conveniently ignoring changes and developments in tech, but:

*Hydraulic*
*+* ease of tracking/control
*+* positive control at very low rates of movement
*+* better at handling excessive torque loads
*-* much more vulnerable to damage
*-* much more servicing and reliability issues

*Electric*
*+* better/more reliable performance over wide temperature ranges
*+* tended to have higher speeds
*-* considerations re: capacity of aircraft's generators

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 5, 2022)

Greyman said:


> Oversimplifying and conveniently ignoring changes and developments in tech, but:
> 
> *Hydraulic*
> *+* ease of tracking/control
> ...



If I'm reading this right, then, the electric turrets were too "snappy" and perhaps got away from the operators, while hydraulic turrets with slower speeds perhaps offered better gun-laying?

As for generators, wouldn't that also be an issue for engine-driven hydraulic pumps? After all, both are driven by engine PTOs, right?

Please forgive what may be ignorant questions, I've just never drilled into this.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 5, 2022)

That looks like a good summary.

Things did change a bit as the years went by.
Both camps were trying to improve their products.

Some were hybrids. That is a hydraulic pump powered by an electric motor close to the turret.

I don't know how some of the American planes were set up but some British 4 engine planes had different parts of the plane run by different engine generators. No cross over. 
Like if the tail turret was powered by engine No 1 and you lost engine No 1 you also lost the tail turret but the turret and nose turret would still function. This was early in the war. Later they cross connected things and upsized the generators so that 2 generators out of three would carry the electrical load.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 5, 2022)

I knew the British bombers sometimes had dedicated engines for specific subsystems. Did this ever become an issue in combat? And did American bombers follow this practice?


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## Shortround6 (Jun 5, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Please forgive what may be ignorant questions, I've just never drilled into this.


A lot of us haven't drilled into it as a subject on it's own.
Sometimes it's just snippets of things we have run across. 

And just because a particular turret operated one way in 1941 doesn't mean it's replacement/later production version operated exactly the same in 1944. 

A different variable is the ammo load. The British tail turrets would hold a huge amount of ammo in tracks that ran well forward into the waist of the fuselage. 
I don't know how the American tail turrets/guns were set up. Some of the American dorsal turrets would only hold a certain amount of of ammo (which rotated with the turret) but their were extra boxes to reload with nearby. I have no idea how long it took to reload or change boxes? Early Martin turret in a B-26 would hold 200rpg. .50 cal ammo went about 30lbs per hundred so trying to move 200rounds with the box was not easy. Of course trying to move 200 rounds without the box was even harder unless you were a professional juggler 
The turret may well have held 400rpg in the boxes but listed the extra 200rpg as "overload" and 200rpg per gun as 'standard load". 
B-17s and B-24s often carried thousands of rounds in boxes inside the plane that had to be changed over in flight.

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## EwenS (Jun 5, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> If I'm reading this right, then, the electric turrets were too "snappy" and perhaps got away from the operators, while hydraulic turrets with slower speeds perhaps offered better gun-laying?
> 
> As for generators, wouldn't that also be an issue for engine-driven hydraulic pumps? After all, both are driven by engine PTOs, right?
> 
> Please forgive what may be ignorant questions, I've just never drilled into this.


This might help if you can track down a copy.
Amazon product

Volume 2 covered guns & gunsights.
Amazon product


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 5, 2022)

EwenS said:


> This might help if you can track down a copy.
> Amazon product
> 
> Volume 2 covered guns & gunsights.
> Amazon product




Nothing's showing up on this end. I could google titles if you'd be so kind.


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## nuuumannn (Jun 5, 2022)

I certainly can't elaborate on the differences between electrically driven and hydraulically driven turrets, but I can give an insight into the three main British turret manufacturers and their different systems. These were Boulton Paul, Bristol and Nash & Thompson.

We'll start with BP. Its turrets were all based on the same principles and workings of the de Boysson turret that was built under licence and first fitted to the Defiant. It was electro-hydraulic, which means that power for the hydraulic actuation was supplied by a 24 volt DC motor. This received motive power from slip rings in the turret rotating base. The DC motor was attached to and drove a hydraulic generator, which supplied hydraulic pressure to the pump, which drove the actuation of the turret in azimuth via a rotating cog and the guns in elevation via an actuator. The hydraulic working gear was supplied by Hele-Shaw Beecham, this name might be familiar to some of you as the company was affiliated with Gloster and in the 1920s built the world's first constant speed propeller.

In the BP turrets the controls were electrically actuated, as was the firing circuit. They were very simple and the turret was easy to operate. It had one joystick lever with a firing button on it, whose actuation in either direction rotated the turret and back and forth raised and lowered the guns. The seat also tilted slightly so the gunner's line of sight followed the guns. The one-handed operation enabled the gunner to cock the guns and un-jam them individually if need be while the others were still firing. The joystick was also a dead man's switch. The de Boysson turret was compact, but heavy. Visibility wasn't great, especially directly ahead, but other BP turrets solved this issue by bigger cupolas. BP turrets also had a boost function, which enabled rapid turret rotation in emergencies, but this wore out the hydraulic system and was not recommended for constant use. Boulton Paul Type C turret fitted to Hudsons and Halifaxes.





YAM 62

Out of the three types, the Bristol turrets were the simplest and lightest. They were plumbed into the aircraft's hydraulic system and driven by the EDP. Their controls comprised the gunner sitting on a bike seat that was attached to a central stork, which had a handle bar that the gunner held and turning it in either direction moved the turret in azimuth. Elevation was achieved by twisting movement of the handles, the seat moved with the guns, enabling line of sight. The left hand handle had a trigger to open the hydraulic system and the right hand handle had the firing trigger attached to it. The problem some Bristol turrets faced was that they didn't have enough motive power in times of high slipstream or forces acting on the guns and some of the turrets refused to turn in flight against the slipstream. This didn't happen to all their turrets, but was problematic for the ones it happened to, including the B.11, which was fitted to (two) de Havilland Mosquitoes and was intended for Douglas Bostons, but because it failed at high speeds it was not put into production. Bristol B.1 turret cupola as fitted to a Bolingbroke. The gun was offset to enable the gunner to fire directly aft and not hit the fin.




DSC_1101

The N&T turrets, like the Bristol ones were hydraulic and relied on the aircraft's system to work. The advantages of this was that the turret was light, but that if the hydraulic system suffered a failure, like in combat, the turrets stopped working. N&T and BP turrets had a wee hand operated handle that could rotate the turret if it had no power. It took about 10 to 15 seconds to turn the handle around enough times to turn the turret 360 degrees. The N&T turrets were actuated by two handles canted at an angle outward in line with the guns and although they had individual firing triggers on each handle, the turret would not turn unless both handles were twisted in the direction the gunner wanted the turret to go. This meant that the guns had to be cocked before they could be turned and if there was a stoppage, the gunner had to release one hand to clear the stoppage, which stopped the turret from rotating. He could continue to fire the other gun/s not blocked though. Nash & Thompson FN.20 rear turret fitted to Avro Lancasters. The yellow turret behind is an unpowered Armstrong Whitworth turret as fitted to Avro Ansons and Airspeed Oxfords.




YAM 60

So, in summary, the BP turrets benefitted from ease of operation and the fact that the entire workings of the turret, e.g. its hydraulic system was entirely self-contained. The slip rings ensured that the turret could still work if there was an electrical failure and not relying on the aircraft's hydraulic system could also fully function in the event of hydraulic system failure. The down side was that the BP turrets were heavier because they were self contained and they were more sophisticated, bringing higher maintenance. The other types were lighter, but relying on the aircraft's hydraulics meant that failures of that meant the turrets could only work manually. They also relied on messy moveable hydraulic joints in the hydraulic lines that leaked and provided a mess for the mechanics to clean up and at worst caught fire if ignited. Obviously, none of the turrets were particularly easy to get in and out of and the Defiant and its early A.1 turret got a reputation as a gunner killer. There was supposed to be a hatch in the bottom of the aircraft below the turret, but the gunner would have had to dismember himself to get through it because it was so small. Defiant gunners wore a special flying suit that had their parachute packed into it, called the Rhino-suit and ingress and egress was best made by turning the turret to one side and climbing in and out of externally. Boulton Paul Type A.1 turret as fitted to a Defiant.




DSC_0056

The Bristol turrets were easy to get into and out of from below (correction) and there was less clutter in them, but the gunners couldn't carry their parachutes in the turrets with them as the bike seat they sat on was too small. N&T turret gunners could sit on theirs, as pilots did. Access for those was obvious, through the doors in rear turrets or up from underneath for mid upper and front turrets, both easily achieved. Getting out was always the difficult bit, although rear gunners could turn the turrets to one side and open the turret's doors and fall out backwards. All this illustrates that being a gunner was not the most comforting occupation on board an aircraft.

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## GregP (Jun 5, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Thank you for the correction.
> 
> I Knew that...........................once upon a time



Hey Sortround6. I do that all the time and I'd bet money you catch me more often than I catch you. 

It's all good. Cheers.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jun 5, 2022)

Greyman said:


> Oversimplifying and conveniently ignoring changes and developments in tech, but:
> 
> *Hydraulic*
> *+* ease of tracking/control
> ...


The GE Amplidyne control system allowed electric turrets to be as precise as hydraulic. The Martin upper turret used this system and was extraordinarily successful being utilized on a multitude of types (B-26, B-24, A-20, Baltimore, Ventura, Neptune, B-32) and continuing on to the post war.




In fact, late production Lancasters used it in lieu of the FN 50 hydraulic turret.
As you note the hydraulic lines were more vulnerable to damage and worse, presented a fire hazard if the lines were breached. I recall a note stating that a surprising number of Lancasters were lost due to hydraulic fires. The Bolton Paul turrets obviated that problem by using local pumps for the hydraulics. The BP turrets were one of the few advantages that the Halifax had over the Lancaster and when the Lincoln replaced the Lancaster it used BP nose and rear turrets in conjunction with the Martin upper turret which together eliminated the long hydraulic lines. 
The attached document from which the above snippet was taken provides an overview of the extraordinarily complicated American development of a bewildering variety of turrets to perform the same basic functions, some doing it much better than others. It's ironic that the Americans, who pride themselves on mass production and standardization, produced such a chaotic program.

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## EwenS (Jun 6, 2022)

Lincoln first prototype PW925 flew with the Martin turret in the dorsal position. But the second and third prototypes and all production Lincolns used a Bristol B.17 turret fitted with 2x20mm Hispano cannon in the dorsal position. Postwar they were removed from many aircraft.






Bristol B.17 mid-upper turret with twin 20 mm Hispano cannon | World War Photos


Bristol B.17 mid-upper turret with twin 20 mm Hispano (Mk IV or V) cannons



www.worldwarphotos.info

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## nuuumannn (Jun 6, 2022)

Interesting snippet about the Amplidyne system, which was also applied on the Bendix Type A top turret fitted to the B-25. I can't say I know the history of US turret design and manufacture (thanks Reluctant Poster for the attachment), but I do know that US gun turret manufacturers benefitted enormously from a technology exchange with Britain in 1941. Examples of Boulton Paul and Nash & Thompson turrets were sent to Wright Field and manufacturers were quick to adopt British technology into their turrets, which by that stage had yet to yield anything that was suitable for service use. The biggest problem that turret designers had with their turrets was weight (!) and getting the actuation system right. The Bendix B-25 turret and the Martin Type 250 CE turret, one of the widest applied top turrets of the war and which saw installation in Canadian built Lancasters and was going to be fitted to Handley Page Halifaxes, took advantage of the Nash & Thompson design of hand controls redesigned by General Electric and adapted to suit the electrical control system via the amplidyne unit. The successful Martin 250 CE top turret showing its GE control yoke, Amplidyne control box and N-8 GGS.




DSC_0221

Consolidated and Emerson applied the N&T control system to its B-24 end turrets, despite the Emerson ones being electrically driven, although the Consolidated turrets were hydraulically powered through ther aircraft's hydraulic system, like the N&T turrets. The Sperry Gyroscope Company took full advantage of the British technology, particularly the Boulton Paul Type T turret that was sent to the USA and the Sperry Type A-1 top turret fitted to B-17Es and Fs had a more than passing resemblance to the BP Type T turret and used its electro-hydraulic working gear. Sperry also applied this system of using a DC motor to drive the hydraulic system to power the turret in the Briggs-Sperry Ball Turret applied to B-17s and B-24s. Like the BP turrets, the ball turret was entirely self contained and didn't rely on the aircraft's hydraulic system. A Boulton Paul, sorry, Briggs-Sperry ball turret.




DSC_0469

Its interesting to note that the first US bombers fitted with power operated turrets of the war were RAF LB-30s and Liberator Mk.IIs, the latter of which was specially built for the British, although the USAAF received Mk.IIs and designated them LB-30s. The Mk.II had a Boulton Paul Type A turret (as fitted to the Defiant and Halifax) _aft _of the wing spar and a Boulton Paul Type E tail turret, also fitted to the Halifax. The Type E turret also remained in use on some RAF Coastal Command Liberator GR variants, which, once US turrets became available generally replaced the British turrets on RAF B-24s, but not all. It was decided (by the Air Ministry?) that foreign types in RAF service would be fitted with Boulton Paul turrets, which included the Lockheed Hudsons and their distinctive BP top turrets, but also the Liberators and Douglas Bostons, which were also going to be fitted with BP turrets, but different types were trialled, including a Rose turret. The Bristol B.11 turret, which was originally designed for the not proceeded with Beaumont bomber, was intended on being fitted to Bostons, but might not have ever been fitted to one. To my knowledge the only fitting of this turret to an aircraft was the two prototype de Havilland Mosquito turret fighters. These British built turrets were originally intended for installation in Boston IIIs, but the Boston IV was delivered with the standard Martin 250 CE turret, and RAF Boston IIIs never went to war with power turrets.

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## nuuumannn (Jun 6, 2022)

I should note that as much as I'd like to, I can't provide a list of source info for what I've written here, as most of it comes from stuff I've read or copied over the years from a multitude of books and magazines. I have photocopied pages from various books and magazine articles, including the British Aircraft Armament books, but also books on Boulton Paul and manuals for the BP electro-hydraulic system. I copied a lot of stuff when I worked in museums in the UK and, I'd imagine like you guys, I have boxes full of clippings that will probably one day end up on the rubbish tip...


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## Admiral Beez (Jun 6, 2022)

EwenS said:


> At least the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver reached squadron service with a single squadron, even if it never reached operational status. 450 ordered. 26 received.
> 
> 
> 1820 Naval Air Squadron


Considering the Commonwealth was producing the Helldiver they could have easily made some for Britain.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 6, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Considering the Commonwealth was producing the Helldiver they could have easily made some for Britain.



Boy, a Barracuda vs Helldiver thread might have some potential.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 6, 2022)

Maybe they flew one and decided "Thanks, but no Thanks!" much like the Airacobra I.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jun 6, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Interesting snippet about the Amplidyne system, which was also applied on the Bendix Type A top turret fitted to the B-25. I can't say I know the history of US turret design and manufacture (thanks Reluctant Poster for the attachment), but I do know that US gun turret manufacturers benefitted enormously from a technology exchange with Britain in 1941. Examples of Boulton Paul and Nash & Thompson turrets were sent to Wright Field and manufacturers were quick to adopt British technology into their turrets, which by that stage had yet to yield anything that was suitable for service use. The biggest problem that turret designers had with their turrets was weight (!) and getting the actuation system right. The Bendix B-25 turret and the Martin Type 250 CE turret, one of the widest applied top turrets of the war and which saw installation in Canadian built Lancasters and was going to be fitted to Handley Page Halifaxes, took advantage of the Nash & Thompson design of hand controls redesigned by General Electric and adapted to suit the electrical control system via the amplidyne unit. The successful Martin 250 CE top turret showing its GE control yoke, Amplidyne control box and N-8 GGS.
> 
> View attachment 672575
> DSC_0221
> ...


The study I posted on US turrets gives much credit to the Brtish leading the wy in turret design

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## EwenS (Jun 7, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Considering the Commonwealth was producing the Helldiver they could have easily made some for Britain.


The British aircraft actually came from the Canadian production line and were SBW-1B models. Produced by Canadian Car & Foundry Company. Made no difference to how good/bad they were.

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## Geoffrey Sinclair (Jun 7, 2022)

Britain, SBD-5 Dauntless arrivals, 2 in November 1943, 1 in February and 6 in April 1944. For evaluation. The SBD-5 went out of production in April and the SBD-6 in August 1944. Canadian Car and Foundry built the SBW September 1943 to September 1945. Fairchild Canada built the SBF October 1943 to May 1945. Canada says 835 SBW built, the U.S. says 834. The first SBW-5, USN Bureau Number 60210, was never accepted by the USN.

835 SBW, 40 -1, 26 -1B (British), 413 -3, 270 -4/4E and 86 -5. The SBW-1B acceptances were 1 in September, 6 in November, 8 in December 1943, 7 in January and 4 in February 1944. The USN reports JW100 to 125 were BuNo 60010 to 60035 but 60023 crashed, while BuNo 21198 was an XSBW-3 but crashed. The SBW-1/1B (and in fact all CCF Helldiver) orders were NXs-LL-139A on 23 May 1942 for 450 aircraft (BuNo 60010 to 60459) and NOa(s)-1733 on 17 September 1943 for 550 aircraft (BuNo 21192 to 21741). 

300 SBF, 1 X-1, 49 -1, 150 -3 and 100 -4E.

Britain Helldiver (SBW-1B) arrivals 3 in March, 1 in May, 4 in August and 1 in September 1944, 1 in January 1945, the remaining 16 were presumably assigned to 1820 squadron which arrived in Britain on HMS Arbiter in July 1944 after training in the US and losing some aircraft there.

The other Helldiver family export. The Australian Minister of External Affairs, Dr. H.V. Evatt's 1943 mission to the US resulted in additional aircraft for the RAAF, including 3 types not previously allocated, 150 A.25, 12 PBM and 14 UC-64, notified to Australia on 17 July 1943. The A-25 were ordered under RAAF Overseas Indent 2225. The USAAF reports it delivered 1 A-25 in August and 9 in September for the RAAF, serials 42-79673 to 42-79682.

As of end July 1943 the RAAF reports the 150 A-25 Shrike shipments were to begin in August, then in September it was none yet arrived but shipments were expected to finish in December. By mid September "Due to temporary restrictions on West Coast shipping the aircraft are moving to the East Coast for shipment."

10 reported en route mid October. By November shipments expected to be completed in January 1944. The RAAF reported the 10 sent arrived 23 to 25 November 1943 as uncrated deck cargo on the Port Caroline, adhesive plaster used to protect flaps, joints etc. and were A25-A-15-CS models.

Mid December, "Shipments being held until clarification of radio equipment."

Mid January 1944 "Action taken to cancel 142 dive bombers from RAAF allocations, it is understood most will be Shrikes" the A-25 order was cancelled by the end of the next week.

In February "Possibility of returning the Shrikes to US authorities being investigated." and "9 aircraft not erected to stay that way, will be returned to USA".

A69-4/42-79676 was allocated for target towing trials and performance testing in February/March 1944.

October 1944 A-25 Shrike "Approval to dispose of aircraft to USAAF given." December 1944 "5 issued to USAAF.", January 1945 remaining 5 issued to USAAF.

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## Admiral Beez (Jun 8, 2022)

It's interesting that the RAF never took interest in dedicated dive bombers. They seemed to have success with the Vengeance. What about an improved Skua for the RAF? Omitting the wing fold mechanism, arrestor hook, catapult fittings and dinghy might shave a few hundred pounds off.


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## SaparotRob (Jun 8, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> It's interesting that the RAF never took interest in dedicated dive bombers. They seemed to have success with the Vengeance. What about an improved Skua for the RAF? Omitting the wing fold mechanism, arrestor hook, catapult fittings and dinghy might shave a few hundred pounds off.


And do something about that darned windscreen!

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## Reluctant Poster (Jun 9, 2022)

EwenS said:


> Lincoln first prototype PW925 flew with the Martin turret in the dorsal position. But the second and third prototypes and all production Lincolns used a Bristol B.17 turret fitted with 2x20mm Hispano cannon in the dorsal position. Postwar they were removed from many aircraft.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I should have noted that the Martin turret was replaced by the Bristol. The Bristol was electrically driven but I don't know what control system it used

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## Shortround6 (Jun 9, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> And do something about that darned windscreen!




OK, sending over an airplane to serve as a model for the new windscreen. 






Hope that meets you expectations.

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## SaparotRob (Jun 9, 2022)

Thanks bro’!


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## EwenS (Jun 9, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> And do something about that darned windscreen!


Look closely. Is it really that bad? Note the very narrow not quite vertical panel and the much larger almost triangular angled quarter panels.

Think about pushing the air around the sides of the cockpit rather than over the top.





Blackburn B-24 Skua


A shipboard two seat fighter / dive bomber that was the first British type to shoot down an enemy aircraft during the Second World War.




www.baesystems.com

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## SaparotRob (Jun 9, 2022)

I really wasn't all that serious.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 9, 2022)

I agree that people are a bit too hard on the Skua, mostly because to the "fighter" designation. 
I get accused of being anti British at times.
So here is a hit on the Americans.





In service in defense of Somoa until June 1943 (?) 

It does have a sloped windscreen but it has so much drag from other things that it didn't need dive brakes. 
All so note that it is a convertible. 




When the enemy approaches from the rear the gunner note only slides the canopy forward, he has to lower the turtle deck to open the field of fire and swing the gun into position.
(British got 5 of them, went straight to training, didn't even try to use them as target towers'

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## Admiral Beez (Jun 9, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> And do something about that darned windscreen!


It is odd. I don't think any other monoplane divebomber had such a windscreen.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 10, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> When the enemy approaches from the rear the gunner note only slides the canopy forward, he has to lower the turtle deck to open the field of fire and swing the gun into position.
> (British got 5 of them, went straight to training, didn't even try to use them as target towers'



Didn't the SB2C (which is one of my favorite GI acronyms ever!) have the same deployment process for the rear gunner -- dropping the deck for the field of fire?


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## EwenS (Jun 10, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Didn't the SB2C (which is one of my favorite GI acronyms ever!) have the same deployment process for the rear gunner -- dropping the deck for the field of fire?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jun 10, 2022)

EwenS said:


> View attachment 673035



Thanks, 
E
 EwenS
-- it's good to know my memory ain't going completely to crap!


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## yulzari (Jun 11, 2022)

Re tail guns; Faireys found the Battle hand held rear VGO reduced performance when deployed with extra drag and the gun was difficult to use in the 200+mph wind. They concluded that keeping the rear closed up and saving the weight of the gun etc. would be of more use. Tried on the post Battle light dive bomber offer and deliberately kept so on the Fulmar.


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## EwenS (Jun 11, 2022)

yulzari said:


> Re tail guns; Faireys found the Battle hand held rear VGO reduced performance when deployed with extra drag and the gun was difficult to use in the 200+mph wind. They concluded that keeping the rear closed up and saving the weight of the gun etc. would be of more use. Tried on the post Battle light dive bomber offer and deliberately kept so on the Fulmar.


The gunner in the Battle was much more exposed when using his gun, than the gunner in the SB2C. Small wonder it was difficult to use and caused drag.









Fairey Battle I RAF air gunner mans his Vickers K gun from the rear cockpit


Asisbiz article about Fairey Battle I RAF air gunner mans his Vickers K gun from the rear cockpit




www.asisbiz.com


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## Macandy (Jun 14, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Centaur is essentially a single level Ark Royal or an Illustrious without the armoured box. Nothing really evolutionary there. But I am suggesting the Centaurs follow the Illustrious, so when the four Illustrious/Indomitable start in 1937 the follow-on design should be Centaurs.




The Royal Navy did indeed abandon the armoured box hanger after the Indomitables.
It had a fatal flaw that doomed all of them to short lives and early trips to the scrapyard

The very rigid box kept most bombs out, but Newton and his every action has a reaction is a thing.

While on an American carrier, the blast was vented outboard from the hanger, on a British armoured carrier, the shock was fed down through the armoured box into the hull causing structural damage like bent shafts, twisted keels and other not good outcomes.
The other thing was a fire in the hanger - it didn't vent and temperatures reached such high levels, yet again, twisted hull time.

The follow on Audacious class had a much lighter armoured box, little better than splinter levels with armoured patches over the vitals, and Malta class were modelled after the Lexingtons and did away with it.

Also, its claimed the 'stupid Americans' followed British practice and moved the strength deck up from the hanger floor to the flight deck as they had fallen in love with 'armoured carriers'. Nope, they did it because it was the only way to make the huge new carriers hulls stiff enough.

Also, its commonly claimed US wartime carriers weren't armoured - actually, yes they were, but the armoured deck was the hanger floor.


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## EwenS (Jun 14, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The Royal Navy did indeed abandon the armoured box hanger after the Indomitables.
> It had a fatal flaw that doomed all of them to short lives and early trips to the scrapyard
> 
> The very rigid box kept most bombs out, but Newton and his every action has a reaction is a thing.
> ...


The RN did NOT abandon the armoured box hangar after Indomitable.

Firstly we need to clarify exactly what we are talking about. Carrier hangars can be either "open" or "closed". An open hangar is basically superstructure sitting on the ship's hull girder and extends to the edge of the deck (It needs expansion joints spaced along its flight deck length to cope with bending of the hull girder under it). A closed hangar is usually part of the hull girder itself, and there will be compartments between the ship's side and the hangar walls.

And either can be armoured or unarmoured.

So the US built CV-2 & 3 Lexington and Saratoga with closed hangars before moving to open hangars, until the Forrestal class supercarrier were developed in the early 1950s both for considerations of hull strength and protection from nuclear blast. After considering adding armoured flight decks to a number of carrier designs (Yorktown and Essex) they finally adopted an armoured flight deck in the Midway class, to protect a large part of the hangar space. As in earlier US carrier's the hangar deck was armoured and they added armoured doors to divide up the hangar. All that required support so holes in the hangar walls had to be reduced compared with previous open hangar designs. Additional hangar side protection came from the pedestals for the 5"/54 guns. But no armoured sides to the hangar itself.

The Japanese opted for the closed hangar in their carrier's, adding an armoured flight deck in the Taiho.

Britain also opted for the closed hangar design for its carriers including the 1938 Ark Royal. It was only with the Illustrious class that a move was made to turn that closed hangar into an armoured box.

In the Implacable design they had to save weight to stay within the 23,000 ton Treaty limit and have more speed and the extra half hangar. So the armour on the hangar sides and bulkheads was reduced from 4.5" to 1.5" to compensate. That was then also applied to Indomitable while her design was being modified in 1938. But it was still NC armour plate not ordinary steel plate and it was still used structurally as in the Illustrious class.

The Audacious class as designed in 1942 increased the thickness of the flight deck from 3" to 4" but retained the 1.5" hangar wall NC armour. The double hangar was still closed and an armoured box.

The Colossus/Majestic and Centaur classes still had a closed hangar, but it was left unarmoured.

Ark Royal and Hermes (armoured and unarmoured closed hangar designs respectively) had to have significant strengthening added to their sides when redesigned post-war to incorporate side lifts as the hull girder was being cut into.

As for the Maltas, there was much debate within the Admiralty about whether to adopt an open or closed hangar. The initial design adopted was basically an enlarged armoured closed double hangar Audacious class. Then everyone went back to the drawing board and the final design, which incidentally was never approved by the Admiralty before cancellation, became a US style open hangar design without an armoured flight deck it is the latter that appears in most illustrations and models of the ship.

The stories about the Illustrious class having bent shafts and twisted keels postwar as a result of wartime bomb damage has yet to be evidenced. (I would call it a myth but who knows someone someday might find something buried in the archives that has not yet come to light. Never say never. But not yet.). Illustrious herself served as a trials and training carrier all the way through until the end of 1954 having steamed the equivalent of nearly 18 times around the world. Not something you would expect of a ship of a ship so badly damaged in the way claimed. Only Formidable did not see service post-war, and while in Reserve seems to have been badly neglected being in a "poor material state" by 1949, without any mention of twisted kneels and bent shafts. Indomitable was the other ship that was heavily damaged at different times, but she too saw service between 1950 and 1953 as an operational carrier.

As for fire damage, take a look at the damage reports for Illustrious in 1941 and compare with that for the Franklin in 1945 with her much improved standards if damage control. The hangar fire in Illustrious affected only the after part and was contained there. The fire on the deck below was started by a bomb weighing far in excess of what her armour, or that of any carrier, could have kept out and which hit further forward IIRC (2,200lb). And again where is the evidence that these fires led to more twisted hull damage.

Post-war the RN preferred the light carriers on the front line because it took less crew to man them at a time when the RN had a manning problem. So Victorious, Indefatigable and Implacable spent long periods as training ships only going to sea occasionally, but being manned meant that they were well maintained.

When it came to the 1950s the closed hangar design was just not as flexible when it came to reconstructing them, as the open hangar design in the much larger Essex and Midway classes of the US Navy. After the early experience with Victorious (reconstructed 1950-58) and the headaches from planning the Implacable reconstruction, the RN canned the whole project in 1952. It was just not worth the effort and cost to get a decent carrier capable of taking the types of aircraft expected in service by the end of the decade.

At the end of the day both the US Navy and the RN built the types of carrier that they felt was best suited to the war that they expected to fight.

DK Brown, the naval architect and author, in "Nelson to Vanguard" discusses the pros and cons of open v closed hangars, summarising them like this:--

"Open hangar. Good ventilation, easy to warm up planes, mount large strike, side lifts, more planes.
Closed hangar. Stronger, lighter hull. Much safer against fire, easy to armour, planes protected from weather and some enemy action.

"The choice was not easy, depending on the weight attached to different aspects. Goodall [Sir Stanley Goodall, the wartime Director of Naval Construction] made these points in 1943 under four headings - Aircraft operation, Size and strength of the ship, Protection and Fire risk. He saw the open hangar having a small lead in operation, closed with a big lead in strength and protection and little difference in fire risk. Overall he favoured the closed hangar. I would suggest that both the RN and the US N were right for the wars they planned to fight, the RN in narrow seas, facing shore - based aircraft while the US N expected to engage the Japanese fleet in the open Pacific. The author's choice for The RN in the late 1930s would have been an improved Ark Royal [completed Dec 1938 with hangar capacity for 60 Swordfish / Skua sized aircraft] with better lifts and cleaner run of uptake."

There is plenty of information including damage reports over on the armoured carriers website.








Armoured Aircraft Carriers in World War II


Action reports and battle damage for the armoured aircraft carriers HMS Illustrious, Formidable, Victorious, Indomitable, Indefatigable and Implacable in World War II, 1940-1942




www.armouredcarriers.com





And you can find the Franklin damage report here.





USS Franklin CV-13 War Damage Report No. 56


DECLASSIFIED CONFIDENTIAL




www.history.navy.mil




And those for Enterprise





Damage Reports


Diagrams and reports of battle damage inflicted on USS Enterprise CV-6.



cv6.org

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## Reluctant Poster (Jun 15, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The Royal Navy did indeed abandon the armoured box hanger after the Indomitables.
> It had a fatal flaw that doomed all of them to short lives and early trips to the scrapyard
> 
> The very rigid box kept most bombs out, but Newton and his every action has a reaction is a thing.
> ...


The vented blast myth.

Here are some excerpts from the damage report for the Enterprise when it was struck by a kamikaze on May 14, 1945








The famous photo of a portion of the elevator 400 feet in the air.




Note the flight deck was bulged upwards by 3 and and half feet




Full report is here: USS Enterprise CV6 War History 1941 - 1945
From the Wasp lost in action report




Elevator blown up and over. Side venting doesn't seemed to have helped.


http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/WDR/U.S.S.%20WASP%20(CV-7),%20TORPEDO%20DAMAGE%20-%20South%20Pacific,%20September%2015,%201942%20(LOST%20IN%20ACTION).pdf



The statement that
" the shock was fed down through the armoured box into the hull causing structural damage like bent shafts, twisted keels and other not good outcomes.
The other thing was a fire in the hanger - it didn't vent and temperatures reached such high levels, yet again, twisted hull" is not true . Bent shafts were caused by underwater explosion from near misses. What specific references to you have for twisted hulls from hanger fires?

As to your statement that the US didn't want armored flight decks here is an excerpt from the USS Franklin damage report




Report is here: USS Franklin CV-13 War Damage Report No. 56
Actually the USN was 'stupid" enough to follow the RN. Every USN fleet carrier after the Essex class was fitted with an armored flight deck. It was a decision based on experience with the survivability of RN carriers. Note that the strength deck was still at the hanger level on the Midway class, the armored flight deck was pure superstructure .
It also important to note that the USN carriers were struck with smaller bombs (500lb) than the RN were hit with in the Med. The destructive power of a 1000 lb bomb was more than twice that of a 500 lb. NO carrier suffered any where near the number of bomb hits the Illustrious took on January 1, 1941 and lived to tell the tale.
As to the closed hanger the USN spent a lot of money post war turning their Essex class carriers into Illustrious look alikes.





Aircraft Carrier Intrepid


Launched in 1943, the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid fought in World War II, surviving five kamikaze attacks and one torpedo strike. The ship later served in the Cold War and Vietnam. Intrepid also served as a NASA recovery vessel in the 1960s.




www.intrepidmuseum.org




Note sides are plated and the bow enclosed.
Another thing to note is the appalling casualty rate on US carriers which was far far greater than on RN ships. I have the stats somewhere and will dig them up.

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## EwenS (Jun 15, 2022)

Enterprise's flight deck, just aft and to port of her forward lift well following the kamikaze damage on 4 May.





One of a series of photos of the Bunker Hill in May 1945







Aircraft Carrier Photo Index: USS BUNKER HILL (CV-17)




Franklin arriving in New York a month after being bombed

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## Geoffrey Sinclair (Jun 15, 2022)

From Norman Friedman,
The propeller for the centre shaft of Illustrious had been removed before the ship was hit by a Kamikaze. It was operating on two shafts, top speed around 25 knots and at 19 knots significant vibration started. The shaft had been distorted in the January 1941 attacks. The flight deck armouring was the area between the two lifts. Apart from the hits there were a number of near misses causing damage to the hull, First attack,

1) 1,000 lb bomb on S.2 pom pom mounting
2) 1,000 pound bomb through the front flight deck, exited then exploded 10 feet above the water
3) 1,000 pound bomb through the after lift, which was on the way up with a fighter, exploded 10 to 20 feet below the lift platform. The fighter and its pilot simply vanished.
4) 1,000 pound bomb passed through the armoured flight deck, burst 10 feet above the hangar deck.
5) 500 pound bomb hit the edge of the after lift.
6) 1,000 pound bomb went through P.1 pom pom, hit the armour belt, failed to explode but did start a fire.
7) 1,000 pound bomb near miss starboard side aft
8) (Second attack, later that day) 500 pound bomb down the remnants of the after lift.

9) (6 days later in Malta) several near misses then a 1,000 pound bomb through the aft flight deck, exploding 13 feet below the Captain's day cabin.
10) (Also at Malta) several more near misses then a 1,000 pound bomb very near miss port side, opening up the plating, causing immediate 5 degree list to port, shock effects cracked the port turbine feet and caused other machinery damage.

All up 83 men killed. Left Malta 2 weeks after the first attack, doing 24 knots, to Alexandria for a while then to the US, arriving in May and leaving in November.

"The centreline shaft was repaired but it was never satisfactory, and it later caused severe vibration when run at high speed. The gland packing of the centre shaft deteriorated so badly that the centre propeller was actually removed before the Okinawa operation"

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## EwenS (Jun 17, 2022)

There has been a lot written about the Illustrious class, much of it critical and a lot of it undeserved in my view. With regard to Illustrious, I don't think there is quite such clear cut a link between the 1941 damage to Illustrious and the final speed reduction in 1945 nor to the claims of ongoing vibration problems postwar or to much worse claims of twisted keels etc in both her and Formidable. I don't think anyone has really done a deep enough dive into the archives to discover the full story.

Let me start by saying that no carrier suffered so heavily and from such large bombs as Illustrious did in January 1941 and still stayed afloat. Built to withstand 500lb bombs she was hit by bombs up to 2,200lb as was Formidable. See the damage reports. 








Report:


HMS Illustrious, January 10, 1941, Damage Report (Bomb & Shell)




www.armouredcarriers.com




Most of the hits were outwith that part of the flight deck covered by 3" armour plate. So there was bound to be heavy damage. The question is how well that was repaired while she was at Norfolk. And how did it affect the ship in future years.

Many ships suffer from vibrations in various parts of their structure. Often they manifest themselves far from the cause. This can usually be resolved while they are on trials. ISTR reading many years ago that the 5 British carriers that used a three shaft layout suffered in various ways. Mostly they go unremarked on. I've linked some relevant articles at the foot of this response about causes. Ark Royal for example from Poolman about her trials:-

_"There were some teething troubles. The forty-foot overhang of the flight deck astern and the position of the rudder immediately abaft the centre screw put an unusual strain upon her lightly built structure aft, and it was necessary to stiffen some of the lighter plating."_

Most famously the US battleships North Carolina & Washington experienced terrible vibration problems while brand new out of the yards on trials. It took months of trials to resolve with the eventual solution being a new design of propellor with *5 blades* for two of her shafts.

There is a comment on the Royal Navy Warship Histories page for Illustrious for 24 May 1940:-
_"Final acceptance trials. (Note: *Excessive vibration was noted* particularly in the Bridge Structure. This problem was never completely resolved during subsequent service.)"_

Such was the urgency to get Illustrious to sea that her trials were cut as short as possible (2 days) and she sailed for work up in the Caribbean less than a month later.

It is the only record I've found to date of such a problem that early in her career but it is curious and raises the possibility of an underlying problem even before she was bombed.

As for the stern gland packing failing, this is a regular maintenance item for ships. I've seen articles saying it can need replaced as frequently as every 3 years. And it would appear that there had been plenty of opportunity to address any issues. Illustrious had refits in early 1943 (3.5 months), late 1943 (3 weeks) and autumn 1944 (8 weeks at Durban). Yet by Feb 1945 the problem was so bad the prop had to be removed while at Sydney. Why the sudden deterioration in the space of 4 months? Was removing the centre prop merely a precautionary measure to ensure it wsnt going to be a bigger problem when she was fat from a dock?

I have harboured doubts about the intention to send Illustrious to the Pacific in 1945 in the first place. RN plans for the BPF always revolved around the core of a 4 fleet carrier task force. The only reason I can see for sending Illustrious, given that that prop had to be removed, was due to delays with Formidable. Never much mentioned is the fact that Formidable suffered a major machinery failure (some kind of turbine failure IIRC) after she left the UK at the end of Sept 1944. She then spent 3.5 months at Gibraltar being repaired before continuing her journey east. Had she arrived on schedule Illustrious could have been sent home.

Incidentally, the reduction in Illustrious's speed to 25 knots is not the big issue that it might first appear. Carrier Task Force standard operating procedures saw operations generally carried out at 15-25 knot range. Many reasons for that particularly fuel burn, AS escort limitations to name but two as I've noted previously on other threads.

Now Friedman. Yes she had her centre propellor removed and the shaft locked while at Sydney in Feb 1945 due to a vibration problem. Everyone agrees about that. But just what was the cause of the vibrations leading to the speed reduction to 19 knots?. What Friedman actually says is this:-

_"Illustrious suffered Kamikaze damage on 6 April 1945, a bomb-carrying Judy (D4Y3) skidding past her superstructure into the water The only immediate apparent damage was a large hole in the 272 radome forward of her bridge. However, the Kamikaze's bomb exploded underwater near the ship, causing severe shock damage. The outer hull was opened up and some of the frames cracked; Illustrious was limited to 19 knots."_





So the speed reduction comes *after* the kamikaze strike. The bomb has been variously rated at 1700-2000lb in different publications. In suicide form the D4Y3 could carry 800kg (1,764lb). It exploded about 50 feet from the ship. The extent of the hull damage only became apparent when they put divers down after the ship arrived at Leyte Gulf on 16 April. That was the final nail to end to her wartime career. For comparison, look at the hull damage she suffered while at Malta from a near miss from either an 1,100lb or 2,200lb bomb. If the 1945 damage was comparable then it is small wonder she had a vibration! And she escaped from Malta in 1941 at 20 knots.










And the bomb that caused the Malta damage was only supposed to be 1,100lb. Is it small wonder therefore that her speed was further reduced if damage was on this kind of scale?

And now we come to postwar. She spent 12 months under repair and refit at Rosyth from the end of June 1945. There is a passage in an article refuting many of the comments about Illustrious in an article written by Stuart Slade. It is worth repeating here, but I've provided the links below for anyone wanting to read more.

*"Of the British armored carriers, Formidable and Illustrious were write-offs due to war damage. By the end of the war, Illustrious was in very poor condition; her centerline shaft was history due to structural deformation and her machinery was shot.*
_
- Illustrious had been at war since 1940 and Victorious and Formidable since 1941. Naturally, they had been "used" much harder than 1943/44 Essexes which served shorter combat careers (many not more than one operational war deployment). So it is natural for their post-war condition to be poorer than the Essexes.

A more accurate 'tour of duty' comparison would be with the treaty ships Enterprise and Saratoga.

- The unique circumstances of Illustrious's battle damage has already been referred to (but not mentioned by Slade). Her centreline shaft had to be cut away in 1945 to reduce vibrations. Ironically, it was *a US solution for severe vibrations in its own warships that was applied in late 1945 to fix Illustrious - a five-bladed propeller was affixed to her repaired centre shaft*. Vibrations returned about three years later due to *wear on the wing shafts*."_

As I noted above replacing the stern gland packaging is a regular maintenance item for ships so not necessarily indicative of a hangover from wartime damage.

Slade article History and Technology - Were Armored Flight Decks on British Carriers Worthwhile? - NavWeaps
Response refuting many of the criticisms raised by Slade Report:

Another aspect of the Illustrious class that is only rarely touched on is the problems Victorious, which suffered no major hull damage during the war, had with her rudder starting in Aug 1944. From McCart "HMS Victorious 1937-1969":-

_"...the Victorious suddenly hoisted 'Not Under Control' balls at the masthead as her rudder had jammed. It was the first indication of *a problem which was to stay with her for the rest of her career."*_

She then immediately spent about 2 weeks at Colombo for "maintenance" followed by a month Nov/Dec in the dry dock at Bombay to try to fix it. She had then been scheduled to have a 7 week period in dry dock at Sydney from mid-Aug 1945 after the operations off Japan. That was to have included fitting a new rudder shipped out from the UK. That refit was cancelled. Instead she carried it home, suffering more rudder problems in heavy weather en route to Colombo. It was finally fitted Oct-Dec 1945 at Devonport as part of the refit she received there.

So the question I have is, was there some kind of design weakness in these 5 carriers (Ark & the 4 Illustrious) around the stern section as a result of choosing a three shaft layout in the first place? Perhaps it was made worse in Illustrious by virtue of her bombing off Malta. But none of it seems to add up to the claims of bent & twisted keels etc. If things had been that bad why hasn't it appeared in official documents that the likes of Hobbs & Friedman can reference. If I've missed something I'd like to hear about it.

It is interesting that both the other great carrier navies, Japan & the USA, came to see the advantage of flight deck armour if not the full blown armoured box hangar on British carriers. The Japanese did come closer with splinter protection to the sides of the hangar and making the flight deck the strength deck in Taiho. On the subject of flight deck armouring all the British, American and Japanese ships fitted with armour on the flight deck restricted it to the areas between the lifts. The advantage that Japan & the USA had was that they could build a bigger ship being free of Treaty limits by the time that thay were laid down.






History and Technology - Shake, rattle and Roll: Vibration in ships - NavWeaps







www.navweaps.com









History and Technology - Designing a Propeller - NavWeaps







www.navweaps.com









History and Technology - Shafting a Ship - NavWeaps







www.navweaps.com

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## Macandy (Jun 20, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> The vented blast myth.
> 
> Here are some excerpts from the damage report for the Enterprise when it was struck by a kamakazie on May 14, 19445
> View attachment 673755
> ...




The rebuilt Essex class were fitted with a 1.5" steel flight deck, not because they 'wanted to mimic' the Illustrious design, it was simply needed as a strength deck to operate the much heavier jets.

The Midway design was a disastrous dead end, terrible ships with an awful and vicious roll thanks to being so top heavy with the pointless heavy armoured deck.

No US carrier after the Midway dead end used an armoured flight deck. They all use steel strength decks of 1.5"-2", a simple design requirement due to their huge size.


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## ThomasP (Jun 21, 2022)

The Midway class - as built with a 3.5" thick armoured flight deck - had no problems with rolling as such. The armoured flight deck was not part of the strength girder (it only covered the armoured box between the fore and aft elevators) and it is easy to see the expansion joints in the original deck. The only reason there was a bit of a problem with roll later, was the relatively low freeboard as built coupled with the much widened and angled flight deck after rebuild. As built the deck forward and aft of the elevators was only .75" thick. The entire widened angled flight deck after rebuild was 1.5" thick (I think). The widened and angled flight deck was designed as a "semi-strength deck".

The Forrestal class was the first US carrier design (that was also built) that incorporated an armored flight deck as part of the hull girder. The flight deck was of homogeneous quality 1.8" thick plate.

The Forrestal and all subsequent US carriers incorporated the British idea of an armoured flight deck and enclosed hangar/hurricane bow, although they used deck edge elevators.

Armour thicker than 1.8" was used in the flight deck in the Enterprise, and in all later US CV/CVNs. The current operational CVNs have armoured flight decks of significantly increased thickness. (The actual details are still classified.)

Incidentally, the UK's new Queen Elizabeth class CVs also have armoured flight decks.

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## Admiral Beez (Jun 29, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> The Skua was a dead end in development terms - might as well investigate a new airframe altogether.


Indeed. But if if they persisted, I wonder if a single seat fighter variant would have looked like a single-seat, narrow-bodied Balliol.






And I thought the Firebrand had a disproportionately tall tail.

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## SaparotRob (Jun 29, 2022)

It does look better. 
I like big tails and that I can’t deny.

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## Snautzer01 (Jun 29, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> It does look better.
> I like big tails and that I can’t deny.


Yeah some kid made a song about that.

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## nuuumannn (Jun 29, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I like big tails and that I can’t deny.



You an' me both, bruthah...

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## nuuumannn (Jun 29, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> And I thought the Firebrand had a disproportionately tall tail.



Dunno how Blackburn got that so wrong. Horrendously over engineered aeroplane. Brown, resident FAA test pilot du jour had little nice to say about flying it.

The Balliol on the other hand was a nice aeroplane to fly, apparently, although with the Mercury was underpowered. It was a retrofit because the Mamba turboprop was taking too long and the decision was made to equip production aircraft with Merlins instead. I think it looks good with a round engine.


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## SaparotRob (Jun 29, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Dunno how Blackburn got that so wrong. Horrendously over engineered aeroplane. Brown, resident FAA test pilot du jour had little nice to say about flying it.


OOOH, OOOH, I know!! Put 20 pounds of crap into a 5 pound sack, per government specification?

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## nuuumannn (Jun 29, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> OOOH, OOOH, I know!! Put 20 pounds of crap into a 5 pound sack, per government specification?



Brown said it was built like a battleship... And flew like one, too!

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 1, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The rebuilt Essex class were fitted with a 1.5" steel flight deck, not because they 'wanted to mimic' the Illustrious design, it was simply needed as a strength deck to operate the much heavier jets.
> 
> The Midway design was a disastrous dead end, terrible ships with an awful and vicious roll thanks to being so top heavy with the pointless heavy armoured deck.
> 
> No US carrier after the Midway dead end used an armoured flight deck. They all use steel strength decks of 1.5"-2", a simple design requirement due to their huge size.


I did not state than the Essex class was rebuilt with an armored flight deck. They were rebuilt with closed hanger sides and enclosed bows like the Illustrious.

Your statement "The other thing was a fire in the hanger - it didn't vent and temperatures reached such high levels, yet again, twisted hull time." is physically impossible. The plastic deformation temperature of A36 steel is ~ 200 C (392 F). To distort the hull would require heating thousands of tons of steel to that temperature. The ship would become a gigantic oven baking the crew. Also note that the ship is floating on a giant heat sink. Venting by the way provides oxygen to the fire increasing heat release rates and therefore temperatures. One of the best ways to stop a fire is to cut off its oxygen supply. The various foam and gas fire suppression systems operate on the principle of reducing the oxygen supply to the fire. Venting is done to clear smoke not to stop the fire.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 1, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> OOOH, OOOH, I know!! Put 20 pounds of crap into a 5 pound sack, per government specification?


I wouldn't blame the government for the Firebrand. Blackburn simply wasn't the A team when it came to designing aircraft. They were given a reset and came up with the Firecrest which was actually in many ways worse than the Firebrand. 









Blackburn Firecrest - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 1, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> Blackburn simply wasn't the A team when it came to designing aircraft.


It’s amazing that nine years after the Firecrest debacle, Blackburn somehow arrived at one of the superlative postwar low level strike aircraft with the Buccaneer. First flying in 1958, the Buccaneer was still flying combat missions over thirty years later.

I can’t think of any other carrier aircraft made by Blackburn that wasn’t rubbish. I suppose the Ripon, Baffin and Dart deserve some kudos.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 1, 2022)

You can blame the government at least partly.
Blackburn had to submit paper plans before they even got money for a mockup.
Mockup has to approved before they got money for prototypes.
Government had plenty of times to cancel the whole thing before it went into production.
It was the government's idea to turn it into a torpedo bomber.
It may have been the government's idea to use the Sabre engine.
Once you decide to use the Sabre engine a 10,000-12,000lb airplane follows.
Once you have a 12,0000lb airplane the size wing you need for a British carrier follows.
Blackburn may not have executed the idea well but you were not going to get a Seafire out of the air ministry requirements.

Blackburn, Fairey, Gloster, Hawker, Supermarine and Westland had all summited proposals and revisions in 1939. 
Blackburn may not have been the best but some of the other companies were judged to busy with existing work.
By the time you get part way through 1940 the official requirements wanted a speed 350kts(403mph) which wasn't going to work with any Merlin they even working on in the summer of 1940 so hypothetical Griffon or Sabre were the only two alternatives. 

Supermarine proposals of time (1939) were split between a Griffon powered plane with 120 gal of fuel and a Sabre powered version with 186 gal and Westland came up with a Griffon proposal with 220 gals. 
Hawker in Feb 1941 came up with a stretched Typhoon when the Firebrand was having trouble in the design stage. 
But they had to put a bigger wing on it (and fold them) and stick 264 gallons fuel in it. And they figured that it wouldn't be ready spring/summer of 1942 AND would only use 25% of the parts of a Typhoon so it wasn't going to get them anywhere. 

All of these companies were trying to build what the government told them to build. They were in competition with each other. One company did not come up with a design and tell the Air Ministry "take-it or leave it, now give us the money".

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 1, 2022)

How does Petter’s Westland Wyvern compare to Blackburn’s Firebrand and Firecrest?

If his Whirlwind, Canberra, Gnat and Lightning are any indication I’d like to think, if temporarily seconded to Blackburn, Petter could have made a better Skua. Though he sounds like a terrible person to work with.


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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 1, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> How does Petter’s Westland Wyvern compare to Blackburn’s Firebrand and Firecrest?
> 
> If his Whirlwind, Canberra, Gnat and Lightning are any indication I’d like to think, if temporarily seconded to Blackburn, Petter could have made a better Skua. Though he sounds like a terrible person to work with.


I believe Peter had left Westland before the Wyvern was designed


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 1, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> I believe Peter had left Westland before the Wyvern was designed


He was still on the Westland payroll, but went awol. But I see now that the Wyvern was a Mensford-led design. I always thought the Wyvern didn’t share the clean lines of Petter’s Whirlwind and Canberra.

So, do we think Petter seconded to Blackburn in 1936 can help the Skua?


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## Shortround6 (Jul 1, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> So, do we think Petter seconded to Blackburn in 1936 can help the Skua?


Maybe, maybe not.

Petter did a lot things right. He also did a lot things w..........let's say, not so good, in retrospect. 
For the Whirlwind the air intakes to carbs may not have been so hot.
On the Whirlwind prototype the exhaust pipes were certainly streamlined, but running the hot exhausts through pipes (inner and outer) through the fuel tanks and out the back of the wing (and reducing the exhaust thrust) wasn't the best idea by any stretch of the imagination. 
Not sure who's idea the Excelsior engine controls were. Made running the controls easy, keeping them adjusted for even a few hours was a problem. 
Using the landing flaps as part of the cooling flap to the radiators was certainly innovative and saved parts, cost, and weight.
It also meant you couldn't taxi the plane without overheating the engines unless the landing flaps were down. 

Part of the problem he had working with others was that he disliked criticisms of the less that stellar ideas. 

Whirlwind had to get special permission to use higher air pressure tires than the RAF used on every other plane to avoid putting ruts in the grass airfields. 
Easy to make your plane more streamline if you don't follow the same rules as the other designers ( he got to use smaller rear nacelles to house the smaller landing gear.) 

And there was only so much Petter could do if he was forced to use the Perseus engine. 
One History says that after the prototype flew a Mercury engine production planes flew with the Perseus because all (most?) of the Mercury production was allocated to Blenheim production. Don't know if that is true. The Wellington and Hampden were probably sucking up the Pegasus engines though?

Part of the problem with the Skua was that ran late. 21 months from flight of prototype to first squadron. IN 1934 when work began they were expecting delivery to start in 1937. 
Only 12 were delivered in 1938. 
Petter was also busy designing and sorting out the Lysander.

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 1, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Maybe, maybe not.
> 
> Petter did a lot things right. He also did a lot things w..........let's say, not so good, in retrospect.
> For the Whirlwind the air intakes to carbs may not have been so hot.
> ...


It would have been interesting to see what Petter would accomplish if given strict parameters; single Merlin engine, grass strip capable, etc.


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## nuuumannn (Jul 1, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> You can blame the government at least partly.



To a point. The specification offers parameters, it doesn't stipulate design cues. N.11/40 did stipulate the use of the Sabre in a power egg arrangement. Blackburn was solely responsible for the design and structural elements of the Firebrand. The only competitor was the Hawker P.1009 Sea Typhoon, which would have been problematic too based on the work required on the Typhoon as it happened, with detachable rear fuselage and high ingress of carbon monoxide into the cockpit, to say nothing of the issues with the Sabre, which, to be fair were not fully understood at the time the specification was written.



Admiral Beez said:


> So, do we think Petter seconded to Blackburn in 1936 can help the Skua?



Not by much, design is almost certainly completed that year and the aircraft is well on the way to receiving a production contract, which took place in 1936. If you want Petter to go in, get him in sooner to aid in design cues. He could have made it smaller for starters, but whatever the choices he makes, they'd be advanced. Whether they'd be practicable or not in the real world remains to be seen, he was definitely a thinker, but if the Whirlwind is anything to go by he would overthink things. However, the Lysander was an entirely conventional aircraft, which means he could have gone down that route...

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## nuuumannn (Jul 1, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I can’t think of any other carrier aircraft made by Blackburn that wasn’t rubbish. I suppose the Ripon, Baffin and Dart deserve some kudos.



I mentioned this earlier, the Dart through to the Shark were equal to if not better than foreign contemporaries on carrier decks. These aircraft were largely the work of Maj F.A. Bumpus, who was the chief engineer at Blackburn, with George Petty as his assistant between the Great War and WW2. Petty took over from Bumpus in 1937, although was given lead on the design of the Skua. Bumpus had worked with Robert Blackburn himself as well as Admiralty personnel during and subsequent to the Great War, so he had a handle on what the navy expected from its aircraft designs. The outlandish Blackburd was designed by Harris Booth of the Admiralty Air Department, so Bumpus can't be held responsible for that, but his were generally sound workable designs.

Petty took design duties of the Skua and was responsible for the Botha, a terrible aeroplane, which, Petty did believe was underpowered at the time of design and suggested to the Air Ministry that the Hercules should be its powerplant, not the Perseus, but this was turned down, although investigative work was done on the Botha II powered by Hercules. Probably still would have been bad. Once again, Petty was responsible for the Firebrand and Firecrest. I'm sensing a pattern here...

Interesting to note that the Buccaneer was designed by B.P. Laight.

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## GreenKnight121 (Jul 5, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The rebuilt Essex class were fitted with a 1.5" steel flight deck, not because they 'wanted to mimic' the Illustrious design, it was simply needed as a strength deck to operate the much heavier jets.
> 
> The Midway design was a disastrous dead end, terrible ships with an awful and vicious roll thanks to being so top heavy with the pointless heavy armoured deck.
> 
> No US carrier after the Midway dead end used an armoured flight deck. They all use steel strength decks of 1.5"-2", a simple design requirement due to their huge size.


CV-41 Midway before her 1967-70 second modernization had no rolling issues.

CV-42 FDR had no rolling problems at any time in her career... neither did CV-43 Coral Sea.


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## Macandy (Jul 6, 2022)

GreenKnight121 said:


> CV-41 Midway before her 1967-70 second modernization had no rolling issues.
> 
> CV-42 FDR had no rolling problems at any time in her career... neither did CV-43 Coral Sea.




Right from the start, the class proved to be very cramped and wet ships, seriously overweight, and with a nasty snap roll in any seaway thanks to all that top weight.
That roll never got better, only worse. The design was quickly discarded and the Forrestal Class were clean paper designs with lighter and stronger, but bigger hulls,


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## ThomasP (Jul 7, 2022)

Hey Macandy,

I think you are getting her post-1966/70 rebuild seakeeping issues confused with her handling qualities as built.

As built, she had no problematic roll - nasty or otherwise. The top weight you are referring to (ie armoured flight deck) was taken into account in her original design, and as completed her period of roll under all normal conditions was considered good.

As far as being wet goes. As built she had a lower freeboard than the follow-on supercarriers, so if you are saying that she was wetter compared to the later supercarriers then you are correct. But her freeboard as built was comparable to her predecessors and contemporaries.

Some freeboards (height from WL (Water Line) to FD (Flight Deck)
Illustrious CV as built ~42'
Independence CVL as built ~45'
Essex class CV as built ~55'
Enterprise/Yorktown CV ~55'
Midway class CVB as built ~53'

As far as being cramped goes. She was built with the ability to carry over 130 aircraft, but she only ever carried that many on her first operational deployment to the Med in 1947. Before her 1955/57 rebuild she normally operated around 80-90 aircraft, the same as for the Essex class during most of WWII. (80 aircraft was the ~size of a normal carrier air group at the time.)

Edited

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## EwenS (Jul 7, 2022)

Wetness represents an interesting issue for the Midways.

According to Friedman “US Aircraft Carriers. An Illustrated Design History”, it was recognised well before the Pacific Fleet encountered the June 1945 typhoon, which damaged the flight decks of several carriers, that the Midways would be wet. This was due to their length in proportion to their freeboard. Added to that, as completed they rode lower in the water than initially planned as they were badly overweight due to all the extras added during their build (especially 40mm & 20mm AA guns, radars etc). But that was a problem common to most of the warship classes designed up to the early wartime years. If only ship designers could have foreseen the explosion in topweight for more guns, radar and in the case of carriers, aircraft.

But he makes no mention of rolling being a problem during the early part of their careers.

Photo of Midway in a Med gale.



https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/024118.jpg



CVB-43 Coral Sea being less advanced in her build was modified to extend her side plating up to meet the underside of the forward flight deck and had a transverse bulkhead installed to link the side plating up. This was later applied to the other two ships. Note this is not the Hurricane bow fitted in the 1950s modernisations. CVB-43 also completed with only 14 of 18 5”/54 AA guns in a weight reduction effort. Changes to her bow are visible here.



https://www.navsource.org/archives/02/0243an.jpg



Another thing to bear in mind is that these ships operated in the Atlantic initially (it was 1954 before any of them ventured into the Pacific as they were too wide for the Panama Canal at that time) with its generally rougher weather than US fleet carriers encountered in the Pacific during WW2.

Friedman goes on to say:-
“The ships were also wet, both on the hangar and the flight decks. For example, they tended to plunge into heavy seas rather than ride over them, so that green water broke over the forward end of the flight deck. The latter was leaky, making the hangar deck wet in the rain as well as in heavy seas. Flight deck wetness was particularly significant because US operating practice required aircraft to be parked for extended amounts of time at the forward end of the flight deck.”


As for them being cramped, well that was a sign of the times. All navies found that crew sizes grew significantly during WW2. Midway was still a 1941 design although she didn’t complete until 1945. Designed for a total complement (ship & air) of 3,583, by 1947 this had grown to about 4,100 with more in prospect as jets and new weapons came across the horizon. And much of that accomodation was on the gallery deck which increased the need for air conditioning in tropical climes, being under the Armoured flight deck. The latter was also a problem encountered by the British Armoured carriers in the tropics during WW2 and especially for Victorious after her reconstruction.

The real problem with carriers however is not the height of the flight deck above the waterline, but the height of the hangar deck above the waterline. If water, whether from the ocean or firefighting, gets onto the hangar deck it can very quickly have a seriously destabilising effect due to the free surface effect. See the USS Franklin damage report section 9.


USS Franklin - WAR Damage Report



By way of comparison with earlier classes and the Forrestal/America/JFK and CVN here are the figures for the classes taken from Friedman:-

Essex - hull depth (to main/hangar deck) 54ft 8.25in. Depth to flight deck 81ft 7in
Midway - hull depth (to main/hangar deck) 57ft 6in. Depth to flight deck 84ft 0in.
Forrestal - hull depth 97ft 4in (note in this class the flight deck not the main/hangar deck was the strength deck so the hangar formed part of the hull)
Enterprise CVN-65 - hull depth 99ft 6 in
Nimitz - hull depth 100ft 6in

BUT:-
1. the draught of an Essex was about 23ft while that of a Midway was about 33ft. So the main/hangar deck of a Midway rode some 7ft closer to the waterline than an Essex or the best part of the depth of a whole deck.

2. a Midway had a hangar height of 17ft 6in. In later classes that increased to 25ft and then 26ft 6in in the Nimitz. That accounts for over half of the increase in hull depth.

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## ThomasP (Jul 7, 2022)

Hey EwenS,

I think you made a typo? The draft of the Essex was ~28' 0" at full load, not 23' 0".

I only get a difference between the Essex and Midway (both as designed and ~built) of 3' 8" to 4' 1" to the Flight Deck, and 3' 2" to 3' 8" to the Hangar Deck.

Midway as built
Hull depth was 84' 0" to Flight Deck, and 57' 6" to Hangar Deck
32' 2" draft at 55,450 tons design displacement
34' 6" draft at 60,100 tons design full load displacement
so 51' 10" to 49' 6" freeboard to Flight Deck
and 25' 3" to 23' 0" freeboard to Hangar Deck

Essex class as built
Hull depth was 81' 7" to Flight Deck, and 54' 8" to Hangar Deck
26' 3" draft at 33,400 tons design displacement
28' 0" draft at 36,380 tons design full load displacement
so 55' 4" to 53' 7" freeboard to Flight Deck
and 28' 5" to 26' 8" freeboard to Hangar Deck

 I stand corrected re my statement "Crew accommodations, as built, were considered superior to those of the Essex class". I had not run across the habitability issues mentioned by Friedman. I am wondering if what I was remembering was from after the SCB rebuilds?

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 7, 2022)

So, how about we just focus on making the Skua smaller, lighter and more streamlined?

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## Shortround6 (Jul 8, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> So, how about we just focus on making the Skua smaller, lighter and more streamlined?


Why?
It was never going to be an effective fighter if it stayed with two seats.
It was the size and weight of a Dauntless. except it already had folding wings.

The problem wasn't the plane itself. It was the use of the plane. 
Accept that two seat aircraft with a 900hp radial engine was never going to be a decent fighter and move on.
It could be decent strike aircraft and it could be decent scout/recon plane. 

part of the problem with the size is that you need a certain size wing to get into air with desired bomb and fuel load if you use the Perseus (or Mercury) engine. 
You also need a certain size wing to the the desired landing speed. Not sure how you make the plane much lighter. You are already using an engine of about 1000lbs. Unless you give up dive bombing you can't make the structure much lighter. And so on. Most planes were built to do certain jobs and the designers had a number of factors to consider. The best designs got the compromise right. Try for too much speed and you may have too high a take-off and landing speed. Or use too big an engine and you need more fuel for the range desired. 
Sometimes the customer has to compromise. Maybe you can accept less range. landing 10% faster may mean a lot more wrecked airplanes.


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 8, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Why?


Why? To make it a better dive bomber, and forget the fighter spec.


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## SaparotRob (Jul 8, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Why? To make it a better dive bomber, and forget the fighter spec.


Did you have a problem with post #8454 in the Humpty Dumpty thread too?


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## Shortround6 (Jul 8, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Why? To make it a better dive bomber, and forget the fighter spec.



OK, what do you want it to actually do?

My own opinion would be to mount a Pegasus engine (around 100lbs?) in the Skua to handle a bigger bomb load (improved bomber) and to handle increased weight of protection (armor and fuel tank protection). I have pointed out, several times, that the weight of four .303 guns and ammo isn't going to make much difference. Leave them in for strafing/flak suppression or take them out. Taking the guns out is only worth about 12 sq ft of wing area so you aren't going to change the size of the plane much at all. 
There isn't much of anything else you can take out that is only a fighter part of the specification. Dive bombers need pretty much the same strength as a fighter for structure. 
The Dive bomber needs at least as good a radio as the fighter, probably better. 

The only thing you might want is more fuel for more range. 

You already have a limited bomb capacity so you can't go any smaller. 

More streamline you might be able to do but unless you change the engine the Perseus isn't going go very fast no matter what you do. 
An extra 10-20mph isn't going to make much difference to survival.


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## yulzari (Jul 8, 2022)

AFAIK the only item of the Skua’s fighter role was the guns and sight. It was a strike/dive bomber that could stray far away from the carrier in night and day and still find it again with the TAG in the rear seat with his token VGO. The prey was expected to be long range reconnaissance and bombers against whom it could bring to bear the same 4 guns as the Gladiator. The fighter role was incidental. More power would allow a larger bomb load/fuel load. What it would do for the fighter role would, again, be incidental. At the time of design the production available power units could not both make a fighter with useful performance versus a peer and carry a useful bomb load off a deck. Later power units could do so. At the time you could either go for a defensive fighter or an offensive strike aeroplane. Hence the Nimrod and the Osprey using the same engine for each role not a single unified design trying to do both. The Royal Navy went for the offensive choice. At that time it was looking at active service in the Atlantic with the Mediterranean being the province of the French navy. Hence it was not expecting to meet pure fighters. The US Navy was concerned more about the Pacific where they expected to meet a peer Japanese fleet so would meet peer fighters so needed their own fighters. No one expected the Luftwaffe to be operating out of Norway and the Biscay coast let alone across the Mediterranean together with the Italians. What their Lordships sought for fighters was fleet self defence against long range bombing and torpedo attacks so the short range Hurricane and Spitfire were their aim but were trumped by RAF home defence priorities so had to make do with the interim Sea Gladiator. In many ways the Fulmar was a better Skua.

To make a better fighter Skua is simply not possible. A better Skua, maybe. For a better fighter you want an entirely different airframe. Ideally not made by Blackburn……. Until Norway falls there was no telling argument for a wide ranging pure naval fighter for the Royal Navy. Certainly there were arguments for them, but not conclusive ones until it was certain that the Royal Navy would have to operate in seas subject to land based fighter opposition.

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 8, 2022)

yulzari said:


> To make a better fighter Skua is simply not possible.


It is a shame that for its first all metal, monoplane, retractable and wide-track undercarriage, folding wing carrier aircraft the Air Ministry decided to pursue a dive bomber. Had they used these same resources and the above design elements to pursue a single seat fighter for service in 1938 they might have had a something quite impressive. Yes, we’ll need to sort out a means for a single man to run the homing beacon receiver. The Swordfish and later Albacore can dive bomb, there’s no need for the Skua.


yulzari said:


> Until Norway falls there was no telling argument for a wide ranging pure naval fighter for the Royal Navy.


Until the Skua the Royal Navy always had a single seat fighter (Pup, Camel, Nightjar, Flycatcher, Nimrod, Sea Gladiator). And yes with the exception of the Flycatcher they were all adaptations of RAF designs rather than pure naval fighters, but the RN's carriers always fielded single seat fighters that were to some degree competitive with their land based counterparts, until the Skua and then Fulmar/Firefly.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 8, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> It is a shame that for its first all metal, monoplane, retractable and wide-track undercarriage, folding wing carrier aircraft the Air Ministry decided to pursue a dive bomber. Had they used these same resources and the above design elements to pursue a single seat fighter for service in 1938 they might have had a something quite impressive. Yes, we’ll need to sort out a means for a single man to run the homing beacon receiver. The Swordfish and later Albacore can dive bomb, there’s no need for the Skua.


For 1938 service you need an engine, the Merlin III barely qualifies. A lot of 1938 production was the Merlin II that pretty much the same except for the prop shaft. 
to sort out the homing receiver may require different radio gear. What was available in 1942 may not have been available in 1940 let alone in 1938, or it may have been. Right know we don't know. 

There was a fair amount of debate on dive bombing. It to was changing/evolving. In 1937-38 you are doing daylight dive bombing (and for quite a bit after) because you don't have radar or good altimeters. The AA guns on ships were constantly evolving, sometimes slowly but things were changing. A plane like the Skua could approach quicker than a biplane. It could dive faster than a biplane (but not too quickly so as to maintain accuracy) and it could exit the target area quicker than a biplane. It could spend much less time in range of the AA guns. 
You could use Biplanes to dive bomb, and here there were several different types of biplanes 
US biplane dive bomber of 1937





There was a fixed landing gear Vought that could do 180mph at sea level and 200mph at higher altitudes. 
The Swordfish could drop bombs while diving (and pull out) but it is not quite the same thing. 

The RAF was all over the place with dive bombing. 
Once the US went to monoplanes they used dive brakes to control the speed of the plane in the dive. For best accuracy you want the steepest dive you can manage and you need a certain number of seconds on a steady course (or minor corrections) and nearly a steady speed to aim the bomb. The dive brakes on the monoplane also limited the dive speed so that the bomb could be dropped at a lower attitude and still allow the pilot to pull out without hitting the ground or blacking out for so long that control of the aircraft was lost. Many dive bomber pilots did black out momentarily while pulling out. 
The Fairey Battle was said to be strong enough to dive bomb. That is not quite the same thing. No dive Brakes and the propeller wasn't really suited for dive bombing. The Henley had no dive brakes and aside from the prototype had the wrong propeller but by that time they were target tugs. Dive bombing using Swordfish and Albacores was done, but it says a lot more about the crews than the men who procured the aircraft. 
Please note the Germans were trying to fit dive brakes on many of their "dive bombers", they often didn't work but at least they realized they should have them. 


Admiral Beez said:


> Until the Skua the Royal Navy always had a single seat fighter, yes with the exception of the Flycatcher they were all adaptations of RAF designs rather than pure naval fighters, but the RN's carriers always fielded single seat fighters that were competitive with their land based counterparts, until the Skua and then Fulmar/Firefly.


In the early 30s the British biplanes fell behind the land based counter parts. The Nimrod needs to be compared to the French D 510 or the Boing P-26 if you are comparing to land planes. perhaps the Nimrod was a match for the He 51 and Arado 65. The P-26 would have been hopeless as a carrier fighter.

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 9, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> In the early 30s the British biplanes fell behind the land based counter parts. The Nimrod needs to be compared to the French D 510 or the Boing P-26 if you are comparing to land planes. perhaps the Nimrod was a match for the He 51 and Arado 65.


Agreed. And it‘s to the Nimrod’s successor where the resources for the FAA’s first all metal, monoplane, retractable undercarriage, folding wing aircraft should have been focused. We can still use the Skua’s Perseus engine, and start with the Mercury until the former is ready.


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## EwenS (Jul 9, 2022)

When it comes to dive bombing, you need to be clear about two things:-

1. exactly what do you mean by "dive" bombing? The term is usually restricted to aircraft that can dive at angles of 50+ degrees, not necessarily the full 90 degrees normally thought of. Japanese Val tactics normally used a 50-55 degree (it could be 45-70 degrees) dive with bomb release at 2,600ft (or as low as 1,900ft). For the USN SBD squadrons it was usually 50-70 degrees with bomb release at 1,900-2,500 ft, pulling out by 1,500ft.

2. what is your purpose? In the late 1920s and 1930s the main purpose for both the RN and the USN isn't to sink ships, let alone battleships. It is to tear up the enemy's carrier decks (to "mission kill" them in today's parlance) and to wipe out the AA gun crews on escorting ships to, in the case of the RN at least, allow the torpedo bombers to do their stuff. If lighter shps sink then so much the better, but sinking them is not the primary purpose.

So bombs up to 500lb are perfectly adequate for that purpose. It is the USN that begins to want 1,000lb weapons in its 1933 design requests that entered service from Dec 1937 in aircraft such as the SBC-4 and the Vought SB2U Vindicator. I've still to dig out a reason for that. In fact with that being the purpose are you better off with multiple 500lb hits or a single large 1,000lb hit? Once carriers gain armoured flight decks of course the game changes.

And how many carriers were sunk in WW2 by dive bombing alone? None. Numbers were sufficiently damaged that they had to withdraw for repairs or be scuttled. But it was generally torpedoes that let enough water into their hulls to finally put them underwater.

Dive bombing isn't easy, even against stationary targets. During Operation Bronte in 1948 the FAA was testing 1,000lb and 2,000lb armour piercing bombs against the Nelson anchored in the Firth of Forth. To penetrate her 6" deck armour it was calculated that the 2,000lb had to be dropped from at least 4,000ft. After missing with 39 bombs from 8,000ft the bombing height was reduced to 6,500ft before a hit was obtained with bomb number 42 from an actual dropping height of 5,900ft.

When the FAA bombed the Tirpitz in 1944 using, amongst other weapons, 1,600lb US made AP bombs, which it was estimated needed to be dropped from 2,000+ft. Hits with these weapons were very few (and not every aircraft was carrying one) and only one penetrated her main armoured deck and then didn't explode. One of the criticisms levelled at the pilots was that they were bombing from too low an altitude for the bombs to have enough penetrating power.

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## EwenS (Jul 9, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Agreed. And it‘s to the Nimrod’s successor where the resources for the FAA’s first all metal, monoplane, retractable undercarriage, folding wing aircraft should have been focused. We can still use the Skua’s Perseus engine, and start with the Mercury until the former is ready.


And that ignores the basic problem of how does the fighter of the 1930s, however good you make it, find its target independently when there is minimal / no direction from the warships below? And with increasing speeds of attacking aircraft, warning times got less regardless of how fast the fighter was.

That was the issue that drove the decisions that the RN made in the 1930s about reliance on ship's gunfire and armoured flight decks to protect its strike aircraft.

And the issue wasn't unique to the RN. The same converstion went on in the USN. There were even those in the USN that doubted that carrier fighters had a future. It is summed up neatly in this quaote from Friedman "Fighters over the Fleet".

" In Admiral 1934 Reeves (sic) himself wrote that he saw little point in continuing fighter development merely 'to keep up with the Joneses'. This was hardly a denial of the value of carrier air power, but rather an acceptance that the carriers were strong offensively but weak defensively."

Ultimately the USN chose to pursue a new fighter in their 1935 competition that led firstly to the Brewster F2A Buffalo that entered service in the second half of 1939, to be followed by the Grumman F4F a year later.


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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 9, 2022)

EwenS said:


> When it comes to dive bombing, you need to be clear about two things:-
> 
> 1. exactly what do you mean by "dive" bombing? The term is usually restricted to aircraft that can dive at angles of 50+ degrees, not necessarily the full 90 degrees normally thought of. Japanese Val tactics normally used a 50-55 degree (it could be 45-70 degrees) dive with bomb release at 2,600ft (or as low as 1,900ft). For the USN SBD squadrons it was usually 50-70 degrees with bomb release at 1,900-2,500 ft, pulling out by 1,500ft.
> 
> ...


I may have posted this before. Regardless the USN was unhappy with their AP bombs. This is from the USN BuOrd history:





I have also attached the USN Study "Striking Power of Airborne Weapons". It is interesting to note that they don't even consider 500 lb bombs in their analysis of damage to any vessel larger than a destroyer.

Another point of interest is that the distance of what is considered a near miss can vary considerably with bomb size

Blast radius is another factor






What is more puzzling to me is why the Japanese often used SAP bombs. They are not capable of penetrating the main armored deck of an aircraft carrier and theie much smalleer explosive charge reduces their effectiveness particularly in the case of a near miss.

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 9, 2022)

EwenS said:


> And that ignores the basic problem of how does the fighter of the 1930s, however good you make it, find its target independently when there is minimal / no direction from the warships below?


The same way the RN's fighters before the Skua, and those of the USN, IJNAS and Aéronavale did before the introduction of radar, Mark I eyeball with limited (if any) radio comm back to the mothership for reinforcements.


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## EwenS (Jul 9, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> The same way the RN's fighters before the Skua, and those of the USN, IJNAS and Aéronavale did before the introduction of radar, Mark I eyeball with limited (if any) radio comm back to the mothership for reinforcements.


Which ignores the problem that experience in exercises showed that the Mk 1 eyeball was no where reliable enough especially air to air. Often ships were spotting attacking aircraft long before the airborne fighters. Too late for deck launched interceptors to react. Too close for any available fighters, if able to be directed by radio, to get to them before coming in range of the fleet’s AA barrage.


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 9, 2022)

EwenS said:


> Which ignores the problem that experience in exercises showed that the Mk 1 eyeball was no where reliable enough especially air to air.


I don't know how to overcome the contrarianism here. I must be an eternal optimist, otherwise why do I bother? So here goes..... All the carrier fleets into the 1930s are operating single seat fighters, I'm just suggesting the RN carry on alongside the Japanese, Americans and French carrier arms as it prepares to design its first all-metal, folding wing, retractable undercarriage aircraft. Make it a single seat fighter, like everyone else instead of pursuing the Skua.

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## EwenS (Jul 9, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> I may have posted this before. Regardless the USN was unhappy with their AP bombs. This is from the USN BuOrd history:
> View attachment 676975
> 
> 
> ...


But the point wasn’t to penetrate the main Armoured deck (the hangar deck) of the carrier. It was to rip up the flight deck making it unserviceable and exploding within the hangar to do damage there and with a bit of luck start fires. The US carriers had a thin steel deck with 3” of timber on top.


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## EwenS (Jul 9, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I don't know how to overcome the contrarianism here. I must be an eternal optimist, otherwise why do I bother? So here goes..... All the carrier fleets into the 1930s are operating single seat fighters, I'm just suggesting the RN carry on alongside the Japanese, Americans and French carrier arms as it prepares to design its first all-metal, folding wing, retractable undercarriage aircraft. Make it a single seat fighter, like everyone else instead of pursuing the Skua.


But the main USN fighter from 1936 to 1941 is the non folding wing, 264mph, Grumman F3F biplane. OK it has a manually retracted undercarriage.

For Japan the monoplane Mitsubishi A5M with fixed undercart, 270mph introduced 1936.

The RN made a rush purchase of 250mph Sea Gladiator in 1938 with delivery late 1938/early 1939 to replace the 200mph Nimrod still in service.

With hindsight the RN needs a single seater to enter service in 1940. In other words at the same time as the USN F4F-3 and the Japanese A6M-2 Zero. But it needs more speed than the 330mph speed of those two because of what it will have to face in the skies over Europe. Robust like the F4F. And with folding wings from the start. Folding wings only appear on the F4F-4 which only began production in Q3 1941. On the A6M only the wingtips folded.

So I don’t think that either the US or Japan should be held up as what the RN should aspire to in the mid1930s.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 9, 2022)

EwenS said:


> But the point wasn’t to penetrate the main Armoured deck (the hangar deck) of the carrier. It was to rip up the flight deck making it unserviceable and exploding within the hangar to do damage there and with a bit of luck start fires. The US carriers had a thin steel deck with 3” of timber on top.


That's what I am saying. No point in SAP, they are not needed to penetrate into the hanger, they don’t cause as much damage as a GP when they do explode. What I am saying it that a 1000 lb bomb is likely going to cause much more damage. That being said USN carriers suffered large fires from 1 or 2 500 lb bombs on more than one occasion. 
I think the USN philosophy was that if you were going to carry one centerline bomb make as big as possible (at the time)


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## don4331 (Jul 9, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I don't know how to overcome the contrarianism here. I must be an eternal optimist, otherwise why do I bother? So here goes..... All the carrier fleets into the 1930s are operating single seat fighters, I'm just suggesting the RN carry on alongside the Japanese, Americans and French carrier arms as it prepares to design its first all-metal, folding wing, retractable undercarriage aircraft. Make it a single seat fighter, like everyone else instead of pursuing the Skua.


I think you are giving USN and French too much credit:

In '33, just 8 months before AM orders Skua, USN is ordering Vought XF3U: a biplane, 2 seat fighter to fulfill the same role as Hawker Osprey - the "reconnaissance in force" airplane. And there was much debate within USN BuAer, if moving the plane to SBU Corsair to be more focused DB role was correct course. And remember the XF4F was also a biplane in '36. The USN gets it right by '42. But Skua's reputation has been made by then. 

I'm not sure the Wibault 74 would be my single seat fighter of choice in '39, or Dewoitine D.376 in '40.

And there is a period from '34 to ~'41, where a single seat interceptor is next to useless - where Mk. 1 eyeball is replaced by Radar.

Remember, when the specification is let, there aren't any Hurricane, Spitfires, Bf.109s, etc. So, Blackburn Skua was bleeding edge in '37, with all metal, folding wing, retracting gear, enclosed cockpit.

The issue is really there was no upgrade path for Blackburn's aircraft:
There are issues with the RAE wind tunnel (turbulence) which means it isn't giving correct drag number. So, you can't really say if that windshield is costing 0.5mph, 5mph or 50 mph​The Perseus can't be developed into a 1,300 hp engine. (or even an 1,100hp one)*​There is no plan to swap Bristol engine for RR one ala Fw.190A to Fw.190D (probably weren't enough Merlins anyways.)​
But I look at Hawker Henley of more/less same weight/wing area and see a plane that can almost touch 300mph and I can't help but think a cleaner design would have been more useful as a fighter.
​*The NM experiments with a twin Potexz 565 leading to Bréguet Bre.810 for strike aircraft in acknowledgement that an engine of sufficient power are unavailable, being alternative. Somehow, I don't think twin Aquila's really buys anything.


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 9, 2022)

don4331 said:


> But I look at Hawker Henley of more/less same weight/wing area and see a plane that can almost touch 300mph and I can't help but think a cleaner design would have been more useful as a fighter.


I like the small internal bay in the Henley, but I have to think it can’t hold much.


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 9, 2022)

don4331 said:


> I'm not sure the Wibault 74 would be my single seat fighter of choice in '39, or Dewoitine D.376 in '40.


No, but to be fair the French get the credit for the very first single seat monoplane carrier fighter with folding wings. Wing tips aside it’s not something the Japanese would ever accomplish, the US not until late 1941 with the first folding Wildcats, and the British not until the Seafire Mk.III of 1943. Of course the D.376 is rubbish otherwise, even Skuas would shoot them down.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 9, 2022)

don4331 said:


> But I look at Hawker Henley of more/less same weight/wing area and see a plane that can almost touch 300mph and I can't help but think a cleaner design would have been more useful as a fighter.


Henley "near" 300mph with a Merlin II or III which has 1030hp at 16,250ft.
Skua 225mph at 6,500ft with a Perseus XII with 905hp at 6,500ft.

Now just for comparisons sake;

Hurricane I with constant speed prop and using 6.25lbs of boost.

5,000ft.............................................276mph
6,500ft.............................................280mph
10,000ft..........................................291.5mph
16,500ft..........................................312mph
18,000ft..........................................316mph


Comparing the speed of planes at widely different altitudes is going to lead to some distorted results.

Yes the Hurricane would make a good carrier fighter if given a constant speed prop in 1939.
The Henley........not so much, unless you stick in a medium altitude Merlin (like Fulmar got) you are looking at a 250-260mph airplane at the combat altitudes of the Skua.
And the Henley had only one machine gun in the wing and as built had 94 Imp gallons of fuel.
I know you were not proposing using the Henley but just using it as a "benchmark".

You might have easily improved the Skua but with the Perseus engine you have a major problem. The chances of even getting close to the Hurricane's drag numbers are not good no matter what you do. Even if you get the Skua "slick" up to 245mph (1/2 the difference between a normal Skua and the Henley at 6,5000ft) you still don't have much of a fighter.

What is a 240-245mph Skua going to do that a 225mph Skua won't do?


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## Shortround6 (Jul 9, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I like the small internal bay in the Henley, but I have to think it can’t hold much.


You are correct.
A pair of 250lb bombs.


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## ThomasP (Jul 9, 2022)

re the USN push for the 1000 lb GP bomb

Somewhere on the internet . . .

There is a very good report on the tests made by the USN in the late-1920s to mid-1930s using bombers (level and dive) vs ships. One of the lessons learned was that a 1000 lb HE bomb was more likely to cause useful damage against a ship with a heavily armoured ship deck (or decks) than a 1000 lb AP bomb. Partly (as mentioned upthread) this was because it was difficult to make an AP bomb with a fuse that would still function after penetrating to the ships vitals, and partly the relatively tiny amount of HE that could be incorporated into an AP bomb of sufficient ruggedness.

Incidentally, the British had reached approximately the same conclusion during the same period. Although the British successfully developed a large AP bomb that could penetrate enough armour to reach the vitals of heavily armoured ships and explode (see "http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index....armour-piercing-bomb&catid=43:bombs&Itemid=60"), to do so they had to be dropped from relatively high altitudes with a consequent low chance of a hit.

Subsequently the British did studies as to what the optimum size bomb that could be carried on the operational airframes in service - or soon to be in service. They decided that a 500 lb HE or SAP was the best choice. Aside from the Skua with its single bomb, the Shark and Swordfish could carry 3x 500 lb, and the Albacore could carry 4x 500 lb bombs. The Shark and Swordfish had dive speeds of over 215 mph, and the Albacore's was 250 mph, when dive bombing.

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## yulzari (Jul 10, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> I don't know how to overcome the contrarianism here. I must be an eternal optimist, otherwise why do I bother? So here goes..... All the carrier fleets into the 1930s are operating single seat fighters, I'm just suggesting the RN carry on alongside the Japanese, Americans and French carrier arms as it prepares to design its first all-metal, folding wing, retractable undercarriage aircraft. Make it a single seat fighter, like everyone else instead of pursuing the Skua.


The Skua was not chosen as the fighter but as a strike aeroplane. They just made minor changes so that it could cope with the bombers and torpedo aeroplanes of the time. They needed a strike aeroplane and, at the time it was designed and entered service it was the canine testes of it’s day. They also wanted a single seat defence fighter. Hence the search for a navalised Spitfire and Hurricane which was blocked by the home defence priority. Now if you can see the funding, spare design capacity and production to make a few dozen naval fighters using the production engines of that time without impinging upon the home defence priority it would receive a round of applause from Their Lordships and much booing from Their Airships. The spare capacity and funding just was not there and the Gladiator was only about to enter service and remain in front line home defence service. Only Fairey had something else and could carry it out. Make a new fighter and you have to not do something else. With hindsight I could happily do a long list of aeroplanes that may as well not have been made. Just a maybe; Boulton Paul’s Defiant production did not get into full stride until after they had completed their Roc production. Perhaps there is a window then for a Sea Defiant but even then it will not get onto an operational deck until late 1940 so the Gladiator is the only option for the first two years. The key to arming the FAA with effective fighters is classing it as part of home defence.


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## yulzari (Jul 10, 2022)

Turing some of the arguments on their head; what was the purpose the earlier single seat FAA fighters? What was the actual threat to be met? I am reminded of the due to be independent Malaysian government intentions on an Air Force. They fancied some Venoms and Canberras but the staff pointed out that there was no threat requiring such expenses and mopping up of skilled staff and persuaded them to start on armed trainers and light tactical transport and build up from there. Who was sailing the oceans with potential enemy fighters and likely to attack the fleet? USA? 
France? Japan, our recent best fleet mates?

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 10, 2022)

yulzari said:


> I am reminded of the due to be independent Malaysian government intentions on an Air Force. They fancied some Venoms and Canberras but the staff pointed out that there was no threat requiring such expenses…


Isn’t that why the RNZAF basically disbanded except for transport and SAR?


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## EwenS (Jul 10, 2022)

For the Admiralty, from 1923 the threat to Imperial interests was seen as Japan.

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance finally came to an end in Aug 1923, following decisions taken at the 1921 Imperial Conference and the signing of the Washington Treaty.








Anglo-Japanese Alliance - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org





The Sempill Mission in 1921/22 probably represents the last signs of co-operation until after WW2.








Sempill Mission - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org





The change in attitude is best shown by the decision to build a new naval base at Singapore, which was announced in 1923. Construction started slowly and gained a fresh impetus in 1931 following Japanese moves into China. It opened in 1938 but was still under development on the outbreak of war with Japan in Dec 1941. Imperial defence was then based around sending a large fleet east from Home & Med waters to Singapore and advance via an advance base through the South China Sea to relieve Hong Kong and defeat the Japanese fleet.








Singapore Naval Base - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org





Things only begin to change in Europe with Hitler becoming Chancellor in Jan 1933 and Fuhrer in Aug 1934. And in the Med changes come with the changing relationship with Italy as a result of the Abyssinian Crisis in 1935. The latter helped shape the Admiralty’s view of the Air Defence of the fleet and led to the design of the Armoured carrier instead of building additional Ark Royals. At that point there were severe doubts that carriers could carry enough fighters to maintain standing patrols around the fleet in sufficient strength to break up enemy shore based strikes.








Armoured Aircraft Carriers


An overview of how the 1930s Royal Navy settled on a strategy to deal with a rapid pace of change and a challenging set of requirements.




www.armouredcarriers.com

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## Shortround6 (Jul 10, 2022)

Unfortunately The Skua took too long to design/build.
Requirement issued in 1934 and got 5 different proposals. 
Backburn doesn't get the order for two prototypes until April of 1935. 

IN 1935 The Japanese were using this as torpedo plane. 




which was developed from the Blackburn Rippon. Top speed 132mph. 
In 1936 it's replacement stated to show up. The Yokosuka B4Y.




Top speed 173mph (?) one Lewis gun in the rear cockpit. 
Japan was so advanced that 8 of them were operating off the Hosho during Midway. 
The B5N1 went into production in Nov 1937 using a 840hp (?) Hikari 9 cylinder radial engine. 

I have no idea of what the British knew in secret but the 1938 Janes (updated in Sept 30th 1938) has only a picture of the Yokosuka B4Y with no details (not even manufacturer let alone make of engine) 

The urgency of the Skua program was such that the Air ministry ordered 190 aircraft in July 1936 while the first prototype didn't fly until Feb 1937. 
First production aircraft was completed Aug 1938. Now due to factory space the main-planes (wings) were built in the old Olympia works in Leeds and some fuselages were sub-contracted to General Aviation Ltd. 

I don't know what Blackburn could have done to speed things up but the Skua certainly met the existing threat during the mid 30s and the likely threat into the late 30s. 

Had the Admiralty/air ministry not gone down the turret fighter rabbit hole perhaps the 136 aircraft contract for Rocs placed in April of 1937 could have been substituted by a suitable number of Skua IIIs with Pegasus engines. By 1937, even if they didn't know what the Japanese were doing the US TBD could provide something of a benchmark that monoplane torpedo bombers of higher performance than the Biplanes were certainly possible. 

Blackburn and Britain were ill served by the Botha program. Blackburn built what they were told, using the the engines they were told to use. The results were worse than useless which should have been apparent to anybody with any brains before hand. Both Bristol and Blackburn knew their aircraft were underpowered and while Bristol got the Taurus Blackburn was stuck with the Perseus which was not powerful enough for an 18,000lb plane. 

The problem was getting Pegasus engines.

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## nuuumannn (Jul 12, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> By 1937, even if they didn't know what the Japanese were doing the US TBD could provide something of a benchmark that monoplane torpedo bombers of higher performance than the Biplanes were certainly possible.



I certainly agree with your post, SR, but the issue with British torpedo planes wasn't that they needed higher performance, but versatility. The Swordfish and Albacore were designed to fulfil multiple roles and requirements. The Albacore was designed to a couple of different specifications, ultimately leading to 41/36, which was for a "Torpedo Spotter, Reconnaissance, Dive Bomber Aeroplane", the earlier specification, M.7/36 specified that it also operate from floats, which the Swordfish also could and yes, one TBD was tested on floats, but the Swordfish and Albacore were stressed for ship catapult launches and could be converted to float configuration. Standard production TBDs couldn't.

Speed was relative in torpedo aircraft, a high speed machine might mean quicker transit speeds to the combat area, but during the attack run it served no benefit because dropping torpedoes was a precise art and had to be done at a particular speed to ensure correct entry of the torpedo into the water to enable a smooth run at the right depth, and lessen the risk of the torpedo from breaking up on the water's surface. Too high penetration speed could, at the time, ruin the depth setting mechanisms, so approach speeds had to be measured and restricted. The other consideration of British torpedoplanes was that the Admiralty believed that torpedo aircraft required manoeuvrability low to the water's edge to evade enemy fire once the torpedo had been dropped. A biplane offered better low speed manoeuvrability than a monoplane.

Fairey _could _have designed an all-metal monoplane to meet the Albacore specification, but it didn't.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 12, 2022)

Sorry, The Point wasn't about the British building a monoplane torpedo bomber. It was that the Skua, when designed and adopted, was an adequate fighter to use against foreign torpedo bombers. 
The point about the Douglas TPD was that the foreign torpedo bombers were changing and the British would have to take that into account. 
We do tend to use the retrospectoscope in these discussions and when criticizing the Skua it doesn't matter so much what other nations were doing behind the scenes but rather what the British could expect their opponents to do. The Japanese were very secretive about their own aircraft development and while now we know which planes they were developing when, the capabilities of Japanese aircraft in 1936-1941 were much less well known. Again, the point about the TPD was what or when the Japanese could be expected to follow suit with a monoplane torpedo bomber (and thus a recon plane) of their own that would require the British to field a higher performance fighter to counter it. 
The British were working on, or at least thinking about/designing, a better fighter than Skua. But if the Japanese were only revealing to the world a new biplane torpedo bomber to the world in 1938 when the Skua was being introduced into service perhaps the British thought they had more time. 

Sorry for the confusion.

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## nuuumannn (Jul 12, 2022)

No need to apologise, I understood the point you're making, SR but I wanted to stress the logic behind British approach to torpedo aircraft. The TBD was a trailblazer and that's often forgotten because its reputation suffered in WW2, but the British didn't go that way for a reason in designing torpedo aircraft is all. My point wasn't to criticise yours.



Shortround6 said:


> But if the Japanese were only revealing to the world a new biplane torpedo bomber to the world in 1938 when the Skua was being introduced into service perhaps the British thought they had more time.



The problem was that those slow lumbering torpedoplanes wouldn't be operating in a vacuum, any strike against British carriers would be carried out in conjunction with fighter support because such slow torpedo and dive bomber aircraft would be vulnerable to enemy fighters, be they Skuas, Hawker Nimrods or Sea Gladiators. In the late 30s the Japanese had the Mitsubishi A5M, which was an all-metal monoplane with fixed gear and open cockpit, with performance that suited its vintage, but was still better than any other carrier fighter in the world in 1937 when it entered service, although the British had long ceased receiving intelligence from its sources in Japan by then, so its capabilities were not exactly known.

I suspect the British motivation was more about funding than any operational considerations; the FAA was just not the highest priority in the early to mid 1930s Air Ministry defence budget. By the mid to late 1930s when aircraft like the Bf 109 and Spitfire and Hurricane are receiving interest and orders, this began to push naval personnel to question the wisdom behind the decision not to pursue a decent single-seater order for the FAA. Even before it entered service both Admiralty and Air Ministry representatives believed the Skua to be bordering on obsolete and would be completely so by 1940.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 12, 2022)

True but the Skua had a lot more firepower than the A5M, a pair of Vickers guns that were slowed by synchronization. The Skua had the four Brownings. They also had twice teh ammo capacity of the 8 gun fighters so they could make more firing passes. Poor substitute but at least something

The Skua and the Japanese torpedo bombers had the exact same defensive fire power. A single Lewis gun firing .303 ammunition (Japanese never changed it) from 97 round drums. 

The Fulmar was ordered in 1938 and that should have taken care of any improved torpedo planes/dive bombers that showed up in 1940. Assuming they showed up about 2 years after the latest biplanes. 

I agree that the RN was held back by the lack of funding. The Skua not only never got an improvements in any role, it never got an actual bomb sight, let alone a bomb release system.
They had been fooling around with a system (or several) that would do some of the things the Ju 87 system would. 
I have yet to see a photo of the Skua with gunsight. There was supposed to be a ring and bead (how 1917 can you get in 1938?) but trying to use a ring and bead as a bombsight is not going to give good results. Apparently the Air Force thought that dive bombing was a passing fad and all true bombers, of whatever size should use level bombing from 6,000ft or more. 

Penny wise and pound foolish. Buy the planes, put them on expensive ships. train crews. Don't buy gun sights or bombsights?

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## nuuumannn (Jul 12, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> (how 1917 can you get in 1938?)



So true!! But let's not forget that even in 1940 the majority of the world's bombers were flying around with defensive positions little more advanced than this...





RAFM 158 

Despite sweeping technological advances in some areas, other areas suffered lags in development much slower than we often give credit to. The P-40s that went to war in 1941 still had ring and bead sights, for example.

The Skua is in that same blanket area like the TBD, both good at what they did but overtaken by advances in aircraft performance and expectation, although the difference was that the TBD had no pretenses at being a fighter.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 12, 2022)

TBD was also cursed with a defective torpedo which pretty much nullified it's reason for being.

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## Macandy (Jul 13, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> So, how about we just focus on making the Skua smaller, lighter and more streamlined?




It was already a death trap with no armour or self sealing tanks, making it smaller and lighter wont fix that.


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## buffnut453 (Jul 13, 2022)

Macandy said:


> It was already a death trap with no armour or self sealing tanks, making it smaller and lighter wont fix that.



While you have a point given the Skua's operational use in 1940, we must ask how many other aircraft had armour or self-sealing tanks in 1938? Short answer is...none.

How many American aircraft had armour and self-sealing tanks even in 1941?

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 13, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> So true!! But let's not forget that even in 1940 the majority of the world's bombers were flying around with defensive positions little more advanced than this...
> 
> View attachment 677395
> RAFM 158
> ...


Not TBD, but I bet the bomber-exclusive SBD Dauntless shot down more enemy aircraft than the fighter-bomber Skua.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 13, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> While you have a point given the Skua's operational use in 1940, we must ask how many other aircraft had armour or self-sealing tanks in 1938? Short answer is...none.
> 
> How many American aircraft had armour and self-sealing tanks even in 1941?


I agree. 
To bring it a bit closer to home or on point.
In 1940 The SBD did not have either armor or self sealing tanks. 
In 1938 the SBDs direct predecessor, the Northrop BT-1 (Douglas acquired Northrop and inherited the BT-1/2) was death trap even without requiring enemy gun fire. 
In addition to fixing the handling problems Douglas replaced the 825hp engine with a 1000hp engine and in later models fitted 1200hp engines and finished with a 1300-1350hp engine. With the addition of more power protection could be fitted with out much sacrifice in performance, except for range. And with there further increases in power allowing for higher gross weights some of the range was recovered. 

SBD went through the change from the BT to the SBD-1 and finished with the SPD-6. 
Skua had two Skua I prototypes and then were told to switch engines from the Mercury to the Perseus as the RAF wanted all available Mercuries leaving the Perseus sleeve valve for the RN. And there was your Skua II, A 2nd rate engine and no way to change it. 

There is difference between a design that was not allowed to change/mature and one that hit a limit that didn't allow for change.
Since the Skua ended production at about the time that armor and self sealing tanks were being introduced in other aircraft it seems rather harsh to criticize it for not having them.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 13, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Not TBD, but I bet the bomber-exclusive SBD Dauntless shot down more enemy aircraft than the fighter-bomber Skua.


We have been over that before.

They Built about 190 Skuas,
They built just under 6000 SBDs.

The Skua would have to shoot down about 30 times as many planes per Skua as the SBD did.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 13, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Not TBD, but I bet the bomber-exclusive SBD Dauntless shot down more enemy aircraft than the fighter-bomber Skua.



I've read that the SBD was one of the very few bombers with a positive air-to-air kill ratio, but I can't vouch for that claim and so am very amenable to correction.


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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 13, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I've read that the SBD was one of the very few bombers with a positive air-to-air kill ratio, but I can't vouch for that claim and so am very amenable to correction.




The prowess of the SBD as an ersatz fighter is greatly exaggerated.

A large part of the SBDs claim to fame is the battle of Coral Sea. I was always puzzled by the extremely high USN claims for Zeros shot down during this battle. If these numbers were remotely true the Zero easily wins the title of the worst fighter of WWII. In fact, it would qualify as one of the worst aircraft of all time. A pilot would be safer in a BE2 flying over the Western Front during Bloody April.

A while ago I did an accounting for the Zeros at Coral Sea on May 8 based on Lundstrom's book "The First Team". The claims of Zeros shot down by the USN were extraordinarily high, a total of 32 plus an Me 109! Clearly this could not be the case Zeros considering that the Zuikaku started the day with 19 operational Zeros while the Shokaku started with 18 for a total of 37.

Each of the carriers contributed 9 Zeros for bomber escort with the rest reserved for CAP. During the battle over the Japanese force SDBs claimed 11 Zeros destroyed with the F4Fs claiming 4 more.

The reality was far different. Two of Shokaku's CAP Zeros were shot down with both pilots killed and 3 accompanied her as CAP as she withdrew from the battle. I am not sure what their ultimate fate was. I presume they ditched. The remainder landed on Zuikaku. None of Zuikaku's CAP were shot down. Lundstrom credits the 2 Zeros shot down to F4Fs. Note that only 16 of the 19 Zeros actually took part in the battle.

Of the Zeros accompanying the strike, none were shot down, 1 ditched and 3 landed on Zuikaku but were pushed over the side to make room for incoming aircraft. The other 14 all landed safely on Zuikaku. In contrast, the F4Fs claimed 1 Me 109 and 9 Zeros shot down with the SDBs claiming a further 6 Zeros. To quote Lundstrom "_From a correlation of Japanese and American sources, it appears reasonable that the F4Fs actually shot down *no* Zeros , but perhaps splashed three dive bombers and one torpedo plane, while the SBD crews accounted for *no* Zeros, but downed one dive bomber and five torpedo planes – total ten Japanese aircraft destroyed by aerial engagement. American anti aircraft fire from the ships likely destroyed one dive bomber and two torpedo planes_." My emphasis in bold.

On that day the SBDs claimed to have shot down 17 Zeros 1 Val and 1 Kate. The reality according to Lundstrom was 0 Zeroes 1 Val and 5 Kates.

Going back to the previous day and the attack on Shoho the SBDs claimed to have shot down 5 Type 96s and 1 Val. The reality was 0 Type 96s and 0 Vals. F4F did shoot down 1 Zero and 2 Type 96s.

In the battles leading up to Coral Sea the SBDs claimed to have shot down 6 Type 96s when in fact they shot down 0.

Total SBD claims up to and including Carol Sea:
17 Zeroes actual* 0*
11 Type 96 actual *0*
2 Vals actual 1
1 Kate actual 5
31 total actual 6

For the entire war SBDs claimed to have shot down 75 fighters and 39 bombers vs a loss of 40 SBDs in air to air. The above numbers put a serious dent in those claims

A summary of the Japanese Attack on TF 17 at Coral Sea where the SBDs were used as low-level fighters:

F4Fs
20 participating 3 shot down
Zeros 9 claimed 0 shot down
Me 109 1 claimed 0 shot down
Vals 4 claimed 3 shot down
Kates 1 claimed 1 shot down

SDBs
23 participating 5 shot down
Zeros 6 claimed 0 shot down
Vals 1 claimed 1 shot down
Kates 1 claimed 5 shot down

The Zuikaku finished the day with 24 fully operational Zeros, 1 easily repaired Zero and at least 2 heavily damaged Zeros. That leaves 1 not specifically accounted for by Lundstrom, which was likely a badly damaged Zero aboard the Zuikaku.

In summary the F4Fs claimed to have shot down 13 Zeros (and a 109) when in actual fact they shot down *2* and the SDBs claimed 17 Zeros when in fact they shot down *zero *Zeros. With 3 of Zuikaku's Zeros remaining on deck during the battles over the Japanese task force, if the claims are taken at face value the USN shot down virtually every Zero they saw. This was plainly not the case. The incredible over claiming of Zeros (a factor of 15 to 1) can be attributed to two factors: the USN overall over claimed by a factor of almost 4 and they tended to claim everything they shot at was a Zero. To be fair the Japanese pilots were even more optimist in their claims.

I haven't had the chance to look at the numbers at Midway in detail where the Japanese did lose 13 Zeros. Lundstrom credits 12 of those to F4Fs with 1 possibly shot down by an SBD or TBD.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 13, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> The prowess of the SBD as an ersatz fighter is greatly exaggerated.
> 
> A large part of the SBDs claim to fame is the battle of Coral Sea. I was always puzzled by the extremely high USN claims for Zeros shot down during this battle. If these numbers were remotely true the Zero easily wins the title of the worst fighter of WWII. In fact, it would qualify as one of the worst aircraft of all time. A pilot would be safer in a BE2 flying over the Western Front during Bloody April.
> 
> ...



Exactly why I expressed my skepticism, and thanks for the solid details explaining the BS in the claim.

ETA: I really need to get a couple of Lundstrom's books. Thanks for the reminder, as well.

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## Admiral Beez (Jul 14, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Skua had two Skua I prototypes and then were told to switch engines from the Mercury to the Perseus as the RAF wanted all available Mercuries leaving the Perseus sleeve valve for the RN.


Interesting that the FAA wanted the poppet valve Mercury. Besides the four shipboard squadrons of Skua and those of the Albacore did the FAA operate many sleeve valve engine aircrsft from the RN’s aircraft carriers? I get the sense that their maintenance and delicate handing needs made them less popular.


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## EwenS (Jul 14, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Interesting that the FAA wanted the poppet valve Mercury. Besides the four shipboard squadrons of Skua and those of the Albacore did the FAA operate many sleeve valve engine aircrsft from the RN’s aircraft carriers? I get the sense that their maintenance and delicate handing needs made them less popular.


Napier Sabre in Blackburn Firebrand I/II in secondary roles. Bristol Centaurus powered Blackburn Firebrand III/IV/V & Hawker Sea Fury And it was intended for the Blackburn Firecrest & Fairey Spearfish which only reached the prototype stage.


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## yulzari (Jul 14, 2022)

The difference between the ‘bomber’ SBD and ‘fighter’ Skua is the use of fewer 0.500” as against more 0.303” machine guns. The firepower was thus not that different. The principal difference was that of doctrine whereby the Skua was to be employed occasionally as a long range/loiter fighter against multi engined fleet attackers whilst the SBD was armed to defend itself.

But we digress from the OP, in which the real answer is that you can make a better aeroplane a few years later (eg the Fairey Fulmar) but not do much to make the Skua itself better.

At the time of design decisions it was right at the top of the game, but the goal posts were moving so fast that it soon fell from the Premier League down to good club football. It might be more instructive to think about a better and sooner Fulmar.

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## Macandy (Jul 14, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Not TBD, but I bet the bomber-exclusive SBD Dauntless shot down more enemy aircraft than the fighter-bomber Skua.



Yes indeed they did.
I believe a few SBD pilots got enough kills to be transferred to fighters. Loses to enemy fighters seem to have been a tie.
Its performance was actually significantly better than the Fairy Fulmar 'fighter'.


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## Macandy (Jul 14, 2022)

Re the F4F Wildcat?

The last Fleet Air Arm victories in the European Theatre occurred on 26th March 1945 off Norway when 8 Wildcats engaged 8 Bf 109s, shooting down 4 Bf 109's for no loss while escorting Avengers on an anti shipping strike.

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## Clayton Magnet (Jul 14, 2022)

Macandy said:


> Yes indeed they did


re-read post 269 from 
R
 Reluctant Poster

The "fighter" SBD has been blown out of proportion

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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2022)

Going back to the number of enemy aircraft shot down compared to the number of aircraft built.
The Skua may have shot down two aircraft before Norway. 

With just 6000 SBDs built the SPD needs 60 victories just to maintain that rate of success. 

Unfortunately for the SBD fans, the Skua racked up the following victories according the Digger Dell website

.
Blohm and Voss BV138 Flying Boat - 2 destroyed by strafing
Dornier Do 26 Flying boat - 1 destroyed
Dornier 18 flying boat - 3 destroyed.
Heinkel 115 floatplane - 12 destroyed, 10 of these by strafing
Henkel 111 bomber - 9 destroyed in the air, another 8 damaged and written off after crash-landing.
Junkers Ju 88 - 5 destroyed

This is supposed to be from"Flying sailors at War" by Brian Cull with Bruce Lander and Mark Horan" lists some 40 enemy aircraft verified destroyed by Skuas during the Norwegian Campaign (see Appendix II in the book). These are not just claims, they correspond with German records.

So how many hundreds of planes did the SBD have to destroy to keep up the pace the Skua was setting?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Going back to the number of enemy aircraft shot down compared to the number of aircraft built.
> The Skua may have shot down two aircraft before Norway.
> 
> With just 6000 SBDs built the SPD needs 60 victories just to maintain that rate of success.
> ...



If you're counting strafing victories for the Skua, ain't it fair to count bombing victories for an SBD? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that's a decent number.

Asking for a friend.

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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> If you're counting strafing victories for the Skua, ain't it fair to count bombing victories for an SBD? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that's a decent number.
> 
> Asking for a friend.



You have a friend now? Wow, that's progress! 

Sorry, brother, just couldn't resist. 

In a bid to contribute more positively to this discussion, "Aces High" by Shores and Williams lists the following Skua aces:

Lt Cdr John Martin Bruen: 5 Skua claims comprising 1x Curtiss Hawk dmgd, 1x Morane 406 dmgd, shared kills of a Cant Z501 and S-79
Lt Cdr William Paulet Lucy: 1x He 111 prob, 1/3x He111, 1/2x Do17 dmg, 1/3x He111 dmg, 5 shared kills of He111s, 1/2x Ju88 and another 1/2x He111 dmg
The fact that the Skua was taking on aircraft like the P-36 and Morane 406 is pretty impressive, IMHO. 

As others have noted, the Skua was actually a good aircraft based on the specification that was levied. It had a decent bomb load and range, and was very well armed for its time. Unfortunately, it was rapidly overtaken by events and was never further developed. I still have a considerable soft spot for it, though.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> You have a friend now? Wow, that's progress!
> 
> Sorry, brother, just couldn't resist.
> 
> ...



Look, I want to count the kills on the carriers at Midway, do you freakin' mind?!

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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Look, I want to count the kills on the carriers at Midway, do you freakin' mind?!



Crack on, mate. Whatever floats (or sinks) your boat!


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> Crack on, mate. Whatever floats (or sinks) your boat!



... says the guy who loves the Buffaload ...


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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> ... says the guy who loves the Buffaload ...



And the Skua. And the SB-2. And the Gladiator. And the A-17. And the P-36. And the Vengeance. And the Blenheim. And...well, you get the point.

What's your excuse?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> And the Skua. And the SB-2. And the Gladiator. And the A-17. And the P-36. And the Vengeance. And the Blenheim. And...well, you get the point.
> 
> What's your excuse?



For what? I've got some dogs in my stable of thoroughbreds too.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2022)

Amiot 143

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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2022)

You're right to whisper its name!

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Amiot 143



WTF is your coat? And do you really need it in July?

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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> WTF is your coat? And do you really need it in July?



Apparently, that's the modern form of sackcloth and ashes.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> Apparently, that's the modern form of sackcloth and ashes.



Well, dust him up and send him on his way ... in that flying cafe.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2022)

Where's my flying scarf?

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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> If you're counting strafing victories for the Skua, ain't it fair to count bombing victories for an SBD? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that's a decent number.
> 
> Asking for a friend.


Ok, cut the number to 16 instead if 40, confirmed kill by enemy records, not claims. 

Times 30 to account for the different production and.........................SPD needs 480 air to air kills, not claims.

And the Skua saw action off Dunkirk, may have gotten 1 kill?
And the Skua saw action in the Med and got several kills. as many as (9) but these are claims and not confirmed by Italian records. 

All Italian claims are against Floatplanes/ spotters and a few SM bombers. 
4 or more of the claims are against these.






Some of the 190 built were completed as target tugs at the factory.
The Skua seems to have been a lot better than many people give it credit for.


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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2022)

Don't forget the raid against French forces at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940.

Six Swordfish, escorted by 3 Skuas, were intercepted by 5 French H-75s, resulting in the loss of 1 Skua with both crew killed, the only British fatalities in the entire raid.

Another outnumbered formation of Skuas fought off attacks by 4 Morane 406s, and 12 other French fighters including at least 4 H-75s. One each H-75 and 406 were damaged for no Skua losses. 

Not a bad showing by the Skuas.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Ok, cut the number to 16 instead if 40, confirmed kill by enemy records, not claims.
> 
> Times 30 to account for the different production and.........................SPD needs 480 air to air kills, not claims.
> 
> ...



You know, it was just a joke. I certainly wasn't looking for a "if a train left Chicago doing 76 mph" equation.

It was, to repeat, just a joke.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> You know, it was just a joke. I certainly wasn't looking for a "if a train left Chicago doing 76 mph" equation.
> 
> It was, to repeat, just a joke.


Ok, I was replying for a friend 

Besides, I was waiting for somebody to make comment about air to air "victories". 

A lot of people (not you ) make a lot out of some airplane's "record" without ever taking into account may many planes were built or saw combat service or a number of other things that affected the record. It is like the often repeated "fact" that 109 shot down more planes than any other fighter. It may very well be true, problem is that they built close to 50% more of them than any other fighter so if it didn't shot down more planes it was actually a bad bargain .

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Ok, I was replying for a friend
> --
> Besides, I was waiting for somebody to make comment about air to air "victories"





> It was, to repeat, just a joke.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2022)

We do need to lighten up around here sometimes.

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## PAT303 (Jul 14, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Amiot 143







WTF is that?.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 15, 2022)

PAT303 said:


> View attachment 677619
> 
> WTF is that?.



A flying café, of course.


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## PAT303 (Jul 15, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> A flying café, of course.


The dinners had a great view,.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 15, 2022)

PAT303 said:


> The dinners had a great view,.



I'm told the wine and cheese was fabulous.


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## Frog (Jul 15, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I'm told the wine and cheese was fabulous.


If the cheeses served are Munster, Maroilles, Pavé de Lille, Livarot, Avesnois & Camembert, it is forbidden to remove your mask.

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## yulzari (Jul 15, 2022)

Frog said:


> If the cheeses served are Munster, Maroilles, Pavé de Lille, Livarot, Avesnois & Camembert, it is forbidden to remove your mask.


St. Felicien, accompanied by a half bottle Charpoutier-Banyuls. A silver coffee spoon is an excellent way to transport the ripest examples to the savouring mouth. Although a mother of pearl caviar spoon will also suffice.

In the case of the OP cheeses I presume that sodium citrate is added so that your masked customers can imbibe them through a straw?

At least one can be confident that the staff will not be taking the cheese straight from the refrigerator to the table like Anglo-Saxon savages.

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## GTX (Jul 15, 2022)

I wonder if a development of the Fairey P.4/34:







Or Hawker Henley:






Would have made for a better option than the Skua?

Obviously the former led to the Fairey Fulmar, so we kind of know how it would have performed. And while not stellar, having it in service a couple of years earlier would have still been an arguable improvement over the Skua.

The Henley could arguable have been even better than both.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 15, 2022)

Problem is timing. 

All three planes flew within a few months of each other, except the Skua already had the folding wing and bits and pieces for catapult launch and arresting landing. 

Next thing is that the Skua was a dive bomber, in that it had dive brakes. 





For some reason the land based dive bombers didn't have dive brakes. They could dive, they could pull out without breaking. They just may have had to pull out sooner/higher and have less accuracy. This assumes that the RAF ever funded a dive bomber sight for any of them. 
Stressed for dive bombing and actually dive bombing the way the Americans and Germans and Japanese did it are not quite the same thing. 

You could probably modify both planes to substitute for the Skua, the question is how long would it take and what was the availability of Merlin's at that particular time. 
If Blackburn could not get Mercury radials because all available Mercuries were going to Blenheim production could you get Merlin II/III away from Hurricanes and Battles? 
The engine availability thing may have swapped back and forth a few times over 1937-39. But you have to pick a plane and engine combo and stick with it.

And finally once you are done, is it really going to be any better than the Skua? Or should I say significantly better? 

From wiki and is lacking in a few details.
"_The first prototype Fulmar, which acted as a "flying mock-up", was powered by a single Rolls Royce Merlin III engine, which was capable of generating up to *1,080 hp* (810 kW).[9]​ Flight testing revealed the prototype's performance to be relatively poor, the highest speed it could attain being* 230 mph* (370 km/h). Following the adoption of the more powerful *Merlin VIII* engine – a variant unique to the Fulmar and with supercharging optimised for low-level flight, as well as various aerodynamic improvements made to the airframe, the prototype's speed was increased to *265 mph *(426 km/h) when flown at an altitude of *7500 ft* (2286m)_"

Now in 1937-38 the the Merlin made 1030hp at 16,250ft, not 1080hp. 
The Speed of the prototype Fulmar is not given with an altitude. 
The P. 4/34 was good for 284mph at 15,000ft (and perhaps a bit better at 17,000ft? see speeds for Hurricane I with same engine). Where did the 54mph go? 
Or was the Fulmar prototype flying somewhere around 5,000ft to 7,500ft? A Hurricane I with a two pitch prop will loose over 30mph of speed when flying at 6500ft compared to 17,000ft. We don't know the answer for sure but something is off. 

The production Fulmars got a different supercharger gear and they could make a lot more power down low than the Merlin III and that helped get the Fulmar back up to 255-265mph at the Altitudes the Skua did 225mph. Remember the Skua had 905hp at 6,500ft. 

There is little doubt the P.4/34 and the Henley would have been a bit faster than the Skua but without the Merlin VIII the difference would have been a lot less marked at the 5-7,500ft altitude. 
You could have made the Skua go faster by giving it an engine that peaked at 14,-15,000ft but it would have been slower at 5,000ft where more of the enemy spotter aircraft and bombers were.

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## buffnut453 (Jul 15, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Problem is timing.
> 
> All three planes flew within a few months of each other, except the Skua already had the folding wing and bits and pieces for catapult launch and arresting landing.
> 
> ...



Great post, as always SR. The other factor here is...in which areas would these aircraft improve over the Skua. All the complaints about the poor old Skua stem from its relative lack of performance against single-seat fighters. However, as a dive bomber it was pretty effective. Yes, it would have benefited from being able to lift a larger bomb but, apart from that, it was quite good. 

Replacing the Skua with the Henley or the Fairey proposal isn't going to give you a better fighter. It'll just give you a dive bomber that may (or may not) be better than the Skua. You'd still need a single-seat fighter in addition to either the Henley or the Fairey, with no guarantee that either of the latter 2 types would represent a big improvement over the Blackburn product.


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## EwenS (Jul 15, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Problem is timing.
> 
> All three planes flew within a few months of each other, except the Skua already had the folding wing and bits and pieces for catapult launch and arresting landing.
> 
> ...


Strictly the Fulmar prototype was the first production aircraft N1854 which flew in Jan 1940 and not the K7555 the second P4/34 prototype.

The second P.4/34 light bomber prototype, K7555, first flew on 19 April 1937 (the first prototype having flown in Jan that year). It was then tested at the A&AEE between 24 Sept and 11 Oct 1937. But before any of the P.4/34 prototype contenders had flown the Spec had been scrapped. Marcel Lobelle then tried to make something of his design by removing the underwing bomb racks and adding provision for guns in the wings to try to meet an emerging requirement, OR56, for an *interim* two seat naval fighter *for quick production. *

K7555 was chosen as a flying mock up of the new naval fighter design. After the late 1937 tests it was returned to the factory for modifications including shortening each wing by 8" fitting smaller ailerons and ejector exhausts. It then returned to the A&AEE in April 1938. ( It later went on to test items for the Firefly, like the Fairey-Youngman flaps and pneumatic brakes in 1940/41). It was then decided to pursue the design to create the Fulmar and a new Spec was written around the Fairey proposal. O.8/38 was issued to Fairey on 24 April 1938 calling for first deliveries in Sept 1939. The engine specified was a moderately supercharged Merlin 'H' (aka Merlin III). K7555 was then tested again in 1939 with a Merlin VIII.

O.8/38 called for a max speed of at least 230 knots for an operational height of 10,000 feet amongst other things.

Only then was the design further modified to incorporate folding wings, deck arrester hook, catapult hooks and dinghy necessary for naval service. The wing was revised to carry the 8 0.303" guns and larger flaps. The fuselage was modified to raise the cockpit to improve the pilot's view over the nose along with a change to the wing incidence. The tailplane was revised and mounted lower. None of these changes was made to K7555. That is why the N1854, the first production airframe, is considered the true Fulmar prototype.

So that little lot must have added a fair bit of weight to the original P4/34 flying mock up and can't have done the performance on the original engine much good at all. Hence the Merlin VIII.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 15, 2022)

Thank you. 

We do still have some details that don't quite line up. 



EwenS said:


> The engine specified was a moderately supercharged Merlin 'H' (aka Merlin III)


I am unclear on this one.
A Merlin III had 8.588 supercharger gears, The RR designation was R.M.1.S. The S stands for supercharged or fully supercharged.
There was an R.M.1.M moderately supercharged engine using 7.32 gears and it was rated at 1085hp at 9750ft.(P)It was never put into production and never got a MK number. 
I have no idea if one was flown in the K7555 or not. 


EwenS said:


> K7555 was then tested again in 1939 with a Merlin VIII.


The Merlin VIII used 6.313 gears and was the R.M.3. specification. At least according to the R-R Heritage Trust "The Merlin in Perspective" 

Strangely enough the Merlin 30 was R.M.2.M and went back to the 8.588 supercharger gears but used a 9.75in impeller. 


EwenS said:


> O.8/38 called for a max speed of at least 230 knots for an operational height of 10,000 feet amongst other things.


And 230kts is just about 265mph. The 10,000ft would line up pretty well with the phantom R.M.1.M engine though. 

There may have been a bit of fooling around with cooling system with some of these engines, The R.M.1 used either glycol cooling or the pressure cooling system depending on MK number The R.M.1 was also the Merlin X 2 speed engine. 

Just trying to get out that trying to make the Fulmar in 1938/early 39 may not have had the same engines available as what was available in 1940. 

The Switch to the Fulmar (or Skua replacement) also saw the dive bomber requirement drop way. The Henley carried two 250lbs bombs in the bomb bay and while it may have been possible to adapt to a single 500lb with the trapeze it was a bot more work that had to be done. Likewise the K7555 had a pair of 250lbs under the wings would need a bit of modification to carry the 500lb SAP for anti ship duties. 
When the dive bombing part went away I don't know. The ability to carry a bomb came back with the Fulmar but it may have been an after thought and not their the entire time? 
The long range tank under the fuselage blocked carrying bombs? 

Something that came up on the Dinger Aviation .net pages was the claim that the Skuas operating around Scapa Flow in Sept 1939 had a lot of trouble being directed to aircraft that had been seen by ground observers. At the time the Skua did not have voice radio and only had radios that could be used with code. 1938-39 radio technology was not always what 1940 radio technology was and 1943-44 was almost another world. 
The voice radio did exist, why the Skuas did not have it I don't know. Speculation is you need the extra black boxes, another separate antenna and the range is going to be rather short in any case. 
This may or may not have anything to do with two seat fighter requirement. 
Did the single seat biplanes have radios? what was their range? how far did the single seat biplanes fly from the carriers? 
How far from the carrier did thy have to be to intercept a 120-150mph strike aircraft?
How far do you have to be to set up an intercept on a 200mph strike aircraft? 
If you increase your "protection" radius by 50% you may increase the area you need to cover by double. 

Just somethings to consider.


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## ThomasP (Jul 16, 2022)

re the T.1083/R.1082 command & liaison set carried by the Skua

The T.1083/R.1082 combined command & liaison set was the standard FAA kit for multi-crew aircraft from about 1936, along with the R.1110 DF/receiver for homing on the Type 72 shipboard homing beacon. This equipment was carried by the Shark, Swordfish, Walrus, Skua, Roc, early Fulmar, and some early Albacore. (maybe others also?)

In the form carried by these aircraft the set was capable of CW, ICW, and R/T(voice) for air- to-air and air-to-ship communication. It also had a built in capability for acting as an intercom for the crew.

Where the myth began that it was not capable of voice communication between aircraft or air-to-ground I do not know, but it is possible that the myth started due to the equipment sometimes being used as a shipboard radio set. When it was used as ship-to-aircraft equipment it usually did not have the voice capability/equipment included, instead transmitting/receiving in ICW(Morse) for communication or CW for DF purposes. This was due to there being other much more capable shipboard R/T(voice) sets.

It began to be replaced in mid- to late-1940, although some aircraft kept the old set for some time while receiving an additional command set for R/T(voice) communications. The T.1083/R.1082 set was also used in many pre- and early-war RAF multi-crew aircraft.

This is the T.1083/R.1082 radio description page from the 1937 edition of the Pilot's Notes for the Swordfish Mk I:

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## yulzari (Jul 16, 2022)

I note, but make no comment, that the strike role of the Skua was taken on when it was being withdrawn by the Albacore, whilst the fighter one by the Fulmar. Also the Swordfish. The Albacore offered a small reduction in cruising speed but a fourfold increase in bomb load and greater range plus a torpedo capacity. The Fulmar covered the other roles with it’s greater speed, range and firepower. 

Out of curiosity I looked up the similar period peer Junker JU87 and found it to cruise little slower than an Albacore, have a shorter range and lesser bomb load. In some ways closer to a Skua than an Albacore but on more power. Of course it was made to meet a tactical army support role instead. Maybe a better Skua might have been an RAF dive bomber variant? Even the Roc ventured out over Dunkirk.

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## EwenS (Jul 16, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Something that came up on the Dinger Aviation .net pages was the claim that the Skuas operating around Scapa Flow in Sept 1939 had a lot of trouble being directed to aircraft that had been seen by ground observers. At the time the Skua did not have voice radio and only had radios that could be used with code. 1938-39 radio technology was not always what 1940 radio technology was and 1943-44 was almost another world.
> The voice radio did exist, why the Skuas did not have it I don't know. Speculation is you need the extra black boxes, another separate antenna and the range is going to be rather short in any case.
> This may or may not have anything to do with two seat fighter requirement.
> Did the single seat biplanes have radios? what was their range? how far did the single seat biplanes fly from the carriers?
> ...


A lot of questions. Not sure I have all the answers but here goes.

*CH radar coverage in north Scotland in 1939.*
There was only a single CH radar station on Orkney in 1939. Others were added at Sumburgh in the Shetlands to the north and Thrumster to the south on the mainland by July 1940. A CHL station had also been added on Orkney by July 1940.

So any other direction was courtesy of the Mk.1 eyeball. And then the weather, particularly cloud, comes into play. Under cloud a ground observer might hear an aircraft but not see it. Or he might see it but an aircraft may not. Orkney does not have the best of the weather conditions in the autumn / winter part of the year as well as having limited daylight hours. Even in central Scotland in Dec-Jan it often feels like it never really gets daylight.

*Radio range.*
From a link I posted on the "FAA Seafire vs Corsair" thread, the TR9 HF radio set (T.1083/R.1082 combination) introduced to the RAF from 1933 and standard equipment until 1940 and beyond when VHF radios began to be introduced, had an HF voice transmission ground to air range of about 35-40 miles but only 5 miles air to air. Added to that the reception quality could be variable.

These sets were certainly fitted to the Sea Gladiators delivered from late 1938. Not sure about the earlier Nimrods.

*Single seaters on carriers*
These were unable to fly far from the carriers. Visual distance only or probably not much more. The RN had a poor view of RAF pilots being able to find their way back to a carrier, that being one reason for a two seat fighter in the first place.

*Type 72 Homing Beacon*
A trial installation of this equipment was made in 1933 with production versions installed in carriers from 1936.

In the US the first experimental YE beacon was installed in the Saratoga in May 1938. YE was fitted in Victorious in 1943 while she was in the Pacific and then more generally in the Ruler class CVE as well as being retrofitted to earlier ships, becoming standard in 1944.

*Fighter protection of the fleet*
The best explanation I can offer comes from Friedman's "Fighters Over The Fleet" who discusses a 1934 exercise reported in the annual RN document "Progress and Tactics":-

_"In an exercise ('RY'), defensive aircraft patrolled 12nm from the fleet centre. Calculation showed that to be 100% effective in detecting attackers, eight aircraft would have to be arranged in 45° sectors at each height patrolled. In the exercise, however, only 5 aircraft were available. They were placed at 72° sectors, offering coverage of about 70 per cent of incoming raids in practice (roughly agreeing with the calculation). The 12nm depth was chosen because attackers were expected to sight their targets at 10-15nm, then work around on a circle to find an attacking position. Even if the whole circle was not covered, typical attacking practice would give scouts a good chance of seeing the attackers. In the exercise, high bombers were not detected. The conclusion was that the fleet needed air screens at two heights, to deal with high and low attackers or else an air screen plus a surface screen. Overall the exercise showed that 12nm was the minimum depth for an air-screen – and any greater range would have required many more aircraft.

One lesson learned from the exercise was that even a short war (in this case, 6.5 hours) imposed enormous wear on the aircraft and pilots, who flew a total of 110 hours on patrol. Many exercises, including those involving RAF flying boats, demonstrated the strain entailed by day after day of reconnaissance."_

He goes on:-

_"..although it was impossible to prevent enemy reconnaissance aircraft from sighting and reporting a fleet, every effort should be made to attack them as soon as possible: 'the fact of shadowing aircraft being shot down, in itself constitutes protection against attack._

_Looking back, the important observation in the 1934 edition were that warning of impending air attack was difficult at best, that dive bombing was extremely difficult to counter and that attacks could be ruined by destroying shadowers (snoopers), without which they might not materialise at all……Later exercises showed that it might be difficult to deal with shadowers."_

And then:-

_"Exercises in 1935 called the value of fighter defence into question. In a 1935 Mediterranean Fleet exercise ('SE') fighters got into range of the attacking torpedo bombers only after the attackers were within fleet gun range. Fleet gunfire was considered so much more effective that such action was unacceptable. A later exercise showed that fleet could be saturated by well synchronised attacks and therefore that there was an urgent need for some form of anti-aircraft co-ordination….."_

*Mk.1 eyebal*l.
So much in this period relies on this extremly useful but limited piece of equipment. Attackers spotting the fleet. Defending aircraft spotting attacking aircraft. Ground/ship spotters spotting attackers using optical instruments like binoculars and gunnery rangefinders. And as noted the weather plays its part with the possibility of clouds obscuring the observers views. And while voice radio is available it is relatively short ranged and is unreliable.


*Radio silence*
The RN preferred to operate under conditions of radio (and radar) silence whenever possible until units were reasonably sure that they had been discovered. They had plenty of experience in WW1 tracking enemy forces by their radio transmissions (check out the Y service and development of shipborne MF/DF interwar and HF/DF during WW2). That persisted into 1945 on the Russian convoy operations for example. Crews that called up looking for homing signals to their parent carriers were not popular but were obliged to ensure that they were not lost.

A couple of examples from the Japanese experience in 1942 helps highlight some of the difficulties in pre radar days and with limited radios (not all Japanese fighters carried them in this period):-

*Operation C in the Indian Ocean*
9 April 1942 – 9 Blenheims from 11 squadron RAF attacked the Kido Butai off Ceylon. The first warning the Japanese had, despite having a CAP of 20 A6M overhead, was when their bombs fell close to Akagi & Tone. The CAP then shot down 4 Blenheims as they left for home. Unfortunately the 5 survivors ran into the returning Japanese strike force and its escorts. Only 3 made it back to base with one crash landing and the other 2 badly shot up.

A report from the Hiryu after this operation noted that it was exceptionally difficult to sight targets at over 5,000m (16,400ft) due to the limitations of the spotting glasses and gun director optics.

The first Japanese prototype radar installation was made on the battleship Ise in May 1942.


*Battle of Midway*
5 June 1942 – the Japanese CAP, while plentiful and added to at the start of the USN assault, lacked fighter direction and had a habit of bunching up with everyone going after the same threat simultaneously, and leaving little or nothing to challenge other threats arising shortly thereafter.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 16, 2022)

Fascinating thread. My takeaway is that instead of discussing "what-if" airplanes, a better line of fantasy would be "what if there were better radios?"

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## Shortround6 (Jul 16, 2022)

ThomasP said:


> re the T.1083/R.1082 command & liaison set carried by the Skua
> 
> The T.1083/R.1082 combined command & liaison set was the standard FAA kit for multi-crew aircraft from about 1936, along with the R.1110 DF/receiver for homing on the Type 72 shipboard homing beacon. This equipment was carried by the Shark, Swordfish, Walrus, Skua, Roc, early Fulmar, and some early Albacore. (maybe others also?)
> 
> ...





EwenS said:


> *Radio range.*
> From a link I posted on the "FAA Seafire vs Corsair" thread, the TR9 HF radio set (T.1083/R.1082 combination) introduced to the RAF from 1933 and standard equipment until 1940 and beyond when VHF radios began to be introduced, had an HF voice transmission ground to air range of about 35-40 miles but only 5 miles air to air. Added to that the reception quality could be variable.
> 
> These sets were certainly fitted to the Sea Gladiators delivered from late 1938. Not sure about the earlier Nimrods.



Thank you both.

This does go a long way in explaining the problems/realities of the time. 

I may not have understood the passage from Diggers Aviation site but we can put together a reasonable explanation. The Skuas had voice radios, but perhaps the ground observers/controllers did not or the radios were of limited range and could not maintain consistent contact with fighters. You might have had ground observers trying to use a phone to call the command center which would then use it's radio/s to try talk to the aircraft. Ground observer of the aircraft could be a number of miles from the radio? Having each ground observer having their own radio might make things difficult with too much cross talk, you only have a very limited number of frequencies to use at any one time. Having the rear seater trying to communicate via code and then relay the message by intercom to the pilot was also less than ideal. 

This is a radio/communications problem and has nothing to do with the type of aircraft being used except that a single seat plane is going to have even more difficulties. 

I notice in the description of radio on the Swordfish a short section on the "trailing" aerial, section 6. It was this aerial that would be used for the longer distances and the aerial could be controlled in length using the winch. This would be to suit the aerial to the frequency being used but small changes of frequency probably didn't require tuning. However even the Swordfish was carrying a spare aerial cable reel to be fitted in case the aerial in use was lost/carried away. The work a few minutes for gunner/radio operator but for a single seat aircraft? Possible if the spare was carried but more difficult while flying the plane? 

For the fleet exercises I am guessing they were using the Nimrods as fighters and whatever Torpedo planes they had at the time, performance didn't very that much. A faster fighter could cover a somewhat larger arc/area and still get into firing position but things don't look that good. _IF _the enemy strike planes have better performance than the 1934/35 biplanes then the defending fighters have less time to perform the interception. They need to be flying further out with more planes to cover the arcs or they need higher performance or both. And without a radio beacon to find the carrier flying further away from the carrier to increase the interception distance starts to increase aircraft/crew losses even without enemy action. 

The Skua seems to have been a decent solution to the problems of the mid to late 30s. It seems to have performed well, even if not great, against the intended aircraft targets (non single seat fighters). Part of it's problem was inconsistence of policy. It was conceived/ordered when they were coming up with the idea of going to the ship board gun solution of defense. 
There weren't enough Skuas to provide an effective air defense and they didn't show up in time to work on much in the way of tactics. 
And they had changed their mind just about when the war broke out and the last 50 planes were completed as target tugs at the factory. 
Likewise the RAF had hobbled the Skua with their flip flop on dive bombing. From going from, "this might be a good idea and it needs investigating" to "this is very bad idea and it needs to dropped forthwith " was only a few years and caught the Skua and the Henley between design and actual production. Apparently they only brought back dive bombing or gave lip service to it to quiet critics after the Germans used it Poland and low countries. 
The navy had been asking for a dive bombing sight/system for a number of years but the RAF never came up with one after spending a few years in development. The Henley got shunted off to target towing land before the 1st production aircraft showed up. 
Again, note that the Fulmar was a 2 seat fighter that _could_ bomb. It was not a dive bomber that could fight or even a 2 seat fighter that could dive bomb. At least in the way that USN dive bombers could dive bomb. 

The Skua was also stuck in the level of development at Aug-Oct 1938. Only minor modifications were made after that time of the sort that could be done in service or at maintenance units. This makes it's actual achievements even more impressive. Or rather it's crews achievements.


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## ThomasP (Jul 16, 2022)

Hey EwanS,

re "From a link I posted on the "FAA Seafire vs Corsair" thread, the *TR9 HF radio set (T.1083/R.1082 combination)* . . ."

T.1083/R.1082 combined command & liaison set was not the TR.9 command set. (This part edited to remove incorrect information.)

The TR.9 series had the following combinations of Transmitters and Receivers.

TR.9 (Transmitter Type D/Receiver Type D). The transmitter had only 1 HF channel.
TR.9A (T.1096/R.1097). The transmitter had only 1 HF channel.
TR.9B (T.1102/R.1103). The transmitter still had only 1 HF channel, but incorporated connections for the 'Pipsqueek' DF/IFF device (as did all subsequent models). The 'Pipsqueak' device interrupted voice transmission.
TR.9C (T.1121/R.1103). The transmitter still had only 1 HF channel, but it used crystal control (as did all subsequent TR.9 sets).
TR.9D (T.1119/R.1120). The transmitter introduced a 2nd HF pre-set crystal controlled channel. Channel 1 was for R/T(voice), Channel 2 was dedicated for use with 'Pipsqueak' DF/IFF. Used by RAF, CC, and FAA. (Note - the T.1118 could be substituted for the T.1119, but was not common.)
TR.9F (T.1138/R.1120). As for the D model, but not used with 'Pipsqueak', giving 2 channels for R/T. Incorporated mods for intercom. Used by RAF multi-crew aircraft.
TR.9G (T.1394/R.1395) as for the D model, but incorporated mods for intercom. Used by RAF night fighters and FAA multi-crew aircraft.
TR.9H (T.1396/R.1395) as for F model but single channel, with mod for remote switching.
TR.9J (T.1397/R.1398) as for F model, with mod for remote switching. Used by CC multi-crew aircraft.
TR.9K (T.1399/R.1400) as for F model, but no mods for intercom. Used by RAF in small aircraft (ie gliders, utility, small transport, etc).
TR.9L (T.1401/R.1402) as for F model. Used on small ships and boats whose duties included Air/Sea Rescue.


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## special ed (Jul 16, 2022)

"Howland Island calling. Howland Island calling. Come in Amelia."

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## ThomasP (Jul 16, 2022)

Edited my post#313 to correct information (ie the T.1083/R.1082 combination was not designated TR.1091)

Also added info for TR.9(no suffix).


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 17, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Next thing is that the Skua was a dive bomber, in that it had dive brakes. For some reason the land based dive bombers didn't have dive brakes. They could dive, they could pull out without breaking. They just may have had to pull out sooner/higher and have less accuracy.


Perhaps that’s where our improved or second version of the Skua should be directed, to the RAF. From 1939-40 the Stuka showed the RAF what land based dive bombers could do in Poland, France and the Low Countries. Build a new version of the Skua without folding wings, arrestor hook (and the hook’s internal bracing), catapult fittings, etc. for the RAF. If the RAF could make use of the Vengeance in SEA, they can make earlier use of the Skua.


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## yulzari (Jul 17, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Perhaps that’s where our improved or second version of the Skua should be directed, to the RAF. From 1939-40 the Stuka showed the RAF what land based dive bombers could do in Poland, France and the Low Countries. Build a new version of the Skua without folding wings, arrestor hook (and the hook’s internal bracing), catapult fittings, etc. for the RAF. If the RAF could make use of the Vengeance in SEA, they can make earlier use of the Skua.


The jigs etc. were with Boulton Paul to make the Roc. Blackburn having no space left whilst they moved on to build Bothas and Swordfish etc. and develop the unmentionable device. Boulton Paul would doubtless suggest a dive bomber Defiant and switch Defiant production from turret fighters to dive bombers. The RAF were having cold feet over the turret fighter anyway.

BTW & OT the cold feet should have been an opportunity to switch also to a Sea Defiant but that would be another thread. Using the Skua as a model, a Sea Defiant in the dive bomber/fighter role.Still a two seater but less turret and with wing mounted armament.Thus a Merlin powered 300mph clean Skua. Folding wing for the FAA and fixed for the RAF.

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## EwenS (Jul 17, 2022)

yulzari said:


> The jigs etc. were with Boulton Paul to make the Roc. Blackburn having no space left whilst they moved on to build Bothas and Swordfish etc. and develop the unmentionable device.


But just how true is that statement about the jigs?

Skua production began in mid-1938 and Blackburn continued to deliver Skuas until Oct 1939. Over half the 190 production Skuas left the factory after March 1939. 

On the other hand Boulton & Paul had begun to deliver production Rocs in March 1939 and had delivered at least 40 before the final Skuas rolled off the production line. Roc production continued until Aug 1940.

The Blackburn built Swordfish were not built at the Blackburn Brough factory but at a new shadow factory at Sherburn-in-Elmet constructed for that purpose. The contract for them was awarded in Nov 1939 and the first production aircraft first flew on 1 Dec 1940. That factory used many of the Swordfish jigs from the Fairey production line that had moved on to Albacore production.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 17, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Perhaps that’s where our improved or second version of the Skua should be directed, to the RAF. From *1939-40* the Stuka showed the RAF what land based dive bombers could do in Poland, France and the Low Countries. Build a new version of the Skua without folding wings, arrestor hook (and the hook’s internal bracing), catapult fittings, etc. for the RAF. If the RAF could make use of the Vengeance in SEA, they can make earlier use of the Skua.


Timing. 
The time to build "improved" Skua's was in 1939-40. Deciding to built improved Skuas in the Summer of 1940 is too late if any major modifications are to be done. 

A Vengeance weighed as much empty as a Skua did loaded. 
The Skua did not have a good bomb load even by 1940 standards. Using it in over land operations without improving protection was asking for a loss rate very close to what the Blenheim's, Battles and Lysanders suffered in France. 

The other big Problem (read HUGE) was that the RAF didn't what to do with close support aircraft in 1940. They didn't know how to use them in an effective manner. 

This is something that is consistently overlooked in the Luftwaffe's use of the Ju 87. It wasn't that the Ju 87 was really that good. It was that they had worked out a way to use it. 
Luftwaffe had officers acting as forward controllers attached to the unit's that were supposed to get air support. The Officer had a vehicle, some times an armored half track, with the correct radios to talk to the aircraft. These officers also advised the Ground commanders what the Luftwaffe support units could and could not do and helped advise on target selection. If they Luftwaffe could only provide a certain number of strikes on a given day they didn't want to use them on unimportant targets, or targets that could be handled by regular artillery strikes. These Officers could, at times, direct the strike aircraft by radio onto the target while observing the target from the ground. 

In the Spring of 1940 the RAF couldn't even figure out how to proved fighter escort for the strike aircraft let alone pick targets that weren't hours old. The RAF was often not participating in the battle at the front lines but trying to bomb/attack supply routes dozens of miles behind the lines. 
The British Tommy's could see the German aircraft bombing and strafing them, they couldn't see the British aircraft doing anything to help them. (some fighters attacking the German bombers'?) They may have been but there was no shift in morale. 

Something else the Skua needed if it was going attack land targets, a bombsight. 
You may be able to stick a piece of gum on the wind screen and line up the plane with 500ft long ship. It doesn't work so well on pill boxes or artillery in woods or other targets in cover. 

Note that this has very little to do with the Skua as an airplane, There were things that could have been 'fixed' (Fuel tank protection?) on the Skua and things that could have been improved (Pegasus engine?) but you aren't going to get large improvements in results if you don't change the doctrine/tactics. Throw in weapons, If you are going to attack land targets you you need something beside that 500lb SAP bomb. 

Forget futzing with the wing and hook support structure. Bolt the wing in place if you want, unbolt the hook. leave the rest alone. Spending hundreds if not thousands of hours recalculating stresses and redrawing parts to save a few dozen pounds wasn't worth it. Just keep building what you are already making.


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## yulzari (Jul 17, 2022)

EwenS said:


> But just how true is that statement about the jigs?
> 
> Skua production began in mid-1938 and Blackburn continued to deliver Skuas until Oct 1939. Over half the 190 production Skuas left the factory after March 1939.
> 
> ...


Nevertheless Boulton Paul had to make Rocs as Blackburns could not. Just as Blackburn got the Swordfish shadow contract because Fairey were giving up on the Swordfish and moving on to the Albacore and further looking towards the Barracuda. It might have been Blackburn made Albacores but the delay to set that up was by-passed by Fairey passing on the Swordfish production line. The Blackburn design capacity was over burdened which was no help with their performance spending the war trying to make the unmentionable, unsuccessfully.

My point is that Blackburn itself had no uncommitted capacity and it’s shadow committed to making a Fairey design. Boulton Paul did have it if the RAF ditched the turret fighter concept, which was losing support. Knowing both the Roc/Skua and the Defiant Boulton Paul would have acknowledged their capacity to turn out RAF Skuas but surely recommend FAA Sea Defiants and RAF dive bomber Defiants.

But this is AH and hindsight. BP Skuas could have been in service sooner with the RAF though and with a better chance of defending themselves than the Advanced Striking Force Fairey Battles and Westland Lysanders.

Whether either would have been a good idea is a WI matter (shades of Father Jack’s’ that would be an ecumenical matter’).


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## EwenS (Jul 17, 2022)

The RN originally intended to have Blackburn build Albacores. But the contract was switched to Swordfish because the jigs were becoming available from Fairey and less need for strategic materials. That enabled the aircraft to be available sooner which in 1939 was what the RN needed. In late 1939 Barracuda production wasn't scheduled to begin until April 1941 in succession to Fulmar production at Fairey Stockport.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 17, 2022)

yulzari said:


> My point is that Blackburn itself had no uncommitted capacity and it’s shadow committed to making a Fairey design. Boulton Paul did have it if the RAF ditched the turret fighter concept, which was losing support. Knowing both the Roc/Skua and the Defiant Boulton Paul would have acknowledged their capacity to turn out RAF Skuas but surely recommend FAA Sea Defiants and RAF dive bomber Defiants.


The fascination with the Defiant boggles the mind. 
Skua had a wing area 27% larger than a Defiant. The Defiant I was within 100lbs of the Skua. A Sea Defiant is terrible idea for landing on a carrier, this assumes you can actually get a MK I Defiant off the carrier. The Defiant MK I has only bit more power than the Skua, doesn't matter what it has at 16,000ft. 

Yanking the turret out leaves you with a crap load of redesign work. You are not going to get a faster Hurricane by just taking out the turret. The Defiant was around 1 ton heavier than the Hurricane. In order to get the weight down you have go through pretty much the entire airplane and lighten up all kinds of structure. 
Unless you are going for the dive bomber option (with the small wing?) and while you can do a lot of things if you really try, in this case why bother?





Where does the bomb go? 
OK you can add 18in or so to the wing. Now you have bomb sandwiched in-between the oil cooler/air intake and the radiator. 
For forward firing guns the space in the wings just outboard of the landing gear is where the the fuel tanks are. 
Maybe you can use a pair of bombs under the wing but that tends to limit the ability to attack ships? 
And we are back to the weight problem. You are using a plane with the same engine as a Hurricane (even going to the MK II of both types) that weighs hundreds of pounds more to carry the same load. 



yulzari said:


> But this is AH and hindsight. BP Skuas could have been in service sooner with the RAF though and with a better chance of defending themselves than the Advanced Striking Force Fairey Battles and Westland Lysanders.


All three planes were bog slow and the chances of the forward firing guns making much of a difference is pretty slim.

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## yulzari (Jul 18, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The fascination with the Defiant boggles the mind.
> Skua had a wing area 27% larger than a Defiant. The Defiant I was within 100lbs of the Skua. A Sea Defiant is terrible idea for landing on a carrier, this assumes you can actually get a MK I Defiant off the carrier. The Defiant MK I has only bit more power than the Skua, doesn't matter what it has at 16,000ft.
> 
> Yanking the turret out leaves you with a crap load of redesign work. You are not going to get a faster Hurricane by just taking out the turret. The Defiant was around 1 ton heavier than the Hurricane. In order to get the weight down you have go through pretty much the entire airplane and lighten up all kinds of structure.
> ...


Actually I agree with this but imagine that BP would promote their device over the Skua. After all they had done the P82 SeaDefiant as a competition alternative to the Roc already.The BP Skua is the fast and dirty solution. A dive bomber Defiant is the best driving out the modestly useful and turning up too late for the party.

If the RAF ‘saw a blinding light on the road to Bentley Priory’ then the Perseus’s could be found off the Lysander production allocation and be in service in time to act in the BoF. All dive bombers or light bombers need escort or air dominance and the difference between the survival rate of Skua against Battle is small but would exist and take with them a few more Me 109s. FAA dive bombers did sterling work around Dunkirk.

The RAF would need to introduce a much faster response loop than just changing aeroplanes. Much as Home Defence was a whole system not just ‘cool’ fighters, the use of dive bombers needs it’s own reporting/response cycle system integrated within the BEF. All you need to do is change the entire belief system of the RAF since it’s inception…………


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## Macandy (Jul 19, 2022)

The fundamental problem the Fleet Air Arm faced was it had only reverted to Royal Navy control in 1937 and had missed out on the generation of doctrinal development that in the IJN and USN led to the A6M and F-4U Corsair respectively..

The hell you say? Yes, both those iconic designs came from design requirement let in early 1938!

The FAA stated the war with a miss mash of types totally unsuited to carrier warfare and the work of people with often not a single ounce of carrier aviation understanding.
See the British still issuing design requirements for fighters with a navigator in the belief it was 'too complex' a task for a pilot on his own to navigate long distances over water while the JN and and USN had standardised on single seat fighter types.

Both the IJN and USN had come to the conclusion in the latter half of the 30's that any naval fighter had to have performance at least as good - and ideally better - than land based fighters it was going to face.


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## Macandy (Jul 19, 2022)

Clayton Magnet said:


> re-read post 269 from
> R
> Reluctant Poster
> 
> The "fighter" SBD has been blown out of proportion




The big advantage the USN possessed in the SBD was it had a good enough performance to act as a secondary fleet defence 'fighter' which was indeed one of its its secondary roles.
It was more than good enough to tangle with confidence with enemy bombers - and had a good ability to defend itself against fighter types. Its performance in the role was good enough to instil confidence in its pilots to 'have a go'.


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## buffnut453 (Jul 19, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The fundamental problem the Fleet Air Arm faced was it had only reverted to Royal Navy control in 1937 and had missed out on the generation of doctrinal development that in the IJN and USN led to the A6M and F-4U Corsair respectively..
> 
> The hell you say? Yes, both those iconic designs came from design requirement let in early 1938!
> 
> ...



I can't disagree that losing a decade of doctrinal and maritime air power theory undoubtedly hurt the FAA. However, the example you provide as "evidence" is completely wrong on a number of levels. 

First off, the primary carrier-based fighters prior to the Skua and Fulmar were the Hawker Nimrod and the preceding Fairey Flycatcher. Those aircraft spanned the period 1923-1939 so entirely cover the pre-war period...and BOTH were single-seat fighters.

Secondly, neither the Skua nor the Fulmar had a navigator. They had a telegraphist air gunner. All navigation was done by the pilot. 

There were two doctrine-driven RN carrier problems that emerged from the 1920s and 1930s. First was the relatively small size of the carriers themselves, which drove requirements for multi-role aircraft like the Skua. The second was the determination that carrier aircraft would be too far offshore to encounter single-engine fighters. Both those issues can be laid squarely at the door of the "battleship admirals" who never integrated aircraft carriers into their planning. It could be argued that the lack of FAA aircrew being promoted to admiral rank had an impact on that but, let's face it, no FAA pilot was EVER going to attain the highest ranks in the RN. To do that you had to be a ship driver (still true today).


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## EwenS (Jul 19, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The fundamental problem the Fleet Air Arm faced was it had only reverted to Royal Navy control in 1937 and had missed out on the generation of doctrinal development that in the IJN and USN led to the A6M and F-4U Corsair respectively..


The decision to transfer the FAA from RAF to Admiralty control came out of the Inskip Report which was published at the end of 1937. BUT the actual transfer of responsibility took place on *24 May 1939, *just over 3 months before war broke out.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 19, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> The prowess of the SBD as an ersatz fighter is greatly exaggerated.
> 
> A large part of the SBDs claim to fame is the battle of Coral Sea. I was always puzzled by the extremely high USN claims for Zeros shot down during this battle. If these numbers were remotely true the Zero easily wins the title of the worst fighter of WWII. In fact, it would qualify as one of the worst aircraft of all time. A pilot would be safer in a BE2 flying over the Western Front during Bloody April.
> 
> ...


Although I can't find the SBD claims for Midway, I did go through Lundstroms "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign" and found a similar story.
At Eastern Solomons the SBDs claimed 6 Vals but actually shot down 0.
At Santa Cruz they claimed 15! Zeros during the strike on the Japanese but actually shot down 0.
At Santa Cruz during the strike on the Americans they claimed
2 Zeros actual 0
9 Vals actual 2
2 Kates actual 0

I haven't found an actual kill of a Zero by an SBD in Lundstrom's books with exception of the one possible kill at Midway. I have found claims for 11 Type 96s and 34 Zeros that can be discounted. That's reducing the SBD claims against fighters by more than 1/2 without looking at all the data. The claims against Vals and Kates do seem to be closer to the mark.

I did make a couple of mistakes in my previous post. SBDs claimed 31 bombers not 39 and they lost 43 in air to air not 40. I should also point out that this is for carrier-based SBDs only.

Land Based Marine squadrons lost 96 SBDs in air to air and claimed 22 fighters in return (no bombers)
Land Based Navy SBDs lost 17 in air to air and claimed 10 fighters (no bombers).

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## EwenS (Jul 20, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> Secondly, neither the Skua nor the Fulmar had a navigator. They had a telegraphist air gunner. All navigation was done by the pilot.


The Skua was manned by a pilot and a TAG. 

But the Fulmar was manned by a pilot and an Observer. The latter handled both navigation and the operation of the radio equipment from the rear cockpit. The Observer was necessary to allow the aircraft to fulfill it secondary reconnaissance role


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## EwenS (Jul 20, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> It could be argued that the lack of FAA aircrew being promoted to admiral rank had an impact on that but, let's face it, no FAA pilot was EVER going to attain the highest ranks in the RN. To do that you had to be a ship driver (still true today).


It would perhaps be truer to say that during the inter-war period but not since.

Virtually everyone involved with the RNAS got transferred to the RAF on 1 April 1918. The first FAA courses for aircrew began in 1924. At that point Observers and about 50% of the pilots were to come from the RN. But beyond a certain point the prospects for promotion in an RN flying position were limited. Add to that, it took a Midshipman about 22 years to rise to the rank of Captain and then another 8 or so to gain enough seniority to command a carrier, you see why the RN carriers at the start of WW2 were commanded by individuals without service flying experience (D'Oly Hughes who commanded Glorious when she was lost in 1940 was actually a qualified pilot having gained a civilian PPL). So someone joining around 1910 involved in aviation would have gone to the RAF in 1918.

Those who were on those earliest FAA courses only began to receive carrier commands from 1943/44, usually in the form of escort carriers, as RN naval aviation expanded as they gained the appropriate rank and seniority. The one exception I have found was L D Macintosh, who opted into naval aviation part way through his career, qualifying first as an Observer and later as a pilot, and got command of Eagle in June 1942, then Victorious and then Implacable. He retired from the RN as a Vice-Admiral in 1950.

2 RN naval aviators have reached the dizzy heights of First Sea Lord, the most senior position in the RN, since WW2. The first was Sir Casper John who joined the RN in 1917 and was FSL between 1960 & 1963.








Caspar John - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





More recently Sir George Zamballas, a naval helicopter pilot, was FSL between 2013 & 2016








First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Many other individuals with service in RN naval aviation have reached the highest ranks in the RN. But having the experience of being a "ship driver" is an essential qualification for any carrier captain. You don't simply go from piloting an aircraft to captaining the carrier.

While the USN have adopted a policy post-war of having their carriers commanded by naval aviators, they too cut their "ship driving" experience on smaller vessels.

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## buffnut453 (Jul 20, 2022)

EwenS said:


> The Skua was manned by a pilot and a TAG.
> 
> But the Fulmar was manned by a pilot and an Observer. The latter handled both navigation and the operation of the radio equipment from the rear cockpit. The Observer was necessary to allow the aircraft to fulfill it secondary reconnaissance role



Thanks for the correction, Ewen, but that still points to lack of aircraft capacity within the carriers themselves, which drove requirements for multi-role aircraft. Sticking with a dive bomber replacement that could also do reconnaissance, rather like the SBD, was probably a better option than giving the Fulmar a reconnaissance role...which requires a bunch of features that actually contradict the requirements of an effective fighter (e.g. stability).

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## EwenS (Jul 20, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> Thanks for the correction, Ewen, but that still points to lack of aircraft capacity within the carriers themselves, which drove requirements for multi-role aircraft. Sticking with a dive bomber replacement that could also do reconnaissance, rather like the SBD, was probably a better option than giving the Fulmar a reconnaissance role...which requires a bunch of features that actually contradict the requirements of an effective fighter (e.g. stability).


Clearly you've forgotten much of my post #212 on the Seafire v Corsair thread that you liked.

In terms of aircraft numbers what are you comparing with what and when? Several points worth noting:-

1. Most of the RN carriers designed inter-war had hangar capacity for 36 (Furious & Illustrious class) or 48 (C&G & Implacables) aircraft as designed. The experimentals, Argus, Hermes and Eagle had less (the disadvantage of being a leader in the field of carrier development in WW1). But the RN was committed to these WW1 ships before the reconstruction of Furious was even considered and her redesign proved to be a bit of an eye opener for the RN in terms of aircraft numbers. Ark of course had more (60).
2. After the experimental Langley, with her 34 aircraft many of which were broken down to be stored deep in her holds not in the hangar, the US decided it wanted 39,000 ton carriers before Washington for its role in the advance across the Pacific. The RN felt smaller ships suited its needs better. Both had good reasons for their decisions. They both went to the Washington Conference and broadly both came away with what they wanted.
3. US carrier airgroups are inflated pre-war because of the reserve aircraft they were forced to carry for the war they intended to fight over ever increasing distances across the Pacific as they moved further & further from their bases in Hawaii & the West Coast. So Lex and Sara are rated at 100 in 1936 (data from Friedman). But 30 (30%) of those were reserves either triced up in the hangar roof or otherwise broken down for storage and not immediately available for action. Ranger (an experiment in trying to squeeze a Lex sized airgroup into a hull half the size proved to be a folly) as built in 1934, 114 of which 38 (33%) were reserves. That practice was stopped in 1942 as it was found to be inherently dangerous under wartime conditions. Britain didn't have that constraint due to its worldwide network of bases to operate from and pick up replacement aircraft from.
4. British carrier capacity was determined by how many would fit in the hangar. The US by how many would fit on the flight deck for their preferred "deck load strike". Why? Because wood and canvas aircraft of the 1920s and 1930s wouldn't have lasted 5 mins on deck in some of the waters that the RN had to operate in. And of course providing the aircraft was an RAF responsibility even though the RN paid, and the RAF didn't want to acquire naval aircraft. Maintaining servicability of aircraft parked on deck in northern waters remained a problem right through to the end of the war. Much less so in the IO and Pacific. And when it came to 1936 keeping them in a protected hangar meant that the strike force was more likely to survive an enemy attack that it was thought couldn't be defeated by defensive fighters. The RN did however begin to adopt deck parks from late 1940.
5. Both nations were affected by aircraft numbers being reduced as aircraft grew in size during the 1930s.
6. Comparison with the Essex class, which is often made, is not appropriate as, while that design began pre-war, it ended after the outbreak of war when all the Treaty limits went out the window. One objective of its much larger design was to restore the air group size to previous levels. But there were limits. By 1945 it was felt that an Essex air group with 105 aircraft was too big to be handled efficiently. And the size of the Midway airgroup caused concern even before they were laid down. So numbers alone are not the answer. The RN did however acccept by 1942 that fleet carrier capacity needed to increase and that was incorporated in the Audacious class.
7. As for the armoured deck, well the US looked at that too while designing both the Yorktowns and the Essex but preferred greater aircraft numbers for the war it expected to fight. The RN recognised that on a Treaty limited hull you could have aircraft capacity (Ark) or protection (Illustrious) but not both. It took the USN 45,000 tons on a Midway to get both.
8. USN exercises showed that its carriers had to get their first strike in successfully or they would be disabled or sunk, in all liklihood very far from home.
9. One of the reasons for having an Observer in many FAA aircraft was that the RN felt that RAF pilots were not so well trained as naval officers in navigation. It formed a part of every naval officer's basic training before he even got to learn to fly. Given the Bomber Command experience early in the war maybe that is true! Again a reflection of the RN not having control of FAA pilot training.
10. Your favourite SBD arose from a hurried redesign of an earlier aircraft (the BT-1) in early 1938. The first production models (SBD-1/2) came off the production line in small numbers from April 1940 without self sealing fuel tanks. It didn't gain that feature until the SBD-3 variant arrived in March 1941. By then the Skua was in the last days of its front line service. The Albacore, capable of dive bombing, had been in service for over a year. If it hadn't been for the outbreak of war then the Barracuda would have been about to enter production. And as I've noted in other posts the combination of torpedo & dive bombing in the one airframe actually makes sense because of the attack profile developed by the RN between the wars. And look at what I have posted before about the origins of the two seat fighter in the RN.

Ultimately, as I have said before, both nations built the type of ships that they felt would best suit their needs based on the knowledge and experience that they had. But the experience of the early war years changed everything. And ultimately only the US had the industrial capacity to react to thos echanges quickly enough to have an effect on the otcome of WW2.


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## SaparotRob (Jul 20, 2022)

Ah Hah! Wood and canvas aircraft?


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## Admiral Beez (Jul 20, 2022)

Does the Skua even need improving? Given effective (single seat, monoplane, retractable undercarriage, folding wing) fighter escort and a good AP bomb the Skua could have served effectively into end of 1942. As it was, four squadrons of Skuas out of Ceylon along with or instead of the Blenheims on that day Nagumo forgot to put up sufficient CAP might have been successful.

Yes, a 225 mph (max) bomber carrying a single 500 lb. bomb is going to present challenges, but it’s the lack of an effective escort fighter in sufficient numbers that’s the real issue. Second issue is the lack of crews to fly all the Skuas, Swordfish, Albacores, Fulmars, etc… something had to be discarded.


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## MikeMeech (Jul 20, 2022)

yulzari said:


> The RAF would need to introduce a much faster response loop than just changing aeroplanes. Much as Home Defence was a whole system not just ‘cool’ fighters, the use of dive bombers needs it’s own reporting/response cycle system integrated within the BEF. All you need to do is change the entire belief system of the RAF since it’s inception…………


Hi
The RAF at its inception during 1918 were well aware of the need of a rapid reporting/response cycle as can be seen in the documents of the period, for example from 'Notes on Corps Squadron Work during the Somme Offensive August 1918':








Also from '13th Wing Special Operation Order No.12' dated 24th September, 1918:




And from a 66th Division 'Instruction No.2, Issued under Divisional Order No.92' (issued down to Platoon Commanders), dated 6th October, 1918:




All documents from UKTNA.
So working within the bounds of available technology the RAF Corps aircraft used W/Telegraphy to call for artillery or FGA or other Corps aircraft to make attacks on enemy troop concentrations (and also use their own weapons against them). They could also attract the attention of other air assets to the enemy concentration by firing a red flare and also warn the troops on the ground with other pyrotechnics. The FGA (mainly Camels) would operate from Advance Landing Grounds, where they could also be re-armed and refuelled, therefore speeding up the air support process. Also late 1918 the RAF also used telephony equipped aircraft to send messages back informing of the enemy forces situation.
One of the main problems for air support for the Army in the 1930s was that it was not decided to send a substantial Expeditionary Force to France until not long before war was declared, which meant not even the Army knew what they would require.

Mike

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## Macandy (Jul 21, 2022)

EwenS said:


> The decision to transfer the FAA from RAF to Admiralty control came out of the Inskip Report which was published at the end of 1937. BUT the actual transfer of responsibility took place on *24 May 1939, *just over 3 months before war broke out.




Yes, I'm well aware of the date of formal administrative transfer.
However, the Admiralty started drafting orders on the direction of naval aviation from the start of 1938 - but having no experience 'in house' - aviation was the RAF's responsibility and only the most mediocre pilots were drafted to the Fleet Air Arm by the RAF , basically defaulted to carrying on as before and ordering outdated concepts developed by the RAF such as torpedo fighters and twin seat fighters.

The RN had done no experiments along the lines of the US Navy's Fleet Problems from 1922-1940 to drive and develop doctrine.
Royal Navy doctrine such as it had was no further improved from what it had developed by 1918 - ie, the primary role of naval aviation was to scout for the Battleships, then provide spotting for the Battleships big guns, ( See the Swordfish, Torpedo Spotter Reconnasance) and as an afterthought, carry some mediocre fighters to shoo away any enemy observation or torpedo planes. There was no doctrine of carriers as a strategic weapon conduction strikes against land targets and dominating air space.

An excellent read, the US Navy entered WWII with a fully worked up and modern war winning carrier aviation doctrine.

Amazon product






Fleet problem - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


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## SaparotRob (Jul 21, 2022)

Didn't the RN come up with better fighter direction?


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## Frog (Jul 21, 2022)

Macandy said:


> Yes, I'm well aware of the date of formal administrative transfer.
> However, the Admiralty started drafting orders on the direction of naval aviation from the start of 1938 - but having no experience 'in house' - aviation was the RAF's responsibility and only the most mediocre pilots were drafted to the Fleet Air Arm by the RAF , basically defaulted to carrying on as before and ordering outdated concepts developed by the RAF such as torpedo fighters and twin seat fighters.
> 
> The RN had done no experiments along the lines of the US Navy's Fleet Problems from 1922-1940 to drive and develop doctrine.
> ...




The RN did not perform so badly with them at Taranto.


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## EwenS (Jul 21, 2022)

Macandy said:


> Yes, I'm well aware of the date of formal administrative transfer.
> However, the Admiralty started drafting orders on the direction of naval aviation from the start of 1938 - but having no experience 'in house' - aviation was the RAF's responsibility and only the most mediocre pilots were drafted to the Fleet Air Arm by the RAF , basically defaulted to carrying on as before and ordering outdated concepts developed by the RAF such as torpedo fighters and twin seat fighters.


Well when your involvement has been limited to the deck operations side of naval aviation for the last 20 years and you have none of the necessary decision making structures in place for deciding what is needed in the future, it is kind of difficult to make immediate changes. Organisational change doesn't happen overnight. Much as you might dislike the notion, change takes time. A new Air Division had to be set up within the Admiralty. New Departments to handle Air Personnel, Air Material (incl aircraft acquisition) and Aircraft Maintenance and Repair.And until you have complete control of an organisation changing it is in fact impossible.

And remember that the RN began in 1939 with almost nothing in terms of support. They received 4 airfields in Britain. They had to plan for how they could support what they had around the world, let alone the expansion that was already in the pipeline for the new carriers then building. So you find papers in the archives in the first half of 1939 about new facilities at home and abroad for repair & maintenance of naval aircraft. That is in addition to looking at aircraft production numbers, the numbers of slots on carriers and projections through until 1942 under various scenarios.

Aircraft acquisition policy is just one aspect and one where the RN was probably least experienced because that had been reserved to the RAF and Air Ministry, and defended jealously. Forming new staff requirements for everything needed, including aircraft, was the responsibility of the Directorate of Air Material created in Jan 1938. And you very rarely design and get a new aircraft into production in 18 months. So what do you do until you can decide exactly what you want? Just cancel everything in the pipeline? Or continue with what is already planned until you are clear about the new direction of travel? And by late 1939 the Admiralty had concluded that a new direction had to be found for its fighters. Hence all the confusion with industry as to what was actually being sought to fulfill N.8/39 and N.9/39.

There is an saying "act in haste, repent at leisure". And yes there is a balance to be struck and it would have been nice to have had things go faster. But everyone was working to a schedule that didn't foresee a war in Europe until about 1944. That included Hitler. The way things snowballed from Autumn of 1938 was just not in anyone's plans.


Macandy said:


> The RN had done no experiments along the lines of the US Navy's Fleet Problems from 1922-1940 to drive and develop doctrine.
> Royal Navy doctrine such as it had was no further improved from what it had developed by 1918 - ie, the primary role of naval aviation was to scout for the Battleships, then provide spotting for the Battleships big guns, ( See the Swordfish, Torpedo Spotter Reconnasance) and as an afterthought, carry some mediocre fighters to shoo away any enemy observation or torpedo planes. There was no doctrine of carriers as a strategic weapon conduction strikes against land targets and dominating air space.
> 
> An excellent read, the US Navy entered WWII with a fully worked up and modern war winning carrier aviation doctrine.
> ...




Well the truth is that for the USN, IJN and the RN the battleship was king throughout the inter-war period and everyone was focussed on how to destroy those of the enemy. The carrier was simply an enabler to allow that to happen. But the tactics used as a means of enabling were different because the circumstances faced by each navy were different and for the USN changed over time.

Between the wars the USN planning for a war against Japan was based around War Plan Orange which involved an advance across the Pacific to break the blockade of the Philippines. In the 1920s the carriers were closely linked to the battle fleet. By the 1930s, the carriers would operate individually and independently of the battle fleet, each with its own cruiser escorts, to firstly locate an enemy fleet and secondly to destroy his carriers to stop them from finding the US fleet. So firstly reconnaissance / scouting which while essential was difficult (Fleet Problem XI in 1930. 4 days of futile searching by both sides!). And the weapon to disable/destroy the enemy carriers grew to be the dive bomber (which itself grew out of hanging bombs on fighters). And fighters were to try to ensure that an enemy did not get the first hit in on its own vulnerable carrier i.e. attempting to control the airspace above their own ship within the limitations of the day. The spotting function was moved entirely to floatplanes on cruisers and battleships because the carriers were operating independently away from the battle fleet. As I noted the expectation for the USN was that its carriers would probably very quickly be disabled/destroyed. For a time in the early 1930s the USN virtually abandoned the torpedo bomber viewing it as ineffective.





War Plan Orange - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Using single carriers to attack places like Los Angeles and the Panama Canal, while spectacular, only served to demonstrate how vital it was to keep an enemy away from the vulnerable US coast. The real drive for USN carriers to attack land targets in the 1930s was to assist the Fleet in capturing enemy island outposts during a slow advance en route across the Pacific to relieve the Philippines and not "strategic" targets like the Panama Canal. And then the danger to them was the carrier strike aircraft being outranged by the land based variety or the same problem faced by the RN.

Inter war the RN expected to operate in much more confined waters under attack from land based bombers and outwith the range of the fighters of the day. And except against Japan wasn't going to encounter other carriers. So the role of the carrier could be much more focussed on attacking the enemy battle fleet. They weren't going to be supporting land campaigns or becoming involved in strategic bombing. Those were roles for the independent RAF, something not present in the USA. And the RN never lost faith in the torpedo, seeing it as the primary airborne weapon to at least slow down an enemy fleet. The purpose of the two seat fighters and later dive bombers was effectively flak suppression to allow the torpedo bombers to carry out that task.

Like the USN the RN did carry out annual exercises, usually with the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets in combination. They just didn't give them grand names like "Fleet Problem". And in those exercises they did seek to develop carrier tactics far beyond that achieved in 1918. 

Night flying from carrier decks became a regular feature of FAA operations from the mid-1920s and explains why the FAA could carry out night operations from the earliest days of WW2. That necessitated development of appropriate flight deck lighting etc. From as early as 1928 Britain had begun to experiment with multi carrier forces. That had to include flying off, forming up concentration of aircraft for attack and orderly and safe return to the right ship. And they sought to use those multi carrier groups to seek out the enemy, not at sea, but where he thought he was safe, in his own ports. In 1932 for example the air groups from Courageous & Glorious combined to attack the Med Fleet in a Greek harbour (shades of Furious at Tondern in 1918 but on a far greater scale and a precursor to Taranto in Nov 1940 and Pearl Harbor in 1941). The IJN began multi carrier operations with the formation of the Kido Butai in April 1941 and the USN not until 1942.

Ah I hear the cry! If only they had bigger carriers in the first place. But what is better? A single flight deck that the USN expected to lose almost immediately or multiple decks offering an increased chance of survivability if only by splitting the attention of the attacking force?

So again we come back to different navies facing different threats, or perceiving the same threat in a different way, and having to formulate solutions to meet them. And really until the mid-1930s all nations are experimenting and developing carriers, the best types of aircraft to operate from them and the best tactics to employ. Yes from being the world leader at the end of WW1 the RN fell behind in carrier operations. But of the Big 3 carrier nations in WW2, it was the only one not to have full control of its naval air service during the inter-war period.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 21, 2022)

a few observations on the events. 

There were a lot of changes going on. Especially in aviation. While a 1932 torpedo bomber was a large improvement over a 1922 torpedo bomber the possibility of 1942 torpedo bombers were in another world (or could have been, 6 Avengers at Midway?). The Avenger used an engine almost 4 times more powerful than the FAA torpedo bombers of the 1920s. 
Grumman was NOT responsible for the MK 13 Torpedo. 
Dive bombing was not a tactic until the very late 20s or early 30s. Yes a lot of planes had dropped bombs while diving. However the over 60 degree dive (and approaching 90 degrees) that allowed for a number of seconds of continuous aim that was mark of the 1920s/30s experiments and US colonial actions was a dividing line. 

In some ways the ships is use were the results of the Washington treaties. Bespoke ships didn't show up until the mid 30s. or designs for them in the early 30s. The Hulls chose the carriers and not the other way around. It wasn't until the Ranger and Yorktown (1937) show up that the US was getting a handle on desired size of carriers. Likewise the Ark Royal didn't get into operation until 1939. And these mid 30s carriers were still restricted by treaties and not actual operational requirements. A lot of theories, like lots of little carriers vs a few big ones but nobody knew. The small British carriers were too small and too slow by the 30s to compare to a ship larger than the Glorious. 

A lot of the exercises during the 20s and 30s were judged by referee's, some whom had biases of their own and sometimes the rules of the exercise were biased to begin with. For instance one reason that US Submarine performance was rather poor at the beginning of the war was the US sub commanders were overly cautious. Sometimes the exercise rules stated a sub was assumed sunk if a surface ship sighted it's periscope. Getting your sub "sunk" on exercise could affect chances of promotion in the peace time navy. 

Anti-aircraft fire was weighed very heavily in favor of the ships guns in many of these exercises. The gunnery men were working on better systems but they were working a bit slowly and in some cases were trying too hard. The US spent years working on the 1.1 in AA gun and wound up with an unreliable mount of extreme complexity. However in their goal of best is the enemy of good, the 1.1 had the ability to skew the barrels left and right in order to track dive bombers. If you point a normal gun up at high elevation it is vary hard to track a target diving at the gun. Normal traverse swings the guns off target. 
The US had the 5in/38 and was the best in the world in that regard (which may not be saying all that much until the proximity fuse showed up) but it was heavily criticized by surface fire advocates for not having enough range or firing in too high an arc for good surfaces shooting. However nobodies destroyers had the fire control equipment (or the ship stability) to fire at longer ranges anyhow. Another triumph of theory over practicality. 


A lot this stuff seems to be part coincidence.
The RN had small groups of planes, attacking in daylight against the supposed superiority of the AA guns might have meant failure. Attacking at night would severely hamper the AA guns. But trying to attack at night without radar in the planes also has it's own problems, Dropping flares by a few planes to illuminate the targets was one solution. 
You also had navies were the same navy couldn't agree on what was needed. The US allocated eight .50 cal machine guns to each pre 1938 battleship for much of the 1930s. 
They had a couple (2?) of 3in guns and eight 5in/25s (actually a pretty good weapon ). However the airplane guys were planning on using fighters to strafe the AA guns and drop light bombs for suppression to allow the dive bombers and torpedo bombers to have a better chance of success. In the 1930s the big AA guns had no shields or tubs. Crews were totally exposed. The 3in and 5in guns could not traverse fast enough to follow close in aircraft. the entire close range AA defense was up to those eight .50 cal guns in single mounts. 
Dive bomber defense was wishful thinking. The dive bombers were going to be dropping their bombs from about the max practical range of the .50 cal guns. 
the 5in guns fired time fuses in salvos. the 5in guns fired at 15-20rounds per minute. A dive bomber doing 300mph in the dive is dropping at almost 1500ft in 3 seconds. 

It calls for some very good range estimation and fuse setting. and not much shooting time. 
The US was fitting four of the quad 1.1in guns to each large ship in 1940-41. By 1940-41 the USN Navy was using fighters with four or six .50 cal guns per plane. so the AA gun crews were in trouble. 

RN was sort of in the same boat, The light AA sucked and the heavy AA was biased too much toward surface fire. This can be seen by the losses suffered when operating in range of land based air. But changes of this type needed some real changes in thinking and in evaluating real needs or better interpretations of test results.

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## Macandy (Jul 21, 2022)

EwenS said:


> Well when your involvement has been limited to the deck operations side of naval aviation for the last 20 years and you have none of the necessary decision making structures in place for deciding what is needed in the future, it is kind of difficult to make immediate changes. Organisational change doesn't happen overnight. Much as you might dislike the notion, change takes time. A new Air Division had to be set up within the Admiralty. New Departments to handle Air Personnel, Air Material (incl aircraft acquisition) and Aircraft Maintenance and Repair.And until you have complete control of an organisation changing it is in fact impossible.
> 
> And remember that the RN began in 1939 with almost nothing in terms of support. They received 4 airfields in Britain. They had to plan for how they could support what they had around the world, let alone the expansion that was already in the pipeline for the new carriers then building. So you find papers in the archives in the first half of 1939 about new facilities at home and abroad for repair & maintenance of naval aircraft. That is in addition to looking at aircraft production numbers, the numbers of slots on carriers and projections through until 1942 under various scenarios.
> 
> ...




The Royal Navy never took attack by aircraft seriously and convinced itself, in cahoots with the RAF- that attacking ships at sea was too difficult except with torpedoes and low angle gunnery defences were more than adequate. Some did not agree, but they were siren voices quickly told to shut up.

Rear-Admiral [Aircraft Carriers] Sir Reginald G.H. Henderson , 1932


> 'the primary defense of the fleet against air attack [by gunfire] is not justified by data or experience. No realistic firing against aircraft has taken place since the last war and, in my opinion, the value of our own High Angle Control System Mk I is rated too high. In common with others, we are apt to over-rate the capabilities of our own weapons in peacetime.'



These 'exercises' were laughable - highly choreographed, the 'air attack' would culminate with a Queen Bee drone to be launched off a cruiser to be duly despatched by the massed fires of the Fleet - or not as the case always was.
With the introduction of the new HACS anti aircraft gunnery directors in the 30's, (they were rubbish) the Home Fleet conducted an excise to validate the massively more lethal anti aircraft gunnery capability with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Europe.

For two and a half hours, the entire Home Fleet banged away at the circling Queen Bee with zero effect, eventually, fed up of all this, the Queen Bee lost its radio link and was last seen heading off to a quieter life over the horizon.

This exercise was declared a 'great success'.


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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 21, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The big advantage the USN possessed in the SBD was it had a good enough performance to act as a secondary fleet defence 'fighter' which was indeed one of its its secondary roles.
> It was more than good enough to tangle with confidence with enemy bombers - and had a good ability to defend itself against fighter types. Its performance in the role was good enough to instil confidence in its pilots to 'have a go'.


It was tried in the fleet air defense function once at Coral Sea. The experiment was never repeated. It was used in ASW duties.


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## EwenS (Jul 21, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The Royal Navy never took attack by aircraft seriously and convinced itself, in cahoots with the RAF- that attacking ships at sea was too difficult except with torpedoes and low angle gunnery defences were more than adequate. Some did not agree, but they were siren voices quickly told to shut up.
> 
> Rear-Admiral [Aircraft Carriers] Sir Reginald G.H. Henderson , 1932
> 
> ...


Yes the exercises were unrealistic but it seems that US exercises were no different. See the previous post by Shortaround6.

But the other side of the coin with those exercises, is that the battleship admirals convinced themselves that ships could absorb torpedo hits and still sail merrily on unaffected. In one trial in 1932 they estimated that Resolution's speed would only be reduced by 7 knots (30%) after being hit with 7 x 18" Mk.VIII (320lb TNT warheads) torpedoes launched from Blackburn Darts. If anyone had actually believed those results the air launched torpedo would have been abandoned then and there. Given the anti-shipping results from WW2 it is just as well that the air launched torpedo was retained and tactics developed to minimise attacking aircraft losses. Even the USN after virtually abandoning it as ineffective (Ranger was built with no torpedo storage) went back to it from 1935.

By 1939 the RN was reckoned to have the best AA weapons for dealing with dive bombers, in the shape of quad and octuple pom-poms and quad 0.5". But in practice even that proved inadequate.

And the solution that Admiral Henderson came up with only three years after your quote, while he was Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy, was not to push for more, and more capable fighters, but to shield the available strike force under armour to protect it from 500lb bombs delivered by dive bombers and from cruiser gunfire. And so the Illustrious class was born.

And that brings us back to just how, in the days of reliance on the Mk.1 eyeball and increasing aircraft attacking speeds in the 1930s so decreasing warning time, you control the available fighters. I've posted before about this. It is no good having fighters if neither they nor the ships in the fleet can't locate the attackers sufficiently early to stop them dropping bombs on your lovely ships. Viewed in that context the decision not to depend on fighters for defence is in fact quite logical. Come 1940 everything begins to change because radar arrives on the scene and better ship-aircraft communications lead to infinitely better interception capabilities. But then again you have the benefit of one tool that the Admirals of the time didn't - the retrospectroscope!

But you will continue to believe what suits you. USN good. RN bad. Or should it just be, judging from some of your posts on other threads, US good. Britain bad.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 21, 2022)

EwenS said:


> By 1939 the RN was reckoned to have the best AA weapons for dealing with dive bombers, in the shape of quad and octuple pom-poms and quad 0.5". But in practice even that proved inadequate.


The 40mm pom pom was the best *gun *available for most of the 1930s. The problem was not enough of them (the likely enemies were not going to attack in 2s and 3s to give the guns time to switch to new targets) and that as attack speeds went up the time to engage the targets went down. The 40mm pom pom was a bit short ranged which compounded the problem. Most data lists over estimate the effective range, not just of the 40mm pom pom but just about all light AA guns. The 40mm pom pom was fairly heavy for what it did. 
The octuple mount was 15-16 tons while the octuple mount had a massive amount of fire most ships never got more than 4 until late in the war and early war cruisers were luck to get two. It could be overwhelmed with attacks that had relatively few planes. 



EwenS said:


> And the solution that Admiral Henderson came up with only three years after your quote, while he was Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy, was not to push for more, and more capable fighters, but to shield the available strike force under armour to protect it from 500lb bombs delivered by dive bombers and from cruiser gunfire. And so the Illustrious class was born.


And here is one of the disconnects. 
The British were going to go to armored flight decks and AA guns to counter dive and level bombers. And they were going to mount quad and octuple pom poms to counter dive dive bombers.
But they abandoned the dive bomber almost as soon as they adopted it. They never finished off the Skua (fitted a dive bomber sight or system) before they even delivered the first production models and then didn't the dive bomber back until the Barracuda. 

Somehow the RAF concluded that dive bombing would become obsolete in the late 30s (better level bomb sights?) and it was worthless to pursue while the RN tried to get more AA guns and fit armored flight decks? The FAA were the ones who brought it back but it took too long.

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## EwenS (Jul 21, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The octuple mount was 15-16 tons while the octuple mount had a massive amount of fire most ships never got more than 4 until late in the war and early war cruisers were luck to get two. It could be overwhelmed with attacks that had relatively few planes.


Depends on the ship. The old battleships got 2-4 during the 1930s as they refitted /reconstructed. While KGV & PoW began with 4 the rest of the class started with 6. All were AA upgunned later in the war.

Ark was designed for 6 octuple mounts but didn't get the final port side pair until Aug 1941. Illustrious class were fitted with 6 from the start. Implacables with 5 and a quad. It was the quad that was more generally fitted in cruisers (with a few exceptions like Edinburgh & Belfast)


Shortround6 said:


> And here is one of the disconnects.
> The British were going to go to armored flight decks and AA guns to counter dive and level bombers. And they were going to mount quad and octuple pom poms to counter dive dive bombers.
> But they abandoned the dive bomber almost as soon as they adopted it. They never finished off the Skua (fitted a dive bomber sight or system) before they even delivered the first production models and then didn't the dive bomber back until the Barracuda.


No. They didn't pursue the Fighter Dive Bomber represented by the Skua (to Spec O.27/34 issued Dec 1934), but they did pursue the dive bomber concept. 

In July 1936 they issued Spec O.8/36 for a Dive Bomber Reconnaissance aircraft to Operational Requirement OR.36 capable of carrying 2x500lb SAP or 4x250lb SAP. That was quickly followed up in Sept 1936 with Spec M.7/36 for a Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance Aircraft to succeed the Swordfish. Both those Specs were combined into Spec 41/36 issued in Feb 1937 to meet Operational Requirement 45. That Spec was to cover the Fairey Albacore which was on occasion used as a dive bomber during WW2, notably during Operation Torch.

That was then followed by Spec S.24/37 that produced a number of proposals of which Fairey & Supermarine were awarded contracts for prototypes (Barracuda and Type 322 "Dumbo" respectively) with Fairey getting a production contract in mid-1939.


Shortround6 said:


> Somehow the RAF concluded that dive bombing would become obsolete in the late 30s (better level bomb sights?) and it was worthless to pursue while the RN tried to get more AA guns and fit armored flight decks? The FAA were the ones who brought it back but it took too long.


AIUI the RAF never wanted anything to do with dive bombing in the first place even after events in May/June 1940. Read a comment recently about the development of the Vultee Vengeance, that the order was placed in July 1940 by the Ministry of Aircraft Production (i.e. Beaverbtook) against the wishes of the RAF. There was even talk of them refusing to train the necessary aircrew for it.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Didn't the RN come up with better fighter direction?



My understanding, and I'm certainly amenable to correction, is that the RN pioneered radar-vectoring of carrier-borne fighters, prior to any other navy in the world. If memory serves, one of the lessons the USN picked up from USS _Robin_ was the more efficient use of radar in this mission.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2022)

Macandy said:


> An excellent read, the US Navy entered WWII with a fully worked up and modern war winning carrier aviation doctrine.
> 
> Amazon product
> 
> ...




My reading indicates that while the USN certainly used carrier assets independently of the main fleet in a couple of Problems, even as late as 1941 the USN pegged its strategy on battleships, with carriers operating as adjuncts; and that this only changed due to the devastating losses at PH which forced the Gun Club to give carriers free rein. Am I wrong reading it this way?

As an aside, reading your link on the Fleet Problems, I notice none of them mention simulated attacks on PH, while many of the histories I've read mentioned those simulated attacks. Could someone steer me right on this?


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## EwenS (Jul 21, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> My understanding, and I'm certainly amenable to correction, is that the RN pioneered radar-vectoring of carrier-borne fighters, prior to any other navy in the world. If memory serves, one of the lessons the USN picked up from USS _Robin_ was the more efficient use of radar in this mission.


The RN began radar directed fighter control on Ark Royal off Norway. Radar reports came in by light signal or radio from Valiant, one of the few radar equipped ships in the fleet, to be plotted by an officer sitting in the corner of the bridge with an Observer’s Bigsworth Board to plot the reports. A telegraphist with him then directed the fighters in Morse Code. Initially the reports were advisory but as confidence built with successes they quickly became instructions.

An RN fighter direction school was opened in mid 1941 with participants pedalling converted ice cream carts around the airfield. 








Pedal power at the Royal Naval Fighter Direction School, HMS Heron, Royal Naval Air Station, Yeovilton, Somerset – 1943


RICHARD MADDOX IN 1941 LIEUTENANT COMMANDER CHARLES COKE RN finished a tour of duty as Air Signals Officer on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal – where part of his duties were directing figh…




iwmvolunteerlondon.wordpress.com





The first course included two USN officers. The USN got a look at things when Illustrious and Formidable were under repair at Norfolk from mid-1941. Then in Nov Indomitable arrived with the latest improvements and the fighter directors on all 3 ships got together to exchange notes. I’ve no doubt the USN sat in on that. Illustrious managed to get some RAF radar plotting equipment in early 1942 while in the IO.

The USN set up a fighter direction school around Sept 1941.

Formidable and Victorious were both refitted with the latest Action Information Office set up just before Torch. And Victorious got a further upgrade in Jan 1943 (a vertical glass plotting board in the AIO) while at Norfolk before going to the Pacific. At that time her outfit was the most advanced in either navy. That was one of the two main reasons for her operating as a fighter carrier while there.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2022)

EwenS said:


> The RN began radar directed fighter control on Ark Royal off Norway. Radar reports came in by light signal or radio from Valiant, one of the few radar equipped ships in the fleet, to be plotted by an officer sitting in the corner of the bridge with an Observer’s Bigsworth Board to plot the reports. A telegraphist with him then directed the fighters in Morse Code. Initially the reports were advisory but as confidence built with successes they quickly became instructions.
> 
> An RN fighter direction school was opened in mid 1941 with participants pedalling converted ice cream carts around the airfield.
> 
> ...




E
 EwenS
, you are a goldmine. Thank you!


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## Shortround6 (Jul 21, 2022)

EwenS said:


> Depends on the ship. The old battleships got 2-4 during the 1930s as they refitted /reconstructed. While KGV & PoW began with 4 the rest of the class started with 6. All were AA upgunned later in the war.
> 
> Ark was designed for 6 octuple mounts but didn't get the final port side pair until Aug 1941. Illustrious class were fitted with 6 from the start. Implacables with 5 and a quad. It was the quad that was more generally fitted in cruisers (with a few exceptions like Edinburgh & Belfast)



I stand corrected on the larger ships but the cruisers were worse than I thought? 
The US was no better with the 1.1in AA guns until the 1938-39 program ships appeared in 1941-42 and many of them were refitted very quickly. 


EwenS said:


> No. They didn't pursue the Fighter Dive Bomber represented by the Skua (to Spec O.27/34 issued Dec 1934), but they did pursue the dive bomber concept.


We have a difference of opinion here. 

The Skua had dive brakes and could dive at fairly steep angle and hold it's dive using the dive brakes. 
The idea was to use the constant speed dive at a constant angle to allow the pilot to "aim" the aircraft until the release point and the low speed, for a monoplane, would allow for a low release point also for accuracy. 
The RAF had been working on a bombsight and in 3 years never finished it or a "bomb system" which would do several things depending on stage of development. While not the "automatic" system that Ju-87 used which pulled the aircraft into a pull out of a certain G and climb to altitude to ensure a safe pull out after releasing the bomb and while the pilot was blacked out (or nearly) the RAF was working on the automatic pull out upon bomb release or other aids like a flashing light on the ring and bead post to indicate the altitude at which to pull out. Nothing was approved. 

The US dive bombers of the 1930s carried single 500lbs until the SBDs of 1940, with the larger 1000hp engines they got a 1000lb bomb. 
The SBC-3 Biplane of which contract for 83 aircraft was signed in August 1936 and deliveries began on 17 July 1937. The production aircraft were powered by an 825 hp (615 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1535-94. The aircraft had a bomb displacement swing located on the centerline of the fuselage for a 500-lb (227-kg) bomb or a 45-U.S.-gallon (170-liter) fuel tank.
The SBC-4 contract for 124 production aircraft of the XSBC-4 was signed on 5 January 1938 and deliveries began in March 1939 to April 1941. These used a 950hp Wright R-182o engine and could carry a 1000lb bomb. 
The US dive bombers had a sight, it may not have been a fancy one and may have been little more than Aldis sight or a modification, but they had them.

The US was also planning, once the engines got powerful enough, to use 1000lb bombs and later larger. 

The Swordfish and Albacore did not have dive brakes, being fixed landing gear biplanes they didn't need them. They weren't going to go very fast no matter what angle they dived at.
The British did allow for the carriage of large bomb loads under the wings but not the carriage of large single bombs, Although multiple 500lbs bombs was something the US could not do until the SB2C. 
The British often described "dive bombing" but that is more like a fighter dropping it's bombs in a dive. 


My _opinion_ is it is more than semantics. 
A true dive bomber is going to have "aids" to help the pilot line up the target. It might be as basic as a few lines painted on the cockpit to help judge the angle, It may be a simple telescopic sight. It may may be a button or switch to activate a trim position or elevator setting to assist in pulling out. In may have more than one aid. 
The USN was still in the ship killing business using dive bombers, or at least ship crippling business in 1940-41. They had several different types of 1000lb bombs, they had space in the magazines. they had at least some aiming aids. They had a training program. 

The RAF had checked out and left the FAA to use small bombs or multiple medium bombs and no aiming aids. If you want to use AP (or SAP) bombs from dive bombers you have to drop them at a certain height and speed to get the penetration you want. Dropping them low and slow, even in a steep dive, will not get the penetration required on big, heavily armored ships. If you are going to be in the ship killing business you also need to carry ship killing bombs in your magazines. 
There was more to dive bomb training that flying at the ground, often with no bombs, and practicing pulling out without hitting the ground. Yes the British had 11lb and 20lb practice bombs but what was the actual training program? Some of the 1930s British training was only live fire once or twice a year. 

Once again, British crews performed near miracles using equipment they should not have had to use. 
The FAA, once they could order their own aircraft went back to a single big bomb under a plane that had dive brakes. It didn't show up until 

Many, many missions were flown by fighter bombers and described as dive bombing and many units got rather good at it. 
Did they ever get as good accuracy results as true dive bombers on small targets? 

Ans some dedicated dive bomber designs turned out to not as good as hoped.

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## EwenS (Jul 22, 2022)

You seem very hung up about the RAF decision not to pursue an automatic bomb sight for the Skua. Let’s go back to some basics. What aiming equipment did each type have.

Ju87
The Wiki article draws heavily on Manfredo Griehl’s 2001 book about the Stuka. AIUI the attack method was to set the aircraft up for the dive, including setting the bomb release height in the automatic pull out device. The target was selected via a window in the fuselage floor. The pilot then put the aircraft into a dive using red lines on the cockpit window to select the dive angle. Aiming was done manually by the pilot via the cockpit gunsight (same one as used for sighting the guns), which from cockpit photos appears to be a reflector sight of some kind. The automatic pull out system then indicated when dropping height was reached by flashing a light in the cockpit. Then the pilot pressed the bomb release. That did 2 things:-
1. Drop the bomb.
2. Activate the automatic pull out.

So throughout the process the accuracy is down to the pilot, not any automatic system. If the pilot is incapacitated on the way down and can’t press the bomb release, plane and Mother Earth come together violently!

SBD
The bombing accuracy again depends on the skills of the pilot. The only assistance he had was a 3x optical telescope, which “was considered an aid to dive bombing, but not a panacea.” (Peter Smith, Douglas SBD Dauntless). A pilot did not put his eye to that until near the end of the final dive to make final adjustments (which makes sense as otherwise it would be easy to lose sight of the target in the much narrower field of vision provided by a telescope). This device also had a problem when bombing from 16,000-18,000ft as it tended to fog up at around 7,000ft. That forced crews to bomb from lower altitudes. It was eventually cured by special optical coatings on lens and windscreen (Eric Brown noted that windscreen heating only became available on the SBD-5). Not even any lines on the cockpit windows to help him with the dive angle.

Note he has no aiming assistance, not even a ring and bead sight, until the moment he puts his eye to that telescope. That telescope was also the gunsight for use with the forward firing armament.

SBD pilots saw the introduction of a Mk.VIII reflector sight in 1943 as a great step forward. And a reflector sight was also fitted to the SB2C Helldiver.



Skua, Swordfish and Albacore
The Skua was fitted with a reflector sight from the outset i.e. matching the Ju87 fit. The latter pair made do with a standard ring and bead sight for use with the forward firing guns and as a bomb sight when dive bombing. The Barracuda introduced a more sophisticated reflector sight.

The Albacore was designed for diving at speeds up to 215 knots with flaps either up or down. The Swordfish would reach 200 knots in a dive “if the necessary considerable altitude was available”. (Comments from Eric Brown in “Wings of the Navy”). So neither type required dedicated dive brakes, the drag from the biplane airframe being sufficient to limit diving speed.

Summary
The common theme to all these aircraft is that dive bombing accuracy was down, not to technology, but to the skill of the pilot in judging things like wind direction, ship movement and speed and ensuring the aircraft remained straight in a dive. 

And very few dive bombers used 90 degree dives. Early Stuka operations did and Vengeance in Burma. USN policy was 70-75 degrees. Pre-war RN tests concluded “Steeper angles of dive give a far greater degree of accuracy, and it is suggested that an angle of not less than 65 degrees would be most advantageous.” IJN Vals used 45-70 degrees, depending on the type of target being attacked.

Bomb size.
It is true that the RN stuck with the 500lb HE/SAP until 1944, even using them in asymmetrical loads under the wings of Barracuda Mk.II. (Designed for 4x500lb under the wings just like the Albacore but Mk.II/III were limited to carrying 3x500lb due to weight growth in the airframe). But where is the evidence that this was not adequate for the purpose for which they were intended? In the RN the dive bomber was for taking out A.A. crews on enemy ships and tearing up carrier decks. For the RN the ship killing / disabling weapon was always seen as the torpedo. Much more effort went into torpedo training and development of the necessary automatic sighting systems than dive bombing. And the British torpedo sight used from mid-war in the likes of Barracudas and Beaufighters was far more sophisticated that anything fielded by the USN.

It was only in 1944 that the RN obtained a supply of 1,600lb AP bombs from the US to hang under the fuselage of Barracudas, which had to be modified to carry them in that position. They were used with limited success against the Tirpitz (one bomb penetrated all her Armoured decks but then failed to explode and even then was found not to contain its full explosive charge). The next torpedo/dive bomber wasn’t requested until 1943 and emerged as the Fairey Spearfish in 1945 with an internal bomb bay capable of toting up to 2,000lb of bombs or a torpedo but it never entered service.

The IJN wreaked havoc with the Val and its 250kg (550lb) bomb load, only moving to larger weapons in the Judy developed from 1938 which entered service in 1942.

So the US moved to 1,000lb bombs in 1938. Given the particular vulnerabilities of Japanese carriers to fire would using 500lb bombs made much of a difference? I don’t think a single Japanese carrier was sunk by bombs alone. And the carriers were the principal targets of the dive bombers. And what therefore would be better, single large bomb hits or multiple smaller ones? But that is no doubt something that could be argued about all day without ever reaching a conclusion one way or the other so I’m content to leave that point there.

Fighter bombers as dive bombers
Did the achieve as good results as dedicated dive bombers? I came across a thread elsewhere recently praising the ability of fighters using dive bombing to drop bridges in Italy with great success. Units that were involved developed their own tactics to determine tip over points for example, often using markings on wings or cockpit canopies. Then aiming via the gunsight. In other words techniques no more sophisticated than dedicated dive bombers.

Finally you may be interested in this link article about the Skua





List of Skua pages







dingeraviation.net




And in particular one of its successes





Sinking of the Konigsberg







dingeraviation.net

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## ThomasP (Jul 22, 2022)

Some additional information on the Albacore:
The flaps were normally used as dive brakes as they helped prevent the Albacore from exceeding its VNE.
In non-diving low speed flight it was found that the flaps and slats combination prevented a real stall, but they were normally not necessary for TO and landings.

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## EwenS (Jul 23, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> E
> EwenS
> , you are a goldmine. Thank you!


You might like this on U S developments.








The Beginnings of Naval Fighter Direction - Chapter 5 of Radar and the Fighter Directors







ethw.org





The first US air warning radars were 6 CXAM sets fitted to California (mid-1940 and moved to Hornet in 1942 when she arrived in the Pacific in place of her poorly performing SC set), Yorktown (Sept/Oct 1940), and cruisers Chester, Pensacola, Chicago and Northampton.

They were followed by 14 CXAM-1 sets of which 13 were fitted to Battleships (Texas, Pennsylvania, Washington, North Carolina & West Virginia), carriers (Wasp, Lexington, Saratoga, Ranger & Enterprise) and cruisers in 1941 with the final one on the seaplane tender Curtiss. The smaller SC set also began to appear before the end of the year with Hornet getting one of the first.

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## Frog (Jul 23, 2022)

EwenS said:


> ....So the US moved to 1,000lb bombs in 1938. Given the particular vulnerabilities of Japanese carriers to fire would using 500lb bombs made much of a difference? *I don’t think a single Japanese carrier was sunk by bombs alone*.....



*MIDWAY !!*!


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## EwenS (Jul 23, 2022)

Frog said:


> *MIDWAY !!*!


*NO!!!*

The US air attacks reduced the 4 carriers at Midway to little more than smoking wrecks but they were all still afloat and theoretically could have been saved. Damage control operations continued on all ships throughout the intervening period. The need for the escorting destroyers, tied up aiding them, for other purposes forced the Japanese into deciding to scuttle them.

Akagi - having been bombed around 10.26 on 4 June, she was still afloat the next morning. She was ordered to be scuttled. Japanese destroyers then fired 4 torpedoes into her (2 or 3 hits)

Kaga - bombed around 10.22 on 4 June and still afloat at 19.00. Ordered sunk by Japanese. 2 torpedoes from the destroyer Hagikaze sank her at 19.25.

Soryu - bombed 10.29 on 4 June. 19.12 the destroyer Isokaze was ordered to sink her and used 3 torpedoes to do so.

Hiryu - bombed 17.03 on 4 June after which she was still capable of 28 knots. Sunk at 05.20 the following morning by a single Japanese destroyer torpedo.

In the case of all 4 ships the bomb damage was largely confined to the areas of the hangar & flight decks. The machinery spaces had to be evacuated over time due to the tremendous fires above. But the hulls themselves were still intact. Not one single US torpedo attack succeeded that day.

The US was fortunate later in the war that it didn’t face the same level of threat from IJN surface and air forces and was therefore able to tow damaged ships like Canberra, Houston, Reno and Franklin to safety. Franklin and Bunker Hill particularly suffered absolutely horrible fires but with intact hulls were able to be saved.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 23, 2022)

Frog said:


> *MIDWAY !!*!


Every fleet aircraft carrier lost in 1942, American or Japanese, was sunk by Japanese torpedoes. The sole exception was the Lexington which was scuttled by US torpedoes.
As for the Franklin the USN damage report admitted “ It was fortunate that the tactical situation permitted the ship to be taken under tow and provided with a screen and air cover until out of the immediate danger zone.” In other words the overwhelming strength of USN enabled the ship to be salvaged rather than scuttled.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 23, 2022)

EwenS said:


> You seem very hung up about the RAF decision not to pursue an automatic bomb sight for the Skua. Let’s go back to some basics. What aiming equipment did each type have.
> 
> Ju87
> The Wiki article draws heavily on Manfredo Griehl’s 2001 book about the Stuka. AIUI the attack method was to set the aircraft up for the dive, including setting the bomb release height in the automatic pull out device. The target was selected via a window in the fuselage floor. The pilot then put the aircraft into a dive using red lines on the cockpit window to select the dive angle. Aiming was done manually by the pilot via the cockpit gunsight (same one as used for sighting the guns), which from cockpit photos appears to be a reflector sight of some kind. The automatic pull out system then indicated when dropping height was reached by flashing a light in the cockpit. Then the pilot pressed the bomb release. That did 2 things:-
> ...


I have posted a link to this video previously but it is worth reviewing again. According to this USN training video the ideal dive angle is 65 to 70 degrees.

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## EwenS (Jul 23, 2022)

Just going through the Japanese carriers in WW2, other than the 4 lost at Midway:-

Hosho - survived

Ryujo - sunk Battle of Eastern Solomons 24 Aug 1942. Sunk by 3 or 4 x1,000lb bombs and a torpedo from aircraft off the Saratoga. Ship abandoned after an hour or so and subsequently capsized.

Shokaku - torpedoed by submarine Cavalla (3 hits) Battle of Philippine Sea 19 June 1944. Subsequently lost to fires and explosions caused by damage to her petrol tanks.

Zuikaku - sunk 25 October 1944 Battle off Cape Engano. Survived one attack with 1 torpedo and 3 bomb hits and drove off a second. Succumbed to 6 torpedo hits from a third attack.

Shoho - sunk Battle of Coral Sea 7 May 1942. Hit by 7 torpedos and 13 bombs within 30 mins.

Zuiho - sunk 24 Oct 1944. Battle off Cape Engano. Hit by two torpedos and multiple bombs with many more near misses causing additional underwater damage.

Hiyo - sunk 20 June Battle of the Philippine Sea. Lost to explosion following an earlier single torpedo hit and a bomb hit causing minimal damage to her bridge.

Junyo - survived, albeit damaged by submarine torpedo Dec 1944, and not repaired.

Ryuho - survived, albeit damaged by bombs while at Kure in March 1945, and not repaired.

Chitose - sunk Battle off Cape Engano 25 Oct 1944, to 3 large explosions - either near misses by bombs OR torpedo hits. No one seems sure.

Chiyoda - sunk Battle off Cape Engano 25 Oct 1944. Stopped by one bomb hit and several near misses. Eventually sunk by US 8” cruiser and destroyer gunfire when salvage attempts fail.

Taiho - lost to internal petrol explosion following being torpedoed by submarine Albacore 19 June 1944 during Battle of the Philippine Sea.

Shinano - torpedoed by submarine Archerfish.

Unryu - torpedoed by submarine Redfish

Amagi - damaged by bombs in air attacks while in port 19 March, 24 July (following which she was abandoned) and 28 July 1945 by both carrier aircraft and B-24s. Heavily damaged by both multiple hits and near misses, with many compartments flooded, she capsized on 29 July to become a total loss.

Katsuragi - damaged in air attacks by carrier aircraft on 19 March, 24 and 28 July she survived the war to be used as a repatriation transport.

The escort carriers Taiyo, Chuyo, Shinyo & Unyo were all torpedoed by US submarines and sunk. Kaiyo was damaged by air attacks by carrier aircraft of TF37 & 38 in various attacks in July 1945, after which salvage efforts stop, and by B-25s on 9 Aug, after which she was abandoned to settle on the bottom until salvaged and scrapped postwar.

The common factor to most the sinkings is that water had to get into the hull in large volumes. That was most likely to happen by large holes in the hull from torpedo hits.

Maybe the RNs concentration on torpedo attack instead of dive bombing is not as backward as sometimes suggested.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 23, 2022)

Wonderful post, EwenS. I forgot about two of those. Chitose and Chiyoda. Not as bad as not remembering what plane Major Loften Henderson was flying. Could have sworn he was with the Vindicators.


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## EwenS (Jul 23, 2022)

The only British carrier lost to dive bombing was the old and small Hermes off Ceylon on 9 April 1942, with only her limited AA armament to protect her.

The Japanese dispatched 85 Vals with 9 Zero escorts to deal with her, 79 armed with 250kg SAP and 6 with 250kg HE bombs. 45 targetted Hermes claiming 37 hits and 5 near misses in only a few minutes (British observers said "at least 40" hits). The remaining aircraft, seeing she was doomed, sought new targets claiming other vessels in the area.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 23, 2022)

EwenS said:


> Maybe the RNs concentration on torpedo attack instead of dive bombing is not as backward as sometimes suggested.


It is not backwards, it does limit options however. 
For the US the MK 13 torpedo meant the dive bomber was the primary ship killer (although the Navy didn't know it at times) until late 43 or 1944(?). 

And while carriers were most important target they were not the only targets. 

The Story of the dive bomber is also somewhat tied to the story of light automatic cannon for AA guns.

Not everybody's AA defenses were the same, Japanese were rather poor in AA defense of most of the war. 


Not everybody's bombs were the same (and it is the bomb that kills the ship, not the airplane) and the Japanese were late developing large bombs. 

Using AP bombs was not easy. Depending on how much armor you want to go through you need to drop from a higher altitude than an HE bomb making hits more difficult. If you drop for a lower altitude and/or a slower speed the bomb won't go through and armor and may bounce or break up. Bomb specifications are not always easy to get. 
However the US 1000lb AP bomb was supposed to penetrate 5in of deck from 10,000ft from a level bomber or from 6500ft in a 300kt 60 degree dive. Please note that anything less in any of the 3 conditions means less penetration and dropping with two conditions not met is really going to screw things up. Also note the AP bomb carried about 150lbs of HE.
The Famous US 1600lb AP bomb (and most of you know I think it was over rated, fame wise) Could defeat 7in of deck armor, drop height not given. It's extra weight allowed it defeat the same 5in deck armor as the 1000lbs bomb but do it from 7500ft from a level bomber or from 4500ft in the 300kt 60 degree dive. The 1600lb bomb carried a bit lower percentage of HE for around 205-215lbs of HE. 

The 1000lb AP bomb was trying to punch a 12in hole. 
The 1600lb AP bomb was trying to punch a 14in hole. 
The US 1000lb SAP bomb was trying to punch a 15in hole. The SAP bomb was carrying about 300lbs of HE. Or about what a British 1000lb GP bomb carried. the British 1000lb GP bomb was NOT an SAP bomb. It was about 16in diameter and the bomb body wasn't strong enough for armor punching without breaking up, might nave been dandy for unarmored or lightly armored ships though. 


You need impact speed for AP bombs (or SAP bombs) to penetrate armor. You can't get the speed needed if you are dropping low and slow. 
You also may have more trouble with the fuses. 

When comparing naval dive bombers to Army fighter planes, Bridges and dams don't move.

But diving bombing land targets also means coping with the AA defenses. By 1944 the Germans, Americans and British were fielding much greater AA batteries than they had just a few years early which made the classic dive bomber attack profiles of 1940-41 near suicidal. AA guns on land were easier to camouflage/hide/spread out over wider area.

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## EwenS (Jul 24, 2022)

And the problem is that as you increase the drop height the more the variables highlighted in the video in the above post come into play, even against a stationary target, let alone one that is manoeuvering or shooting back. 

I've posted before about Operation Bronte before. This was a series of dive bombing tests carried out in 1948 against HMS Nelson moored out in the Firth of Forth with 1,000lb and 2,000lb bombs.

The original orders for one series of tests called for the Barracudas to drop 2,000lb Mk.IV AP bombs (with reduced charges for test purposes so that the damage could be evaluated) from 8,000 ft. They had 39 straight misses. So the dropping height had to be reduced to 6,500ft at an intended speed of 285 knots "to give a reasonable chance of hitting" (Burt "British Battleships 1919-1945"). They got a hit with bomb 42 (actual dropping height 5,900ft at 280 knots).

The conclusions from these tests were:-
1. All bombs needed to be dropped from at least 5,000ft to be effective.
2. Dropped from 3,000-4,000ft, in practice the bombs only penetrated 2.95-4.75in
3. It was not easy to hit the ship from these heights and certainly not from 5,000ft
4. It was noted that the ship was a stationary target
5. Piercing Nelson's 6" deck had not been easy but it had been pierced.

From the information I have SBD pilots were usually dropping from 1,900-2,500ft altitude.

Very few of the accounts I can immediately put my hands on have much detail of both bomb and drop heights. Looking at some of the action reports for the Battle off Cape Engano in Oct 1944, in one case the Helldivers were carrying 1,000lb SAP or 2x1,000lb AP bombs. Dives were started around 10,000ft, dropping height around 3,000ft and pullout at 2,500ft.

As for the bombs themselves I came across these documents a while ago which may be of interest if you have not seen them before.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 24, 2022)

Thank you.

The development of dive bombers (and bombs) has a lot of zig-zags, even in the American and Japanese service.

Both of them had troubles with their intended dive bomber aircraft. 
The Japanese D4Y first flew in Dec of 1940 but troubles with both the air frame and the engine delayed things significantly. 
The SB2C project started before the Avenger and it's prototype also first flew in Dec 1940. 

Speculate if you will on the Pacific war in 1942 if both sides had significant numbers (not total replacement of the older aircraft) at Midway and later. 

The Japanese and the Americans were both planning on planes with double the bomb load (in single bombs) of their earlier aircraft and planes with much better ability to penetrate a CAP screen and spend less time within the range of AA guns. 

Obviously it didn't turn out that way and the Aichi D3A and the SBD bore the brunt of the dive bomber work until well into 1943. 

Trying to bomb modern battleships was hard, you do need AP bombs dropped from altitude. However those ships are not common and the Carriers and Cruisers (the latter being much more common) are vulnerable to smaller/lighter AP or SAP bombs dropped from lower altitudes. Destroyers and transports have no deck armor. 

Trouble is with training. The different bombs don't follow quite the same trajectory and need different aiming points, especially if you are trying to drop from the heights the AP bombs need in order to deal with a battleship. Were the pilots "trained" to use the different bombs (not just briefed) or were the drilled using one bomb and approach/technique?

Earlier I mentioned the change in AA. 
Extreme examples are things like the USS North Carolina class. They went to the Pacific with 6 quadruple 1.1 guns (upgraded from 4) in late 1942 with an assortment of of .50 cal MG and 20mm. By late spring or summer of 1943 both ships had the 1.1s landed and 10 quadruple 40mm Bofors guns replacing them and by August of 1943 both ships (?) had 15 quad mounts. The .50 cal MGs had pretty much disappeared and the number of 20mm guns were around 50+ to 64. A lot of the ships newer than the North Carolinas got pretty heavy AA batteries to begin with and a number of the older ships saw extensive changes. 
The 5in guns were getting an increasing supply of proximity fused projectiles.

The Japanese never saw such extensive upgrades. They tried to do what they could but they didn't have the manufacturing base. 

Since the "bomb" was pretty much a ballistic weapon there was no good way to change the attack profile/s. You could fly a bit faster and perhaps the newer, faster planes offered a bit more scope for maneuver on the way out.
Torpedo bombers could and did adapt the torpedoes to higher and faster drop envelopes that gave the TBs a bit better chance of survival than the early war attacks. By late 1944 or 45 the Americans were able to drop from high enough and fast enough that the actual torpedo drops are very difficult to pick out from the other planes firing around. 


The British got a bit "lucky" in that they developed airborne radar before anybody else did and this allowed them to attack under the cover of darkness better than some other countries. Certainly not fool proof in the early years and needing skill and training but it did allow tactics that other nations could only use with much more difficulty. 

The zig-zags were bad enough, stops and starts in doctrine and training can be even more disruptive. 

And some countries were not doing enough testing or relying on guess work and theory a bit too much? 

From Wiki so who knows.
"Before the Indian Ocean raid, the established doctrine regarding attack against ships was to arm all D3A1 dive bombers with semi-AP bombs. On 5 April 1942, an IJN carrier force attacked Colombo on Ceylon with half of its complement, while the other half was kept in reserve for strikes against ships. Since a second strike against Colombo was deemed necessary, the dive bombers of reserve force were rearmed from semi-AP bombs to land bombs. When British heavy cruisers were spotted soon afterwards, the reserve force was sent with a portion of D3A1 dive bombers armed with land bombs. In the subsequent attack, land bombs unintentionally proved very effective in suppressing the anti-aircraft fire from the ships. As a result, the doctrine was modified in order to intentionally equip the first few D3A1 dive bombers with land bombs. This new method was already implemented for the attack that sank HMS _Hermes_ just four days later, and continued to be used from then on.[7]"​

Might very well be wrong. I don't know what the Germans and Italians were using in the Med but it may have been an assortment. The damage assessment of the Illustrious tends to say that 3 different sizes of bombs were used from 250kg to 500kg with one 1000kg bomb. The types may also have been mixed. ​

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## yulzari (Jul 25, 2022)

When considering ship borne dive bombers one can see the load being proportional to the engine power, as the decks remain little changed. When the Skua was conceived it had about as much power as one could get off the shelf at the time. As engine grew larger the loads also grew. Different priorities affected individual choices (compare the Dauntless with the Albacore bomb loads against cruising speeds on not vastly different power) but the trend is clear. From 500+lbs under a Skua to 2,000lb under an Albacore. Curiously it stalled by the time of the Fairey Spearfish which carried the same load as the old Albacore on twice the power, albeit faster and further.
Thus one may criticise the Skua’s bomb load but it was in line with that which could be carried at the time and compared well with peers. To get more load off the same deck with the same power means more wing area. Hence the biplane choice for TSR types at the time. In many ways the Skua was an attempt to build the smallest airframe around a 500lb bomb for dive bombing using Mercury/Perseus power.


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## EwenS (Jul 25, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Earlier I mentioned the change in AA.
> Extreme examples are things like the USS North Carolina class. They went to the Pacific with 6 quadruple 1.1 guns (upgraded from 4) in late 1942 with an assortment of of .50 cal MG and 20mm. By late spring or summer of 1943 both ships had the 1.1s landed and 10 quadruple 40mm Bofors guns replacing them and by August of 1943 both ships (?) had 15 quad mounts. The .50 cal MGs had pretty much disappeared and the number of 20mm guns were around 50+ to 64. A lot of the ships newer than the North Carolinas got pretty heavy AA batteries to begin with and a number of the older ships saw extensive changes.


The 5in guns were getting an increasing supply of proximity fused projectiles.


Shortround6 said:


> The Japanese never saw such extensive upgrades. They tried to do what they could but they didn't have the manufacturing base.



Well here I would distinguish between calibres and numbers of weapons.

The US recognised early on that the 0.5” and 1.1” were inadequate. US production of the 20mm Oerlikon had begun in mid-1941 and the first twin Bofors was produced in Jan 1942 and the first quad in April with the first ship fittings in June/July.

Britain began with 0.5” and 2pdr Pom-Pom (40mm). It had placed orders with Oerlikon in Switzerland for large numbers of 20mm in 1939 but the German advance in May/June 1940 cut off supplies with few delivered. Licence production here took some time to set up and it was late in 1941 before they began to become available in quantity. Licensed production of air cooled Bofors began in Britain pre-war but most went to the Army and only a few to the RN (see PoW late 1941 with a single mount for example). Britain adopted and produced the complex but stabilised and radar equipped Dutch Hazemeyer twin water cooled 40mm from late 1942.

Only Japan did not increase the calibre of its A.A. weapons. It went to war with the 25mm based on a Hotchkiss design and end the same way.

But all navies, including the Japanese increased the numbers of weapons carried. You have mentioned the US but here is the British equivalent
King George V -1940 4xoctuple Pom-pom & 4xUP projectors (rocket batteries)
Anson & Howe - 1942 6xoctuple Pom-Pom & 18 single 20mm
Howe - Sept 1945 8xoctuple & 6xquad Pom Pom, 2xquad & 18 single 40mm Bofors & 4 twin 20mm

And for Japan
Yamato - 1941 on completion 6 twin 5” plus 24x25mm in 8 triple mounts and 2 twin 13.2mm
Yamato - 1945 12 twin 5” plus 162x25mm mostly in triple and single mounts and 2 twin 13.2mm (but after sacrificing 2 of her triple 6.1” turrets)

As well as many more 25mm barrels, Japanese carriers that survived to the latter part of 1944 had their AA armament augmented by 6x28 barrelled AA rocket launchers





Japan 12 cm (4.7") AA Rocket - NavWeaps







www.navweaps.com





But to carry the heavier A.A. armament there were choices and sacrifices to be made.

USA - in larger ships the sacrifice was reduced stability margins not acceptable to the RN. From 1942 destroyers sacrificed sets of torpedo tubes to get 2 twin 40mm. In 1945 the anti-kamikaze AA refits saw the sacrifice of yet more torpedo mounts in early destroyers and even one mount in Fletcher & Sumner classes. Even cruisers up to the Cleveland class were losing one of their two catapults in 1945 to save weight for more AA and radar.

RN - in 1944/45 many cruisers lost a turret to gain additional Pom-Poms and other light AA and aircraft facilities had been removed earlier. As the war went on 0.5” was replaced by single 20mm was replaced by twin 20mm was ultimately replaced by single 40mm

Japan - Yamato I noted above. But even their fleet destroyers were losing a turret to gain more light A.A.

And it was not only light AA but weight for radars and other electronics high up in the ship.

The US proximity fuse programme was inspired by British work begun in 1939 and passed to the US by the Tizard Mission in 1940. Testing took place from early 1942 and it was first used in action by the cruiser Helena on 5 Jan 1943 with her 5”/38 guns. By mid-1944 they were available for a variety of both British & US guns from 3”/50 through to 6”/47. Initial teething problems were largely overcome by 1945. For example, the RN found the batteries in early versions apt to deteriorate quickly in tropical conditions.


Shortround6 said
“The British got a bit "lucky" in that they developed airborne radar before anybody else did and this allowed them to attack under the cover of darkness better than some other countries. Certainly not fool proof in the early years and needing skill and training but it did allow tactics that other nations could only use with much more difficulty.”

Getting “lucky” had nothing to do with it. Night flying from carriers had been practiced by the FAA from the mid-1920s, long before radar had even been thought of. It was part of the standard training for FAA pilots. The first radar sets were fitted to Swordfish in early 1941. Too late for Taranto and just in time for the Bismarck. All the Swordfish on Victorious were equipped with ASV.II in May 1941 but only some of those on Ark Royal. Due to technical problems Albacores weren’t fitted with it until late in 1941 and only a few had it on Formidable and none on Indomitable in April 1942 in the Indian Ocean during Operation C. That was the reason for the Indomitable borrowing a couple of Swordfish for her air group.


Shortround6 said:


> From Wiki so who knows.
> "Before the Indian Ocean raid, the established doctrine regarding attack against ships was to arm all D3A1 dive bombers with semi-AP bombs. On 5 April 1942, an IJN carrier force attacked Colombo on Ceylon with half of its complement, while the other half was kept in reserve for strikes against ships. Since a second strike against Colombo was deemed necessary, the dive bombers of reserve force were rearmed from semi-AP bombs to land bombs. When British heavy cruisers were spotted soon afterwards, the reserve force was sent with a portion of D3A1 dive bombers armed with land bombs. In the subsequent attack, land bombs unintentionally proved very effective in suppressing the anti-aircraft fire from the ships. As a result, the doctrine was modified in order to intentionally equip the first few D3A1 dive bombers with land bombs. This new method was already implemented for the attack that sank HMS _Hermes_ just four days later, and continued to be used from then on.[7]"​


I recommend reading Rob Stuart’s 6 articles on the Japanese activities in the Indian Ocean in 1942. He is currently the foremost researcher on this, from both British and Japanese sources, and his articles do cover the Japanese bomb loads. I have noted previously that only 6 of the 85 aircraft dispatched to sink Hermes got land attack bombs. That piece of information came from one of Rob’s articles.


Articles





Shortround6 said:


> Might very well be wrong. I don't know what the Germans and Italians were using in the Med but it may have been an assortment. The damage assessment of the Illustrious tends to say that 3 different sizes of bombs were used from 250kg to 500kg with one 1000kg bomb. The types may also have been mixed. ​


The Germans were using a mix of bombs and when they went after Illustrious & Formidable they did use some 1,000kg bombs on the Stukas. Illustrious suffered one such hit and Formidable 2. You will find details of these and the various damage reports over on the Armoured Carriers website.








Armoured Aircraft Carriers in World War II


Action reports and battle damage for the armoured aircraft carriers HMS Illustrious, Formidable, Victorious, Indomitable, Indefatigable and Implacable in World War II, 1940-1942




www.armouredcarriers.com





But to carry a 1,000kg bomb a Ju87 Stuka had to leave the gunner behind and I believe operate at lighter fuel loads and had a much longer take off run. So they were not an everyday weapon.

Edit:- AIUI the first USN Carrier borne aircraft to go to sea with radar were the TBF-1 Avengers of VT-10 when the parent air group arrived on the Enterprise in Oct 1942. That was with the ASB-1 set roughly equivalent to the British ASV.II.

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## Reluctant Poster (Jul 30, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> My understanding, and I'm certainly amenable to correction, is that the RN pioneered radar-vectoring of carrier-borne fighters, prior to any other navy in the world. If memory serves, one of the lessons the USN picked up from USS _Robin_ was the more efficient use of radar in this mission.


The Royal Navy was a full 2 years ahead of the USN. I have posted this link before in which Commander Taylor describes his experiences in the RN in 1939 and 40


PROCEEDINGS OF THE HART INQUIRY: THIRTIETH DAY


USN fighter direction was copied from the Royal Navy. To this day the jargon used is what the British taught them.

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## MikeMeech (Jul 30, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> The Royal Navy was a full 2 years ahead of the USN. I have posted this link before in which Commander Taylor describes his experiences in the RN in 1939 and 40
> 
> 
> PROCEEDINGS OF THE HART INQUIRY: THIRTIETH DAY
> ...


Hi
Louis Brown's 'A Radar History of World War II, Technical and Military Imperatives', page 371 mentions the introduction of US version of ASV Mk. II and radar fits for carrier aircraft. However, note the last paragraph stating that the USN was four years behind the RAF in introducing VHF radio systems:






Mike

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## Admiral Beez (Aug 8, 2022)

EwenS said:


> The US air attacks reduced the 4 carriers at Midway to little more than smoking wrecks but they were all still afloat and theoretically could have been saved.


Was Hermes the only carrier at sea sunk only by dive bombers?









List of sunken aircraft carriers - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Of course, thirty-two dive bombers vs. a CVL without fighter cover will get the job done.


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## EwenS (Aug 8, 2022)

Admiral Beez said:


> Was Hermes the only carrier at sea sunk only by dive bombers?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Hermes is the only confirmed direct loss to dive-bombers alone. Detailed article on her loss here


Articles



See my post #358 re the Japanese ships. As noted there is doubt about Chitose and whether the 3 waterspouts were from near misses by bombs or from torpedo hits. To me the latter seems a much more likely cause of her loss.


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## Reluctant Poster (Aug 10, 2022)

Macandy said:


> The big advantage the USN possessed in the SBD was it had a good enough performance to act as a secondary fleet defence 'fighter' which was indeed one of its its secondary roles.
> It was more than good enough to tangle with confidence with enemy bombers - and had a good ability to defend itself against fighter types. Its performance in the role was good enough to instil confidence in its pilots to 'have a go'.


Fleet defense was not one of its secondary roles. It was tried as an experiment at Coral Sea. It was not considered to be a sucess and the experiment was not repeated.

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## Macandy (Aug 17, 2022)

Reluctant Poster said:


> Fleet defense was not one of its secondary roles. It was tried as an experiment at Coral Sea. It was not considered to be a sucess and the experiment was not repeated.



Yes, it was such a non secondary role, many pilots felt confident to haver a go as a'fighter' when coming across Japanese aircraft, even willing to mix it with the A6M


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## Shortround6 (Aug 17, 2022)

Macandy said:


> Yes, it was such a non secondary role, many pilots felt confident to haver a go as a'fighter' when coming across Japanese aircraft, even willing to mix it with the A6M


_Coming across_ enemy aircraft is different than being _assigned_ a sector of the air defense. 
Like F4Fs will take medium and high altitudes and SBDs will take low altitudes or F4Fs will take a certain arc of coverage of expected enemy routes and the SBDs will take the flank areas to guard against surprises. 

Part of the confidence may have been the over claiming in the Coral Sea battle.

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## Reluctant Poster (Aug 31, 2022)

I have found the USN statistics for bombs dropped by size and type. As suspected AP is quite rare

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## Shortround6 (Aug 31, 2022)

I would note that the Americans had both a 1000lb AP bomb (MK 33 introduced in Oct 1942) and the famous 1600lb AP bomb (MK 1, Introduced in May of 1942) and the 1250lb AP with rocket assist (Mk 50), introduced (?) was from 1943 but not known if it was actually used. 

The line for AP bombs could apply to either of the first two or for both combined. 
But yes, the true AP bomb, didn't see very much use.


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