relying on a source like the BBC world history series is not a good basis for historical analysis. Its okay, but not great. I am relying on at least five written sources, chiely Norman Polmars 800 page book on Carrier Warfare in WWII. He devotes nearly 20 pages to this battle, giving and almost blow by blow account. Its at home at this minute, and i am not, but i can check later tonite to confirm details in the following response
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The Luftwaffe returned after refueling rearming in Sicily to give the final blow. The fleet went to Illustrious' aid put up a heavy barrage. Fulmars from Illustrious fought to save the ship retired to Malta to refuel rearm to again return to the fight shoot down at least 5 Stukas. She was still 40 miles from Malta."
All true enough, but its the omissions that make this statement unreliable. Whereas the attacks at noon had involved only a portion of FKX (and these were the attacks I was referring to incidentally), the air attacks delivered in the afternoon (starting at around 3pm) were delivered by the full force of the Korps. at that time there were 248 a/c attached, plus there were approximately 50-100 RA aircraft involved in the attacks. To be fair, the Axis divided their concentrations into two, one part attacking the convoy and the other concentrating on finishing off the carrier. But then, this division of effort needs to be balanced up by the fact that the defenders also had to split their forces, some to protect the convoy, and some to protect the carrier (which by then had been detached).
In that second attack, Axis losses amounted to 10 A/C. 5 are indeed attributed to the 5 remaining Fulmars providing topcover, by now operating from Malta about 40 miles away. The carrier had suffered a fire in the hangar, that had destroyed 9 Swordfish and all the fighters that were not airborne. Only those that were airborne were able to divert to malta.
Illustrious was just getting underway again. I am not sure of its speed, but it was still manouvering by engines alone. I ahave read reports that her speed in that second attack was about 10 knots. She still had the "Ship Not Under Command" ensign on her yardarm at the time of this attack, which says in spades she was barely underway and barely manouvering
I am unsure if the words chosen in your quote are as careful as i am reading them (ie, am I reading too much into them), but a "barrage" is not directed fire, its the method used when you cannot aim properly. If the Brits were relying on "barrage" fire, they were in deep trouble at the time of that second attack
It seems the Illustrious was rather heavily defended and quite mobile during the second attack in which she was heavily defended by the AAA of other ships. The presence of so much AAA and fighters would have spoiled the aim of the bombers. Ju 88's were not capable of the vertical dive of a Ju 87 and at the time lacked the computing bombsight so much less accurate with only standard sights. The Luftwaffe had to learn to attack moving ships, it had trouble at Dunkique.
Ah agreed, however FKX flyers had been trained to ignore the effects of flak, had developed tactics that maximised their benefit against the known British weaknesses in their AA FC. FKX had been fighting the RN since April 1940, and knew their jobs. Against experienced verterans like that British AA was weak. by the time of the second attacks and the attacks over malta, the defences had been organised and were ready, and proved very effective, thatmuch I can agree with, but also by then, the numbers of aircraft involved in the attacks had greatly increased. Rememeber, the object of this little sub-debate is how the LW compared in terms of accuracy to aircraft not fitted with bombsights. I am saying they didnt make much difference to the accuracy issue.
"HACS" the "High Angle Control System" had limitations as a AAA director but it was repeatedly modified so that around 1940 (from wiki)
Tachometric and radar additions:
"The RN moved quickly to add true tachometric target motion prediction and radar ranging to the HACS by mid 1941. The RN was the first navy to adopt dedicated FC AA radars. However the system, in common with all WW2 era mechanical AA fire control system still had severe limitations as even the highly advanced USN Mk 37 system in 1944 needed an average of 1,000 rounds of 5-inch ammunition fired per kill.[22] In 1940 the Gyro Rate Unit (GRU) was added to the HACS system, an analogue computer capable of directly calculating target speed and direction,[23] converting the HACS into a tachymetric system.[24][25] Also in 1940, radar ranging was added to the HACS.[26] The GRU and its associated computer, the Gyro Rate Unit Box (GRUB) no longer assumed straight and level flying on the part of the target. GRU/GRUB could generate target speed and position data at angular rates of up to 6 degrees per second, which was sufficient to track a 360 knot crossing target at a range of 2000 yards"
Wiki is a source you need to be careful with, though in this case the information concerning technical specs seems okay to me. what is misleading, in the extreme, is the claim that the brits had solved their AA problems for their sghips by 1940, or even by mid 1941. I would recommend that you spend roughly AU$180 in a good reference like campbell, that looks at this in detail. Basically the true picture is this....Britain had indeed identified the shortcomings in its AA systems afloat by mid 1940, following the poor showings in Norway. New ships from the midddle of 1941 on were indeed incoprorating new FC and directors, and in some instances stabilized mounts. older ships also as they could enter refit were being updated to the new standards. but this took time, and even as late as 1944 RN ships were still having difficulty with their AA systems. But anyway, in the case of this battle, Illuistrious had not been updated or refitted since commissioning. Her AA systems, whilst very advanced (relative to other RN units) , did not take on board the newest ideas mentioned in the wiki article. It was basically a 1938 style AA suite, designed with all the inherent flaws in that system. It finished up working adequately, but not outstandingly. The same can be said for the two battleships. I have their refit dates at home, but they too were still using the late 1938ish style of AA FC and weapons fits. I will also need to check at home exactly what support was given to Illustrious whilst she was in Malta...not sure if the BBs stayed with her or not.
To get some idea of the efficiency of the british system compared to the US mk37 system of late 1944, for the Us the estimated number of rounds per kill in 1944 from director controlled fire was about 500 to 1000. For the Brits in 1941, the estimated ammo expended from director controlled fire was about 10x that amount (german AA fire needed approximately 8250 rpk according to Westermann at this time) . That means Brit AA was about a tenth as effective as its US counterpart. They improved that gradually as the war progressed, but in 1941 they had a lot of problems.
One final observation, the article says (erroneously) that things were in hand by 1941....well even on the basis of that flawed article, the combattants would have been operating at a disadvantage. The battle was fought in January 1941, not mid 1941.