Destroyers.....

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The above USN study gives these figures:

totals for 1942:

_____5" Com__

Rounds_15,110-
Kills__60
R.P.B.__252

yet Lundstrom estimates about 90 AA kills for all of 1942 from all gun types (mainly CIWS). If we add actual AA kills at Pearl Harbour we get 100-110 AA kills where the USN AA study states 246 for kills by weapon type for 1942 and 228 for total kills from Dec 07 1941 to end 1942. It is very obvious that 5in kills are greatly overestimated in this study.

We should remember Captain Gatch's estimate that 5in AA only accounted for 5% of the kills at Santa Cruz.

its intersting that depending on who you talk to, how the revelations change.JoeB will tell you that at Santa Cruz, for example, the known kills of IJN aircraft were by far the result of AA fire, and of these, by far the result of 5/38 fire. Wildcats were effective, but fasr greater perentage was the reault of AA fire.

I guess if we try to connect or fuse the two schools of thought, that in reality IJN losses were about 5% of the accepted numbers.

Seriously, I think we should look at sected actions in 1942, using main stream sources and determine the total losses suffereed by the Japanese and of that, the numbers destroyed by aircraft, the numbers destroyed by AA and the numbers lost to other non-combat related causes. That way, we should be able to determine the numbers of aircraft lost by each cause.

Over Pearl either 9 or 11 a/c were shot down by AAC aircraft. That means either 18 or 20 aircraft were brought down by AA. The majority of these were by the navy, but not all.

I would suggest that we try and use actions that are clearly all USN (which includes the Marine Corps) . We could look at Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz and the Battle of Guadacanal until releieved by US Army formations.

Overall during Guadacanal the Japanese reportedly lost over 1000 a/c. Its hard to visulaise the VMF squadrons shooting down over 900 a/c. Typically, non-combat related losses might run at 30-40% maximum, so we could realitically reduce combat related losses to say 500. Even so, visualising the Marine fighters shooting down more than 400 Japanese aircraft is still very hard.

Provided the Marine Corps is considered part of the overall Navy tally, its very hard to accept Lundsstroms estimate as anything other than post war revisionism. One of the many reasons why Im not a fan of Lundstrom. If the Marines are not included, it becomes a bit of a false construct.

Cannoit say too much about Gatch's comments, but the study I posted puts the 40mm as being the chief AA weapon, with 5/38 accounting for about 30% of kills. that seems a reasonable estimate to me. It states in that report that 20mm weapons, (or any weapons with an effective range below 2000m) were not much use in the latter part of the war, being overtaken by the 5/38 because it could literally tear an aircraft apart, whereas a 20mm could not. I would be very interested to see how the BPF, with its 2pounders (being replaced) fared against a similar enemy environment)
 
If I can add to Juha statement, The 5in guns were in turrets which in itself is a significant improvement on the RN guns. They have a full DP ability when attacked by high level bombers and don't have 35 seconds to fire. They can fire at the aircraft until they start their dives. They have a higher rate of fire. They have modern fire control.
Now what advantages did the twin 4.7 have, err, umm, could it be, err no err sorry I will have to come back to you on that one. We know the Tribals have a turret replaced with a twin 4in, so thats not good. We know the AA ships were not fitted with them, so thats not good either. We know the RN's Assistant Chief of Naval Staff officially described them as very bad, which isn't promising.
 
According to John Webbs "The British Pacific Fleet - Experience and Legacy" "The RN had been developing its methods of defending vessels at sea under the particular circumstances of the med and the ETO. whereas in those circumstances heavy fire from 20mm weapopns could interfere badly enough with a pilots aim to make his chances of hitting with a bomb or torpedo more difficult, when faced with Japanese suicide planes the inability to actually destroy the aircraft was a problem. Kamikazes wouold not veer off or withdraw if damaged".

The book continues

"(The RN observed that) the USN had discovered that their 40mm and 5/38 fire was able to physically break up the attacking suicide aircraft, the british soon discovered their 2pdr and 20mm guns lacked the explosive power (and range) for a (similar result to be achieved)".

Steps were taken to mount as many 40mm calibre weapons as possible and improve the standard of training in the BPF for AA defence.

Fraser in commenting on the AA performance of his fleet in 1945 had this to say "The armament of our ships had been designed primarily for antisurface operations and generally speaking, as the Americans would say 'not able to look after themselves' . since 20mm weapons are not an ant-surface weapon, and 40mm guns not generally in service until the deployment of the BPF to the operational areas, Fraser was clearly referring to the main armament of his destroyers.

Rawlings, who is also quoted, says in his final report "there were difficulties in providing effective area defences by our destroyers to the fleet generally " ...I think he was referring to the limits of the main armement being carried (destroyers included Q class and Tribal classes along with some N class manned by Australians. Some of the Q classes were also RAN) Rawlings continues"A new screening disposition was evolved in response, to increase the level of protection for the carriers, but it required careful and rigid station keeping on the part of the destroyers". I think he is again clearly referring to the
limits of the main armament of his destroyers.

In July the british decided to adopt the radar picket duties undertaken by USN destroyers for their Task Forces. however the Directorate Of Air Warfare and Training considered the british destroyers to be incapable of effective self defence, so it was decided to fit and allocate cruisers each with 1-2 destroyers and four aircraft to this task. The directorate in its report stated that Destroyers were generally slow to open fire on attacking aircraft though it acknowledged that big improvements had been achieved in comparison to 1944.

In mid may rawlings reported to fraser that the overall standard of AA defence had inproved considerably with the introduction of amnerican directors and 40mm guns, greater usage of Vt fusing, along with better AA fleet disppostiions and better standards of training. the BPF had always enjoyed better tactical organization with regard to airborne fleet defences, and it seems they were finally closing the gap in shipboard defences as well, which included adoption of better tactical usage of their destroyers. but their destroyers had in built disdvantages that had to be overcome by clever usage, not inbuilt advantages that could be exploited as advantages.

There were also problems with the numbers of VT fuses available to the British guns. something less than 15% of british ammunition was VT fused, whereas the Americans by 1945 were expending fully 34% of their 5/38s with VT fuses.
 

Your last sentence is not supported by what we know from March.

Not all 5in/38 destroyer guns were in turrets - the mk 33 destroyers generally had open mounts, with shields, much the same as RN destroyers. The twin 4.7 does have advantages over a 5"/38 single, the main one being that it is considerably lighter, thus allowing for a heavier CIWS. Not all attacking aircraft are divebombers (obviously), and 4.7in guns can place a barrage above the ship being attacked as easily as a HA gun.

The other big problem with your argument is that it lacks nuance; this is not a black and white argument, rather it is composed of many shades of grey...of design trades off regarding, weight, cost, complexity and the effectiveness of rapid fire CIWS versus medium calibre guns.

A rhetorical question:
Which plane is better; Hurricane or Spitfire? Obviously a 1944 Mk VIII Spit has is all over the Hurricane but in 1940, the Hurricane was cheaper, easier to mass produce, easier to repair and probably easier to land could be operated from rougher strips...in 1944 the choice between the two is easy, but not so in 1940.
 
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Lunstrom describes in detail all the actions where USN AA was involved and I used his numbers. No way was naval AA involved in large AA loses near Guadalcanal.

Captain Gatch was at Santa Cruz, and well placed to make his judgement call.



This was the officiak USN tally of AA kills as of the end of 1942:


So this is what the USN was reporting to the RN in 1942/43 (I found this on another board and reported it here - this is from the USN AA study number 20). Apparently, in 1944/5 the USN reduced the kill totals to those listed in the Oct 1945 study.

It is not hard to see why the RN would have been impressed; too bad it just wasn't true.
 
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A couple of points
Twin 4.7in = 25.09 tons = 56,000 lb approx
Single 5in = 41,000 lb approx

I make it
Farragat and Mahan not in turrets 26 ships
Gridley, Dunlap, Bagley Benson and Sims some guns not in turrets 58 ships
All the rest in turrets and it should be noted that of the partial ships normally only one or two guns were in open shields,

From this we know that there was no weight saved in the JKN/Tribal to allow for a heavier CIWS.

. .[/QUOTE]
I agree that it is a trade off. The Bristol or Benson class were a similar size to the RN destroyers and were built in a similar timeframe so would make an interesting comparison. This should cover the last question you raised.
The obvious trade off in simple terms was the RN emphasis on anti shipping with six guns vs four/five and the USN emphasising the AA capability with a true DP main battery. Apart from that the JKN and Bensons were pretty similar, even the close range weapons were broadly similar once the initial war updates were installed which generally were approx 6/8 20mm.
 
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The RN also had a lot fewer destroyers per carrier than the USN, or so it seems to me. But I'll have more to say tomorrow.
 
At its peak, the BPF consisted of the following major units

5x CV, 4 x CVL, 4 x BB, 8 x CVE, 10 x Cruisers, 1 x AA Ship, 40 x DDs, and 30 Frigates and sloops. It was the equivalent of a USN TG, though somewhat stronger in numbers (ill check Morrison when I get home) . Not sure if the CVEs were used as front line units in the final offensives. They certainly were used in the 1944 operations.

Roughly speaking the close escort for the Carriers (that might provide immediate closse AA coverage, taking into account TDs of the ships involved) might usually include 1 capital ship (either a cruiser or a BB...trouble is, a BB has a bigger TD therefore there are less DDs able to contribute in the inner ring defences). Typically you should have a TD of around 2-3000 yards, which meant the DDs could not provide effective AA cover over the Carriers. I think thats what Rawlings was talking about when he said that new tactical disppositions were found necessary. I think the brits were forced by the limitations in their weapons systems to close up to within 1000 yads or so, which would have meant running up signals "restricted in ability top manouvre". and that in turn would severely restrict the ability of the TG to use manouvre when presented with a threat.

The other possiblity is the reverse. if Rawlings decided that manouvre was their best defence, he would have pushed the TDs out. No cover over the Carriers, but more sea room to make violent changes of course and speed, possibly to take advantage of the poor pilot training in the IJN by that stage. That latter scenario would be consistent with the CAP dispositrions, which the british pushed out to above 35 miles (and out to 60 miles quite often).

Either way, Rawlings was clearly reacting to improve the performance of the AA defences in his escorts. The BPF did not do well in January February, but following these changes, and some additional training, ramped up their effectiveness very quickly after that.

As to numbers, well maybe, but there are definitie limits as to the number of escorts that can be effectively ringed around a carrier. Given that a BB needs roughly twice the TD of a DD, and there were 4 BBs and 5 carriers, you might have 1 BB and 4-6 DDs within the immediate escort of the carrier (it will depend where the BB is placed). US or British, thats about the limit of ship densities that you can achieve in a standard defensive AA circle around a single high value target like a carrier. You might want to add an outer screen for long range gunnery, but for the british this would of extremely limited value.

So IMO the British were not short of escorts for the size of the fleet they committed. The limits of their weapon systems were coming home to roost however, because i dont think additional escorts would have helped them materially anyway in fleet air defence issues....

Edit

TF 57 which was the main battle force consisted of the following (for the Okinawa operation)

4 x CV, 2 x BB, 2 x CL 3 x CLAA, 11 x DDs.

Thats an average of 4.5 escorts per Carrier. about what I expected.

By compartison, TGs 58.1, 58.2, 58.3 and 58.4 each had in their battle forces, the following (for the March 18 preliminary airstrikes) of the following

TG58.1: 3 x CV, 1 x CVL, 2 x BB, 3 x CL, 16 DDs; Average Escort to Carrier ratio 5.25
TG58.2: 2x CV, 2 x CVL, 2 x BB, 2 x CA, 1 x CLAA 17 DD; 5.5
TG58.3: 3 x cv, 1 CVL, 2 x BB, 1 x CA, 4 x CL, 17 x DD ; 5.75
TG58.4: 3 x CV, 3 x CVL, 2 x BB, 1 x CL, 2 x CLAA, 14 x DD; 3.3

The means the Escort to Carrier relationship for the American battle formations was 4.95. Given thats the majority of escorts were DDs for both nationalities, thats the equivalent of 0.5 DDs additional cover for each US ship.

With regard to TDs, I dont have all of them, but at 30knots (or best max) the KGVs were 1025, the Illustrious class 1050, Essex classes were 765, the Iowas 814, and the Fletchers were 950 yds. somewhere I have the TDs for the battles and Daring Classes, but might take a bit more searching

Nothing to worry about in terms of numbers around each carrier
 
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Here are some more little guys. I took most of the information from Wikipedia but changed the displacement of the Matsu class as the IJN did not calculate a standard displacement and added the range at 16 knots from Jentschura. I do not have ranges for the Ciclone class but Whitley gives 442 tons bunkerage, which was reduced from 520 tons in the earlier Orsa class to improve stability. Thus the displacement figures from Wikipedia and Whitley are odd because the difference between standard and full load should equal bunkerage plus spare boiler water.

Matsu Class
Displacement: 1,262 tons light 1,530 tons in battle condition
Length: 100.0 m (328 ft 1 in) overall, 92.15 m (302 ft 4 in) waterline
Beam: 9.35 m (30 ft 8 in)
Draft: 3.30 m (10 ft 10 in)
Propulsion: 2 × Kampon water tube boilers, 2 × Kampon impulse geared turbines, 19,000 shp
Speed: 27.8 knots
Range: 3,500 nmi (6,500 km) at 18 kn, 4,680 nmi at 16 kn.
Complement: 211
Armament: (Matsu, April 1944)
3 × 127 mm (5.0 in) L/40 Type 89 AA guns
24 × 25 mm (1") Type 96 AA guns (4×3, 12×1)
4 × Type 93 torpedoes
4 depth charge throwers and 36 × Type 2 depth charges

Ciclone class
Displacement: 910 long tons (920 t) standard, 1,625 long tons (1,651 t) full load
Length: 82.5 m (270 ft 8 in)
Beam: 9.9 m (32 ft 6 in)
Draught: 3.77 m (12 ft 4 in)
Propulsion: 2 shaft steam turbines, 2 Yarrow type boilers, 16,000 hp (11,900 kW)
Speed: 26 knots
Complement: 154
Armament: 2 × 100 mm (3.9 in) guns (3 guns in some ships after refit)
8 × 20 mm (0.79 in) anti-aircraft guns, 8 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) AA machine guns
4 × 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes
4 × depth charge throwers

Rudderow class destroyer escort (the generally similar later John C. Butler class might have been chosen because Samuel B. Roberts acted as a destroyer off Samar but that class had no torpedoes when they were needed)
Displacement: 1,740 tons (1,770 metric tons) (fully loaded)
Length: 306 ft (93.3 m) (overall)
Beam: 36 ft 6 in (11.1 m)
Draft: 11 ft (3.4 m) (fully loaded)
Propulsion: General Electric steam turbo-electric drive engine
Speed: 24 knots (most ships could attain 26/27 knots and Samuel B. Roberts reportedly reached 28 kn off Samar)
Range: 5,500 nautical miles at 15 knots
Armament: 2 x 5 inch /38 dual purpose mount, 4 x 40 mm Bofors, 10 x 20 mm
Three 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Hedgehog
Eight depth charge throwers with approximately 200 depth charges

 
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The destroyer USS Peary on fire. At about 1045, Peary was attacked by Japanese dive bombers, and was struck by five bombs. The first bomb exploded on the fantail, the second, an incendiary, on the galley deck house; the third did not explode; the fourth hit forward and set off the forward ammunition magazines; the fifth, another incendiary, exploded in the after engine room. A .30 caliber machine gun on the after deck house and a .50 caliber machine gun on the galley deck house fired until the last enemy plane flew away. Peary suffered 88 men killed and 13 wounded; she sank stern first at about 1300 on 19 February 1942.
 
It seems to me that the USN lost a few destroyers that were on picket duty, so it does not look as though they could look after themselves?
This is not an attempt to belittle those who fought and too often died, but shows that if we wish, we can pick examples which prove our point.
The RN were far from perfect - as was some of their equipment. but they did quite a lot with what they had and sometimes even learned lessons.
 
parsifal said:
At its peak, the BPF consisted of the following major units
Click to expand...

IIRC, the BPF suffered one of it's worst days for kamikaze hits on the CVs, when Vian took the 2 KGV class BBs along with several cruisers and destroyers away from the carrier escort, for a bombardment mission. In any event, the number of kamikaze attacks on the BPF is really insufficient to draw any conclusions. IMHO, we really have to compare the USN destroyers performance in 42/43 with the RN from 1939-43 if we want to draw any valid comparisons.
 

I disagree that no weight was saved. The Bensons were grossly top heavy in their original design format and soon had to surrender no.3 5in turret for a modest increase in their CIWS, but even so 5 x 5in = 205,000lb, 4 x 5in = 164000lb, while 6 x 4.7in (3 x 2) = 168000lb so the JKMs had a heavier main armament and a considerably heavier CIWS that weighed less than the 5 x 5in guns in a Benson.
Benson- and Gleaves-class destroyer armament in World War II
The other factor in the weight equation is the FC directors. The Mk37 director in the Bensons weighed about 12 tons, and this weight was carried very high in the ship while theDCT and 3 man rangefinder - AA director in the Tribal-JKMs weighed only 3.4 tons combined.
 
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I would certainly agree that on average US destroyers (all classes) were top heavy when war broke out and the no 3 gun was soon removed. In the early days they sometimes lost a set of TT's and kept 5 x 5in, it varied a lot.
 
Some notes from March (British Destroyers):

There was intense debate over the armament of the new destroyer classes from the Tribals onward. The 40deg 4.7in twin was selected due to it's ability to provide long range HA fire

p338: The Tribal class were top-heavy and excessive rolling and a loss if stability was noted. It is not stated but the 4 ton reduction in topweight by replacing X twin 4.7 with a twin 4in must have helped considerably.

P.323:

V class leaders = Tribal class.
 

Can you explain the "a considerably heavier CIWS" already in 43 Benson/Gleaves had 4x40mm Bofors (2x2) and 4 - 7x20mm, if one remember that even RN thought that twin Bofors was at least as good as quad pom-pom as AA weapon?

Juha
 
Juha said:
Can you explain the "a considerably heavier CIWS" already in 43 Benson/Gleaves had 4x40mm Bofors (2x2) and 4 - 7x20mm, if one remember that even RN thought that twin Bofors was at least as good as quad pom-pom as AA weapon?

Juha
Click to expand...

And to do that the Bensons had to give up a set of TTs. However, as designed, it seems pretty obvious that the JKN CIWS of a quad pom-pom and two quad .5in was vastly superior to 6 x .5in on the Bensons.

The late war armament on an N class destroyer was 6 x 4.7in, 1 quad pom-pom, 2 twin power 20mm, 2 x single 20mm, 2 x quintuple TTs. Also, the the RN opinion of the value of a quad pom-pom varied as to the target type; against a kamikaze they felt it was almost as good per barrel as a Bofors. It seems obvious that by surrendering a set of TTs that the N class could have exceeded the Bensons in late war CIWS.
 
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