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There is no doubt that the RN were impressed with the 5in L38. HMS Delhi was fitted out with these in the USA durng a refit in 1941, and the RN tried to aquire 60 gun/director sets for installation in RN vessels. Unfortunately the US were working flat out to fit out their own fleet and none could be spared.
British 4"/45 (10.2 cm) QF HA Marks XVI, XVII, XVIII and XXIHMS Carlisle, a converted AA cruiser armed with these guns, shot down 11 aircraft during the war, the highest score among British cruisers. The Auxiliary AA ship Alynbank, also armed with these guns, shot down six aircraft.
Hello RCAFson
we all know, and have knew a while that you think that RN AA was best of the world in early part of the war, but show by some concrete figures when it did clearly better than USN AA.
Again the end of your message #218, do you read the chapter 9 of the action report of Enterprise, USN saw the dive-bombers when they were well in their dives, see my Indomitable case on 12 Aug. 42, RN AA succeeded to shoot down max one out of 12 Dive-bombers in similar circumstances. How that shows that RN automatic AA was better than that of USN?
Weather was rather cloudy during the Japanese attack, which made it difficult especially to heavy AA.
You quoted Yorktowns combat report but the Enterprise action report, even if critical to the performance of 5" guns gives entirely different recommendations.
On those screenings, as I wrote earlier, USN liked to have its DDs in circular formation 2000y out of the escorted ships, and by the way, according to p. 282 in RN official history, when air attack threatened PQ-18, 8 of the screening DDs moved nearer to the merchantmen, nearer than 1000 y from nearest merchantman, others keep their position 3500-5000y out from the nearest merchantman, so much your 6000 minimum distance for RN DDs.
And your last message clearly shows, that you really see what you want. Maybe some basic study on LW loss reporting might help. notice that the %? was in dam column not in loss column.
And maybe you should find out a bit more on staff studies and why they were classified.
Action Report: 24 August 1942Anti-Aircraft Protection.
1. The fire control radar in ENTERPRISE was ineffective. It is not known whether or not other vessels in the Task Force obtained acceptable results from their corresponding equipment, but the fact remains that no 5-inch fire from any vessel in the Task Force was commenced while the enemy aircraft were at the high altitudes at which these guns were the only ones having the necessary range. The 5-inch fire was commenced only after that of ENTERPRISE small caliber weapons, and after the first attacking planes were in their dives.
They did pay for it and guess what, they would have had to pay for the other 60.They were very impressed that they got the equipment for free, but they might have had a different opinion if they actually had to pay for it.
No idea but I have always been of the opinion that the RN twin 4in was a very capable gun, something that you have just confirmed
You can of course support that statement.The other factor is that we have the USN making really inflated claims of AA kills with their 5in guns, and that must have swayed RN opinion.
They did pay for it and guess what, they would have had to pay for the other 60.
No idea but I have always been of the opinion that the RN twin 4in was a very capable gun, something that you have just confirmed
You can of course support that statement.
Hello RCAFson
I'm getting a bit bored, if you can give a concrete examples of RN superior achievements, please give them. I already know what you think, so repeating it is not very producive. And of concrete achievements I mean real ones, not wartime claims.
If you have had read more on the Pacific war, you might know that Buckmaster wasn't Yorktown's gunnery office.
And what the captain of Enterprice said was that 5" fire was most effective when directed against dive-bombers before they reached their push over point and for that one needed HA guns-
Quote:"Imagine a TB flying low between two ships armed with bofors or pom-poms, if each engaged the TB, they could easily hit each other with dozens of 40mm shells, and that could do severe damage to an unarmoured ship, like a a destroyer. "
If the outer screen was 6000y out the VT must flew between screening ships in order to reach the launching point for attack on the escorted vessels. And anyway, screen should have been really far out if one wanted it to be out of range of the heavy AA of excorted vessels. 4"-5" shell would have hurt even more, and there were friently fire cases during air attacks.
Juha
USS South Dakota (BB-57) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaSouth Dakota fired 890 rounds of 5 inch, 4000 rounds of 40mm, 3000 rounds of 1.1 inch and 52000 rounds of 20mm ammunition during the action. Captain Gatch made the following assessment of the relative effectiveness of each weapon type in bringing down enemy aircraft during the action: 5 inch; 5%, 40mm and 1.1 inch; 30% and 20mm; 65%.[3]
(3) United States Navy, AntiAircraft Action Summary, July 1942 to Dec 1942 (Information Bulletin No. 22), p111
Hello RCAFson
from the Eastern Salomon report you gave a link.
on those "useless 5" "
"The 5-inch bursts from this ship appeared to be under the bursts of other ships firing and generally well in line and ahead of the planes. Several planes were noticed attempting to pull away from bursts and others were seen to emerge from bursts on fire, while three planes were reported to have disintegrated as though directly hit. (The use of influence fuzes on 5-inch projectiles would make them devastating against a dive bombing attack). "
Juha
HyperWar: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons [ONI Combat Narrative]Assigning credit to ships for shooting down enemy aircraft proved difficult. Enterprise claimed 15, North Carolina 7, Portland 1, Atlanta none (this despite the excellent 5-inch barrage she maintained over the carrier), Balch 2, Benham none, Monssen 1, Ellet none, and Grayson 1. Undoubtedly overlapping existed in these claims, because all ships, except the North Carolina, which became separated, made it clear that more often than not planes at which they fired also were under fire of other ships of the formation. On the other hand, no "probables" or "possibles" were included in these claims.
Hello RCAFson
...see my Indomitable case on 12 Aug. 42, RN AA succeeded to shoot down max one out of 12 Dive-bombers in similar circumstances. How that shows that RN automatic AA was better than that of USN?
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/LondonGazette/38377.pdf49. The first attack commenced at 1835 and
comprised at least 13 torpedo bombers; simultaneously
an unknown number of high level
aircraft attacked. An emergency turn was made
to avoid the mines and torpedoes which had
been dropped outside the starboard screen.
Very soon after this 40 torpedo bombers were
reported ahead, followed immediately by a
Stuka attack on INDOMITABLE who became
obscured by splashes and smoke.
The net result of these series of severe
attacks was FORESIGHT torpedoed aft,
INDOMITABLE 3 hits by large bombs and
several near misses, causing two large fires and
putting the flight deck out of action. There
were many near misses elsewhere in the force
but no other ships suffered damage. .
The casualties to enemy aircraft are uncertain
but INDOMITABLE's fighters shot down 9
certain, 2 probable and I damaged, for the loss
of 2 fighters, i pilot being saved. One JU.87
was probably shot down by ships' gunfire.
First of all, I had already given the figure 28-31 for LW PQ-18 losses
And what you gave, I bothered only check the recon plane, because I know LW loss figures, and as I guessed, you simply didn't understand the table. And even from your list, you have 30-31 plus some possibles, that doesn't necessary mean 35+ for anyone looking it objectively, especially if you have counted those bombers marked as ?% as lost.
Quote:" Please, it was notoriously difficult to determine AA kills at long range…"
dear, dear, the dive-bombers were in their dives, so not so long-range targets. And if you think that I don't know that many, probably most wartime claims were inflated, I can assure you that I have been aware on that since mid 60s
And of inferiority of US equipment is only your opinion, sorry. The USN AA achievements which Nikademus and I have given were not claims but real results checked against known Japanese losses.
And again I'm little boring on your cherry-picking and strawman tactics
Hello RCAFson
Quote:" and as you explained the entire convoy was under attack and the aircraft were not spotted until they started their dives, so no AA support from other ships, whereas the USN carriers were the central focus of each attack and had about a dozen ships ready and waiting to open fire in support."
As were in Enterprise cases according to the action reports and are you claiming that the HMS Kenya and HMS Charybdis joint claim was bogus one and RN AA got none of the Stukas or what? If you don't know Charybdis was a Dido Class AA cruiser, as was Phoebe, which sailed behind Indomitable but was distracted by Italian torpedo planes, which it probably thought being a thread to Indo. After all it was a standard tactic to co-ordinate dive-bomber and torpedo-bomber attacks just to confuse AA.
If you reread your own message #228, you see that at least captain Gatch seemed to have high regard on 20mm and maybe even on 1.1", at least 40mm and 1.1" together, and US ships tended to have more 20mm at that time than RN ships. So USN had more Bofors and 20mm, in that they were better, and would haven't been surprised if 2 single .5" Brownings were more effective AA weaponry than a RN quad ,5". I have no firm opinion on quad 1.1" because its bad reputation might be partly caused by the fact that it was replaced by excellent Bofors and USN Bofors mounts were clearly more reliable than RN Hazemayers, of course also less sophisticated.
What was effective depended who made the valuation, read the action reports you gave links to.
Juha
Lend Lease was in effect at that time, so the gear was effectively free.
Everyone keeps saying how the 5"/38 is such a great gun, but where are the kills to prove it? The experience of the USN was that DP weapons could not protect the fleet, and that the real threat to aircraft was automatic AA,
B. Gunnery
1. The following listed alterations should be installed.
(a) A workable hand-powered ammunition supply for 5"38 caliber guns.
(b) A hand-operated cooling system, as an auxiliary, for the water-cooled automatic guns.
(c) Automatic fuse setters for 5"38 caliber guns not already so equipped.
(d) Automatic parallax control for 5"38 caliber fire control installations not already so equipped.
(e) Replacement of 5"38 caliber guns, 1.1" guns and 50 caliber machine guns, by a large number of 40mm automatic guns. While smaller caliber automatic guns have proven effective at short ranges, their range is too short to offer effective opposition to attacking planes prior to delivery of their attack. 5"38 caliber guns are very effective at long ranges and should be retained in ships which are used as anti-aircraft screening vessels.
The USN would have been better off by staying with LA 5" guns and devoting the weight saved to more AAA and the gunnery report from Yorktown at Midway states exactly that:
Hello Nikademus
on bombers, I counted also 3 Ju 88A-4s from KG 30, one written off after undercarriage failure during landing, maybe mechanical failure or after effect of battle damage, one missing at Spitsberger and one missing at a square, exact place of which I have not bothered to check. On KG 26 losses there are also few cases in which I have given the benefit of doubt to RN.
I can find only 3 Bf 109 losses between 13 and 18 Sept, none had anything to do with PQ-18 and one on 19 Sept, shot down in air combat over Murmansk, so most probably by Soviets.
Juha
USN Combat Narrative: The Battle of the Coral Sea (p31)Admiral Smith also expressed satisfaction with the personnel performance of the Astoria, as well as that of the two other ships of his command, the Portland and Chester. The Admiral, however, was disappointed with the antiaircraft gunfire. The performance of the 5-inch batteries, he said, was "uniformly poor," with "much wild shooting." The 1.1's and 20-mm. guns, "although extremely wild, were more effective."
HyperWar: Battle of Coral Sea--Task Unit 17.2.2 Action ReportThe performance of the 5" A.A. batteries was uniformly poor. There was much wild shooting with no indication of control other than local. Bursts were in most cases short and ineffective. Other than noise effect on morale it may be assumed that this battery was useless for close range melee.The automatic weapons, 1.1 and 20 m.m. although extremely wild were more effective. At least 85% of the fire observed from these weapons was low and trailing. Failure to lead sufficiently and following the tangent of the tracer trajectory were all too apparent. The only solution is believed to be more practice firing from all angles at high speed towed sleeves. Pointers for 20 m.m. guns should be able-bodied, intelligent, marines, trained in "Duck Shooting."
Admiral Kinkaid estimated that 170 to 180 enemy planes took part in the attacks on the Hornet and the Enterprise, and that approximately 133 came within striking range of the 2 carriers. He concluded that the Hornet had been assaulted by 49 planes, antiaircraft knocking out 23, and the Enterprise by 84, of which 33 were destroyed by antiaircraft fire. The Enterprise thus was attacked by almost twice as many planes as the Hornet and, together with her supporting ships, shot down 10 more. Her damage was much less severe, because, unlike the Hornet, she did not have the ill-fortune to receive torpedo hits in her vital engineering spaces at the very outset of the battle.