Admiral Beez
Major
Indeed, if you want to sink an Illustrious you want to punch holes in its bottom, not try to penetrate its armoured top. Torpedoes are the tool for this job.
Dive vs Torpedo Bomber
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How about penetrating the armoured top creating fires and explosions in the armoured hanger below?
One thing leads to another.
Admiral Beez
Major
While a strike as you describe can cause sufficient damage to prevent flight ops and require a lengthy dockyard stay, such attacks never sank an Illustrious class. HMS Formidable, Indomitable and Illustrious each had their hangars penetrated by Stukas (which doesn't say much for their vertical protection) but none of the three were at risk of sinking, and all were close to friendly ports to make immediate repairs before sailing to Norfolk, US for permanent fixes. HMS Indefatigable's hangar deck was penetrated by a bomb-carrying Kamikaze, but was in no danger of sinking.
RN aircraft handling, damage control and concussion-resistant avgas storage prevented IJN-like fatal infernos as seen at Midway. As it was, the four IJN and one USN carriers lost at Midway were not sunk by the dive bomber strikes that penetrated their hangar decks. All five carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū, Sōryū and USS Yorktown were sunk by Japanese torpedoes. Had they been closer to a friendly and sufficiently equipped port, some of these five carriers may have been salvaged.
Now, hit Formidable, Illustrious, Indefatigable, Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū or Sōryū with two or three air dropped torpedoes and I'm certain damage will be fatal for some, just as it was for USS Yorktown. My point is, dive bombers may cripple, but with the notable exception of HMS Hermes they don't sink carriers, torpedoes do.
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Actually:
Prince of Wales- 4 torpedoes and an 1100lb bomb hit, several near miss bombs.
Repulse- 4 torpedoes, one 550lb bomb hit, several near miss bombs.
Admiral Beez
Major
If the water was deeper we could add three battleships sunk at Taranto. As it was, one was never recovered into service.
Most Luftwaffe torpedo bombing seems to have been carried out by He 111 or Ju 88 Torps which could carry two torpedo's. Without aircraft carriers there was not much need for a single engine torpedo bomber and its limitations in range. Technically the Ju 88 is a dive bomber so its actually on topic. Not quite sure how successful these aircraft were but it would be predicated on whether they had escort fighters and at certain point if confronted with the rather long ranged Bofors 40mm it would be difficult to get close compared to the POM POM and 20mm guns.
At a certain point the Luftwaffe developed "The turnip planting method" where a Ju 88 or say Me 109 would shallow dive on the target and aim bombs just ahead of the waterline.
The Bombs were time delay fused for about 5.6 seconds (according to Fleischers German Air dropped weapons) so the bomb would sink and blow up beneath the ship hopefully breaking its back. From a Ju 88 equipped with the Stuvi 5 and BZA it was quite accurate. An lone Me 109 seems to have burst open the hull armour plate of HMS Fiji using this. A Luftwaffe pilot was expected to be able to carry out calculations. The pilot would plan and attack run with a particular speed, altitude and angle for release. He would know his targets dimensions and use the stedometric ring on the Revi guns sight to estimate range. Some Revis used for fighter bombers had a second reticule which was pre-set on the vertical axis and the pilot would release to bombs as he pulled up.
I think the turnip method was seen as suplanting torpedo bombing. Interestingly the bombs were often given a 'prall scheibe" a flat plate on the nose to stop them bouncing which makes me think that with appropriate fusing the method might have worked using skip bombing, direct hits as welll as under water bursts.
The Luftwaffe even developed a special series of bombs called the BT series BordTorpedo eg BT700, BT1400 which were highly elongated bombs that could be dropped hundreds of feet from the target ship and would speer underwater. The idea was to use a to coil metal detector as a proximity fuse presumably with impact, time delay and or depth as a backup. After problems with their magnetic torpedo fuses the Germans introduced metal detector style fuses in 1942. They didn't quite enter production for the BT series but I think were used on ordinary bombs. The big advantage of the turnip method was that a huge explosive could be carried so a near miss by a big bomb was as good as a direct hit by a small torpedo war head and it could be released at high speed to provide standoff range.
Nevertheless the Luftwaffe persisted with torpedos. There were Fw 190 experimental modified with extended tail yokes to carry torpedos and it was planed to use the lobe switching feature of the Hohtenweil radar to do torpedo bombing attacks at night and in bad weather using Ju 88/Ju 188 and Me 410.
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pinehilljoe
Senior Airman
- 742
- May 1, 2016
Yes, and the other BBs at Pearl also provide more data. I chose Arizona since she was a total loss. The other BBs at Pearl took multiple bomb and torpedo hits and were salvageable. Arizona is one data point, 4 hits, one hit was to a critical location and resulted in total loss. You could add Utah to the list, two torpedoes caused her to capsize, and the effort to salvage her stopped, and the wreck is still in Pearl.
I believe your correct that all 5 carriers were sunk by torpedoes, Yorktown sunk outright while the others were scuttled, but I don't think there was enough left of the 4 Japanese carriers to save even if they had been sitting in a harbor when they were bombed. I'm pretty sure they were totally gutted hulks, nothing really left to salvage. As hot as they burned I'm not even sure the steel in the hulls would have been worth keeping or if they would have simply been cut up for scrap. Maybe I'm wrong, does anyone else have an opinion or info on that?
https://www.pacificwrecks.com/ships/hms/prince_of_wales/death-of-a-battleship-2012-update.pdf
that is an 80 page forensic analysis of the sinking of the Prince of Wales
that is an 80 page forensic analysis of the sinking of the Prince of Wales
Admiral Beez
Major
Hiryū looks like it could have been saved, as the IJN had trouble scuttling her.
You may be right. Hiryu didn't burn as badly as the others. One of them was burned almost to the waterline in the middle
Admiral Beez
Major
Good first person account of the only carrier sunk at sea solely by dive bombers, HMS Hermes.
BBC - WW2 People's War - The Sinking of HMS Hermes (continued)
And good investigation into the wreck site.
https://xray-mag.com/pdfs/articles/News_B_WreckRap_Hermes_PeteMesley_71_locked.pdf
BBC - WW2 People's War - The Sinking of HMS Hermes (continued)
And good investigation into the wreck site.
https://xray-mag.com/pdfs/articles/News_B_WreckRap_Hermes_PeteMesley_71_locked.pdf
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Admiral Beez
Major
Does anyone know if Fairey's monoplane proposal was to be dive bomb capable?
Arnhem Jim: October 2013
Kevin J
Banned
I always find it amusing for people that think the Admiralty was wrong or the Swordfish was obsolete since they conveniently forget that their modern contemporary is the helicopter which flies at the same sort of speed.
Admiral Beez
Major
No one is using helicopters for maritime strike against warships. The Swordfish's contemporary for anti ship work is the Super Hornet, F-35, Rafale, etc. along with anti ship missiles.
Kevin J
Banned
So what are all our helicopters for. Your planes look like an over expensive way to destroy ships and submarines. It's a bit like replacing the Warthog with B1s. Even John McCain could see that idea was stupid.
Shortround6
Major General
Modern helicopters are not trying to get within 500 -1500 yards of floating AA batteries (warships) or even closer for the skip bombing tactic.
Most subs do not try to shoot it out on the surface against helicopters.
It doesn't take much of an aircraft to attack unarmed merchant ships/fishing boats.
Helicopters have absurdly short range for a maritime strike role.
The list could go on but you are comparing corn on cob and watermelons.
Most subs do not try to shoot it out on the surface against helicopters.
It doesn't take much of an aircraft to attack unarmed merchant ships/fishing boats.
Helicopters have absurdly short range for a maritime strike role.
The list could go on but you are comparing corn on cob and watermelons.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 4,022
- Jun 25, 2013
The helicopters aboard quite a few navy's frigates and destroyers carry anti-ship missiles for maritime strike. This is why various navies have qualified their embarked helicopters with Penguin, Exocet, and similar missiles. While the Argentinians used free-fall bombs against warships, nobody thinks that's a particular good idea, hence missiles like Harpoon, Penguin, Exocet.....
Shortround6
Major General
Helicopter using a missle to fire from a number of miles away from the target is a tactic/luxury that WW II carrier aircraft (dive and torpedo bombers) didn't have.
The torpedo was the "stand off" weapon of the day, being able to be dropped out of effective machine gun range. Doesn't mean the torpedo bomber didn't wind up inside effective machine gun range after dropping the torpedo.
Trying to make comparisons between modern weapons/aircraft and WW II equipment sometimes runs into these wholesale shifts in weapons/ranges and sensors.
A modern large helicopter can attack a ship from beyond visual range, (assuming it is willing to take the risk of hitting a neutral ship)
But the difference in attack profile has nothing to do with the speed of of the helicopter compared to the speed of a biplane.
The torpedo was the "stand off" weapon of the day, being able to be dropped out of effective machine gun range. Doesn't mean the torpedo bomber didn't wind up inside effective machine gun range after dropping the torpedo.
Trying to make comparisons between modern weapons/aircraft and WW II equipment sometimes runs into these wholesale shifts in weapons/ranges and sensors.
A modern large helicopter can attack a ship from beyond visual range, (assuming it is willing to take the risk of hitting a neutral ship)
But the difference in attack profile has nothing to do with the speed of of the helicopter compared to the speed of a biplane.
Admiral Beez
Major
They also carry deck guns, small arms and fire hoses for striking other vessels.
You can use a frigate's ASW helicopter with antiship missiles to tackle a single and small enemy surface combatant. But that's not the anti-surface vessel mission the Fairey Swordfish was undertaking. The modern equivalent of a Swordfish mission is to mount a strike against a well escorted Kirov-class battlecruiser or a group of Luyang III-class destroyers. No one is going to use a navy's ASW helicpoter to attack that. That's Super Bug, Rafale and F-35 work.
That said, sending a single or pair of Swordfish to search for and depth charge a U-boat is equal to today's ASW helicopter doing the same job. So maybe that's what was meant above.
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