Greatest aviation myth this site “de-bunked”.

[GrauGeist]

I suspect that the translation from the IJN's action reports may be the root of that legend.
The carriers' hangar decks were packed with aircraft frantically being rearmed.

Photos taken by some of the SBDs during the action showed some decks with a few CAP A6Ms in various states (being recovered or lining up to take off, etc.).

 

[SaparotRob]

Full flight decks were almost certainly a myth, but I think that was -- pardon the pun -- exploded long ago. Wasn't it Lt Best who reported that Akagi only had a few Zeros warming up, and one starting take-off run, when he was diving on it?

From what I understand, Tully and Parshall put paid to that with Shattered Sword, though I seem to remember Best's "three Zeroes" report elsewhere, perhaps ADWS?

I know the myth of the full flight decks but I was wondering if CV 5 was ever nicknamed "Waltzing Matilda". The source of that was from a book with at least a few errors. I know that Kaga does not mean "increased joy".
It also had a silhouette of a different plane that took part in the battle at the start of each chapter. No Buffalo!

 

[GrauGeist]

The Yorktown was nicknamed the "Waltzing Matilda of the Pacific Fleet", because she was all over the Pacific in 1942, but she was affectionately called the "Fighting Lady".

 

[SaparotRob]

Thanks, GrauGeist. I thought that nickname was made up. I think author said CV 5 got it for all the time spent in Australia. Great book. I guess it was one of Mr. Caidin's sources.

 

[GrauGeist]

Thanks, GrauGeist. I thought that nickname was made up. I think author said CV 5 got it for all the time spent in Australia. Great book. I guess it was one of Mr. Caidin's sources.

You're welcome.
The nickname is genuine, though, like I said.
In 1942, the "Fighting Lady" was all over the Pacific, delivering air groups, getting into scraps, refitting and more - this meant bouncing all over the Pacific right up to her fate off Midway Atoll.
And that is why the guys coined the term "Waltzing Matilda of the Pacific".

 

[SaparotRob]

That has the ring of truth, unlike being in Oz so often.
I realized that book wasn't quite up to snuff after reading Incredible Victory and Miracle at Midway decades ago. I'd love to find and reread it.

 

[pinehilljoe]

If Bomber Command had continued its Ruhr campaign in 1943, it might have shortened the war. (See Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction which includes an examination of the effect on Germany war production.)

Also, the idea that all Bomber Command did was area bombing isn't accurate. Harris certainly preferred it over what he termed 'panacea' targets, but nevertheless plenty of more 'precision' targets were struck. (The peak year in terms of incendiary bombs dropped on urban areas by Bomber Command, in both actual tonnage and percentage of total tonnage dropped, was 1943.)

Quoting Patrick Blackett, the father of what we know call operational research, Taken from Blackett's War by Stephen Budiansky

 

[buffnut453]

Quoting Patrick Blackett, the father of what we know call operational research, Taken from Blackett's War by Stephen Budiansky


View attachment 629938

And Col John A. Warden's "Five Rings" would suggest that Mr. Blackett's analysis is incorrect. Air power is uniquely qualified to attack the heart of a nation's ability to wage war, including the population and infrastructure. That's precisely what Bomber Command and the 8th AF were trying to do. Using strategic bombers to attack fielded military forces doesn't make much sense if you're leaving the national infrastructure intact so that the fielded forces continue to be reinforced without hindrance. That's just a giant game of whack-a-mole.

 

[pbehn]

Quoting Patrick Blackett, the father of what we know call operational research, Taken from Blackett's War by Stephen Budiansky


View attachment 629938

Well he cant have studied many wars then. What was Napoleons Continental system, and the counter British blockade? What does "modern" have to do with the philosophy and what was the German blockade in WW1? It is all just confirmation bias, finding and concluding what it concluded before looking. How many more aircraft could be used in support of the landing in France above what were used, how could that landing in France be made a year earlier?

 

[GrauGeist]

I'm wondering that their interpretation of "modern" is?
The Germans regularly bombed Paris and London via airship during WWI.

Last time I checked, both those cities are population centers.

 

[fastmongrel]

The Germans regularly bombed Paris and London via airship during WWI.

Not forgetting the airplane bombers like the Gothas and the Paris gun

 

[buffnut453]

Or even the lobbing of plague-infested bodies into cities to break siege defences. These early biological weapons were definitely not targeted on the defending forces but on the population at large.

 

[pbehn]

I'm wondering that their interpretation of "modern" is?
The Germans regularly bombed Paris and London via airship during WWI.

Last time I checked, both those cities are population centers.

The Harrying of the north By William the Conqueror in 1069-70 wiped out 75% of the population of Northern England and that was basically the intent of Hitler in the east,

Bombing of UK started in 1915 and also included use of Gotha bombers, an embarrassment to the George Saxe Coburg Gotha, King of England! He became a Windsor shortly after.

 

[33k in the air]

Quoting Patrick Blackett, the father of what we know call operational research, Taken from Blackett's War by Stephen Budiansky

The Germans' own records show the effect the 1943 Ruhr campaign had on its war production. It stagnated for some nine months after the cessation of the campaign, and didn't increase again February 1944. (It peaked in July of that year and rapidly decreased thereafter.)

The figures for the tonnage dropped on each target system is reported in detail in the British Bombing Survey.

The difference in typical bomb load carried in 1944-45 as compared to 1943 is readily visible in the ORBs of the Bomber Command squadrons which recorded this data.

 

[swampyankee]

Slave raids -- obviously directed against civilian population centers -- were a major part of the military strategy of many groups. That civilians weren't the target is probably more an artifact of 18th Century warfare between European monarchies than any place or time before then.

 

[Shortround6]

And Col John A. Warden's "Five Rings" would suggest that Mr. Blackett's analysis is incorrect. Air power is uniquely qualified to attack the heart of a nation's ability to wage war, including the population and infrastructure. That's precisely what Bomber Command and the 8th AF were trying to do. Using strategic bombers to attack fielded military forces doesn't make much sense if you're leaving the national infrastructure intact so that the fielded forces continue to be reinforced without hindrance. That's just a giant game of whack-a-mole.

We may have two correct answers to this question.

It depends on the year/s being discussed.

Yes, Air power is uniquely qualified to attack the heart of a nation's ability to wage war,

Unfortunately bomber command was totally incapable of executing such attacks for the first two to three years of the war. First two anyway with such ability coming on line in the 3rd year.
The argument on the other side is that while BC was fruitlessly trying to bomb the German infrastructure in those first two to three years they were also denying the other RAF commands the needed resources to even play wack-a-mole. Which is sometimes called combine operations.

Costal command was starved of suitable (or even partially suitable) aircraft for Anti-sub and maritime strike during those years.
BC argued against providing Fighter Command with additional fighters for the defense of Britain because that would hinder Bomber Commands campaign to destroy German bomber factories and fuel reserves and thus end the air attacks on Britain.
Bomber Command only released the barest minimum of aircraft for army support and even then didn't allow them to train for the army support role leading to large losses of army personnel and the losses of many brave RAF crews trying to perform the support function with improper aircraft, improperly equipped and having been improperly trained.

Whatever Command accomplished to shorten the war from May of 1942 on has to be balanced against what Bomber Command cost the British armed forces as a whole from Sept 1939 to the summer of 1942 and in some cases beyond.

Lets remember that a large number of Bomber Commands "strategic" bombers in 1939/40 were Fairey Battles and Bristol Blenheim's. The ability to deliver devastating blows to the German infrastructure didn't exist. These bombers could not be used in daylight against strategic targets without horrendous losses and they couldn't find the right city at night let alone the right factory. That didn't stop BC from fighting tooth an nail to retain control over as many of these aircraft and squadrons as they could rather than give somebody the idea that, just perhaps, aircraft could take part in a tactical battle and affect the results.

What is especially damning is that BC knew they couldn't navigate at night from training exercises done over England before the war started. They knew they had no way to aim the bombs at night. They knew the Fairey Battle was not well suited to flying at night (vision problems form the cockpit for the pilot and the "navigator" had even less vision. They figured out by Dec of 1939 that even the Wellington with power turrets could not penetrate German airspace by daylight.
But instead of playing whack-a-mole in 1940-41 where they might have actual done some good or accomplished something, small as it might have been, They proceeded to loose hundreds of aircraft and aircrew without affecting the German war machine one bit or affecting the outcome of one land/sea battle.

 

[buffnut453]

We may have two correct answers to this question.

It depends on the year/s being discussed.

Yes, Air power is uniquely qualified to attack the heart of a nation's ability to wage war,

Unfortunately bomber command was totally incapable of executing such attacks for the first two to three years of the war. First two anyway with such ability coming on line in the 3rd year.
The argument on the other side is that while BC was fruitlessly trying to bomb the German infrastructure in those first two to three years they were also denying the other RAF commands the needed resources to even play wack-a-mole. Which is sometimes called combine operations.

Costal command was starved of suitable (or even partially suitable) aircraft for Anti-sub and maritime strike during those years.
BC argued against providing Fighter Command with additional fighters for the defense of Britain because that would hinder Bomber Commands campaign to destroy German bomber factories and fuel reserves and thus end the air attacks on Britain.
Bomber Command only released the barest minimum of aircraft for army support and even then didn't allow them to train for the army support role leading to large losses of army personnel and the losses of many brave RAF crews trying to perform the support function with improper aircraft, improperly equipped and having been improperly trained.

Whatever Command accomplished to shorten the war from May of 1942 on has to be balanced against what Bomber Command cost the British armed forces as a whole from Sept 1939 to the summer of 1942 and in some cases beyond.

Lets remember that a large number of Bomber Commands "strategic" bombers in 1939/40 were Fairey Battles and Bristol Blenheim's. The ability to deliver devastating blows to the German infrastructure didn't exist. These bombers could not be used in daylight against strategic targets without horrendous losses and they couldn't find the right city at night let alone the right factory. That didn't stop BC from fighting tooth an nail to retain control over as many of these aircraft and squadrons as they could rather than give somebody the idea that, just perhaps, aircraft could take part in a tactical battle and affect the results.

What is especially damning is that BC knew they couldn't navigate at night from training exercises done over England before the war started. They knew they had no way to aim the bombs at night. They knew the Fairey Battle was not well suited to flying at night (vision problems form the cockpit for the pilot and the "navigator" had even less vision. They figured out by Dec of 1939 that even the Wellington with power turrets could not penetrate German airspace by daylight.
But instead of playing whack-a-mole in 1940-41 where they might have actual done some good or accomplished something, small as it might have been, They proceeded to loose hundreds of aircraft and aircrew without affecting the German war machine one bit or affecting the outcome of one land/sea battle.

I'm not entirely sure what moles BC was in a position to whack from 1939-1942. If BC aircraft couldn't survive in daylight, then they aren't much use operating against defended airspace, which potentially would include North Africa and other nearby theatres....and if they can't hit a city at night, what chance of them hitting anything at the tactical end of the fight?

I suspect the operational results from switching to support tactical operations in the first 2-3 years of the war wouldn't have done much, if anything, to shorten the war. Losses would likely have been just as bad and it's not entirely clear what operational benefits would have accrued..

The argument about diverting aircraft to CC has some validity but, again, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Would such a move have further delayed development of bombing aids to improve BC's performance from the summer of 1942 onwards?

Even if BC couldn't hit a city, the simple fact of air raid sirens, bombs dropping and AAA being fired into the air would disrupt the population. I'm not saying the ends justified the means but there was still an operational impact even as BC was working out the technical means to improve its performance.

 

[pbehn]

Even if BC couldn't hit a city, the simple fact of air raid sirens, bombs dropping and AAA being fired into the air would disrupt the population. I'm not saying the means justified the ends but there was still an operational impact even as BC was working out the technical means to improve its performance.

It was impossible to know pre war what the value of messing with Adolfs head was. Hitler's annoyance at a raid on Berlin, itself caused by stray bombs on Croydon played a part in shifting LW attcks from airfields to London inn the Battle of Britain. Bombs falling on Berlin forcing Molotov to take to an air raid shelter completely undermined Hitler and Ribbentrop's rants about "the British being finished".

Most important Hitler was provoked into ordering the Baby Blitz, which threw away the last of his bomber force doing nothing, those bombers could have made a difference to the landings in Normandy.

 

[glennasher]

The einsatzgruppen work in Russia and the Ukraine sort of make all that "bombing of civilians" stuff moot, don'tcha think? The Germans certainly didn't spare any civilians during Barbarossa, so I don't think they have any room to squeal about it. Maybe the Allied efforts should have tried to spare civilians more, but hey, Germany started the whole war mess, and should have forseen that "what goes around, comes around".

 

[swampyankee]

The einsatzgruppen work in Russia and the Ukraine sort of make all that "bombing of civilians" stuff moot, don'tcha think? The Germans certainly didn't spare any civilians during Barbarossa, so I don't think they have any room to squeal about it. Maybe the Allied efforts should have tried to spare civilians more, but hey, Germany started the whole war mess, and should have forseen that "what goes around, comes around".

Agreed!

To put things into perspective: more civilians died in Poland than in all the Axis homelands, combined.