fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
Hermes should never have been anywhere near carrier or land based aircraft. Convoy escort, hunting for surface raiders, training and aircraft ferrying was all she was suitable for.
How big was the FAA in Sept 1939?
- Thread starter Admiral Beez
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- #22
Admiral Beez
Major
The mission Courageous was lost on, ASW was the place for an obsolete carrier like Hermes. Courageous, as a fast fleet should have been elsewhere.
fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
True both Courageous and Glorious were thrown away. Both were missed badly they could have done excellent work in the Atlantic and western Mediterranean. Fleet Carriers should never have been allowed to leave harbour without a flotilla of ASW destroyers and at least a heavy cruiser and an AA cruiser.
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- #24
Admiral Beez
Major
IDK if a larger Courageous air group (there were 24 Swordfish, no fighters when she was sunk) might have spotted and attacked the U-boat before it sank their carrier, but the loss of Glorious goes straight to the point of this thread....the size of the FAA. Sending a fleet carrier designed for 48 aircraft into enemy waters with six (and only five operational) TSRs and nine fighters is negligence even if her captain wasn't an idiot who should have met Byng's fate.
Imagine the Taranto raid in Nov 1940 with HMS Glorious and Courageous joining Illustrious, launching not twenty-one torpedo bombers, but sixty or more! Or HMS Formidable having more than six Albacores to send against Vittorio Veneto at Cape Matapan in March 1941, or two months later in May 1941 HMS Victorious having more than nine Swordfish to send against Bismarck.
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Hi
The point about HMS Glorious when it was sunk was that it also had 10 RAF Gladiators and 10 RAF Hurricanes on board as well, which had taken off from Norway and landed on the carrier (first deck landing for the RAF pilots) to be brought home. The Glorious had previously taken the RAF Hurricanes out to Norway, so they had flown off a carrier before. I believe the Hurricanes were kept on deck after landing.
Mike
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- #26
Admiral Beez
Major
No, the Hurricanes were moved below deck, probably to the lower hangar since the CAG was so tiny to only need the upper hangar. The RAF Hurricanes fit perfectly on Glorious' lift and they did not have the corrosion protections of FAA Sea Hurricanes, so there's no reason to leave them on deck. Same goes for the RAF Gladiators.
All other things being the same, imagine the difference if just a pair of Sea Gladiators were doing a circuitous CAP around their carrier. They'd have spotted Scharnhorst and Gneisenau well outside gun range and then Glorious could lite her cold boilers and get up to speed, whilst ranging and arming her five Swordfish. Meanwhile, HMS Ark Royal would be alerted and would be preparing a strike of dozen Swordfish herself. The Germans are both sunk that day.
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- #27
Admiral Beez
Major
This is a good site on the loss of Glorious HMS Glorious – The cover up of Churchill's Operation Paul
Shortround6
Major General
Agreed but this does point out a problem with the HMS Hermes.
Bear with me here as I am going to make some assumptions just to illustrate a point.
Assume that a Gladiator (or Skua or Sea Hurricane) needs 30 imp gallons per hour for a speed that would give high endurance for CAP.
Assume that the Swordfish or Albacore (or Fulmar) needs 30 imp gallons per hour for a speed that would give high endurance for longer range search.
Assume that you need two fighters in the air at all times for the CAP (to shoot down snoopers or ???) and you need two longer range planes in the air at all times for longer ranged search.
Assume that an average day has 12 hours of daylight or flying time.
You need 1440 Imp gallons per day to maintain this level of air activity. Hermes had 7,000 Imp gallons of aviation fuel storage as built and it was planned to increase this to 13,000 Imp gallons but most sources say this was never done. I don't know if the Hermes was ever upgraded to an intermediate amount.
Adjust fuel usage of the CAP and long range search planes as you see fit.
Gladiator holds 72 Imp gallons, Hurricane just under 100 gallons, Skua could hold 163 gallons (including overload tank?)
The HMS Hermes could not support a large air group for very long or even maintain operations of a small air group for very long.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
That was interesting to say the least. It's perhaps another "everything you know is wrong" event.
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- #30
Admiral Beez
Major
Churchill was a good speaker for rallying the people, troops and Britain's allies, but he was a rubbish strategist. From Gallipoli and Norway to Greece and Singapore, Churchill's playing soldier cost tens of thousands of British lives in multiple failures, demonstrated weakness to Japan to exploit, and expedited the albeit inevitable postwar loss of empire.
I am not very convinced, contrary evidence for his theory, like D'Oyly-Hughes messages which showed his fixation on the court-martial dismissed as "black humour", not flying even one of his Swordfishes as A/S patrol/local recon IMHO shows his wife was right to warn the senior officers that his husband "...sometimes he says and does things which seem quite mad". Not even lookouts in Glorious's crow's nest.
According to my sources admiral Wilhelm Marschall was sacked because he disobey his orders, which were to attack Allies at Harstad to relieve pressure on the German garrison at Narvik. Marschall had followed his hunch and decided to attack sea lines between Narvik and GB. And how much there was plans for Oper. Sealion on 10 June when Oper. Rot was still in full swing? Answer: the planning for Sealino began on 2 July 40.
"The ship was prepared for air attack and was sailing at the correct speed, with enough boilers connected, to prevent submarine attack." But in case of an air attack 17 knots was definitely at a low side and there would not have time to lit up and produce enough steam pressure from boilers unconnected before bombing. IMHO the only reasonable explanation is conservation of fuel but if you think that there was no shortage of fuel, why? After all the RN had learned during the Norwegian Campaign how dangerous LW attacks were even on heavy units and aircraft carriers were vulnerable to bomb damage. And against subs a patrolling Swordfish would have been a significant deterrent.
And the Board of Enquiry file is now open, what is in it?
And Oper Paul has not been so secret for years, even I, a Finn, have read obout it several years ago.
The size of the FAA on 3 Sept 1939:
Recon Seaplanes:
Supermarine Walrus 47
Fairey Seafox 10
Fairey Swordfish 9
Carrier Fighters:
Blackburn Skua 24
Blackburn Roc 3
Gloster Sea Gladiator 12
Carrier Torpedo Planes:
Fairey Swordfish 145
I wrote this down at the FAA Museum sometimes in mid-90s.
Recon Seaplanes:
Supermarine Walrus 47
Fairey Seafox 10
Fairey Swordfish 9
Carrier Fighters:
Blackburn Skua 24
Blackburn Roc 3
Gloster Sea Gladiator 12
Carrier Torpedo Planes:
Fairey Swordfish 145
I wrote this down at the FAA Museum sometimes in mid-90s.
When one thinks what Ark's torpedo planes achieved in Med in 1940-41, the sinking of the Twins is rather unlikely if Ark's Swordfishes had attacked them on that day.
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- #34
Admiral Beez
Major
Didn't they still have some Blackburn Sharks? The FAA should have done the same as Canada did with its Sharks, and pulled off the rubbish Armstrong Siddeley Tiger engine and put on the Swordfish's Bristol Pegasus.
EDIT..... the Sharks I was thinking of were located at RAF Seletar in Singapore (and not RNAS Simbang), but these four aircraft (Sharks K5621 (Mk II), K8926, L2344, L2345 (Mk IIIs)) were assigned to #4 AACU (Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit), so these were likely RAF aircraft, not FAA. That said, here's a FAA Blackburn Shark on HMS Puncher (commissioned, Feb 1944), in non-flying form, used for training deck hands.
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