Most accurate divebomber

[J.A.W.]

"using a... smart bomb"- Actually, P.o.W. Repulse, while damaged by bombs, were actually sunk by the numerous torpedo hits, were any other manouevring battleships in fact sunk by bombs alone in WW2 combat?

 

[tyrodtom]

You made the statement that the Do217 was the first aircraft to sink a battleship at sea, it wasn't.
When a ship goes down in the middle of a battle, struck by several kinds of ordanance, do you really think anyone has the time to determine exactly what is most responsible for sending it to the bottom?
That's for Robert Ballard or some armchair expert to figure out years later.

 

[J.A.W.]

USING A...SMART BOMB,[clear, now?] indeed, Navies [ Airforces]are most interested/invested in what weapons/damage are "most responsible for sending it to the bottom" - during wartime..since they really want ships to sink - or stay afloat, depending on giving or taking..

 

[tyrodtom]

Evidently if it wasn't sunk by a diabolical Nazi smart bomb,( Fritz X) it doesn't count then.

 

[J.A.W.]

Well, its a bit harder to sink a battleship by blasting air in from above the waterline, than by letting water in from below, The Fritz-X [ the Tallboy, -albeit its easier if the Tirpitz is berthed] had the punch to do both...but could any actual divebomber do this? [Rudel, probably, being a diabolical Nazi weapon personified..]

 

[barney]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL1sfS1USpE

Some You Tube footage supposedly taken from SBD's. Notice how they twist around when attacking ships. I have a hard time believing the aircraft can maintain any particular angle of dive when doing this. I also find it amusing that some of the pilots appear to be staying in their dives to view their bomb's impact.

 

[J.A.W.]

There is some good USN combat footage of dive-bombing included in the Howard Hughes movie 'Flying Leathernecks'.

The Pilots Notes for the Typhoon states re dive-bombing;
" The diving speed must not exceed 450 IAS when carrying bombs" [ or 480 IAS with rockets 525 IAS clean]

 

[stona]

Respectfully, don't accept everything you read, just because it's from a good source. Scrutinize the substance of it, then draw your inferences. A 60 degree dive is just a different drop point.

A drop point which is harder to achieve. That was the conclusion of the Swedish and German air forces. You can choose to believe them or not. They both found near vertical dives to be more accurate as did the USAAF with the P-47. I'm not sure that there is a more reliable source than reports by the men who actually carried out the trials! If we don't believe their conclusions then what should we believe?
Cheers
Steve

 

[J.A.W.]

Using Spitfires to dive-bomb V-1 'ski-ramp' launch sites, P.Closterman reckoned, "If you bomb at 45`, aiming is very difficult."
but worried that, "If you bomb vertically the propeller is torn off by the bomb."
He settled for "75`"

 

[VBF-13]

A drop point which is harder to achieve. That was the conclusion of the Swedish and German air forces. You can choose to believe them or not. They both found near vertical dives to be more accurate as did the USAAF with the P-47. I'm not sure that there is a more reliable source than reports by the men who actually carried out the trials! If we don't believe their conclusions then what should we believe?
Cheers
Steve

Steve, I'm not saying impeach the sources, I'm saying cross-examine the testimony. There's no testimony here that a P47 in a vertical dive is any the more accurate than an SBD in a broader dive. The testimony, rather, if it's anything, is that a fighter in a vertical dive is more accurate than a fighter in a broader dive. That's where you're missing the boat.

 

[VBF-13]

Adding: (1) And these Air Force fighters didn't have two months of intensive training in broader dive-bombing (did they?); (2) And they weren't constituted for that, anyway (were they?).

 

[VBF-13]

FWIW, here's about two weeks of their training in the SBDs on these 60-degree dives. The "G" is for bombing. The red entries are night tactical, and "LINK" is the LINK Trainer.

 

[cherry blossom]

At the risk of introducing serious thread drift, it might be possible for dive bombers to sink some battleships. The first requirement is a semi-armour piercing bomb with a fairly long delay. If such a bomb hits any battleship outside the armoured citadel, it may cause serious flooding of the ends of the ship (the bomb hit on Prince of Wales might be an example although not from a dive bomber and possibly PoW was sinking anyway). If it hits the armoured citadel, it probably won't penetrate the main armour deck in a condition to explode (one hit on Tirpitz did penetrate but did not explode). However, some battleships have a potential weakness at the sides. If you look at http://www.warship.org/images/no21987-Midship.jpg showing HMS Hood, you can see that a bomb could end up behind the main armour belt. If it exploded there, it might blow the armour outwards and cause serious flooding. Bismark and Tirpitz were designed with 45 mm armour dividing the area above the low main armour deck into 17 sections, so that such flooding should not be catastrophic. The other battleships built after Washington had armoured main decks well above the waterline. However, older battleships were vulnerable and Ise, Hyuga and Haruna were actually sunk by the above mechanisms http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/prim...ports/USNTMJ-200H-0660-0744 Report S-06-1.pdf.

 

[J.A.W.]

Cool post, Ta.
Do you have any data about the effectiveness of the FAA [carrier-born] dive-bomber attacks on Tirpitz?
Did the [carrier-plane] available weapons have the critical mass to 'nut-cracker' open up those battleship armour complexes like the Fritz-X or Tallboy?

 

[cherry blossom]

There are actually postings here, especially by Parsifal, http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/ww2-aviation-mythbusters-31085-10.html describing the attacks on Tirpitz. Tirpitz - The History - Operation "Goodwood" gives details of the hit which pentrated both armoured decks. There is a discussion at Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships - Naval History Forums of exactly what the bomb penetrated.

 

[barney]

Sinking a battleship can't be difficult.

Last winter my wife was sick. First, she couldn't walk, then she had trouble using her arms too. Scary stuff, the local neurologist hadn't a clue. Finally, the lab came back with a result – Lyme Disease. Thirty days of pill taking and she was cured.

During her illness we did jigsaw puzzles to pass the time. When that got old I suggested we build a model. I returned to the house with tube of glue and a 700:1 scale BB57 South Dakota.

This model is interesting in that it can be built as a waterline model or with the entire hull. Set on a flat surface as a waterline model it looks like a raft. Here's a picture to give you an idea of what the waterline model looks like. It is the vessel on the right.

File:The Monitor and Merrimac.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Okay, I exaggerated but not by much. The South Dakota was always overloaded and had added during the war 66 barrels of 40mm antiaircraft guns. She was two thirds sunk when she left the dock. That's the thing with these armored leviathans, the more armor that was added them to keep them from blowing up or sinking the more they sunk from their own weight.

So, just from looking at this freeboard lacking model makes me think these ships were more vulnerable to sinking then what is generally acknowledged.

 

[Shortround6]

Cracking open a modern battleship with the size bombs that carrier planes could carry was pretty unlikely, which is why the carriers carried torpedo bombers.

Battleships were designed to stay afloat with certain percentages of the "ends" flooded. The citadel was not only supposed to protect the magazines and machinery but enough buoyancy to stay afloat. Battle damage did not always go according to plan however.

The US 1600lb AP bomb carried 209lb of burster (13%) and was supposed to penetrate a 5in deck when dropped from 7500ft or from 4500ft in a 300kt 60 degree dive. If dropped from a lower altitude the impact speed was less and penetration reduced. The 1000lb MK 33 AP bomb had a 15% burster and could defeat a 5in deck from 10,000ft or from 6500ft in a 300kt 60 degree dive.

The M59 SAP bomb of 1000lb had a 30% burster but Campbell doesn't list penetration. A 1000lb HE bomb has about 50-52% burster by weight.

 

[J.A.W.]

Yes indeed, since those Battlewagons were built tough-enough to wear a good walloping from salvos of one-ton armour piercing ballistic projectiles slamming in at supersonic speeds from their bretheren, then they ought to be able to shrug off a few air-directed lumps of lesser mass on their upperworks too..

 

[tyrodtom]

The Arizona's top armor was penetrated by a 1700 lb bomb ( a converted artillery shell ), that's what blew the magazine. The bomb was dropped from Kates used as horizontal bombers.

 

[tyrodtom]

They were dropped from 3000 meters, these very streamlined bombs probably were supersonic, and going straight down, instead of a angle like a artillery shell.