SMS Ostfriesland and Billy Mitchell

GrauGeist said:

While Submarines proved to be a large factor, it was airpower that actually decided the majority of battles.

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True enough in the case of sea battles, but on the broader canvas of the war effort, the stranglehold on Japanese shipping by submarines was a major factor.
Cheers,
Wes

XBe02Drvr said:

Mitchell was a precursor of the monomaniacal military crusader, out to upset the applecart of orthodoxy and promote a new perspective or technology, such as LeMay, Rickover, John Gault and the fighter mafia, etc.
We got dragged through the "Strategic bombing is the do-all weapon" peapatch by LeMay&Co post WWII and learned our lesson. It takes a balance of forces to meet all scenarios.
When you think of it, Ohio class boomers combine the best of both worlds, sea and sky. And with Tomahawks, the fast attacks can do so too.
Cheers,
Wes

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You neglected John Boyd in that... (although partial credit is given for "fighter mafia")

soulezoo said:

You neglected John Boyd in that... (although partial credit is given for "fighter mafia")

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Apologies, John! Mea Culpa. It's my unconscious naval bias showing through.
Cheers,
Wes

If I get 3 disagrees from Soulezoo do I won a prize or something? That would be a bigger achievement than sinking the Ostfriesland.

The Washington naval treaty kinda put the Kibosh on the battleship anyway and so was more instrumental in the future of battleships than Mitchell.

The flak defence was increased markedly during ww2 as the threat increased so that was lesson learned the hard way. Not from Mitchell.

HMS Repulse was not a battleship and was a WW1 design so again cannot be used as the perfect example of Mitchell's ideas.

A good example where air power didn't work is the Channel dash where fog and low cloud and general bad weather worked in the German favour. Anyone familiar with British weather can advise that is normal pretty much all year round!

Part of the bombing of the Ostfriesland had to postponed due to bad weather. Had the Ostfriesland been functional it could have escaped during this time or if it had destroyers laying down smoke it could have easily hid and made accurate bombing impossible.

So many variables and you want to take this test as gospel, as definitive?

The Basket said:

The Washington naval treaty kinda put the Kibosh on the battleship anyway and so was more instrumental in the future of battleships than Mitchell.

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The Washington Naval Treaty did not put a kibosh on capital ships, the world had yet to see the most powerful ones ever launched and they continued to be built and launched during the war.

The Basket said:

The flak defence was increased markedly during ww2 as the threat increased so that was lesson learned the hard way. Not from Mitchell.

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You are correct it was, but it was increased greatly from where it was BEFORE the war started, and BEFORE the war started the AA was already far heavier than it was during the Mitchell tests.

If Mitchell's test proved nothing, then why after the tests were conducted were capital ships equipped and retrofitted with AA starting in the same year the test was conducted? The USS Arizona AA I mentioned earlier started being installed in the late 20's when the 8 x 5" AA guns were installed.

The Basket said:

Part of the bombing of the Ostfriesland had to postponed due to bad weather. Had the Ostfriesland been functional it could have escaped during this time or if it had destroyers laying down smoke it could have easily hid and made accurate bombing impossible.

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Actually it did not have to be delayed, it was done at the behest of the US Navy who per the agreement would set the rules, some of which we idiotic and meant to interfere with the tests. One of the rules set was the ship could only be hit twice and the bombing would be suspended for a but. After which observers would go to the ship and examine it before the tests continued. It was the concern of the inspectors going to the ship in bad weather was the reason it was delayed which would not have occurred during war time.

If it had been functional we have no idea what would have happened. Would it have been more challenging? Yes. Would it still have been sunk? We have no idea. The bomb sights being used at the time for level bombing were for stationary targets, not moving ones. However, it was not direct hits that sank it, it was the near misses. But again you are missing the point of the test, could an aircraft sink a battleship. The answer was yes.

Most WW I battleships (dreadnoughts) started WW I with either no AA guns or a few machine guns or tiny cannon (3pdrs?) anti balloon or airship guns.
By the end of the war most had 2-4 guns of 3-4in caliber and most were sited almost as an afterthought, positions that made the least impact on surface gunnery
Of course many early Dreadnoughts had a number of "anti-torpedo boat" guns pulled out of position in the hull where they were useless in any but the calmest of seas. SO there was top weight and crew available.

By the late 30s the threat from the air was quite credible. War "experience" had NOTHING to do with the initial AA suites of the American South Dakotas, the KG Vs, The Scharnhorst and sister, the Bismarck or any other battleship built during the 30s. War experience change the light AA suite considerably but the large AA guns were in the designs from the start.

Some WW I battleships/battle cruisers got rather extensive rebuilds during the 30s to get around some of the treaty restrictions. the Repulse was NOT one of them. The Renown was.
It might be argued that the Renown had a better AA suite than the Prince of Wales. Not saying the Japanese would not have still succeeded but you had one modern battleship with a less than optimum medium AA battery and a WW I battlecruiser with a distinctly second rate AA battery.

Most of the left over WW I battleships that survived to the start of the WW II had at least eight 4-5in AA guns. eight singles or four twins. The Repulse had 6 single 4 in guns and even at that pathetic level was way ahead of of the pair of 3in AA guns she sported at the end of WW I.

I would note that really crappy weather significantly hindered submarine operations in WW II. You can't hit what you can't see and lookouts only 12-20 ft above the sea with waves breaking against the conning tower aren't going to see much. Periscope isn't going to much use either in really bad weather.

GrauGeist said:

To be entirely honest, how many subs were at Coral Sea or Midway?

Of the 11 U.S. carriers (all types) sunk in the Pacific, three were sunk outright by aircraft. One carrier was sunk by sub AFTER it had been mauled by aircraft and two carriers were sunk by submarine.
Add to that one British carrier sunk by aircraft.

Of the 4 U.S. battleships sunk (although 2 were later returned to service), all were done so by Japanese aircraft.

Of the 24 Japanese carriers (all types - Navy and Army) sunk, 14 were sunk by aircraft (though one was returned to service) and 10 were sunk by submarine.

Of the 7 Japanese battleships sunk, 6 were by aircraft and 1 was by submarine.

We could delve into the loss of both side, the Cruisers, Destroyers, transports and such, but in the Pacific Theater, it was the Battleships and Aircraft Carriers that were prime assets.

While Submarines proved to be a large factor, it was airpower that actually decided the majority of battles.

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Sunk by aircraft, yes. But how many were sunk by bombs?

US trials later showed convincingly that bombs were not very good at sinking large ships like capital ships IF (big if) the bomber could actually hit them. Torpedoes were much better at sinking ships, by the simple expedient of letting water in.

Of US carriers lost to aircraft Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, Hornet, Liscomb Bay, Block Island, were torpedoed. A couple did sink (or were scuttled) after bombing and at least two fell victim to Kamikazes, one of which (USS Bismarck Sea) ended up with a fire in the magazines.

For the British Prince of Wales and Repulse were both torpedoed.

Cheers

Steve

The Stoppage was because the Navy wanted to document the damage caused. Which was actually the point of the exercise.
Did high altitude bombing of ships actually hit anything?

Surely Kamikaze was the best form of attack for shipping. I am sure Mitchell missed a trick here!

One thing forgotten was the Ostfriesland had munitions on board? i doubt.
Most capital ships were blown up by their own magazines! Yamato included and the Hood. Plus the battle cruisers at Jutland.

Also American subs were lumbered with an unreliable torpedo which certaintly limited kills.

We seem to be confusing a whole bunch of things here.

Air attack was not static from 1921 to 1939 let alone 1942-45.

different types of ships have different resistance to damage. A lot of it is passive resistance and armor is just a part of it.

Counting a carrier like the USS Bismark Sea like a Lexington or Hornet is not accurate. But being accurate calls for very lengthy posts. Also a lot ship battles or ship losses seem to have an element of luck to them, Like the USS Bismark Sea : from wiki so........" The fire was nearly under control when the second plane struck the aft elevator shaft, exploding on impact and destroying the fire fighting salt water distribution system, thus preventing any further damage control. "

Now would a larger fleet carrier have had a redundant fire fighting system at the other end of the ship? If the fire fighting water system remained operational would that fire too, have been extrigwhiched/contained?

USS Bismark Sea was one of the Kaiser jeep carriers and was powered b reciprocating steam engines. Under 11,000 tons full load.

Battleships had hundreds (the big modern ones had over one thousand) of water tight compartments, which made them hard to sink compared to older ships and to cargo ships.
Put out of action is one thing, actually sinking one is a lot harder. Something the submarines also learned, one torpedo hit was usually a mission kill, but it took a lot hits to actually sink a modern battleship that was at action stations and fully manned.


But back to Mitchel and the air threat vs ships. By the mid 30s (and it took about 4 years to build a battleship) Every navy in the world that could build them was devoting hundreds if not several thousand tons to AA defense.

10 US 5in/38 twin turrets weigh about 750 tons and that does not include shell handling rooms, structure to hold them, hull structure to float them the 9000 rounds of ammo to feed them or the several hundred men to crew them (and the berthing spaces and mess spaces they needed and food/water/supplies for these men for several months. And the fire control arrangements.

Something was driving the requirements for such an expenditure or allocation of resources and if not Mitchel and the Ostfriesland trials then it was trials in various countries based off the the Ostfriesland trials (with no old battleship available these could be bomb accuracy trials or trials against a simulated target.)

Didn't American battleships protect carriers from air attack as massive flak batteries?

Obviously they didn't get Mitchells message that battleships were vulnerable.

It was carriers especially American carriers that were vulnerable to air attack. Had Mitchell bombed a carrier instead would that have been the end of a fleet air arm?

Japanese carriers were also vulnerable. Look at the beating Yamato took compared to Kaga or Akagi.

USS Missouri was hit by a Kamikaze. It left a dent!

You're not making a lot of sense now.

But to comment, they must have gotten the message as capital ships were equipped against air attacks before the war started.

Why else would the various nations have equipped their capital ships against air attacks before the war started if they had not paid attention to the tests?

Japanese carriers appeared to have a little bit of vulnerability from air attack, too.

If we recall, no IJN carriers at Midway suffered a successful torpedo attack. So then, what did sink them?
Scouting bombers made by Douglas...

And in regards to Battleships, their design was based on the premise that they would be engaging other Battleships (which actually happened on many occasions in the Pacific), therefore they would (naturally) have better armor than an aircraft carrier. Since (in theory) the Battleships and Cruisers would be protecting the Carrier taskforce.

The Basket said:

USS Missouri was hit by a Kamikaze. It left a dent!

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Everybody's seen the photo of that event, the Zero rolling into the Mighty Mo's side just above the waterline and straight into the armor belt at its thickest point. The bomb would have had the structure of the plane between it and the hull and would have vented into open air without any penetration of the superstructure as a proper hit from above would have. Surprising there was even a dent.
Cheers,
Wes

The Basket said:

Obviously they didn't get Mitchells message that battleships were vulnerable.

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That wasn't Mitchell's message. His message was that battleships were not invulnerable (there's a difference), and the new kid on the block was, or would soon be, a credible threat to their dominance; a message the conventional authorities were not yet ready to hear.
Cheers,
Wes

GrauGeist said:

Of the 11 U.S. carriers (all types) sunk in the Pacific, three were sunk outright by aircraft. One carrier was sunk by sub AFTER it had been mauled by aircraft and two carriers were sunk by submarine.

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And one jeep carrier sunk by battleship/cruiser gunfire at Leyte Gulf.
Cheers,
Wes

This is an internet forum. It's not supposed to make sense.
There is the practical and the theoretical.
The goal of Mitchell was to obsolete the battleship not to improve its defences.

The extreme cost and the advent of the atomic bomb would finally do that.

My view is that Mitchell did not achieve his goals in 1921 but the tide of history achieved his goals. So the advent of the USAF and end of the battleship era he foreseen but didn't force.

He sank a battleship so he met the practical but he didn't sink the battleship as a concept so he failed the theoretical.

XBe02Drvr said:

And one jeep carrier sunk by battleship/cruiser gunfire at Leyte Gulf.
Cheers,
Wes

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There were several examples I excluded, as I was only focusing on direct Aerial versus submarine kills.
Several that weren't listed were crippled by air but abandoned and scuttled, etc.

The Basket said:

He sank a battleship so he met the practical but he didn't sink the battleship as a concept so he failed the theoretical.

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And if it wasn't Mitchel pointing out the future of air power, than who else?

How many times in history have the visionaries stepped forward only to leave their necks exposed?

The war in the Pacific is a textbook example of how the shift from Naval power to Air power can dictate the outcome of a battle and previously though impregnable Dreadnoughts were no longer the order of the day, but rather their indomitable power being usurped by those pesky and novel flying machines.

Could the Iowa on its own survive the attack which sank the PoW and the Repulse?
The USN was excellent in that each part played a role so was a team effort.

The Basket said:

Could the Iowa on its own survive the attack which sank the PoW and the Repulse?
The USN was excellent in that each part played a role so was a team effort.

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Maybe and maybe not, but paired with another ship of similar force, most likely. Those ships had a quantum leap better AAA and fire control then the PoW and Repulse. OTOH the Japanese sent a serious swarm of attackers, and this was before there had been much serious attrition amongst high caliber Japanese aircrews.
Cheers,
Wes