SMS Ostfriesland and Billy Mitchell

[The Basket]

At Midway, when the Kido Butai was attacked by high altitude bombing they would go round in circles. There is a picture of Soryu doing just that.

The Japanese went for maneuvering of individual ships rather than the USN maneuver in groups using flak.

At the Battle of Santa Cruz, the Japanese suffered staggering losses of aircrew due to huge walls of flak. Even the survivors got a dose of lead.

 

[MIflyer]

The book Bombers Vs. Battleships explains that the USN best equipped for ship defense against air attack in WWII. The numbers of guns, control of AA, fighter direction, and damage control put the USN in a whole'nuther class compare to anyone else. Even the RN was nowhere near as good. In 1941 two RN carriers put into Norfolk for repairs and in the process learned how the USN did ship defense and even picked up some USN radios. Billy Mitchell did not just revolutionize the way the Air Corps looked at airpower - he had an even greater impact on the USN!

 

[The Basket]

The Ostfriesland proves whatever you want to prove. Although the idea of a one off example being use to prove anything is statistically silly.
The Luftwaffe lost Battle of Britain therefore airpower is poor and worthless.
War is a very good teacher. The RN in Europe would have quickly realised perhaps more guns a good thing.

The sinking of the Yamato kinda proves Billy Mitchell right. Send waves and waves of bombers, torpedoes and fighters and you can sink anything.

I think the only true revelation was that near misses were actually more damaging than first thought. Water doesn't compress and all that.

 

[MIflyer]

Well, using bombs that had to just miss in order to collapse the sides of the ships may have been brilliant, but it was not very practical in warfare, especially on the high seas.

It did the job, though! The Washington Times headlines screamed that billions$ had been wasted on battleships while airplanes could do a much better job. The USN scrambled to save their fleet. The conventional wisdom was, "Not just battleships nor just airplanes, but airplanes and battleships together is the answer." So the USN got interested in aircraft carriers that could defend the ships.

Then the B-17 came out and YB-17's intercepted the cruise ship Roma on the high seas.. The Navy blew a fuse and insisted that the Air Corps not be allowed to fly its bombers that far from shore; the Army agreed to do that. Then the Y1B-17 came out in the pre-radar days of the 1930's the USAAC suddenly had a "Stealth Bomber" with the same top speed as the USN's new F2A but at an altitude TEN THOUSAND FEET HIGHER. In a war game the USN's ships would be dead before they even knew they were under attack. "We need a high altitude fighter to keep from having our arses kicked by the Army on Capitol Hill!" And the prototype F4F-3 got a two stage supercharged engine, even though the Air Corps had already rejected that design in favor of turbos.

 

[The Basket]

Kinda proves it. Don't use single examples to prove a point.

We need high altitude bombers to destroy enemy fleet.

B-17s don't hit anything at Midway.

Er....anyone got any more ideas?

Even bad weather could blow a fuse in that idea. So if high altitude bombers was the takeaway from all that then the wrong conclusion was reached.

Missing is not a problem. Statistics will take care of that.

 

[MIflyer]

Ironically, the USN figured out before WWII was over that the only high altitude heavy bombers were going to be the USAAF's "Friendly Monsters" (USN Pacific Call Sign for B-29's) . And they also figured out at Midway that B-17's and B-24's were far better patrol aircraft than were PBY's, able to not only to take names but kick A when required..

And so after leading the world with the F4F as the first two stage supercarged operational fighter, followed by the F4U and F6F using the same same available supercharger design, the FM-2, F6F, and F8F all had single stage superchargers, as did the PB4Y-2.

But then the USN developed the Bat fire and forget radar guided missile. Imagine what B-29's equipped with surface search radar and their bomb bays full of Bat missiles could do to any enemy fleet. It was just the nightmare the the USN had worried about in the 30's, and even worse, it was an all-weather threat. True, the Bat could not be launched at specific ships - it lacked the ability to correlate the Bat's scope presentation with the search radar's and also could not determine range to the target. The range problem would have been solved by launching from higher altitudes, since the Bat's range depended on that. Hitting the most important ship targets would have been solved by just launching more Bats. So, it's at night and you hit some poor tanker 6 times and the IJN carrier only three times; big deal!

And then, to almost everyone's surprise, came nukes and jets. No two stage supercharged prop job could compete with a jet at altitude anyway, so single stage supercharging was good enuf. And a single enemy bomber could destroy a whole fleet.

 

[vikingBerserker]

The Ostfriesland was not really a one off, the experiment was repeated on another German ship and a number of retired American BB's.

 

[The Basket]

Well the tests showed the Navy that battleships were whatever they were.

Battleship construction went big time in the late 1930s with a lot of countries throwing in the big guns.

So the threat either imagined or actual must have been less than Mitchell realised.

I remember reading an account from the Kido Butai that they saw the bombs drop from the B-17 and moved out the way. Trying to hit a moving target with a moving target from a moving target is no easy task. And say 37 seconds to drop from 20,000 feet and you could be happy with your chances.

And in bad weather, you're not going to find the target to bomb. So yeah....high altitude bombers against a moving fleet has its difficulty.

 

[Snautzer01]

Was it not a 2 sided blade ?
1: the long range b-17 can find a fleet. Fly high and safe. Not intercepted.
2: harasse with a bomb here and there (the reciepient knowing it will hurt him when it hit, of in any case force avasive movements) breaking the battle plan.

Even if all bombs miss, the fleet is busy with anything but its task. Perhaps important to a defense. Gaining time and creating oportunity.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Even if all bombs miss, the fleet is busy with anything but its task. Perhaps important to a defense. Gaining time and creating oportunity.

Proven at Midway. The practically continuous air attacks on Kido Butai and resulting wild maneuvering disrupted cohesiveness and visual communication, interrupted CAP replenishment, and interfered with safe handling of ordnance and spotting of aircraft. So when the dive bombers appeared, the targets were at their most vulnerable, and damage control was handed a sh_t sandwich. Billy Mitchell wasn't all wrong.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[The Basket]

The B-17s at Midway did not much but annoy for a few minutes so certainly wouldn't have broke any battle plan.

From what I've read the B-17s carried 500lb and 600lb bombs and that is not going to trouble a battleship.

Certainly stories of battleships being hit and shrugging off such hits.

Carriers are not battleships and Shokaku got beat up badly twice and did survive. Yamato and Nagato certainly got hit and carried on.

Finding a ship over the ocean is not easy. No radar no navigational aids and throw in cloud and bad weather and you will fly right past.

The B-17 was well within the Zeros wheelhouse by 1942.

I wouldn't give that much credit to Mitchell. The Tirpitz was sank by a 12,000lb bomb and it don't take a Brigadier General to tell you that 3 supersonic Tallboys is bad news.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I wouldn't give that much credit to Mitchell. The Tirpitz was sank by a 12,000lb bomb and it don't take a Brigadier General to tell you that 3 supersonic Tallboys is bad news.

You're right, but in 1921, it took a brevet Brigadier to awaken traditional mindsets to the inevitability of supersonic Tallboys at some future time. Otherwise, air warfare would have been irretrievably subjugated to five millennia of traditional infantrythink. Not unlike some folks here who seem to be wedded to battleshipthink.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[The Basket]

Question is did Mitchell and his idea cancel the battleship? Absolutely not.

The vulnerability of the battleship and battlecruiser was shown in ww1 plenty of times. All it showed if you do something enough times you will succeed based on statistics. HMS Audacious was sunk by a single mine and Invincible turned into mist.

Take Vietnam....you can say look how many SAMs were fired...they were ineffective. Or look how many aircraft they shot down....those SAMs were devastating. Both true. Depends on how you want to slice it.

Good example is the battles which sank Hiei, Kirishima, Fuso and Yamashiro. All night battles. No B-17s there. Battle of Savo Island...again night battle. If you didn't have a surface fleet navy and Battleships then the Japanese would have still built theirs and you are going to enter a world of pain.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

u

Question is did Mitchell and his idea cancel the battleship? Absolutely not!

Rather than cancel the battleship, Mitchell and his idea rocked its pedestal as undisputed master of the seas. "There's a new kid on the block, and he's young yet, but growing faster than you can imagine, and he's lean, mean and strong. Guard well your crown, he's out to take it!" By WWII, he had. Battleships still had utility as floating artillery and AA batteries, as well as task force surface protection. "Adm, Halsey, this is Taffy 3. Can I borrow one or two of your BBs? Like RIGHT NOW, PLEASE!!"
Cheers,
Wes

 

[The Basket]

Military visionaries are fine in small doses. Even a broken clock is right twice a day

Long range musketry is very important. Accuracy at 600 metres is very important so build a rifle that does that. Then fight in a jungle....oops. Or build short range weapons to about 500 metres and then find yourself been outranged by the enemy who is using the older stuff that you discarded. Oops.

Or build lightweight jet fighters where agility is the most important factor and then find yourself against radar equipped fighters with BVR missiles. Oops.

Or build fighters which are purely missile equipped and find that missiles don't work. Oops

Or build turret fighters that turn into bullet magnets....oops.

Or the bomber will always get through while flying a Battle....oops.

God save us from the military visionaries.

 

[Shortround6]

From what I've read the B-17s carried 500lb and 600lb bombs and that is not going to trouble a battleship.

Depends were it hits and the age of the Battleship.

Certainly stories of battleships being hit and shrugging off such hits.

Most of the WW I Battleships had fairly thin decks and turret tops. This was because they expected any shell hits to come in at a fairly flat angle. Max elevation on the main guns was often 15 degrees or under. As battle ranges increased and the elevation went up the angle of decent also went up and required thicker deck armor and turret tops to protect against what was known as "plunging fire". This also increased protection against bombs.
Bombs were also evolving. Stronger bodies to prevent splitting open on impact with hard targets, Better shapes to increase speed (reduce the time of fall) fuses were conastant source of trouble.

On most battleships the "armored deck" was one or two decks down from the open air upper deck. Some ships used 3 different armoured decks to try to disrupt the path of the projectile and get the fuse to function early. Most of the armor was still concentrated in the lower deck as it had to prevent shell fragments from pentraing in the "vitials" and a 12-14in shell had hundreds of pounds of fragments moving at high velocity.
WW I battleships had very few guns without some sort of protection at least this was so after Fisher left office. But with the coming of aircraft the AA guns that began popping up like mushrooms after a good rain filled the deck space with a lot of vulnerable stuff.
In the Washington treaty up to 3,000 tons of extra armor and other "stuff" could be added to existing battleships to modernizem them against aircraft and long range plunging fire.

People are also confusing sinking the battleship with getting a "mission kill", at what point is the Battleship banged up enough that it has only a small chance of successfully completing it;s mission and needs to return to base for repair. (which may take months). One of the many shades of gray in warfare.
The long range gunnery depended on range finders and directors mount high up on the ship and connected to a center "fire control room" that was often located underneath the main armored deck. While hitting the fire control room was very difficult hitting the range finders and directors was not and could render the "fire control" blind and force a revision to "local" control.
So fire control, secondary batteries, AA batteries, aviation facilities were all vulnerable to bombs that had no hope of killing the battleship out right. They could severely degrade it's combat performance.
Yes 500lb bombs hitting a new or modernized turret roof could bounce off (also means the fuse malfunctioned) but a 500lb hitting close to midships could severely damage AA guns and directors, secondary battery guns & directors, damage main gun fire control equipment and even damage funnels leading to loss of speed due to poor draft through the boiler rooms. Also the bow and stern were seldom protected by the same thickness of armored deck that was used from the fore turret to that aft turret.

It was a constant seesaw between threat and design to counter the threat.

 

[MIflyer]

Actually Billy Mitchell said that airpower should be an equal service with the Navy and Army.

At Midway the head USN officer on the island resorted to putting his officers on board USAAF B-17's which had shown the ability to find the IJN fleet, persist over it, and even shot down at least one Zero. In contrast he said that, "Every type of enemy aircraft could and did attack the PBY's." Most notably this included Betty bombers flying out of Wake Island.

 

[gjs238]

The XF4F-3 with the two stage two speed supercharger was the subject of contract negotiations between the USN and Grumman beginning in October 1938. The prototype first flew on 12 Feb 1939. By that time the USAAC had already compared the XP-41 with basically that same engine with the Republic AP-4 which had fitted a turbo to a single stage supercharged R-1830. The Air Corps decided that the turbo was the way to go, resulting in the P-43 order.

Did the XP-41 have a 2-stage supercharged engine?
Wiki lists it as having a 2-speed supercharger.

 

[Peter Gunn]

As far as B-17's at Midway go, from what I've read, AAF doctrine was to attack with 8-12 ships in vee's of three flying down the targets course spread out enough so that when they dropped the target ship had no where to go, a hard port or starboard turn still put it in harms way.

The issue at Midway was that Col. Sweeney's :<sp> group had little time to train in this tactic and indeed, he assigned only 3 B-17's to attack each carrier and even then, if you look at the photos, they came damn close to pulverizing a couple of CV's.

Just my two cents worth.

 

[The Basket]

Quick run down by memory of capital ships lost and how.

By Submarine
Kongo
Royal Oak
Barham

By ship to ship
Bismarck
Scharnhorst
Yamashiro
Fuso
Hood
Hiei - going for this rather than air power
Kirishima
Bretagne

By Air Power
Musashi
Yamato
Gniesanau
Tirpitz
Haruna
Ise
Hyuga
Prince of Wales
Repulse
Arizona
Oklahoma
Utah?
Settsu?
Roma

Went bang in port with no enemy action.
Mutsu

Haven't included ships that were recovered or repaired so only hull losses or never served again. Maybe Conte Di Cavour should be listed. Or maybe Strasbourg, Dunkerque and Provence? One for the philosophers. Utah and Settsu were battleships so include them for the sake of it. Valiant and Queen Elizabeth....loss by frogmen? Dunno as they were fixed. Pearl Harbour refloaters also not included.

So Mitchell earns his gold medal for guessing for which is the cause for most losses.

Carriers are not battleships as Akagi got one 1,000lb and that was the end of her. Close but no cigar. If you miss then don't matter if you miss by inches or by miles...still miss.