SMS Ostfriesland and Billy Mitchell

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Though this makes me sound rather stupid, how do you compute elevation and descent angles over distance? My knowledge of marksmanship is minimal...

tyrodtom said:
I don't think many of us would try to say the pressure of a competitive sport is anything like getting shot at.
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True enough.
 
Zipper730 said:
Though this makes me sound rather stupid, how do you compute elevation and descent angles over distance? My knowledge of marksmanship is minimal...
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I'm with you, brother. I'm actually a pretty good shot, but a lousy mathematician, so I don't obsess over the accuracy achieved by mathematic ballistics and settle for a rough approximation by plotting it on graph paper. Since I'm not aiming for the exact impact point and angle to reach HMS Hood's magazine, that's good enough for me.
A table of velocity decay over range (or time) for your chosen weapon, the rate of acceleration due to gravity, a ruler and a protractor are all you need. (And some time and some head scratching.) You should be able to plot the flight path second by second taking velocity decay and gravity drop into account. A little entertainment for the socially distanced.
Cheers,
Wes
 
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The Basket said:
Or the bomber will always get through while flying a Battle....oops.

God save us from the military visionaries.
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No! God save us from the "one size fits all", "all the eggs in one basket" bean counters. Combined forces are the only insurance against getting caught with the wrong set-up. The success at Midway was largely due to the wide variety of air assets thrown at Kido Butai in a concentrated time frame, and aided by the damage done by some of the near misses, such as damaged steering and ruptured shaft seals. And not to discount the psychological effect of the B26 that strafed the island of the Japanese flagship and had Nagumo & Co ducking for cover. Suddenly, the sense of invincibility had a visible dent in it.
Cheers,
Wes
 
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Odd thing at Midway is that the American air attacks were neither concentrated or coordinated but haphazard and chaotic. But that actually worked out because the Kido Butai was under constant air attacks over a longer period and didn't allow for normal operation.

Although if you looked at British carrier losses, only one was to air attack. So you could statistically say that U-Boats were the deciding factor here.

The navy advised that if there was a crew on Ostfriesland then damage control could have stopped the flooding. Plus the bulkhead doors were all open. The game was rigged. And it's the false positive that annoys rather than the crystal ball gazing.

Imagine a scenario where I am fighting against a world champ heavyweight boxer. The boxer can't move or defend himself or punch back. And eventually I knock him out!

So either I am the heavyweight champ of the world or I have rigged it to get the result I want. Of course the headline will be I knocked out the champ and the inference is it that it was my boxing skills rather than the rules.
 
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In theory I could be heavy weight champ of the world. Nothing is actually preventing that in theory.

Reality says different.

Mitchell missed a trick as Kamikaze proved to be very effective. So he should have gone full Banzai if he wanted my support!

Then that would have truly a harbinger of the American navy future!
 
In terms you might better understand. In a ring against a punching bag. You punch left and right duck a few times. He i can box. Now if i train real hard and have some talent i might go places. That is what Mitchell did. Punching the bag. Proof of concept.
 
In real life people are shooting back.

Against stationary targets at Pearl, the Japanese lost 29 aircraft and 55 aircrew.

And that was under ideal conditions.

As they say, the plan goes out the window when shots fired.
 
The Basket said:
And it's the false positive that annoys rather than the crystal ball gazing.
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That may well be, but history is full of false positives and false negatives that are long forgotten footnotes today, while the crystal ball has been vindicated in the historical record.
I rest my case.
Cheers,
Wes
 
IIRC there were some Navy brass making the statement that an airplane could not carry a bomb large enough to sink a battleship - period!

Sure - throw in a moving target and flack and the game changes.

Keep in mind that although Mitchell was ridiculed and dismissed by the War Department, there were others who listened.



In 1946 some had different feelings about Mitchell and he was Posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor/ Congressional Gold Medal.

Brig. Gen. William L. Mitchell
 
The USS Arizona was destroyed not by dive bombers but by Kate level bombers. The flight of aircraft flew right over the ship with no fighter opposition and only ONE of the bombs they dropped hit the ship - in the forward magazine.
 
I can say man will walk on Mars. That ain't fact or fiction but a probable with a good chance of happening. Where's my medal?

Tennessee, West Virginia and Maryland were hit with the same bombs as Arizonia. And this again under ideal circumstances. Them bombs were duds.

So Prince of Wales, Repulse, Roma, Musashi and Yamato were the only battle ships sunk at sea under combat conditions. And it was torpedoes not bombs that did them in. Or Fritz X in the case of the Roma although Warspite took a Fritz X like a champ.

Still not getting on the Mitchell love train.

Let's play a game Iowa v B-17...who gonna win? And Iowa is going to win every time. Just vector in Some F-14s and the B-17 is going to be Phoenixed well before time. Fixed.
 
MIflyer said:
only ONE of the bombs they dropped hit the ship - in the forward magazine.
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IIRC, that was an armor piercing naval artillery shell converted to a bomb, and the Arizona was designed and armored in the era of low elevation naval guns, when plunging fire was not a concern.
 
It's funny how they designed warships in the pre-missile era. If the ship was attacked from so close that the biggest shells were coming in horizontally the armor was not going to stop them. If it was attacked from so far away the the shells were coming straight down the decks were not going to stop them. There was a range where the attack was coming from far enough away that the shells could be stopped by armor and not far enough away so they were coming almost straight down. Now, what size guns should you assume? They assumed that the ship was being attacked by guns of the same size it was carrying when designing the armor. That way, the optimum engagement range was the same for both the armor and the guns. They designed the ship to fight another of the same type.

Aircraft carriers were designed to be armored for the optimum range of the cruisers that presumably would be escorting the carrier.

A friend of mine was piloting a B-52 in a war game that simulated a strike on a USN carrier. His tail gunner scored a shoot down on the F-14 that intercepted them and they were credited with nuking the carrier.
 
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