RoG Bismarck, Pray for me!

Mansteins revenge wrote:

warshipguy wrote: Manny commented tongue-in-cheek that, had Hood been around, Argentina would never have invaded the Falklands.    Granted, it is an overstatement, but one serious problem that the Royal Navy had was that the largest guns it had for shore bombardment were the 5" popguns on its destroyers.  Oh, well, here's to lessons never learned!  Bill Morrison yeah, otherwise Hood could have sat ofshore and shelled the Argentinians into submission, as the US did at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Pelilieu, etc, etc, etc...

Do I detect a slight note of sarcasm, Manny? The Marines did have a terrible time taking those islands, but the Argentinians didn't have the time to dig in like the Japanese did. Big guns would have made a difference in the Falklands, I think. But don't sell five inch guns short, 5" is the equivalent to a 127mm howitzer.

Oh gosh people. After the invasion Makin Atoll was hell on earth, smoking palm stumps maybe 3' high, ruined for years. That wasn't going to work in the Falklands, and there was no reason for it. I'm not even that keen on what the New Jersey did to Vietnam, but in the South Atlantic, no way.

Several dozen Harriers got the job done.

warshipguy wrote:

Never thought of old Milhouse as a wimp before, I'll have to think on that. I can't find any reference to the bridge story, can you elaborate. It sounds to me like the BB tore up a lot of bunkers and tunnels though.

Tricky Dicky was OK, but the State Dept and Congress he had to work with left a lot to be desired.  No one wanted to "insult the opposition" (especially USSR and China) so all the branches of the military were effectively handcuffed.  The New Jersey just happened to be one of the most glaring.  It may even have been deployed while Johnson was still in office.  Can you imagine Ronny or either George not taking advantage of the enemy being actually afraid of any particular weapon system?  And no, the BBs would not have magically ended the war, but they would have helped a lot more if they had been allowed to do their job as originally intended when the New Jersey was re-activated.  North Vietnam had absolutely no defense against the New Jersey's plunging pinpoint shellfire.  Except to refuse to negotiate if it went back on duty!  So they played that card and we folded our hand.

As for the reference, it was a book I checked out of the library some 20 to 30 years ago, about the history of the Iowa class BBs.  It was written shortly after the New Jersey was re-mothballed after Vietnam.  It discussed all their actions in WWII, then had another section describing all their actions in Korea. The final chapter was about the New Jersey in Vietnam, since it was the only BB to be re-activated, following Korea, at the time the book was written.  It's probably no longer in print since so much more history has been added to the Iowa Class BBs since then.

subfixer wrote:

Mansteins revenge wrote:  warshipguy wrote: Manny commented tongue-in-cheek that, had Hood been around, Argentina would never have invaded the Falklands.    Granted, it is an overstatement, but one serious problem that the Royal Navy had was that the largest guns it had for shore bombardment were the 5" popguns on its destroyers.  Oh, well, here's to lessons never learned!  Bill Morrison yeah, otherwise Hood could have sat ofshore and shelled the Argentinians into submission, as the US did at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Pelilieu, etc, etc, etc... Do I detect a slight note of sarcasm, Manny? The Marines did have a terrible time taking those islands, but the Argentinians didn't have the time to dig in like the Japanese did. Big guns would have made a difference in the Falklands, I think. But don't sell five inch guns short, 5" is the equivalent to a 127mm howitzer.

British Paras brought in their own field artillery and had air-support...the only large surface ship (other than the Brit CA's) was an Argentenian Cruiser that didn't fare too well as I recall...

Well, and here IBTL. Yes of course I can imagine George junior totally backing down because that's exactly what he did with No. K. And Ronny sold Hughes AAM's and F-14 parts to the Iranians, so let's not go there, shall we?

Nixon won the Presidency because he portrayed Johnson and of course McGovern as appeasers, which has been the canard hung around the neck of the Democratic Party whenever they have tried to improve the condition of the local working class. But thats just me; end of rant.

Battleships aliterate with a word that also starts with B. In the Falklands campaign, the last engagement of navy units ever, British sub presence negated, and in one case destroyed, both artillery and air wing assets. On the other side, the British suffered all of their losses from air power, that largely had to fly for a while, tracked all the way, but did real damage.

The thought of the heavy artillery reducing, and that is a word in war technology, the defences on the Falklands is laughable. There would still be hearings to this day abt why a bunch of sheep farmers are still buried in mud.

The New Jersey was only really effective in the DMZ zone in Vietnam. There is absolutely no way that those guns would mean anything to Afganistan, most of Pakistan, Iraq, Iran except for their coastal cities, North Korea, China, oh what the heck Andorra, Switzerland...

I give up.

Correctly. And the carrier "25th of May", ex HMS Venerable was forced back into port by the presence of the HMS. Iron Duke, or their subs, can't remember which? So that the Super Etendards had to fly from Rio Grande.

El Jere needs to come in here.

Britain had a Sheffield class destroyer in the ways that had been paid for by Argentina. They quietly pocketed the payment and kept the ship.

I think the Falklands/ Malvinas war is a perfect example of why aircraft are the deciding factor in war over the ocean. The relatively untested Harrier proved that technology trumps tradition.

Now that being said, I would say that the war was truly won by the heroics of the Royal Army, who really toughed it out and with their officers leading and dying, rubbed out the oppossition, NTL the RAF/ RN Air wings really rose to the challenge. And then there's Black Buck, which I've studied for years. That was a true feat.

I remember back in December of 1972 during Linebacker II. We were just off the port of Haiphong about 10 to 15 miles and watching the B-52 strikes and the SAMs and all of that. I think now of how unnecessary that would have been if instead of my carrier, it had been the New Jersey in our place. No loss to aircrews for one thing, I'll bet.

Sure sub, and I respect the loss of the aircrews, but the damage reports from the NJ shelling that I've seen are speculative at best. Charlie was a thin and widely spread force, which could not be knocked out in one big deadly barrage, I seriously doubt that the NV Generals ever were in fear of something that they could see coming.

If anyone ever comes up with a theory abt how we could possibly have "won" that war, I'll rep the book for free. BB is not the answer.

The targets during Linebacker II were infrastructure like power plants, supply centers, port facilities, airfields,SAM sites, and such. They weren't bombing a phantom target but real military targets of a conventional measure.  Linebacker II got the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table after they had been stalling.

Here is a link to "ye olde" Wikipedia entry on this operation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II

I'm just saying that if a battleship (or two) had undertaken this mission that human losses on both sides would have been less. The guns of a BB would have been more accurate and, since the enemy knew what was coming, they could have had a better chance of evacuating personnel out of the target area leaving jus the targets themselves. 

subfixer wrote:

I'm just saying that if a battleship (or two) had undertaken this mission that human losses on both sides would have been less. The guns of a BB would have been more accurate and, since the enemy knew what was coming, they could have had a better chance of evacuating personnel out of the target area leaving jus the targets themselves.

The personnel were the targets...that was the doctrine for most of that war: body-count...

I really don't understand some of you people, poor guy started what appeared to be a very interesting thread on building and detailing the ROG Bismarck. 130 posts later, 3 posts about the Model 2 of them from the guy his self. 7 pages of nothing to do with the model. Talk about highjacking a thread. I hope the guy starts a new one so we don't have to search through all of this to find it.

 

All started from a tank guy, way to go!!!

ADleitch wrote:

All started from a tank guy, way to go!!!

Now had there been tanks on the Falklands, that would have been a different story...great observation...

Actually searat12, you aren't too far from the mark about the "no boats" analogy. Since no one can actually see the submarine, how would they know if there were none there? (wink)
I liken the submarine to the following analogy:
You are driving along a 3:00 am, the traffic signal before you changes from green to red. You stop. As you sit there, you look around and see no other cars in sight. The red light drags on. You are wondering o yourself "why did the light even change, there were no cars to trigger it"? but still you sit. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the light changes and you return to your travels.
Now, why did you stop in the first place? And better still, why did you sit there for the full duration of the light? There were no police cars around. Why didn't you just run the light and continue on your way?
You sat there because, just because you didn't SEE the police car, doesn't mean there might not be one there that you COULDN'T see. It was the fear of he unknown that kept you in line. Just like the submarine.
And that was just a simple traffic light scenario. The police are not everywhere at every moment of every day, but the thought that just because you can't see them doesn't mean they can't make their presence felt. That it why we live in a (reasonably) orderly society.
And to respond to ADleitch: rabbiteatsnake doesn't seem to mind how things are going, at least he has made no objections.

Mansteins revenge wrote:

subfixer wrote: I'm just saying that if a battleship (or two) had undertaken this mission that human losses on both sides would have been less. The guns of a BB would have been more accurate and, since the enemy knew what was coming, they could have had a better chance of evacuating personnel out of the target area leaving jus the targets themselves.  The personnel were the targets...that was the doctrine for most of that war: body-count...

Not in this particular operation, Manny. This wasn't a tactical operation per se. A month and a half later we were more or less done with Vietnam.

subfixer wrote:

Mansteins revenge wrote:  subfixer wrote: I'm just saying that if a battleship (or two) had undertaken this mission that human losses on both sides would have been less. The guns of a BB would have been more accurate and, since the enemy knew what was coming, they could have had a better chance of evacuating personnel out of the target area leaving jus the targets themselves.  The personnel were the targets...that was the doctrine for most of that war: body-count... Not in this particular operation, Manny. This wasn't a tactical operation per se. A month and a half later we were more or less done with Vietnam.

Wait, I'm lost. We're talking about the NJ, correct, and to the question of Hijacking the thread, I apologize to the original poster. The NJ tour of duty was late 1968 through spring 69, correct? I got drafted in 74, although no one had been called up for a couple of years.

I tell you what;.... Name ANY weapon system besides a battleship, that can RECEIVE 6 x 1000 Lbs hits of explosive (I don't care how it is delivered, bomb, shell, torpedo, missile, etc.), and still be be 'combat effective;' just ONE, whether it is a submarine, a carrier, whatever..... If you can name ONE, then I will say the Battleship is 'obsolete'.  If not, then there is nothing else to say, the battleship wins!! 

searat12 wrote:

I tell you what;.... Name ANY weapon system besides a battleship, that can RECEIVE 6 x 1000 Lbs hits of explosive (I don't care how it is delivered, bomb, shell, torpedo, missile, etc.), and still be be 'combat effective;' just ONE, whether it is a submarine, a carrier, whatever..... If you can name ONE, then I will say the Battleship is 'obsolete'.  If not, then there is nothing else to say, the battleship wins!!

...wins what? I don't understand...BB's have been sunk with less than what you are describing, and some carriers, like the Franklin, survived terrible damage...

Oh thats easy, Searat. 16 A4 Skyhawks incoming towards your big steel drainplug with 4000 pounds of iron bombs each, dispersed across 3 miles of water and staggered in 30 second intervals. Flying at maybe 500 knots, one man/woman each, from all points of the compass, which means that a barely subsonic B-24 will peel in on you more or less unstoppable every 3 seconds, for several minutes, from god knows where. And that's 1965 technology. But so am I, so it's hard to speculate forward.

That qualifies as a weapons system, no?

So to answer your question, you can't bomb, shell or torpedo my Scooters, just shoot them down, which isn't going to happen with your Gatling guns, and I'm not even suggesting the truly lethals, on my end.

Tally Ho dude, here comes the Navy Air Wing.

searat12 wrote:

I tell you what;.... Name ANY weapon system besides a battleship, that can RECEIVE 6 x 1000 Lbs hits of explosive (I don't care how it is delivered, bomb, shell, torpedo, missile, etc.), and still be be 'combat effective;' just ONE, whether it is a submarine, a carrier, whatever..... If you can name ONE, then I will say the Battleship is 'obsolete'.  If not, then there is nothing else to say, the battleship wins!!

How'za 'bout a missile silo??

The battleship wins? Check the scorecard. Swordfish:1, Bismark:0
How many battleships have been constructed since the end of WWII?
How many aircraft carriers and submarines have been constructed?
Seems the governments and militaries of the world have spoken.
The third dimension of the battlefield has been deemed to be of highest priority. That is the realm of the aircraft and the missile.

There, ya see?  Other than the hardened missile silo in Nebraska, nobody has come up with a weapon system that can take 6 x 1000 Lbs hits and still keep fighting, and that's kinda the point.  I have already discussed why no-one has built any battleships since WW2 elsewhere in this thread, and won't go into it again.  As for the Bismark (Oh yeah!  That's what this thread is supposed to be about!), yes, it was hit by one torpedo from a Swordfish.  But before that, it had been hit be several 14" shells from the POW, had sunk the Hood, and was all by itself.  And after the torpedo hit, the ship didn't sink, it was unsteerable (one of the bad points of German battleship design were the exposed rudders), but it took HMS Rodney, the KGV, several cruisers and destyroyers the best part of a day shelling and torpedoing the thing before it finally went down, and that was while it was essentially defenseless because it couldn't aim its guns while slewing all over the ocean!  The Swordfish's single torpedo was merely the catalyst for the destruction of the Bismarck, not the cause (you could claim as much for the 14" hit that caused the ship to leak so much oil, allowing it to be tracked by the cruisers....)

searat12 wrote:

There, ya see?  Other than the hardened missile silo in Nebraska, nobody has come up with a weapon system that can take 6 x 1000 Lbs hits and still keep fighting, and that's kinda the point.  I have already discussed why no-one has built any battleships since WW2 elsewhere in this thread, and won't go into it again.  As for the Bismark (Oh yeah!  That's what this thread is supposed to be about!), yes, it was hit by one torpedo from a Swordfish.  But before that, it had been hit be several 14" shells from the POW, had sunk the Hood, and was all by itself.  And after the torpedo hit, the ship didn't sink, it was unsteerable (one of the bad points of German battleship design were the exposed rudders), but it took HMS Rodney, the KGV, several cruisers and destyroyers the best part of a day shelling and torpedoing the thing before it finally went down, and that was while it was essentially defenseless because it couldn't aim its guns while slewing all over the ocean!  The Swordfish's single torpedo was merely the catalyst for the destruction of the Bismarck, not the cause (you could claim as much for the 14" hit that caused the ship to leak so much oil, allowing it to be tracked by the cruisers....)

Well unless you are going back on your word, your supposed to say, "The battleship is obsolete."  You asked for just one weapons system and you got it...waiting...

searat12 wrote:

There, ya see?  Other than the hardened missile silo in Nebraska, nobody has come up with a weapon system that can take 6 x 1000 Lbs hits and still keep fighting, and that's kinda the point.  I have already discussed why no-one has built any battleships since WW2 elsewhere in this thread, and won't go into it again.  As for the Bismark (Oh yeah!  That's what this thread is supposed to be about!), yes, it was hit by one torpedo from a Swordfish.  But before that, it had been hit be several 14" shells from the POW, had sunk the Hood, and was all by itself.  And after the torpedo hit, the ship didn't sink, it was unsteerable (one of the bad points of German battleship design were the exposed rudders), but it took HMS Rodney, the KGV, several cruisers and destyroyers the best part of a day shelling and torpedoing the thing before it finally went down, and that was while it was essentially defenseless because it couldn't aim its guns while slewing all over the ocean!  The Swordfish's single torpedo was merely the catalyst for the destruction of the Bismarck, not the cause (you could claim as much for the 14" hit that caused the ship to leak so much oil, allowing it to be tracked by the cruisers....)

Less than 2hrs is hardly the better part of a day. Rodney opened up at 0847 and by 0931 Bismarck fired her last main gun turret C. She sank at 1039.  

As far as the claim that it took surface ships to "do the deed" against the Bismark:
The surface ships were used as a "point of honor". Your battleship sank our battleship so we must sink your battleship with our other battleship.
Even as early as the end of WWI, the end was known. Why would the U.S. Navy have allowed Billy Mitchell to use the captured battleships as targets for his air superiority theory? Could it have possibly been a tacit acknowledgement of their new "target status"?

I still haven't heard of any weapon system, besides a hardened silo in Nebraska that can take the kind of punishment that a battleship can.  And a hardened silo can't move!   As for the 'claim' reference the Bismarck, did aircraft sink the ship?  No, they did not, it was surface ships, including two battleships that sank the Bismarck.  Yes, aircraft MIGHT have been used to do so, but in point of fact, they were not (nor is there any guarantee they would have been able to hit the ship anyways, given how much Bismarck was slewing around).  As for 'the end was known by the end of WW1,' if that was the case, then why were SO many huge new battleships and battlecruisers planned and started?  Only the treaties, pushed by the Brits, stopped the battleships.  As for Mitchell getting his 'chance' to bomb the old German battleship, anchored, unmanned and unarmed, and never designed to deal with aircraft in any way, Mitchell had to fight to get that opportunity!  And even though he DID eventually sink it, if battleships were therefore 'instantly obsolete,' then why did everyone continue to come up with new designs and new production?  Why were the old battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor raised, modernized, and put back into service just as quickly as possible?  Same for the Italian battleships at Taranto, for that matter.... Not the sort of treatment you would expect in wartime for a heavily damaged and 'obviously obsolete' weapon system!

Again, the reason there were no battleships built after WW2 was simply because no-one else besides the US could afford them, and the US had such a preponderance in everything, that there was no chance that any other nation could possibly 'catch up' to challenge the US in a naval arms race.  As the US battleships very quickly HAD no equivalent opponents to deal with, there was not a lot of reason to either keep them in service, or create new ones, just keep the ones they had and periodically update them as needed.  The industry to produce battleships and most particularly, battleship armor all disappeared, either victim of the massive destruction of the war years (Europe and Japan), or conversion after the war to other production (as was the case with the US).  There is currently no foundry or steel rolling mill in the world that can produce large armor plates 12" or more in thickness (hasn't been for more than 40 years), and the cost of reproducing such an industry is so cost-prohibitive, that it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever build a battleship from scratch again.  But again, that does not mean the battleship is, or was obsolete; it means it has been SO successful, that at least in the case of the US Navy, it has defeated ALL challengers, and can therefore retire gracefully, as no further challengers have arisen, or are likely to.  Not torpedoes, not kamikazis, not bombers, not missiles, not submarines, not carriers, and not nukes.  Funny how often those old battleships keep coming out of mothballs periodically for new duty; I don't recall any old submarines, or old carriers, or old cruisers, or old anything else coming back into service after decades, can you?

No matter what the reasoniong, the fact remains that Bismark was sunk by surface ships after being damaged by a torpedo. Could Ark Royal's air group have delivered enough ordinance on target to sink Bismark by themselves is debateable. Until Leyte Gulf, no battleship at sea was sunk by carrier airpower alone. And prior to that, the only battleships sunk at sea solely by airpower were by land based aircraft (Prince of Wales/Repulse). IIRC, the Navy was very much against the Mitchell bombing tests, arguing that the tests were not conducted under artificial conditions that would not be realistic in wartime (i.e. ship stationary and not shooting back at the attackiong aircraft). While some in the Navy may have seen that the aircraft would be the weapon of the future, even the basic aircraft carrier was still in the future for the USN.

searat12 wrote:

Why were the old battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor raised, modernized, and put back into service just as quickly as possible?

Most historians agree that it was a National Pride issue that they were salvaged at all...In the event, they were quickly relegated to second-line duty and participated in some of the shore bomardment that seems to have taken up so much of the batteships' time in WW2, to very mixed results...

Manny wrote . . .many battleships were sunk at sea with less than that and the Franklin suffered a lot more damage and survived (I paraphrase).  Remember, Franklin was hit by one kamikaze and was put out of the war for good (with over 800 dead).  No battleship was put out of the war after suffering only one kamikaze hit  . . . I can't even think of one that was forced out of action.

Let's see . . . Yamato and Musashi each took almost 20 torpedo hits and 11 bomb hits before going down.  Ise and Hyuga were overwhelmed by hundreds of aircraft and took many bomb hits and torpedo hits while in port.  Kirishima was virtually destroyed by Washington before being sunk.  Hiei was heavily damaged by surface forces, losing all fire control and steering capabilities; she was then sunk by aircraft. Kongo was sunk by submarines, Yamashiro and Fuso were sunk solely by surface forces, and Haruna was sunk in port by overwhelming numbers of aircraft.  Given that Japanese AA fire control and the associated guns were very bad, it is not surprising that most were lost to aircraft in some way.  (5 sunk by AC, 4 sunk by surface forces, 1 by submarine)

But, no British or American battleship was lost to airpower after PoW and Repulse. Oh yeah, Repulse had no real AA capabilities and PoW had few close-in weapons; they were sunk by land-based aircraft.  Those battleships that were hit tended to shake off the resulting minor damage and fight on.

One Italian battleship was sunk at sea by German land-based bombers.

So, where were the many battleships sunk by airpower?  Mostly in port.  When at sea, aircraft affected battleships to some extent, but not in the dramatic way claimed by many.

As for most historians agreeing that repairing the battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor being a national pride issue, I have read none who made that claim.  May we have sources to support it?

Bill Morrison

 

...Sure, I'll dig it out...Your last post, however, argues more against your point-of-view than it does against other's in here, IMO...you basically conceed that air-power was the primary adversary of BB's---a point I tried to make a long time ago...we agree...thus, naval aviation and the CA took the place of the BB as the main offensive spearhead...and who cares how many toros and bombs it took to sink the Yamato--point is that she was sunk because the Japanese lost control of the air and had a field day (although how many hits she took is still disputed)...again, we are back to air-power...In addition, every hstory book I have read cites the Japanese control of the air as the reason POW and Repulse were sunk, the Japanese land bombers destroyed them at their leisure...

manny, the aircraft carrier was the main offensive weapon of us naval activties in the pacific especially guadacanal. battleships, both types of cruisers & destroyers were mostly used for aa support for the aircraft carriers & used to pound the beaches for invasion with the exception for the battle for the philippines. there the ships sunk at pearl harbour crossed the "t" of a japanese force & almost wiped it out except i think 1 destroyer.