Ideal World War Two RN

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Subject: Ideal World War Two RN
earlm 5/4/2008 3:13:32 PM

With hindsight what should the RN have done to be the best force possible for WW2? 1. Obtain better AA fire control from US. 2. Obtain US carrier based aircraft through lend lease. 3. Introduce a dual purpose 4.5-5" gun. (US 5"/38?) 4. Scrap the R class. 5. Save money on KGV and arm them with R class turrets with higher elevation. 6. Modernize Hood 7. Modernize Repulse

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Yimmy 8/19/2008 5:20:20 PM

Our of curiosity, did the armoured flight deck win out in the end?

I assume the deck on US supercarriers aren't wooden still?

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juan grande 8/19/2008 5:31:05 PM

Our of curiosity, did the armoured flight deck win out in the end?

I assume the deck on US supercarriers aren't wooden still?

Armored flight decks did win out but with open hangar bays. The enclosed hangars on RN carriers held explosions between the hangar deck and flight deck. US carriers will vent the explosions through the open "roller curtains". Notice too who the only navy is in the world with any worthwile carriers.

Too bad Parliment has gutted the RN. The Type 42 destroyers are toothless, the Type 23 frigates are being sold off. The "through-deck cruisers" are next to useless. So much for the vaunted Royal Navy.

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larryjcr hangers and flight decks 8/19/2008 10:53:12 PM

The armored flight deck did finally win, at least to the point that the increasing weight and landing speeds of a/c required heavy metal decks anyway.

The Japanese used wooden decks up to the TAIHO, but with enclosed (but not armored) hangers. They saw the problem of contained explosions in the hanger coming in the SHOKAKU class and built in blow-out panels, but they never worked as advertised.

Also with the open hangers, burning or endangered a/c or ordinance could be disposed of quickly by just shoving them over the side, and escorting DDs and cruisers could aid fire fighting by coming in close and shooting water directly into the hangers from outside. The wooden decks were easily damaged, but also easily repaired. All in all, I think that the USN was right in the way that they went for the time. The dangers and advantages of the wooden flight deck and open hangers cancelled each other out for the most part, but those features allowed for much larger air groups, and in the end, no passive defense could match a cloud of F6Fs or F4Us. None of that was really forseen. It was just that the USN had people with seniority helping to plan the ships that thought in terms of striking power and were willing to accept some down-sides for it.

At Midway, the Japanese were caught in the worst possible position: enclosed hangers full of fueled a/c and ready bombs and torpedos with low-penetration demolition bombs coming down thru the wooden flight decks, and knocking out the fire fighting systems even as they started huge fires and mowed down the a/c maintainance people wholesale. Of the 13 direct bomb hits on the four IJN CVs, nine exploded in the upper hanger , one in the lower hanger and one in an elevator well between the hanger decks. One more went off in crew quarters adjacent to the upper hanger and started fires that spread quickly into the hanger. Only one bomb, the one that destroyed the forward end of KAGA's island, DIDN'T cause a fire in the hangers. Only the AKAGI had any chance of survival, and she took her one hit in the worst possible place: the elevator well, starting fires on BOTH hanger decks.

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juan grande 8/19/2008 11:10:41 PM

The Japanese had the major misfortune of having even worse AAA than the British AND horrible damage control. US damage control was, by far, light years ahead of all involved nations. Japan also had a problem (at least at the beginning of the war) of individual carriers as opposed to sister ships in the same class. The US had the Lexingtons and Yorktowns with Wasp being close enough to count.

The US also had the advantage of having unlimited timber supplies for flight decks. RN had no such luxury. Even Colonial America shipped lumber to England for naval construction. I think that point is a major factor in the British choosing metal decks. The Japanese had good timber supplies but, by mid war, didn't have the manpower to cull the tree harvest. Plus they needed every little bit of edge they could pull out against the Americans. Just imagine if the IJN didn't waste its resources on Yamato, Mushashi, and Shinano!

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StevoJH lots of replies....... 8/19/2008 11:38:55 PM

@ juan grande (18/8 11.46AM)
1)
You have proof that the British AA directors were bad? Just because the ships needed different electrical systems means nothing, the RN used DC and their ships may have used different voltages to the american ships.
2)
Altering the landing gear of the spitfire to swing outwards rather then inwards to give them a wider spacing between the wheels, and with a wing modification to give it folding wings (the spit had a few different wing designs) would make it a decent carrier fighter, the problem with the seafire and sea hurricane is that they were modified in a hurry due to the need to get fighters on ships for convoy defense in the atlantic.
3)
A lot of the Dido's got a 4.5" gun instead of the 5.25", they were much more capable ships.
4)
Sure, a convoy with battleships escort was invulnerable to german surface raiders because if they were damaged fighting the battleship they were a long way from home.
5)
KGV were originally planned to have 9 15" guns, but they could not be fitted on the displacement limit from the London Treaty while still having the requisite armour protection, hence the 14" guns.
6)
We don't know that since it never happened, if hood had been rebuilt, personally i would have been as happy going against bismark in her as if i were in any of the other ships, Hood was as heavily armoured as the RN battleships with the exception of the, KGV's and possibly HMS Queen Elizabeth which was modernized between 1939 and 1941.
7)
The Renown, the other ship of the same class as Repulse was heavily modernised in the late 1930's with the replacement of the original secondary armourment with 20 4.5" DP guns in 10 twin turrets, if the war against germany hadn't started, Repulse probably would have had the same rebuild.

@ larryjcr (19/8 3.49AM)
He also stated an example of combat training between the Hurricanes and the American aircraft midway through the war, where it was found to have greater maneuverablility. Hurricanes built after october 1940 had 12x.303, and from mid 1941, they were built with 4x20mm cannon, 400 of these were converted to sea hurricanes.

@ larryjcr (19/8 4:52 AM)
RE: Cruisers
The leanders and Arethusa Class were easily matches for the IJN light cruisers, even the Dido's with their 5.25" guns (which had light guns due to being AA cruisers) could probably come out on top. There were 13 county class cruisers, 2 Hawkins class with 7.9" guns, 2 Exeter class cruisers and 10 Town class cruisers in service in december 1941, these ships had radar fitted unlike the Japanese, and so could dictate the time and location of the engagement more then the japanese ships could. Remember that the japanese faced the same displacement rules as all the treaty cruisers, so any increase in armourment had to come at the price of a reduction of something else (armour). The older ships may have been outmatched by the newer japanese ships, however there were 27 of them versus the 18 japanese ships and the other British light cruisers would have helped as well. This isnt even mentioning the fact that they would probably be accompanied during a fleet engagement by Repulse and Renown as they were more cruiser then battleship.
About the range of the Dido's, at 16 knots they had a similar range to the much larger QE class battleships, so i dont think range wouldbe a problem

@ prometheus
I believe the plan of the was to place a powerful fleet in singapore and use it to destroy any invasion attempts of malaya or australia. They did not plan for a fleet action, at least initially

@ doggtag
Earlier construction of the graving dock at garden island in sydney, when completed in 1945 it was the largest drydock in the southern hemisphere and was big enough that it could fit the largest ships aroung.

@jaun grande
the full extent of the structural damage taken by the illustrious class was not known until postwar surveys of the ships to discover their potential for upgrades with angled decks. How are the RN cruisers barely adequate? As for the repair time of the british yards, the problem was manpower, as the ships had to repair merchant ships damaged during the crossing of the atlantic in the convoys as well. For example, during WW2, harland and wolff in belfast built 6 Aircraft carriers, 2 cruisers, 131 smaller naval ships and repaired over 20,000 ships.By the end of the war there were 35,000 people working in the shipyard. In a pacific war senario there would not be the need to build hundreds of convoy escorts and replace so many merchant ships (the UK built ~700-800 convoy escort ships during WW2). The lion class may have been finished, the Implaceables would be in service by mid/late 1942 rather then 1944, with the eagle class as well as the bulk of the majestic, collos

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prometheus 8/20/2008 6:22:01 AM

The last post points out the problem with the RN, it's not it's THINGS, it's its THOUGHTS. The RN got a LOT of things wrong from 1919-39, the threat of the submarine, OR it over-estimated ASDIC, it had a flawed view of aircraft and their carrier vessels, it had a bad view on AA Fire Control, or over estimated it. The Royal Navy could fight a surface fight, and that was about it...it was far less capable of dealing with the sub-surface fight and the aerial fight. And it failed, to the extent that it did fail, because the RN didn't think that it was doing a bad job or didn't want to examine the true state of the technical environment. The RN had problems conceptualizing the "sea-change" that naval forces had undergone in the 30 years previous to the Second World War.

With respect to the sub fight, there is an element of truth in the fact that the RN was very compacent about ASDIC, and it's ability to operate in anthing but calm seas. However, as I mentioned earlier, it' pre war planning did not include having U-boats operating out of the French coast, logically, the RN built as many escort ships as it thought it would need with a limited German U-boat presence operating fromt he baltic.

And besides, apart from fighting on the surface, it did, under Horton, end up fighting and winning the battle of the atlantic, whcih implies that even if they got a lot of things wrong, they were able to adapt to the new situation under war time conditions and do so faster than it's opponent. And for all it's inability to really wage a proper air fight, under Cunningham it did in fact provide the first air strike against defended ships in port at Taranto, so obviously their was not such a lack of imagination there.... and at the end it did manage to put on the largest and most complex amphibious landing in history.

So in the end, despite bad mistakes pre war, and some lack of imagination, the RN leaders during the war proved to at least be as imaginaitve as the next nation's admiral, and to say it failed is pretty damn harsh.

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larryjcr back to StevoJH 8/20/2008 1:20:34 PM

Will respond in a series rather than one big post.

1. One of the old 'C' class cruisers was rebuilt in the US as a CLAA with 5"/38 guns and the associated FCS. The RN was very positively impressed compared to their own DP gun systems and wanted more, however US production of the guns and FCS units was not high enough to quite meet our own needs and so could transfer very few. Note that about half of the US built DEs were armed with 3" guns rather than 5" due to lack of supply.

2. The landing gear of the Spitfire was mounted on the fuselage structure instead of the wing to reduce airframe weight. It allowed for much lighter wing structure since it was not subjected to the impact stresses from the gear on landings. Same thing was done in the Bf109 for the same reason. Inward folding gear would have to be mounted to the wing structure, and, especially for a carrier a/c with very high landing forces, would mean a total redesign of both the wing and the connecting fuselage structures. The result (time and resources required for the project aside) would be a much heavier a/c, and certainly no longer a Spitfire at all. Even then, unless the cockpit were raised and the cowling seriously reshaped, it would still have all the drawbacks in the actual approach. This is why the FAA preferred Corsairs, in spite of its own drawbacks in forward visibility, for actual combat use. Trying to make the needed changes in an a/c as small as the Spitfire would have driven weight way up, and defeated the purpose to trying to do it in the first place.

3. Several of the DIDOs were completed with 4.5" guns vice the design 5.25", but this was due to a shortage of the 5.25" guns, not to any belief that the 4.5" was better. Note that, with the exception of one ship that was lost while still carrying the 4.5s, ALL the DIDOs completed with 4.5" guns were eventually re-armed with 5.25s.

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larryjcr to StevoJH 8/20/2008 1:54:14 PM

ref: 19/8 3.49 AM

First question I'd have is what is meant by "more maneuverable"?

Too often, that's taken to mean just, 'who can turn most tightly' which than translates to: who has the lowest stall speed. Both the Wildcat and the Hurricain were pretty good at this, having both low stall speeds. The Hurricain had a lower stall speed, but the Wildcat had much better stall characteristics, and so could be flown closer to stall with less fear the a/c would try and kill you if you made a mistake. In Brown's words: "the plane could be maneuvered to its limits with impunity." It's one thing to match turns in training, with plenty of altitude for recovery. It's another thing in combat, where a Wildcat would have a much better chance of recovering before the enemy had a chance to kill you, than a Hurricain did.

Beyond turn rate, maneuverability also should include a/c agility: the ability to convert from one move to another, such as, to reverse from a left vertical turn to a right vertical turn. This is a factor of roll rate and pitch rate of the a/c.

Brown's comparisons were that the Wildcat had better overall maneuverability than the Sea Hurricain (which a lost at least a little from the RAF version due to increased weight), but that the Grumman needed a good deal of physical work from the pilot to get its best, due to heavier controls. It also had much better combat visibiltiy than the Hurricain.

As to the Hurricain II versions of the Sea H., the cannon armed version had one SEVERE draw back. The 4x20mm guns had only 90 round per gun. Thats a whopping SEVEN SECONDS of fire. I think that I'd rather have the 4x.50s for 33 seconds. Carrier fighters often are defending their own ship -- the place they have to land -- and that doesn't leave the option of pulling out of a fight after one or two squirts.

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Tancred geopolitics & war 8/20/2008 4:48:38 PM

Wicked Chinch you cant ignore the geopolitics, or the strategy.

The reason the japanese went to war in the pacific in 41/2 is the US oil embargo. No embargo no reason to go to war except a straight land grab. Why when the dominant force in Japanese politics is the army and the army has its hands full in China?

Accepting that for some reason the Japanese have or percieve they have no reason to fear the USN but they feel the need to go to war its going to be to sieze the southern resource area.

If european history is as history they win full stop. They probably don't even attack British possessions as there is no need to they can take what they need off the dutch and rearm for the next round (after all with history at this time it looks like Germany wins the world anyway).

If there is no european war then we can speculate on some of the changes in OOB, but it is reasonable to expect both UK and French and possibly the Dutch to be reinforced but my previous points about bases stand. I would also agree that the first UK reaction wouldnot be to send the whole of the home and/or mediterrenean fleets to Singapore

If there is an attack on the southern resource area it will be either an initial attack on Indo China to grab the bases (if they existed in the historical late 41 form - no idea) in which case the IJN fuel problem gets more acute while they consolidate there or straight to the DEI.

Whatever said about racism noone in the RN would have described the IJN as anything but a capable and dangerous opponent.

Unless the US is trading with japan the only places they can get oil are from the DEI and Borneo which means a submarine war while defending the sub base - Singapore.

So the Japanese i think have to count on attacking and taking Singapore in the first wave. Given what they did at Pearl that means they at least think about a sudden strike. The only way that works - given the target is the RN is if they can approach unobserved. I dont think that is possible.

Why would the RN seek a decisive battle with an obviously superior force? When it does not need to. What it needs to do is to hold Singapore. Far more sensible way to do that is to harry the IJN battlefleet with A/C and subs and seek out the landing force or follow on convoys (of for that matter just bombard the coastal routes and give fire support to the army) until reinforcements become available.

At best the IJN does take Singapore and it becomes a production battle in which the UK and France win - probably faster than the US because neither is likely to insist on unconditional surrender but rather status quo ante. If Japan does not take Singapore then that becomes Henderson Field with concrete runways and a full infrastructure with a/c interdicting japanese oil supply out of the DEI.

Three other comments.

As at 7 december the IJN had embarked 175 zeros - about 300 total deployed. Any discussion about japanese aircraft superiority is a discussion of the superiority of the Zero vs whatever. That matters a lot in the Pacific where the only a/c are carrier borne or on a few and scattered (and badly supplied) bases. It matters far less with a lot of reasonably well functioning land bases as there would have been in the east indies or along the Burma , Malay coast. You are not going to bring the UK to its knees on the basis of having 300- ?500 pilots better than anyone else for about 6 months.

Second the Japanese cruiser superiority - the vast one anyway - comes from actions in the slot which are in very confined waters with very poor radar characteristics - all those islands to hide in front of. Take that away - i.e. put it in the comparatively open waters - just about anywhere else and part of the conditions fade away. Another - arguably bigger reason is the US had broken up squadron and divisonal integrity on their cruisers and DD as a result of having to cobble together task forces after Pearl and bad decisions. The RN studiously avoided doing that.

Third noone knows what a WW2 naval war where both fleets had both effective carrier aviation and a functioning battle line would look like because it never happened. Closest is the latter part of the solomons but that was fought around a fixed objective with both sides trying to resupply a marginal airfield.

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larryjcr to StevoJH 8/20/2008 5:44:31 PM

ref: 19/8 - 4.52 AM

My range reference was to the 'C' and 'D' classes, not DIDOs. The Improved Birminghams (HAWKINS Class) I also have already spoken of.

As I posted earlier, the IJN used its old CLs purely as destroyer leaders, rather than building slightly enlarged DDs as the RN did. A LEANDER wouldn't be fighting a KUMA or a NAGARA, but rather, the dozen or so Special Type DDs it was leading.

The USN expected radar to solve the problem of night surface actions. They found out, at great cost, that it didn't! As I've posted above, the FIRST time anybody managed to actually use radar as you, so casually assume the RN would use it, was in August of 1943 (!!!) at the Battle of Vella Gulf! The radar available at the end of 1941 used baseline spike displays, requiring that each single contact be individually plotted to provide any tactical picture. Not until the sweep-scan type radar -- what is usually thought of as 'traditional radar display' with a circular scope being swept by a contact line -- came into use in mid-1942 did the radar itself offer a tactical picture. Until that point (and even then, until the ship and squadron commanders learned how to use it) the Japanese night optics still held the advantage. In the Solomons, the USN and the RAN both learned this the VERY hard way.

The USN and RN both considered the gun to be the primary weapon of any surface action, with the torpedo used mainly to finish off ships crippled by gunfire. The battleship was king, and the cruiser a useful, junior league secondary. Destroyers were screening ships for the battle line. The Japanese turned that inside out. The built torpedoes that outranged cruiser guns and with warheads powerful enough to cripple a cruiser with a single hit. They planned night actions with DDs stationed to lay down patterns of those torpedoes before gunfire was opened. It was a superior doctrine, and it worked.

In the USN, there was very little attention to night surface actions, and I much expect it was the same, or worse in the RN. The admirals all knew that radar was coming, and they expected it to turn night into day, eliminating the need for special tactics. They found out that they were wrong! Any night surface action in late '41 or early '42 would have faced an IJN with superior weapons and tactics -- and, once again, these would have been advantages that the RN would have found totally unexpected. Indeed, it wasn't until after WW2 was over that the full superiority of the oxygen driven 24" torpedo was finally, fully accepted.

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