What about South Dakota's AA capacity?

 

About 300 pounds per minute LESS than the Iowa's...~48,600 pounds per minute...still about 2.5 times the Yamato's.

The more the numbers come out, sorry to an earlier poster who ran off crying because of us being "mean" to him with all those numbers and things, the less the Yamato makes sense.  It's 70,000 tons of high quality steel and optics that could have been better spent by Japan.

 

Again the SoDak is a better over-all platform than the Yamato...It was a better escort for the fast carriers, it was nearly as lethal as the Iowa, had the same superb fire control of the Iowa's...the Yamato, like the Bismarck, like the Tiger Tank, may capture everyone's imagination, but all three are way over-rated.

 

The US, by far, produced the more lethal battleship fleet, in WWII, more effective, more efficient, and more numerous...the US Navy, in WWII, was UNSURPASSED in it's capabilities.  Sorry ever-popular Royal Navy, but the USN was globe-spanning, and lethal, as well as numerous.

It wasn't just resources that made the USN far better than the RN.  The RN was badly hamstrung by British Policy and Naval Policy from the era 1919-39.  The RN didn't "get" Naval Aviation.  The Royal navy didn't produce Naval Aircraft.  The Royal Navy had a very poor anti-aircraft fire control system.  The Royal Navy had poor anti-aircraft artillery.  The Royal Navy did NOT emphasize US-style surface fire control.  The Royal Navy was lax in it's ASW training and policies.

 

The Royal Nay in 1919 was a world leader in a number of technologic areas.  Not so in 1939.  The Royal Navy had radar, but so did many other nations, Germany and the US...the only thing the RN contributed was the cavity magnetron.

 

The USN had underway replenishment, fast fleet carriers, was developing escort carriers, had far superior surface and AAW fire control, far superior a/c,  far superior amphibious warfare doctrine.  It wasn't just money, it was that the RN for 20 years simply did nothing of any substantive value in regards to future combat and allowed its technologic and doctrinal leads of 1919, wither away.  I can't think of a class of warships that the US didn't produce not only the MOST of, but also the BEST of...

 

Let's be honest the RN used US escorts, US escort carriers, flew US a/c, wanted to purchase more US guns and fire control systems-US inability to produce enough of them limited this purchase desire-the RN's finest light AAA was a SWISS weapon, it's finest medium AAA was a SWEDISH weapon-though to be fair the same could be said of the USN.

 

NONE of its services were up to the tasks assigned them in 1939!  And Britain raced frantically to make good it's short-comings, but never fully closed the gap...the RN was handicapped in its air policy, the RAF hadn't really thought about Douhetian Air Policy for all it's talk about "the Bomber Always Getting Thru" and the British Army had starved itself of any funds and thought in regards to Mechanized Warfare-and I attack Hart, Fuller AND the rest of the British Army, to include the so-called hide-bound Infantry and Cavalry.  The British Army handicapped ITSELF with foolish cap-badge arguments, the Infantry and the Cavalry were bad, but the Royal Tank Regiment and folks like Fuller and Hobart were just as Barmy and counter-productive!  Britain  was behind the US, Germany, and Japan in a host of areas...and I don't think you can say that Germany or Japan were economic powerhouses either, and Germany had the disadvantage of the Versailles Treaty.  The reason Britain was behind all three wasn't MOENY, it was want of THOUGHT!

 

Bottom-Line: I'm an Anglophile but Britain slept, stultified in the 20 years from the end of the First World War until the beginning of the Second...

The British were better at:

 

Hydrodynamics and as shipwrights. Their hulls rode better in the water and were class for class usually more efficient slip/horsepower than USN ship classes. 

 

Their naval aircraft, at least the few they produced, started out competitive and were just ineffective because the time they took from blueprints to service entry was twice as long as it should have been.  The Fulmar and the Firefly would have been fone in 1940 and 1942  when they were expected. By 1944 they were outclassed. 

 

Technology comparison:

 

Torpedoes 

Japan first

Italy second

Britain third 

Germany fourth

France fitth

Russia and the US tied for last place.

 

Radars

Britain first 

Germany second

US third

Russia fourth

Italy and Japan fifth

 

ASW.

Britain first

Canada second

US and Italy third

Rest of the world-clueless.

 

Naval aviation

US and Japan first 

Britain and Italy second.

Rest of the world-clueless

 

Submarine warfare;

US and Germany first

Britain and Holland second

Rest of the world-clueless 

 

Naval warfare practice overall.

Britain first

US and Japan second

Canada third

Italy fourth

Rest of the world-clueless.

 

The Battle of the North Atlantic which was predominantly a UK Canadian affair was as hard fought as the Pacific War. The tools to hand were not as glamorous nor the fighting either, but the tools (depth charges, mortar bimbs, the little escorts the radars and sonars, the British modified American aircraft) and the trained UK and Canadian crews who fought that war were better than the American Navy in that theater; FAR BETTER, for most of the war..   

 

Just because the Kriegsmarine surface navy, overall, was incompetent to the point of stupidity, doesn't mean the U-boat men were. You had to be sharp to beat them..

 

And it took until 1944 for the USN to learn the lessons that the British tried to teach them in ASW. We should have taken notes from 1939 on. It was a far fall for the Navy that produced Admiral Sims who TAUGHT the RN the very .lessons in WW I that we had to learn back from the British in WW II.

 

Herald

   

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think you are too kind to the Brit's...and the battle of the Atlantic was a tripartite act, not just UK-Canadian...

 

I'd give the edge to the USN overall, it understood how it was going to fight it's war, and carried it out, and had laid the ground-work necessary to accomplish it.

 

I don't give the Brit's that much credit...for thinking it thru and planning for it, BEFOREHAND...they simply over-estimated their capacity to deal with U-boats, thinking ASDIC was some wonder weapon that negated the U-boat threat.  The rest of the RN was Ok, at best surface combat, and aerial combat, too.

Tiger tank was not overrated, nor his cews were. There is example: In 7th January 1944., from workshop for tank-repair near Berdeèevo, 3 tigers from s.Pz.Abt.509 (509. heavy tank battallion), under command of von Diest-Korber. They run into ambush set by 30 T-34/76 (T-34 with 76 mm cannon). Lead tiger is hit by 20 76-mm projectiles from 200 m distance. Its engine shut down, targeting system was disabled, but crew managed to restart engines and get Tiger 1 km away from the village. Other two tigers covered his retreat, eventually destroying 5 T-34. Von-Diest Korber called for help. and for less than half of hour, 6 Tigers arrived. He sent 3 from one side of village, 3 from another, while he sent his two tanks by the road. Outcome of less-than-hour combat was destroyed Soviet tank brigade with commander and ~20 crewmen running from the scene. No Tiger was destroyed.

And, about Royal Navy-by the end of WWII, it was not larger by the end of war than single US Navy operational group (or that was task force) 77 on Pacific.

Kriegsmarine surface navy wasn't incompetent-it was outnumbered and outgunned 10:1 by Royal Navy alone, not to count US Navy-out of 15 battleships, 6 or 7 were on Atlantic, plus two fast battleships which later came.

Example:

 

No long range air recon for Bismark. No clandestine logistics either by sub or raider freighter for Bismark. No damage control training for what to do with a jammed rudder or a leaking fuel tank (USS North Carolina blew hers off when it jammed. Diver over the side and cutter explosive charge).  Weld a plate over the hole-even if you have to put the welder  inside the tank! (USS Salt Lake City).

 

Lindemann and Lutjens, Dumb and dumber. Should have finished off PoW and then RUN FOR BREST

 

Incompetent is being polite..

. 

Herald

 

 

 

1) I'd say that in technical terms the USN and RN is wash, Herald.  According to you, the RN had more efficient hull forms, but from what I've read the USN had more efficient power plants.  The result would be for an equal volume of engineering plant the USN got more horse power, the RN's hull was more efficient...so to-may-to...tom-MAH-to either fleet is going to get much the same speed out of their hulls, the US uses more horsepower to achieve it, the RN uses a finer hull form.

 

2) And sitting on these more efficient hulls are mediocre weapons with a mediocre fire control system, commanded by men who didn't really understand aerial warfare at sea, and were way too over-confident about their ability to deal with the U-boat.

3) Herald I'd say you're right, the Kriegsmarine was badly led...even under Doenitz.  The Luftwaffe made the RAF and the FAA look like modern professionals in comparison.  It hampered the Kriegsmarine's ability effectively, by depriving it of effective aerial reconnaissance and strike.  And the U-boats did great things, but could have done more, but they were slow to adapt to the changing tactics and techniques of the Atlantic Campaign.  I think Langsdorff didn't do such a great job with Graf Spee, but I'm not sure Lutjens failed....his mission was commerce raiding, not sinking Hood or PoW.  He carried out his orders.

 

4) Finally Leech, the Tiger IS over-rated....it was slow, had poorly sloped armour, had a miserable and unreliable fuel system, was mechanically unreliable (at times only 30% of all Tigers were actually available).  The only two things it had going for it were:

     a) The 8.8 Cm gun.  Giving it a powerful offensive punch; and

     b) The tactical situation the Tiger faced.  By 1943 the Wehrmacht was mostly on the defense.  All the Tiger had to do was sit quietly and ambush it's opponents.  There was no need for mobility, and as an ambush tank its poor armour layout really didn't affect it...Had the Tiger been in the Allied camp it would have been listed as a very poor vehicle. Slow, unreliable and not suited for the offense.  The Tiger on the offense, Kursk or the Ardennes WAS a failure.

 

What I'm saying is the only reason the Tiger was so "formidable" was the situations it was thrust into...not anything inherent in the tank.  It was designed as a "Break thru" tank, a role it filed miserably in...it was only because the Wehrmacht no longer needed to break thru that it developed any sort of good reputation at all.  OVER-RATED.

1) I'd say that in technical terms the USN and RN is wash, Herald.  According to you, the RN had more efficient hull forms, but from what I've read the USN had more efficient power plants.  The result would be for an equal volume of engineering plant the USN got more horse power, the RN's hull was more efficient...so to-may-to...tom-MAH-to either fleet is going to get much the same speed out of their hulls, the US uses more horsepower to achieve it, the RN uses a finer hull form.

2) And sitting on these more efficient hulls are mediocre weapons with a mediocre fire control system, commanded by men who didn't really understand aerial warfare at sea, and were way too over-confident about their ability to deal with the U-boat.