Author Topic: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!  (Read 249935 times)

qc mech3

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1020 on: 11 December 2017, 09:35:31 »
Always wondered if we could use a couple of these babies to ease the traffic getting in/out of Montreal.  #P

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1021 on: 15 December 2017, 15:53:44 »
https://www.facebook.com/rvpetrel/posts/1547178658650943

I know, it's a Facebook post, but it's worth it. RV Petrel has discovered the wreck of Japanese 'super-destroyer' Shimakaze (oh she of the 40-knot speed and 15 torpedo tubes) at the bottom of the Pacific. Several photos from the wreck site are included, including some of those torpedo mounts, five-inch guns, a screw, etc.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1022 on: 15 December 2017, 16:37:04 »
That's a pretty and mad ship.  I am glad she has been found.
Always loved the Shimakaza, the IJN had the best naming conventions.

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1023 on: 15 December 2017, 16:53:33 »
Shimakaze (oh she of the 40-knot speed and 15 torpedo tubes)

Wait, what.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1025 on: 15 December 2017, 17:18:03 »
She was a bit of a beast back in the day, shame it was only a one-off.  Not that it'd have done much to change the war, in all honesty, but as far as night attacks go, yikes.  Especially when she's half the size of Kitakami and has a much smaller radar profile...
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1026 on: 15 December 2017, 17:24:42 »
The URL is missing the close parenthesis...

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1027 on: 15 December 2017, 17:29:03 »
For some reason it's not accepting the closing parenthesis.

Kidd

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1028 on: 15 December 2017, 17:44:19 »
Picture, thousand words, and all that.

That's not a ship, that's a torpedo battery with engines attached.







and from the FB post:








« Last Edit: 15 December 2017, 17:49:40 by Kidd »

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1029 on: 15 December 2017, 18:28:15 »
Try it this way...

Code: [Select]
It looks like this:
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Shimakaze_(1942)]Try it this way...[/url]

I am Belch II

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1030 on: 15 December 2017, 18:41:11 »
Picture, thousand words, and all that.

That's not a ship, that's a torpedo battery with engines attached.







and from the FB post:









The Long Lance Torpedo was such a awesome weapon that was ages ahead of any other torpedo at the time. I would put it on as many ships as I could also.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1031 on: 15 December 2017, 20:31:36 »
The Long Lance Torpedo was such a awesome weapon that was ages ahead of any other torpedo at the time. I would put it on as many ships as I could also.
Meh. The only thing that was of actual value was the higher speed giving ships less time to react which was a factor in the Naval Battles of Guadalcanal. Along with small wakes which were near impossible to spot at night.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1032 on: 16 December 2017, 02:54:12 »
The Type 93 could punch a thousand-pound-plus warhead in a 48 knot torpedo twenty thousand yards, with a max 500m spread at that distance.  If you put it on slow, the same warhead travels at 36 knots out to 40,000m.  Granted, you get a wider potential wander at that range, but there's something to consider.  A hundred feet off the ground, that 20,000 meter range is over the visible horizon.  You're busting torps at targets and they can't even see your ship launching, let alone the torps themselves.

What makes the Long Lance truly brutal?  The USN Mark 15 torpedo had a fair explosive charge of 825 pounds, and a world-class range of 5,500m at 45 knots before the torpedo quits.  If you slowed it down to 26 knots, you got it a touch past 13,000.  So you're shooting back with 80% payload at 25% the range...

Granted, the LL was a delicate beast and was known for its technical failures.  It's also notable that long range torpedo bombardments were...probably at the level of a drunken caveman throwing rocks at a duck, based on engagement data.  But by god the American torpedoes were jokes for most of the war, compared to the Long Lance.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1033 on: 16 December 2017, 03:03:52 »
Granted, the LL was a delicate beast and was known for its technical failures.

You mean that it was known for exploding at the slightest provocation, which was pretty much guaranteed to destroy the ship carrying it.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1034 on: 16 December 2017, 08:47:26 »
 The Torpedo Boat TB-27, USS Blakely.  She was precursor to the modern Fast Attack Craft that seen in use to day.

The Torpedo Boats were huge threat to large ships, thus the development of the Torpedo Boat Destroyer which evolved into the modern Destroyer.  She was armed with a three 1-pounder cannons and three 18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes which were properly loaded with Whitehead Torpedoes which had 800 to 1,800 yards or 3,700 meters.

She was one-off of sorts she was laid down in 1899 and commissioned in 1904. I found that a lot of the Torpedo boats of the time were similar in design, but they were made one at time using shared design characteristics but not serial production vessels we see today.



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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1035 on: 16 December 2017, 09:19:55 »
The Type 93 could punch a thousand-pound-plus warhead in a 48 knot torpedo twenty thousand yards, with a max 500m spread at that distance.  If you put it on slow, the same warhead travels at 36 knots out to 40,000m.  Granted, you get a wider potential wander at that range, but there's something to consider.  A hundred feet off the ground, that 20,000 meter range is over the visible horizon.  You're busting torps at targets and they can't even see your ship launching, let alone the torps themselves.

What makes the Long Lance truly brutal?  The USN Mark 15 torpedo had a fair explosive charge of 825 pounds, and a world-class range of 5,500m at 45 knots before the torpedo quits.  If you slowed it down to 26 knots, you got it a touch past 13,000.  So you're shooting back with 80% payload at 25% the range...

Granted, the LL was a delicate beast and was known for its technical failures.  It's also notable that long range torpedo bombardments were...probably at the level of a drunken caveman throwing rocks at a duck, based on engagement data.  But by god the American torpedoes were jokes for most of the war, compared to the Long Lance.
The weight of the warhead is deceptive because USN used a more refined explosive compound while the IJN still used TNT.
"Torpex is a secondary explosive, 50% more powerful than TNT by mass." : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Blast_Explosive This is the USN version that they put in their Mark 15 torpedoes.
« Last Edit: 16 December 2017, 09:26:28 by HobbesHurlbut »
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1036 on: 17 December 2017, 22:38:14 »
It's worth remembering that while the liquid oxygen used by Long Lance allowed it to do what it did, it was a double-edged sword. To put it in Battletech terms, it's the XL motor of WW2 warship design- it allows you to do things that conventional ideas won't allow, but man, if you start taking hits life starts to suck. This was compounded by Japanese ships carrying reloads for their tubes (something most nations didn't do).



Our poster child for the dangers of liquid oxygen. Heavy cruiser Chokai was lost when her torpedos started cooking off in their tubes during the Battle of Samar, courtesy of a hit credited to the 5-inch gun on the fantail of USS White Plains (which would make this the only time an aircraft carrier sank an enemy warship via direct fire as well).
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1037 on: 17 December 2017, 22:51:32 »
So they should have fired off a salvo of Long Lance at long range and then declared that they were "dumping ammo" before closing the distance with Taffy 3?  ;)
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1038 on: 17 December 2017, 23:33:20 »
So they should have fired off a salvo of Long Lance at long range and then declared that they were "dumping ammo" before closing the distance with Taffy 3?  ;)

Well... I mean, kinda actually.

Something to consider is that during the operation, the smoke screen and aggressiveness of the American escort ships convinced the Japanese that they were up against heavy ships- some of the reports that survived on Japanese ship logs report 'confirmed' Essex-class carriers, heavy cruisers, one report even IDs a Pennsylvania-class battleship! In a case like that, throwing eight Long Lances (she had two four-packs on each beam) isn't the worst way to start things off- you can't see into the smoke screen very well, but that means they can't see OUT all that great either. No big deal for the radar-guided guns of the American 'cruisers', but their lookouts would still struggle to spot Long Lance wakes through all that crud. So just throwing them and seeing what happens isn't the worst move- at best, lucky hits, and if not at least throw the American formation into a chaotic mess of evasive maneuvering (not unlike the chaos the Japanese formation became, actually!). And of course, with the reload magazine, Chokai could be ready to fire again soon- it might not be REAL soon, but another salvo can be loaded, and if all else fails there's the tubes on the other side of the ship too.

The problem is, again, the double-edged sword side of things- it seems the reloads are what actually caused the fatal damage to begin with (CASE was not a standard feature on Japanese heavy cruisers), following the hit on the tubes the fires burned hot enough to start touching off AA/secondary gun magazines and the reload locker. Launching the first fish salvo and reloading wouldn't have helped much- the tubes were mounted port-and-starboard in two four-packs on each side, but the reloads were kept amidships. Emptying the tubes would just have meant the shell from White Plains still would have found a torpedo tube set (during reloading, one imagines), touching off the same fires and causing the same secondary explosions in the reload locker- which isn't AS full, but still has all the reloads for the far side of the ship sitting there waiting.

Hard to predict what REALLY would happen, of course- and it's even hard to really get a look at what DID happen, with Chokai being lost without any survivors (the few that lived died when the destroyer that rescued them was lost later in the battle). But yeah, firing those torpedoes at the impressive range Long Lance gives and just hoping for some luck wouldn't have been the worst idea for the Japanese, given the opponent they thought they were up against. It likely wouldn't prevent the loss of Chokai or the other ships they lost in that engagement, but it might have ensured a bit more effect on the Taffy fleet than they actually caused. With Long Lance being able to slice a heavy cruiser apart with one hit (such as USS Northampton, or USS Minneapolis), the idea of one hitting a CVE is disturbing.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1039 on: 17 December 2017, 23:39:00 »
The thing they really remind me of is the Hollander II: it's got a hell of a punch for something its size, but the second something goes wrong there's a really, really high risk of catastrophic existence failure.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1040 on: 18 December 2017, 06:17:16 »
Well... I mean, kinda actually.

Something to consider is that during the operation, the smoke screen and aggressiveness of the American escort ships convinced the Japanese that they were up against heavy ships- some of the reports that survived on Japanese ship logs report 'confirmed' Essex-class carriers, heavy cruisers, one report even IDs a Pennsylvania-class battleship! In a case like that, throwing eight Long Lances (she had two four-packs on each beam) isn't the worst way to start things off- you can't see into the smoke screen very well, but that means they can't see OUT all that great either. No big deal for the radar-guided guns of the American 'cruisers', but their lookouts would still struggle to spot Long Lance wakes through all that crud. So just throwing them and seeing what happens isn't the worst move- at best, lucky hits, and if not at least throw the American formation into a chaotic mess of evasive maneuvering (not unlike the chaos the Japanese formation became, actually!). And of course, with the reload magazine, Chokai could be ready to fire again soon- it might not be REAL soon, but another salvo can be loaded, and if all else fails there's the tubes on the other side of the ship too.

The problem is, again, the double-edged sword side of things- it seems the reloads are what actually caused the fatal damage to begin with (CASE was not a standard feature on Japanese heavy cruisers), following the hit on the tubes the fires burned hot enough to start touching off AA/secondary gun magazines and the reload locker. Launching the first fish salvo and reloading wouldn't have helped much- the tubes were mounted port-and-starboard in two four-packs on each side, but the reloads were kept amidships. Emptying the tubes would just have meant the shell from White Plains still would have found a torpedo tube set (during reloading, one imagines), touching off the same fires and causing the same secondary explosions in the reload locker- which isn't AS full, but still has all the reloads for the far side of the ship sitting there waiting.

Hard to predict what REALLY would happen, of course- and it's even hard to really get a look at what DID happen, with Chokai being lost without any survivors (the few that lived died when the destroyer that rescued them was lost later in the battle). But yeah, firing those torpedoes at the impressive range Long Lance gives and just hoping for some luck wouldn't have been the worst idea for the Japanese, given the opponent they thought they were up against. It likely wouldn't prevent the loss of Chokai or the other ships they lost in that engagement, but it might have ensured a bit more effect on the Taffy fleet than they actually caused. With Long Lance being able to slice a heavy cruiser apart with one hit (such as USS Northampton, or USS Minneapolis), the idea of one hitting a CVE is disturbing.

I take it you've never had to reload a torpedo...  :-\

You're not going to do it in a battle, a torpedo magazine is only useful for reconstitution afterwards.

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1041 on: 18 December 2017, 06:51:47 »
Doctrine on IJN reloading for cruiser/destroyer was to do it once they broke off from combat and then rejoin after reloading is done.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1042 on: 18 December 2017, 07:53:00 »
...catastrophic existence failure...

I need to remember that one. :))
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1043 on: 18 December 2017, 07:55:09 »
I take it you've never had to reload a torpedo...  :-\

You're not going to do it in a battle, a torpedo magazine is only useful for reconstitution afterwards.
I assume you mean aboard a surface ship... Submarines absolutely need to reload their tubes during combat.

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1044 on: 18 December 2017, 09:13:02 »
I take it you've never had to reload a torpedo...  :-\

You're not going to do it in a battle, a torpedo magazine is only useful for reconstitution afterwards.

Doctrine on IJN reloading for cruiser/destroyer was to do it once they broke off from combat and then rejoin after reloading is done.

Bingo. Not 'go home and reload at the dock' the way everyone else would, but also not while under direct fire. (Though if Kurita and his officers had known what was really going on they might have at least thought about it- who's afraid of destroyers and CVEs? ;) )

It's a complex and dangerous thing to do- doubly so when working with liquid oxygen! But it also was doable, if not in the heat of a firefight certainly by heading to its periphery before diving back in. (Still not a great idea, really, which is why the British, Americans, Germans, etc. declined the option)
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1045 on: 18 December 2017, 10:20:31 »
Hindsight is 20/20. Chokai might as well have tried reloading, as things certainly couldn't have gone worse for her.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1046 on: 18 December 2017, 13:01:30 »
I assume you mean aboard a surface ship... Submarines absolutely need to reload their tubes during combat.


ish


while I will naturally defer to those with actual experience, a lot of the RN's WW2 era submarines had external torpedo tubes that could only be reloaded in port and a single reload for the others and an awful lot of the sinkings earlier in the war were with guns


I generally think of WW2 submarines as being torpedo boats with the capability to submerge for a little bit as opposed to the post-war boats that can stay underwater for a whole patrol (including non-nuke boats thanks to snorkels)
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1047 on: 18 December 2017, 13:20:19 »
Hindsight is 20/20. Chokai might as well have tried reloading, as things certainly couldn't have gone worse for her.

Yeah, when you lose a gun duel to a CVE, things aren't going well, period.  ;D

Nah, it's a fascinating action from the Japanese perspective. Kurita really thought he was engaging either Halsey's main fleet (due to the reports of Essex-class ships) or one of the major landing force support groups like Oldendorf's old-battleship squadron (which had engaged Nishimura's southern force already). The fact that the escorts were so bold convinced him that they had support from heavier ships to allow them to act this way. Throw in the mass air attacks from all three Taffy forces (despite lack of torpedoes or armor-piercing ordnance), Kurita being ill and having been fished out of the water after the loss of his flagship a few days prior, loss of Musashi... it all added up to a surprisingly cautious action by Japan's premier surface combat commander.

As I've said before, I strongly suggest Evan Thomas' masterpiece 'Sea of Thunder', which looks at the mindset and actions of four commanders during the battle (Kurita and  Ugaki on one side, Halsey and Cmdr. Ernest Evans- skipper of the destroyer Johnston on the other. It's a very unique perspective on the battle, and as far as I'm concerned is a must-read on the topic, particularly the portions about Evans. The idea of running a destroyer in the face of something like the Kongo is equal parts insane and brave, and it gives a great idea of what it was like on board during those attacks.
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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1048 on: 18 December 2017, 15:15:08 »
I'm... impressed by the bulkiness contrasted quite nicely in this:



Front - F331 Alvares Cabral (Meko 200 FFG)
Center - D640 Georges Leygues (Georges Leygues DDG)
Back - L9014 Tonnerre (Mistral class LHD)

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Re: Naval Pictures Forecastle: Laying siege to the poop deck!
« Reply #1049 on: 18 December 2017, 15:19:11 »
I'm... impressed by the bulkiness contrasted quite nicely in this:



Front - F331 Alvares Cabral (Meko 200 FFG)
Center - D640 Georges Leygues (Georges Leygues DDG)
Back - L9014 Tonnerre (Mistral class LHD)



I like big hulls and I cannot lie...
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