Nimitz carrier in WW11

[hidetheelephants]

Flooble said:

The USN liaison officer on HMS Indefatigable commented: "When a kamikaze hits a U.S. carrier it means 6 months of repair at Pearl [Harbor]. When a kamikaze hits a Limey carrier it’s just a case of "Sweepers, man your brooms."”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1346476...

The armoured deck was of questionable value and dramatically restricted hangar volume and height, a legacy which hamstrung the FAA as long as the WW2 era flattops stayed in service; as well as being larger the US fleet carriers carried getting on for twice as many aircraft, although to be fair operating in the Pacific allows you to get away with using the deck as an aircraft park. Regardless of which design philosophy was used a direct kamikaze hit would result in a long dockyard visit.

[IanH755]

Evanivitch said:

so you'd have to be close enough to lazer designate. Which is too close.

A nice 20,000ft at 10 miles should keep you safe from the Yamato's AA by quite a margin i.e. 19000yds Brimstone slant range at 20k ft and 10 miles vs 16000yrd AA gun range plus the 500kt+ speed of a modern fast jet should also keep you safe.

Personally I'd love to see a late 70's, early 80's Nimitz go back as fire power of the air wing's back then was actually greater than the modern version but much more imprecise. I'd love to see a few A-6 with a full load of 28 500lb snake-eye bombs flying over enemy ships nose to stern at 500ft and 550kts, the devastation would be unreal!

[davepoth]

jmorgan said:

They did, it was never completed. There was also the the WW I treaty that hobbled construction and resulted in pocket battleships etc. H man was no naval person. Land was where it was at and they were resource poor at the start of WWII.

Hitler had the right idea there - even if he'd built one, what would they have used it for? His strategic aims were all land based in the short and medium term. Perhaps after Russia had been taken and he wanted to turn on Japan or the USA he might have needed some, but it was a long way down the road.

[aeropilot]

hidetheelephants said:

Regardless of which design philosophy was used a direct kamikaze hit would result in a long dockyard visit.

Of the 5 x RN Carriers to suffer direct Kamikaze hits in the PTO only HMS Illustrious needed a long dockyard visit afterwards, and immediately after the hit she was able to maintain flight ops, the only restriction was a reduced speed to 19knts.

[jmorgan]

davepoth said:

jmorgan said:

They did, it was never completed. There was also the the WW I treaty that hobbled construction and resulted in pocket battleships etc. H man was no naval person. Land was where it was at and they were resource poor at the start of WWII.

Hitler had the right idea there - even if he'd built one, what would they have used it for? His strategic aims were all land based in the short and medium term. Perhaps after Russia had been taken and he wanted to turn on Japan or the USA he might have needed some, but it was a long way down the road.

Not sure he was switched on to what sea power was. Was this one a H man fancy or the German navy's? I know some German navy top brass wanted more time but o prepare and had long term plans past 1945.

[Talksteer]

Evanivitch said:

maffski said:

I suspect Talksteer was referring to the accuracy to disable the gun directors.

Except that Brimstone isn't designed to auto identify these targets,so you'd have to be close enough to lazer designate. Which is too close.

Laser guidance is going to keep it well out of effective range of any of the light AA weapons and it is far too fast and unoblingly not flying in a dead straight line to be hit by the large calibre guns.

Personally I'd aim at the guns, it's impossible to carry spares and will likely take years for the supply chain to turn out new ones.

As for 2000b bunker buster vs battleship I'd draw attention to battleships versus Fritz X. That was a 3000lb bomb it crippled Warspite, Littorio and detonated the magazines of Roma. In these cases the bombs went through all decks and blew the bottom out, a modern 2000lb bomb has a higher sectional density, stronger materials and is dropped from a faster aircraft from a higher altitude.

[Wacky Racer]

aeropilot said:

Of the 5 x RN Carriers to suffer direct Kamikaze hits in the PTO only HMS Illustrious needed a long dockyard visit afterwards, and immediately after the hit she was able to maintain flight ops, the only restriction was a reduced speed to 19knts.

My dad served on HMS Formidable in the Pacific theatre as an aircraft mechanic between 1943/45, and his carrier suffered many Kamikaze attacks...this one in May 1945 killing several of his mates...he is somewhere in this picture helping fight the fires....

[hidetheelephants]

aeropilot said:

hidetheelephants said:

Regardless of which design philosophy was used a direct kamikaze hit would result in a long dockyard visit.

Of the 5 x RN Carriers to suffer direct Kamikaze hits in the PTO only HMS Illustrious needed a long dockyard visit afterwards, and immediately after the hit she was able to maintain flight ops, the only restriction was a reduced speed to 19knts.

There were hits but there's little evidence that US carriers were significantly worse off. Contemporaneous Royal Corps of Naval Constructors reports and technical reports from other qualified sources support this; there were advantages and disadvantages and the picture was much less clear when viewed through the prism of 1930s aircraft and their hitting power.

Edited by hidetheelephants on Saturday 27th August 06:52

[davepoth]

USS Franklin after a kamikaze hit.

[Dr Jekyll]

So can we take it that USS Nimitz doesn't have an armoured flight deck?

[Shar2]

It's not armoured, but still a lot stronger than the WWII carriers wooden and light metal flight decks. Their armoured deck was the hanger deck.

[irocfan]

SystemParanoia said:

Yeah, their doing they're coastal bombardments with this new class of destroyer now



Zumwalt can fire rocket-powered, computer-guided shells that can destroy targets 63 miles (101 km) away
It also has 80 missile launchers

Vs USS Missouri's 24 miles (39 km)

its possible that the deployment of the Zumwalt will mean the Battleship will never be reactivated again

interesting that ship design is back to prows shaped similar to how they were 100 years ago...

[irocfan]

IanH755 said:

williamp said:

could you be more accurate with modern weapons? Would it be possible to aim for, say the bridge or where the magazines are, rather then fire and hope for a hit?

With Laser and Electro Optically guided weapons the answer is yes you can fairly accurately place your weapons but heavier weapons tend to be dropped bombs so will strike at a near vertical angle (great for penetrating the deck) whilst missiles tend to attack in the horizontal so better for the Bridge etc.

As Aeropilot mentioned, dropping a few 2000lb EnPW3's bombs down the funnel into the engine bay would do immense damage to something like the Yamato and definitely disable her but they probably wouldn't be enough to sink her as she had over 1100 water-tight compartments designed specifically to prevent sinking so you'd have to damage hundreds of separate compartments to sink her. With only 3 bombs however you could render her completely combat ineffective for several years by destroying the turrets rather than knocking out the engines, which could be repaired in months, with the added bonus of a high potential for a magazine fire/explosion, which is what finished her off in real life after 9 bombs and 12 torpedoes hit her causing her to roll over, during which a magazine exploded ripping the bow off.

why would you need to sink the damn thing? Surely with modern laser guided stuff you could aim for (and hit) the stern disabling the rudder (a la lucky strike on the Bismark) or take out the bridge completely (a goodly proportion of the command structure gone and most of the fire control systems). One might imagine that a bomb straight down the funnel wouldn't be a whole lot of fun for the ship either (again I'd have thought theoretically possible with laser guided stuff). Disabled the Yamato may as well be a pill-box in the middle of nowhere

[irocfan]

ash73 said:

I'd scuttle the ship, there could be many possible negative effects on the timeline; e.g. Japanese attack defeated at Pearl would USA still enter the European theatre? We could suddenly all start speaking German, or with American accents. Also military commanders of that era
would not deploy the technology appropriately e.g. they would use nukes indiscriminately against civilians.

Prime directive

this is the obvious answer TBH - as hard as it would be the correct course of action is to do nothing but hide away and hope that your ship gets back to the correct timeline, any action taken by the time-displaced crew would almost certainly wink them out of existence (grandfather paradox)


By the way OP cracking thread!!!

[jmorgan]

irocfan said:

why would you need to sink the damn thing? Surely with modern laser guided stuff you could aim for (and hit) the stern disabling the rudder (a la lucky strike on the Bismark) or take out the bridge completely (a goodly proportion of the command structure gone and most of the fire control systems). One might imagine that a bomb straight down the funnel wouldn't be a whole lot of fun for the ship either (again I'd have thought theoretically possible with laser guided stuff). Disabled the Yamato may as well be a pill-box in the middle of nowhere

HMS Exeter took a pounding and was still going to fight on.

[IanH755]

I was doing a bit of random drunk "youtubing" where you have to click on whatever vid is recommended next and, after going through about 50 vids, see where you are now vs where you started (great fun drunk, honest!) and I came across a Japanese Anime called "Zipang" where an upgraded Kongo class DDG (Arleigh Burke) of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force gets sent back in time to just before the battle of Midway where it tries to remain neutral (sinking the USS Wasp but defending the allies against the IJN Yamato at Guadalcanal) without trying to do any damage to the IJN fleet as the central theme of the story is "should the crew defend Japanese lives (the whole purpose of the JMSDF) at the potential expense of altering the outcome of WW2?"

Bearing in mind the cartoon nature of Anime, as a modern AEGIS it was easily able to knock back the air attacks although it stretched credulity when it's sea-sparrows took out Yamato 18in shells in mid-air!

Their limited ammunition was the biggest hindrance to being truly effective in influencing the outcome of WW2 had they chosen to do so.