Nimitz carrier in WW11
Discussion
Max_Torque said:
What strike range does a typical Air Craft carrier have with it's mix of aircraft? Enough to send an F14 into Tokyo for a precision strike at night? Surely something defense tech of the time would be incapable of preventing? A few laser guided hits on important capital buildings ought to help swing things surely?
Not sure that would have worked. They were prepared to chuck civilians into the defence if the allies made a landing and had prepped them (messed with their thinking) to accept that. They nearly did fight to the bitter end. After the first bomb, they were going to go for a military coup to keep fighting and drag the Allies into a mainland invasion.Edited by jmorgan on Thursday 25th August 18:38
chuntington101 said:
IanH755 said:
Harpoons wouldn't be as effective against WW2 Cruisers & Battleships as they are much more heavily armoured than current ships, especially at the waterline, as the armour was designed to defeat AP rounds fired by 8in to 16in cannons with much more explosive power than a single harpoon. Ideally you'd set the Harpoons attack profile to be a "pop-up" so the missile dived down on to the less armoured deck and tried to punch through as man armoured decks as possible but even that doesn't guarantee a kill. Instead, it'd be preferable to use 2000lb LGB's on the capital ships (aimed at destroying the turrets) and use the ASM's on less armoured targets like Carriers, Destroyers, Merchant shipping etc
Ian, the block 1b harpoons didn't have the pop up ability but all others (bar block 1 that only had pop up) had a selectable terminal attack mode according to wiki. Agree that 2000lbs bombs with delayed fuses would be degustation to ships! Although I bet even 500lb ers would get the job done even on the bigger stuff (might take a few hits though). Also they would be a fair old bit cheaper than the harpoons!
A single hit stands a very good chance of causing sufficient damage to a cruiser to require it to exit combat and a hit to a battleship will kill crew and potentially if lucky degrade it's combat capability.
A set of bunker busters to the deck will knock out a battleship as would a couple of regular 2000b bombs with delay fuses dropped in the water beside.
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
Max_Torque said:
What strike range does a typical Air Craft carrier have with it's mix of aircraft? Enough to send an F14 into Tokyo for a precision strike at night? Surely something defense tech of the time would be incapable of preventing? A few laser guided hits on important capital buildings ought to help swing things surely?
Depends on which aircraft are onboard; Intruders can lift more and carry it further(on internal fuel at any rate) than the F14 or F18. Without tanking their combat radius is already over 1000mn.Talksteer said:
The Hapoon warhead is a similar mass and velocity to a long range hit from a 10 inch gun. And because it isn't designed to be fired out of a gun its bursting charge is the same as a 16inch HE round.
A single hit stands a very good chance of causing sufficient damage to a cruiser to require it to exit combat and a hit to a battleship will kill crew and potentially if lucky degrade it's combat capability.
A set of bunker busters to the deck will knock out a battleship as would a couple of regular 2000b bombs with delay fuses dropped in the water beside.
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
So lets start with some slight corrections - A single hit stands a very good chance of causing sufficient damage to a cruiser to require it to exit combat and a hit to a battleship will kill crew and potentially if lucky degrade it's combat capability.
A set of bunker busters to the deck will knock out a battleship as would a couple of regular 2000b bombs with delay fuses dropped in the water beside.
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
A Harpoon warhead is has a bursting charge of around 500lb - A 16in Mk.13 HE shell fired by the USN Iowa series of Battleships has a bursting charge of 862lbs which is 72% larger and is travelling around 800m/s vs the harpoons 270 m/s so they're not close in performance.
Against a WW2 ship, which is armoured to withstand multiple hits from 8in+ cannon fire, a single Harpoon wouldn't cause anywhere near as much damage as it would to a modern ship, which are relatively un-armoured. There's a good RimPac video of several Harpoons being live fired against USS Thach, a decommissioned 80's frigate, and it take multiple hits plus a Torpedo before sinking 12 hrs later. However any hit (missile or cannon), will cause some damage so you're right in some respects.
Also, Brimstones, sorry but that raised a genuine LOL. Yes they would indeed cause some extremely minor damage but disable a 70,000 ton Yamato (even if trying to shoot down the funnel into the engine room), Nope. When I was in Afghan we sometimes has problems flattening a house (used a PW4 in the end), never mind a Battleship. Even if you targeted a single specific area with multiple shots (bridge etc) it wouldn't disable the ship, they'd just move to the secondary bridge which you can't hit. The Deck was 8in of hardened steel, the thickest belt was 30in+ (16in then air gap then 14in) and the turrets were 26in thick, Brimstone has a rough penetration of less than 6in allegedly (no tanks with 6in Armour).
Edited by IanH755 on Thursday 25th August 19:27
Talksteer said:
Total number of vessels hit by heavy bombers was negligible. The ship is a difficult target it is hundreds of miles away and moving.
Plus there is a limited amount of sky!
Large raids against point targets had to come in waves, against moving targets they ended up coming in waves of a squadron or less. Look at all the combat footage of aircraft attacking ships there is rarely more than two planes in shot!
It's all academic because the carrier group, will probably be able to form an alliance pretty quickly!
True, however, I was responding to the question "what if the Carrier (no group, just a carrier) goes up against the whole world" so no alliances! The combat footage is of aircraft launching attacked against targets with defences, whereas I was making the supposition that the sheer number of bombers available in World War 2 (potentially a few thousand in a single raid) would exhaust the anti-aircraft ammunition available to the carrier (I suppose they might be able to jury-rig the Phalanx system to survive a while longer). But if you are facing 3000-ish bombers arriving in a continuous stream then at some point you will be out of ammo and then the surviving WW2 bombers (and the new ones being cranked out at a few hundred a week) could just keep coming back until the defenseless carrier was finished off. Bit like sinking the Tirpitz ... drop enough bombs and you will eventually hit it Plus there is a limited amount of sky!
Large raids against point targets had to come in waves, against moving targets they ended up coming in waves of a squadron or less. Look at all the combat footage of aircraft attacking ships there is rarely more than two planes in shot!
It's all academic because the carrier group, will probably be able to form an alliance pretty quickly!
Talksteer said:
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
You might be better off using several Tonkas and lasering down a simultaneous drop of several GBU-24's down the funnel.We were lucky that we still just had good old fashioned MkV111 Torpedo's on board our subs during the FI, as it needed a WW2 era weapon to take out a WW2 era crusier.
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.
IanH755 said:
Talksteer said:
The Hapoon warhead is a similar mass and velocity to a long range hit from a 10 inch gun. And because it isn't designed to be fired out of a gun its bursting charge is the same as a 16inch HE round.
A single hit stands a very good chance of causing sufficient damage to a cruiser to require it to exit combat and a hit to a battleship will kill crew and potentially if lucky degrade it's combat capability.
A set of bunker busters to the deck will knock out a battleship as would a couple of regular 2000b bombs with delay fuses dropped in the water beside.
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
So lets start with some slight corrections - A single hit stands a very good chance of causing sufficient damage to a cruiser to require it to exit combat and a hit to a battleship will kill crew and potentially if lucky degrade it's combat capability.
A set of bunker busters to the deck will knock out a battleship as would a couple of regular 2000b bombs with delay fuses dropped in the water beside.
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
A Harpoon warhead is has a bursting charge of around 500lb - A 16in Mk.13 HE shell fired by the USN Iowa series of Battleships has a bursting charge of 862lbs which is 72% larger and is travelling around 800m/s vs the harpoons 270 m/s so they're not close in performance.
Against a WW2 ship, which is armoured to withstand multiple hits from 8in+ cannon fire, a single Harpoon wouldn't cause anywhere near as much damage as it would to a modern ship, which are relatively un-armoured. There's a good RimPac video of several Harpoons being live fired against USS Thach, a decommissioned 80's frigate, and it take multiple hits plus a Torpedo before sinking 12 hrs later. However any hit (missile or cannon), will cause some damage so you're right in some respects.
Also, Brimstones, sorry but that raised a genuine LOL. Yes they would indeed cause some extremely minor damage but disable a 70,000 ton Yamato (even if trying to shoot down the funnel into the engine room), Nope. When I was in Afghan we sometimes has problems flattening a house (used a PW4 in the end), never mind a Battleship. Even if you targeted a single specific area with multiple shots (bridge etc) it wouldn't disable the ship, they'd just move to the secondary bridge which you can't hit. The Deck was 8in of hardened steel, the thickest belt was 30in+ (16in then air gap then 14in) and the turrets were 26in thick, Brimstone has a rough penetration of less than 6in allegedly (no tanks with 6in Armour).
Edited by IanH755 on Thursday 25th August 19:27
The fill of a US 16 inch shell is 69kg
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.php
The actual breakdown for a Harpoon is not open source, but the Otomat is the same size and has 65kg of HE. The 16inch AP has 19kg of filling.
Using De Marre penetration formula I'd estimate that the Harpoon warhead would go through around 4inches of armour. Which would get through to the vitals of most cruisers from a diving attack.
This is however beside the point, the kinetic energy of an ASM is around the same as a Kamikaze aircraft, it's got residual fuel too.
If it hits near the centre of mass it's going to open the ship up, throw fragments through multiple compartments and start fires. Probably kill a few dozen crew. Very little of the ship is actually armoured, and about half the men on board aren't behind that armour.
Sure you aren't going to detonate a main magazine but setting the upper works on fire is going to seriously degrade the vessels combat capability.
Looking at battle of the River Plate and the various cruiser actions in the Pacific relatively low numbers (5-10) of 8 inch shells effectively took cruisers out of action.
The usual load of two harpoons is probably going to wreck a cruisers combat capability and send it home for repairs if the fires don't get out of control. A frigate load of eight hits is probably going to make it an economic loss as a minimum.
On a battleship 8 hits aren't going to write it off or damage it's vitals but there is a very good chance it will be lacking fire control, on fire, with dozens of casualties with potentially fuel tanks and stores destroyed. Unless the ship is on a death or glory mission it's probably heading back to port for repairs.
Brimstone will drive a pencil sized hole through at least 1200mm of plain steel armour, targeted against a battleships guns it's going to defang it pretty effectively.
Russian 125mm penetration, Brimstone is 177mm
http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/ARM/heat/x_heat...
Simpo Two said:
Dr Jekyll said:
Instead of taking sides the UK just told them to stop fighting. Leaders of both sides where invited to a meeting, played some music from a 1914 sound system, then the same tune from a 1960s state of the art system...
What a load of tosh! I'd take a squadron of Lightnings over the German trenches at Mach 1+ and 50' for starters and progress from there until they gave up or lost. In fact I might just go on and take Europe 
uncinqsix said:
I've occasionally wondered what would happen if you inserted a dozen Apaches or A10s into the Western front in 1914. I reckon a couple of well-placed brrrrrrrrrps would have most of the troops on the other side deserting in pretty short order...
The deserters would be shot or forced back to the line at gunpoint, the incident hushed up and they'd carry on fighting. You can't stop a world war that easily and resolve can be strengthened.Simpo Two said:
uncinqsix said:
I've occasionally wondered what would happen if you inserted a dozen Apaches or A10s into the Western front in 1914. I reckon a couple of well-placed brrrrrrrrrps would have most of the troops on the other side deserting in pretty short order...
The deserters would be shot or forced back to the line at gunpoint, the incident hushed up and they'd carry on fighting. You can't stop a world war that easily and resolve can be strengthened.Dr Jekyll said:
If the atom bomb had been invented 10 years later the notion of using them against Japan in WWII would seem just as anachronistic, and that did play a very major part in stopping the war.
The equivalent in this scenario would be nuking Berlin in 1914, rather than tactical fun and games. There would have been better ways to stop WW1 with 1960s weapons, either land or air.Dr Jekyll said:
Instead of taking sides the UK just told them to stop fighting. Leaders of both sides where invited to a meeting, played some music from a 1914 sound system, then the same tune from a 1960s state of the art system...
the problem with 1960's uk being sent back, is that post war uk would never have taken much losses or needed to open its doors to immigration from the rest of the commonwealth/empire and it would not have a culture as diverse as it currently does.https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ve+day+1945&...
which would be a shame; but on the plus side, i'd be living in jamacia so... yeah, not all bad!
Private Pile said:
Although I don't understand a lot of this thread, I'm enjoying reading it. Why has there been a change from heavily armoured to lightly armoured warships? Is it just a weight issue?
I Assume that its a fuel saving measure, makes the ships faster, and that ships tend not to go broadside with each other any moreSystemParanoia said:
Private Pile said:
Although I don't understand a lot of this thread, I'm enjoying reading it. Why has there been a change from heavily armoured to lightly armoured warships? Is it just a weight issue?
I Assume that its a fuel saving measure, makes the ships faster, and that ships tend not to go broadside with each other any moreI can't imagine what this felt and sounded like though.....
Evanivitch said:
Talksteer said:
A Tornado with Brimstone could easily disable Yamato.....
Not really what Brimstone is designed for. It's much more a precision, low collateral weapon than a big boomer. I'd agree with others that a Tonka with Paveways stands a better chance. Or Storm Shadow.
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