hojutsuka

Tony Evans, I have no desire to become involved in the acrimonious debate you are having with Ken Estes. But in the interests of historical accuracy, let me point out some facts. By 1945, the majority of US armored divisions were organized as "light" armored divisions with 3 tank battalions, each with 3 companies of medium tanks and one company with light tanks. The exceptions to this were the 2nd Armored Division and 3rd Armored Division which retained the older "heavy" armored division organization with two armored regiments. Each armored regiment had two medium tank battalions and one light tank battalion, so a "heavy" armored division had a total of six tank battalions, but only four of them were equipped with M4s. No US armored division had "six complete battalions of M4s" in 1945. The US Army in World War II did not field 20 armored divisions in combat. Only 1st-14th, 16th, and 20th Armored Divisions, or a total of 16 armored divisions, saw combat. Hojutsuka

If you just read the article, you would not have to ask. They expect no reduction in the satellite's planned 14-year life. The REA thrusters were apparently able to use the hydrazine meant for the failed liquid apogee engine that was supposed to raise the perigee. Once the REA thrusters got the perigee to about 3000 miles, they did the rest with Hall Current thrusters, which are very efficient (powered by electricity from the solar cells) but very weak. Hojutsuka

I don't understand your point. The TOW was almost identical in dimensions to the Shillelagh (TOW length 116cm, diameter 152mm versus Shillelagh length 115.3cm diameter 152mm). And the higher launch impulse of the gun-launched Shillelagh would make it harder to upgrade. If you are talking about upgrading, there was no reason why a longer barrel could not be used. The joint US-German MBT-70 was to have been armed with the long barrel XM-150 152mm gun, designed to fire ASFSDS as well as Shillelagh. IIRC, Chrysler proposed an improved M60 armed with the long 152mm but it was not adopted. Hojutsuka

I don't understand your point here, Ken. Yes, you mentioned the "Atlantic bow", and I have no problem with that. But you also said "Bismarck had the sheer of a brick" and that was what I was responding to. As for your comment that "I see no change aft, starting about turret B or the conning tower", sheer is just the "upward longitudinal curvature of the upper deck", according to the glossary kindly provided by Jason L. Sheer does not have to be continuous; there can be sheer forward but not aft (technically you could have sheer aft but not forward, but this is unlikely because you usually want the bow as high as practicable for seaworthiness). Plus, photos often cannot show small differences. You gave Salt Lake City as an example of sheer. According to you, the freeboard of Salt Lake City amidships is 11.5 feet, and at stern 13 feet, or a difference of 1.5 feet. Here is a photo of Salt Lake City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Salt_Lake_City_%28CA-25%29.jpg Just looking at the photo, I cannot detect the 1.5 feet change in freeboard from amidships to the stern. I'm sorry to be dense, but I don't understand why you posted this. I specifically said "The British battleships of World War II were the ones with no sheer" (bolding added) and pointed out that "Vanguard completed after World War II with a modified, higher bow and associated sheer" so you seem to be just illustrating my point. Hojutsuka EDIT: Why do I always have problems with images? Changed to a link.

Not true, Ken. Bismarck has the loveliest sheer of all the battleships of World War II, IMHO. Look at this photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_DVM_10_Bild-23-63-41,_Schlachtschiff_%22Bismarck%22.jpg Bismarck's hull has high freeboard amidships and the sheer is extremely smooth and gradual so it does not grab your attention like the Pensacola, but if you look at the freeboard amidships and at the stem, you will see that the bow is definitely higher above water than amidships. The British battleships of World War II were the ones with no sheer, because of a design requirement that the guns of A turret be able to fire directly ahead at 0 degree elevation. The disadvantage in seakeeping became apparent during World War II, and Vanguard completed after World War II with a modified, higher bow and associated sheer. Hojutsuka EDIT: For some reason the link to the photo is not working; I suspect that the comma is the problem. I therefore am providing a link to the wiki article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck Go down a bit and you will find a photo of Bismarck from the starboard side, on trials without range finders. Click on it to enlarge.

Fair enough. But in your post #85 you said: Many of the concepts you listed were not specifically for sinking capital ships at sea. For example, what is "high altitude torpedo bombing"? AFAIK the height and speed at which the torpedo was released depended on the torpedo; as torpedoes were improved, height and speed at which they could be released increased. In US Navy it went from 50 feet height at 110 knots before the war to 2400 feet at 410 knots at the end of the war. Flying low and slow to drop a torpedo was a dangerous business, so as torpedoes were improved, ALL torpedo attacks tended to be at higher altitudes and speeds. There was no specific idea that aerial torpedo attacks on capital ships would be made at higher altitudes than aerial torpedo attacks on other types of ships. Note that the aerial torpedo attacks on the Yamato were at much higher altitudes than torpedo bomber attacks early in the war, and they succeeded in sinking the Yamato so certainly this cannot be counted as a failure. I am not sure what you mean by "submarine aircraft carriers". The vast majority of aircraft carried by submarines were for search purposes. The only vessels that could be considered "submarine aircraft carriers" would IMO be the Japanese I-400 class, but they were intended for land attack (the aerial torpedoes carried were supposedly for attacking the Panama Canal locks). I think you are misunderstanding what "underwater cruisers" were designed for. "Cruiser submarines" were long range submarines with a relatively heavy surface gun armament. They were expected to use their range to appear in areas where there were few enemy surface warships, and attack merchant shipping on the surface using its gun armament. They certainly were not designed for attacking capital ships, since their gun armament would be totally inferior to that of a cruiser, let alone a capital ship, and their torpedo armament was no better than that of a smaller normal submarine. True, but things can also change quickly in the other direction. Level bombing against moving ships were ineffective for much of World War II (although the Japanese did get hits on HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales using level bombing in December 1941) but by the end of World War II development of bomb guidance made it clear that level bombing was now a major threat to capital ships. Hojutsuka

Kind of pointless to talk about ways in which battleships of World War II were not sunk (I could point out that in World War II no battleship was sunk by mines laid by surface ships, but what would that prove?), especially as no navy in World War II actually used submarines in direct support of the battlefleet (as opposed to indirect support like scouting lines). The Tirpitz was not sunk by the X-craft, but merely severely damaged. Hojutsuka Edited to add: The Japanese Navy did not plan to use its submarines as fleet submarines, i.e. in direct support of their battlefleet. The IJN "Nine Step" plan called for their submarines to primarily wage a war of attrition against the US fleet advancing westwards from their bases in order to reduce the odds against the IJN battleline at the Decisive Battle.

Italian Roma was sunk by level bombing (with guided weapons - Fritz-X). Submarines sank HMS Royal Oak, HMS Barham, and IJN Kongo. Italian manned torpedoes sank HMS Queen Elizabeth, and HMS Valiant, but they were in shallow water of Alexandria harbor, so were still mostly above water and were refloated and repaired. Hojutsuka

Depends on how you define maneuverability. A competent pilot in the F-4C faced with an F-100D would take the fight into the vertical plane, where his greater thrust-to-weight ratio would give him the advantage. In any case, the F-100 suffered from inertia coupling and was not the sort of aircraft that you could fly to the limit in combat maneuvering; push it too far, and it might suddenly yaw and pitch and come apart before the pilot could react. That's why it was relegated to ground attack. F-100 pilots have been known to prefer late model Sabres (like F-86H) for air-to-air. Hojutsuka

F4H Phantom II was a very different aircraft from its predecessor F3H Demon (it had two engines rather than one and was a supersonic aircraft). The F4H Phantom II was simply an interceptor version of YAH-1, in the same way F-101B was the interceptor version of the fighter-bomber F-101A. If you had bothered to read the rest of my post, which I quote below: you would have seen that I was saying the same thing you said in your reply. Hojutsuka

F4H Phantom II started as an attack (i.e. air-to-ground) design, and the first two prototypes were ordered as YAH-1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II US Navy decided it needed an all-weather fleet defense fighter more than another attack aircraft, so McDonnell modified YAH-1 to make it into an interceptor. Incidentally, this is why all Phantom II have the "droopy nose". YAH-1, the original attack design, had a smaller nose that did not droop. But the intercept role called for a more powerful radar with a bigger antenna, which needed a fatter nose to contain it. The need for the pilot to be able to see forward and down for carrier landings meant that the top line of the nose could not be raised, so the extra bulk of the fatter nose had to all go below the original nose of the YAH-1, resulting in the well-known "droop". Hojutsuka Edited for more clarity.

If you mean the Panzergrenadier battalions in Panzer Divisions, they (and their predecessor Schuetzen battalions in Panzer Divisions) had antitank guns through 1943. In 1944 and 1945, they appear to have lost the antitank guns at the battalion level. Hojutsuka Note 1: My source for this is F. M. von Senger und Etterlin, "Die Panzergrenadiere" Note 2: This is of course mostly the "Sollgliederung". Given the chaotic state of actual German divisional organizations in World War II (IIRC no two Panzer Divisions that fought in Normandy had identical TOE), I'm sure there were exceptions.

I don't think so. The angle of attack is measured relative to the airflow. If for simplicity we consider the ski jump set up on land (as in the initial trials) and no wind, the airflow is the inverse of the Harrier's velocity vector. Since the ski jump changes the Harrier's velocity vector, it essentially does not change the angle of attack. The function of a ski jump as I understand it, is simply to launch the Harrier at an upward angle. At the end of the ski jump, the Harrier is not moving fast enough for the wing to support it, so it immediately starts "falling". But gravity has to overcome the upward component of the Harrier's velocity vector, so like a baseball thrown at a similar angle, the Harrier gains altitude for a while before starting to actually lose altitude. This takes time, during which the Harrier is accelerating, so before the Harrier hits the ground, it has gained enough speed for the wings to support it fully. Hojutsuka

[picky mode on] The Narwhal had a bigger hull (beam 37' 7") than the Sturgeon (beam 31' 81/8"), and the S5G probably produced slightly more power than the S5W (Friedman says of S5G that it had about half the power of Los Angeles, so about 17,500hp, and the S5W is generally thought to be about 15,000hp). [picky mode off] Hojutsuka

Don't forget that if World War I had started as little as 2 years earlier, it would have been the short, decisive war expected by most pundits of the time. With the start of hostilities, the Royal Navy cut off the supply of Chilean nitrates to the Central Powers. If the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation process had not come on line just in time (the first plant, at Oppau, started making ammonia in industrial quantities in 1913), the Central Powers would have rapidly lost their ability to make explosives. Hojutsuka