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Midway—77 Years Ago, Today.


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Had that guy known his picture would be all over the internet, he would have worn a nicer sweater without a big hole in it. the feed system was designed by a cigarette packaging company, the same one that invented the hard paper package with the flip up lid.

Edited by Colin
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How accurate was that?

 

This one was armed with a 3 pounder originally, I dont know what the rate of fire was like.

 

Wiki indicates around 20-25 rpm, a little short of that German Navy's 37mm 30rpm. Lower MV of course but heavier shell.

Edited by DougRichards
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Yeah, I've red about the success of British MGBs a lot, but then again, I also read that the actually quite few German Schnellboote operated and sunk ships in the Channel even while 6,000 hostile tactical aircraft were operating in the sky above and 1,000+ hostile warships operated in the Channel.

Whatever success the MGBs had must have been rather isolated incidents.

 

There were 15 pre-war and 216 wartime production Schnellboote (Englishmen called them E-boats).

 

Guess how many survived the war, then mark the next line.

here ---> 91 <---

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Yeah, I've red about the success of British MGBs a lot, but then again, I also read that the actually quite few German Schnellboote operated and sunk ships in the Channel even while 6,000 hostile tactical aircraft were operating in the sky above and 1,000+ hostile warships operated in the Channel.

Whatever success the MGBs had must have been rather isolated incidents.

 

There were 15 pre-war and 216 wartime production Schnellboote (Englishmen called them E-boats).

 

Guess how many survived the war, then mark the next line.

here ---> 91 <---

 

I don't think that anyone would argue that they were not good boats, and most would accept that they were probably better than their British (and US) equivalents. It was only with radar being available to the allied boats that the German boats lost some effectiveness.

Edited by DougRichards
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Well there was a handful that was used by the German coastguard or some non military organization. They were using them for agent running behind the Iron curtain on behalf of MI6. One of them, a veteran of the Slapton Sands disaster, still survives in England.

 

This is interesting.

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Yeah, I've red about the success of British MGBs a lot, but then again, I also read that the actually quite few German Schnellboote operated and sunk ships in the Channel even while 6,000 hostile tactical aircraft were operating in the sky above and 1,000+ hostile warships operated in the Channel.

Whatever success the MGBs had must have been rather isolated incidents.

 

 

Fear of friendly fire: "That's probably just a MTB, MGB, PT boat that's ignoring regulations. What are the odds its German? ... Ups!"

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Always felt a near ideal general purpose MTB or MGB (for either side of the war) would have looked a lot like an E-Boat / S100 -- for the Atlantic they were able to operate at high speed in sea states the PT boats couldn't get on plane, and in the Pacific they had far greater range and endurance than the PT boats and would have been right at home among the islands in Guadalcanal

Edited by Burncycle360
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Always felt a near ideal general purpose MTB or MGB (for either side of the war) would have looked a lot like an E-Boat / S100 -- for the Atlantic they were able to operate at high speed in sea states the PT boats couldn't get on plane, and in the Pacific they had far greater range and endurance than the PT boats and would have been right at home among the islands in Guadalcanal

 

 

Size vs visibility was an issue as was engine power, the larger the boat, the slower and more visible it's going to be and as the size groe, you end up with a corvette (witness the evolution of the Israeli missile boats, for example). In WW2 the S-boats were larger than the other nations boats but their successes came mainly by the unpreparedness and/or lack of training of their enemies (ie Exercise Tiger - where the escorts were pulled out of Atlantic escort duty).

 

By 1944 the counter was the aircraft and the operations were restricted to night minelaying mainly.

 

Also there was overclaiming and ships that grew in the mind of the S-boats commanders from 100s grt to 1000s grt, so they were useful to have but not very cost effective, so resources would have been better spent on more R boats.

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The British answer to the E-boats were the Fairmiles, although they were pure gun boats

 

And the handfull of steam gun boats that were the result of a British deficiency in high capacity diesels.

 

Some Fairmilles were MGB, others were MTB, whilst some were both, with a compromise in armament.

 

Of course what were the intended targets played a role, after all, after late 1943 how much German channel traffic was there for MTBs to sink?

Edited by DougRichards
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Always felt a near ideal general purpose MTB or MGB (for either side of the war) would have looked a lot like an E-Boat / S100 -- for the Atlantic they were able to operate at high speed in sea states the PT boats couldn't get on plane, and in the Pacific they had far greater range and endurance than the PT boats and would have been right at home among the islands in Guadalcanal

 

A problem USN PT boats had in the Solomon Islands were phosphorescent wakes at night. Made it easier for IJN planes.

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The British answer to the E-boats were the Fairmiles, although they were pure gun boats

 

And the handfull of steam gun boats that were the result of a British deficiency in high capacity diesels.

 

Some Fairmilles were MGB, others were MTB, whilst some were both, with a compromise in armament.

 

Of course what were the intended targets played a role, after all, after late 1943 how much German channel traffic was there for MTBs to sink?

 

very true, the Germans also used shallow draft barges that torps ran under. Generally the MGB's and Fairmiles provided cover for the MTB's.

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The Swedes postwar also built a good selection of high speed watercraft. I gather the USN (or was it the US Army?) bought a number of them up for operations off the coast of Vietnam.

 

20 of the Norwegian Nasty class PTF were built for the USN, of which six were built at Annapolis MD by Trumpy Boat Works. They rendered good service and the builders and crew were impressed by the Napier Deltic turbo-diesels. I watched four built across the Annapolis Harbor from the Naval Academy in the late 60s. All were used by SEALs and SF.

Edited by Ken Estes
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Always felt a near ideal general purpose MTB or MGB (for either side of the war) would have looked a lot like an E-Boat / S100 -- for the Atlantic they were able to operate at high speed in sea states the PT boats couldn't get on plane, and in the Pacific they had far greater range and endurance than the PT boats and would have been right at home among the islands in Guadalcanal

 

 

Size vs visibility was an issue as was engine power, the larger the boat, the slower and more visible it's going to be and as the size groe, you end up with a corvette (witness the evolution of the Israeli missile boats, for example). In WW2 the S-boats were larger than the other nations boats but their successes came mainly by the unpreparedness and/or lack of training of their enemies (ie Exercise Tiger - where the escorts were pulled out of Atlantic escort duty).

 

By 1944 the counter was the aircraft and the operations were restricted to night minelaying mainly.

 

Also there was overclaiming and ships that grew in the mind of the S-boats commanders from 100s grt to 1000s grt, so they were useful to have but not very cost effective, so resources would have been better spent on more R boats.

 

No argument here on the overclaiming, it does happen, and of course how they're employed has more to do with their success or failures than anything else.

 

Paper top speed and actual top speed will of course differ, but everything I've been able to find suggested that the E-Boats were generally faster and a more stable gun / torpedo platform than the 80' Elcos (both laden with ordnance) in all but the glassiest of seas -- a lot of the planing hull type designs of the MTBs tended to beat themselves apart at high speeds in open ocean testing. The E-Boats also had Lürssen effect fins (not quite hydrofoils, but it lifted the ass and gave you an on plane like effect while reducing the drag and wake) discovered by happenstance.

 

Without seeing a head to head, I suspect the MTBs would accelerate faster and have a tighter turning circle though just based on it's design characteristics, which would certainly have its merits.

 

At night from the frontal aspects the size is so close as to be a wash IMO, both are about as low to the water as is practical, and in either case the wake would be the giveaway before anything else. Night operations are really the only way to go with either type if you're dealing with anything that can shoot back. One of the reasons I do prefer the S100 is it's large enough to combine the usefulness of MTBs with MGBs without giving up anything that would hinder it's ability to do either job. It is a larger boat though so the most apt question would be: could smaller manufacturers that built the wooden MTBs also build something larger like an S-Boat, and would build something larger like the S-Boat take work away from even bigger, more useful ships?

 

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"in either case the wake would be the giveaway before anything else"

 

Radar aside, passive sonar should have been effective as well.

 

It's an often overlooked naval sensor of the WW2 era. The Bismarck detected Hood & PoW by passive sonar before they were on the radio horizon. German submarines' biggest technological feat in early WW2 was likely their passive sonar abilities. Convoys were often detected and tracked (bearing only) by passive sonar at 100+ km.

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Also there was overclaiming and ships that grew in the mind of the S-boats commanders from 100s grt to 1000s grt, so they were useful to have but not very cost effective, so resources would have been better spent on more R boats.

R-boots were slow (half the speed of S-boot), not really useful for many of the tasks motor torpedo boats did.

Of course with fast attack craft you have to make tradeoffs between size and capabilities. S-boots were large, good endurance, seaworthy, good gun platforms but they were no longer very cheap. Soviet G5 went to other extreme, very lean, small, fast machines but often much less useful because of their endurance and armament restrictions. It's an age old dilemma of small attack warships which was played before during steam Torpedo boat era, repeated again during missile age and probably dates back to ancient galleys. Because when you have potentially very effective single-shot weapon like ram, torpedo or missile it is attractive to use it in as small and cheap hull as possible to maximize cost-effectiveness but result is a single-job platform which might prove useless 90% of the time.

 

Any ways, effect of light defensive platforms like coastal submarines, motor torpedo boats and mines can't be measured solely by tonnage sunk, as their mere existence restricted enemy operations.

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