Midway—77 Years Ago, Today.

[DougRichards]

Interesting article on The Drive, suggesting the USN may be looking at WW2 era beanbags in the event of heavy jamming knocking out communications.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29439/navy-ships-look-to-wwii-era-message-filled-bean-bags-to-communicate-without-radios

 

Does anyone still use semaphore for daytime communications, or the use of old fashioned signal flags, circa Trafalgar?

[Stuart Galbraith]

Dont think so. The nearest used is blinker lights I guess.

[DougRichards]

You would have thought that some form of communication via coded laser pulses would be both secure and able to send enough information for some signals. Please nobody tell me that I am the first person to think of it?.

[Rick]

Dont think so. The nearest used is blinker lights I guess."

Since it is the Navy, "carrier" pigeons

[Markus Becker]

 

 

Doug, cut the Murricans some slack.

 

That said, KM AA was a joke. The same country that came up with 20mm quads was using hand loaded 37mm semi auto guns. *facepalm*

 

I have to say I too am puzzled that somebody thought that semiautomatic 37mm gun was a great idea. Especially as Heer had perfectly good 37mm Flak. Was the idea behind 3.7 SK C/30 that it would work like a 'sniper rifle' of sorts?

105mm was pretty good gun, though.

 

Whereas DP destroyer guns seem like a no-brainer in hindsight, we should not judge pre-war destroyer designs too harshly. Mounting an effective high-angle mount on destroyer was challenging especially when facing with size constraints of the pre-war designs.

The army's 37mm was a late 30s designs, the navy's from early in the decade. But it still makes no sense too me. Germany already used 1pdr Pom Poms in WW1.

[lastdingo]

The Kriegsmarine thought that its 37 mm gun needs a high muzzle velocity and good aim to hit moving targets at useful distances. They underestimated the importance of a high rate of fire.

 

 

Look at the extremely unusually high MV of the Kriegsmarine 37 mm ordnance.

[Markus Becker]

Thanks, didn't notice that until now. They should have gone with the Pom Pom's principle. Lower MV but higher RoF. Would have been perfectly reasonable for a gun designed in the early 30s when biplanes were still the norm.

[lastdingo]

Actually, I think the most sensible approach would have been a 30...37 mm Gatling with autonomous (battery) electrical power. This combination had been patented in 1893 (and shown a huge RoF soon after).

Such a 850 m/s MV Gatling with Minengeschoss (HEI) would have proved devastating at all ranges where the probability of hit was rather good.* There would have been very much firepower per gunner (gun layer, aimer), so training the gunner to be extremely proficient with reflex sight + tracer (tracer out to 3 km, ideally no two guns with overlapping angles would have the same colour unless spaced very much) would have been highly economical (training at low RoF).

 

I generally think that the light AAA of up to the 1950's had a weirdly low rate of fire. The quite improvised use of fighter guns (MG 151/20 and Mk 103) in a few mounts was an exception from the rule (even the quad 20 mm did not really have a high rate of fire). It was understood that machineguns would need a high RoF for AA (see quad Maxims, demands for high RoF with MG 42) and aircraft guns had a high RoF below 30 mm calibre, but light AAA tended to focus on heavier and faster projectiles rather than high RoF. The Kriegsmarine was an extreme case. Gatlings and water-cooled guns were easily able to cope with very high RoF, so one could have expected the navies to be on the high RoF side rather than the opposite!

 

 

*: Starshells and chasing spotter aircraft or airships away with heavy AAA could have been done with destroyer and light cruiser main guns and BB/BC secondary arty. CA could have used two dedicated starshell & heavy AAA 105 mm guns, akin to the flimsy actual USN cruiser AAA of the 30's.

[DougRichards]

Thanks, didn't notice that until now. They should have gone with the Pom Pom's principle. Lower MV but higher RoF. Would have been perfectly reasonable for a gun designed in the early 30s when biplanes were still the norm.

Except were not naval 37mm / 40mm also meant to have an anti-torpedo boat function? So the idea would have been to keep MTB out of effective torpedo range, so a higher MV and thus flatter trajectory would have been useful.

 

And the ship[s that carried them usually had a fair number of 20mm mounts for volume of fire.

Edited August 20, 2019 by DougRichards

[lastdingo]

AFAIK guns calibre 57 mm or better proved most capable against MTBs, I did not see 37/40 mm being mentioned as being really effective against them.

The British MGBs received some rare 6pdr (57 mm) guns to deal with German S-Boote ('E boats'). Heavy AAA used time fuzed shells to hit torpedo boats, hence the armoured bridge of German S-Boote since IIRC mid-WW2.

[DougRichards]

AFAIK guns calibre 57 mm or better proved most capable against MTBs, I did not see 37/40 mm being mentioned as being really effective against them.

The British MGBs received some rare 6pdr (57 mm) guns to deal with German S-Boote ('E boats'). Heavy AAA used time fuzed shells to hit torpedo boats, hence the armoured bridge of German S-Boote since IIRC mid-WW2.

 

Hogg mentions in one of his books on German artillery that the 37mm SK C/30 was sometimes mounted in coastal defence positions with a dual AA and surface role. He further mentions that the shell would have been effective against aircraft but would be of limited effectiveness against MTB.

 

Even so, it was used in that role, and it was often the major armament of R Boats.

 

Having said that, the Colt 37mm AA gun was used in conjunction with 90mm AA guns for the same anti MTB role by the USA.

 

The original 1 1/2pdr pom pom shipboard were mainly intended for the anti MTB role, as aircraft had not yet been invented. Of course as the aircraft was invented the idea was adopted for AA use as well.

 

The British did indeed come up with a useful 57mm coastal gun (that was mounted on some destroyers for use in the Channel), but attempts by both the British and Germany to produce a gun of around 50mm / 57mm for the intermediate AAA role were not particularly successful.

[Ken Estes]

High ROF for shipboard weapons has obvious limits when fleet logistics and replenishment are considered. None existing in 1939, Dingo's attempts to term contemporary judgement flawed just falls flat. We need to understand what people in Year XX thought they were doing, but the purpose of that is to understand what people thought and what was going on, not to ridicule their lack of prophecy.

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

Dont think so. The nearest used is blinker lights I guess."

Since it is the Navy, "carrier" pigeons

 

 

Boom, Tish!

[lastdingo]

High ROF for shipboard weapons has obvious limits when fleet logistics and replenishment are considered. None existing in 1939, Dingo's attempts to term contemporary judgement flawed just falls flat. We need to understand what people in Year XX thought they were doing, but the purpose of that is to understand what people thought and what was going on, not to ridicule their lack of prophecy.

 

The mechanics of replenishing a 30 mm Gatling are simple. In fact, munitions replenishment becomes a lot simpler once you moved from clips to large linkless boxes. You can replace them as a whole, moving them around as a cart. All you need to do is to have a clean and not very much tilted deck and storage space in the superstructures to avoid requiring a lift. To resupply a 30 mm Gatling did likely require less personnel than to resupply a quad mount.

 

The mechanics of letting a triple primary arty mount reload as quickly at 20° elevation as could a twin mount at 5° were much more complicated than that, and that problem was solved during the 1920's.

 

Besides, I call you out for implying a lie; I did not ridicule.

[Ken Estes]

implying a lie? hahahahah

[Markus Becker]

Except were not naval 37mm / 40mm also meant to have an anti-torpedo boat function? So the idea would have been to keep MTB out of effective torpedo range, so a higher MV and thus flatter trajectory would have been useful.

 

And the ship[s that carried them usually had a fair number of 20mm mounts for volume of fire.

Not by the early 30s any more. As far as I can tell MTB weren't a thing in the inter war years. DD were seen as the ones launching fish.

[Markus Becker]

How was replenishment usually defined? WAG: Rearm in home port or one of the many overseas bases if you are the RN? Underway replenishment would be a USN thing.

 

PS: AA ammo expenditure was underestimated too, so continental navies could have gone with high RoF guns.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Markus Becker

[lastdingo]

Germans even resupplied subs by subs - including a technique for transferring fuel while BOTH were submerged.

Graf Spee etc were resupplied by Troßschffe; replenishment ships.

[Rick]

How was replenishment usually defined? WAG: Rearm in home port or one of the many overseas bases if you are the RN? Underway replenishment would be a USN thing.

 

PS: AA ammo expenditure was underestimated too, so continental navies could have gone with high RoF guns.

Both for the USN.

[DougRichards]

 

Except were not naval 37mm / 40mm also meant to have an anti-torpedo boat function? So the idea would have been to keep MTB out of effective torpedo range, so a higher MV and thus flatter trajectory would have been useful.

 

And the ship[s that carried them usually had a fair number of 20mm mounts for volume of fire.

Not by the early 30s any more. As far as I can tell MTB weren't a thing in the inter war years. DD were seen as the ones launching fish.

 

 

The Reichsmarine interest in the Schnellboot dated from 1929, about five years before the 3.7cm SK C/30 went into service. I would be fair to think that any navy with MTB type vessels would assume its enemies would also acquire these and that a defence would be required against them.

[Markus Becker]

That interest might have been the result of the ToV. Other navies didn't have to deal with such limitations.

[DougRichards]

That interest might have been the result of the ToV. Other navies didn't have to deal with such limitations.

 

The Soviets had the G5 MTB in service by 1934.

[Yama]

Most major navies twiddled with MTB's between WW1 and 2. They were in vogue somewhat intermittently, not everyone was convinced they were good use of resources, although in the end they were proven to be.

37mm guns tended to be too small against MTB threat, although this too uses benefit of hindsight.

[Ken Estes]

USN MTBs [PT boats} at the Cape Gloucester Campaign found themselves outgunned by the Japanese landing craft reapplying their garrison troops. The solution turned out to be USMC light and medium tanks in LCM-3 craft.

 

For the RN, their answer to th S-boote was the MGB, motor gunboat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Ken Estes

[JWB]