Cheers Zheng He - my knowledge of the French Navy during this period is pretty limited.
Graf Spee sunk by French
- Thread starter tigercat
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Cheers Zheng He - my knowledge of the French Navy during this period is pretty limited.
“The Battle for Christmas Day” Part Two – ATL Sink the Admiral Graf Spee – 24th/25th
Using dead reckoning and some guess work the 2nd Levasseur PL.10 reached the area of the expected rendezvous with the Aircraft they were supposed to relieve only to find more empty ocean - the crew wasted another 15 minutes running a search pattern before sending a report back to Force L that both the scout plane and the enemy heavy Cruiser where gone.
The French Admiral immediately ordered all available scout planes to blanket the area and the Bearn launched all 5 available PL.10s as well as 4 of the Dewoitine 371 fighter planes - all 3 Cruisers as well as the Dunkerque launched 5 more float planes between them
The Air group commander held his 8 serviceable PL7s and their crews back intending to use them as the core of a strike on the Enemy raider once she was found.
It is here that the French Commanders very nearly lost their quarry
The assumption was that the Panzerschiff had headed south or South West towards the Coast of Brazil.
Accordingly the aircraft fanned out flying to the furthest point that they calculated the Graf spee could have sailed - from the 2 o'clock position tot he 9 o'clock from here last recorded location and then flying a patrol pattern back towards her last reported position.
Only the Officer commanding the small group of Amphibian Aircraft on board the Battle Cruiser Dunkerque disagreed and subsequently abandoned his assigned arc and turned his Loire 130 to the east instead.
So it was something of a surprise when the Senior officers of Force L were given a sighting report some 55 miles east of the Graf Spee's last known location.
It became quickly apparent that with the Graf Spee's estimated speed of 24 knots the Dunkerque and 2 Cruisers would not catch the enemy ship before nightfall - being almost 100 miles north West of her and the only chance Force L had now of catching her before she disappeared into the night was vested in 8 obsolete torpedo planes currently being staged on the Béarn's flight deck.
With less than 2 hours left before sun down the French Carrier put on as much power as she could and turned into the wind.
1 by 1 her somewhat meagre strike group of 8 PL7s, 2 PL10s and 4 of the Dewoitine 373 fighter planes launched in to the Afternoon sky and headed South East.
Back on board the Graf Spee Captain Langsdorff and his crew were feeling increasingly more confident as the ship fled further to the East and the Sun dropped ever closer to the Western Horizon
They were completely unaware that a single Loire 130 was shadowing them - keeping below the horizon some 15 miles astern and only 'popping up' every 3 or 4 minutes to confirm the Cruisers location.
As the sun dipped ever further towards the sea the crew of the shadowing aircraft started to increasingly worry that the strike was late, or it had missed the rendezvous completely.
Less than 40 minutes of day light remained
TBC
Currently it seems like a Bismarck like end is in the offering? Or a surrender? Or a sinking by torpedoes? Nevertheless, ff the maiming by the aircrafts is only moderate and just serves the purpose of getting her caught (eg. fixed by divers doing the fay etc.), it would be interesting to hear of there is any special information about the French naval fire control, accuracy etc. On paper the Dunkerque certainly wins, but also on paper te French army were on par with the germans. Just lacked some radios....
Maybe the French just lack some fire control?
In any case, anybody with special knowledge about this?
For the capabilities of Dunkerque wrt fire control, there are 4 pages in Jordan & Dumas (French Battleships, 1922-1956|/i], pp 38-41), which basically tells that it was state of the art (for 1939 - i.e. no radar) and robust.
There is little doubt that she would sink GS in a one-on-one : more than twice the displacement, more recent, more heavy guns, bigger shells, longer range, heavier armor etc ....
A large margin of superiority, indeed.
sharlin
Banned
Indeed the Dunkirque and her sister were purpose built to deal with the Panzershiffe's. Remember the Spee only has a 3 inch belt, she's not a battleship or pocket battleship, she's a heavy cruiser that goes 'ARD AS NAILS! because she's got 6 x 11-inch weapons. Other than that, they are no tougher than a cruiser. The Frenchman will eat her for dinner.
deathscompanion1
Banned
Dunkirque should walk it.
However OTL leads me to ask how the higher levels of the French command would lose this particular battle. They always seemed to find a way to fuck up spectacularly whatever the service.
Leaving shells in port for later use perhaps?*
*The airforce didn't bother sending up modern fighters during the battle of France leaving them dispersered or dismantled.
However OTL leads me to ask how the higher levels of the French command would lose this particular battle. They always seemed to find a way to fuck up spectacularly whatever the service.
Leaving shells in port for later use perhaps?*
*The airforce didn't bother sending up modern fighters during the battle of France leaving them dispersered or dismantled.
sharlin
Banned
The only 'issue' the Frenchman might have is shell dispersion, this plagued their quad turrets until post war as it was a rather new thing to have so many guns firing so close to one another and the blast of the guns going off could and did disrupt the shells as they left the barrels. The French quad turrets were in essence laid out as two twin turrets on the same mounting and they worked as pairs but fired as a quad and because there was no delay between each gun firing (they all went BANG at once) then the blast did its merry best to fuck with accuracy.
The TLDR version of this is that the Dunk's shooting is not going to be anything to write home about and will probably fire off a significant amount of ammo to sink the Spee. But when she does hit, then its devastating. Whilst her own armour is perfectly capable of resisting the 11 inch guns of the Spee.
The only way the Spee can overcome that is to get close, which suits the Dunk just fine. The Spee cannot run, she can't sink her opponent and can only sting her unless she gets close, which the Frenchman probably won't allow as she can control the engagement with her speed.
The TLDR version of this is that the Dunk's shooting is not going to be anything to write home about and will probably fire off a significant amount of ammo to sink the Spee. But when she does hit, then its devastating. Whilst her own armour is perfectly capable of resisting the 11 inch guns of the Spee.
The only way the Spee can overcome that is to get close, which suits the Dunk just fine. The Spee cannot run, she can't sink her opponent and can only sting her unless she gets close, which the Frenchman probably won't allow as she can control the engagement with her speed.
Also - after the British discovered after cunningly buying the salvage rights from the Germans via a 3rd party (you couldn't make this stuff up!) - Graf Spee had a for that time a decent ranging radar which made her shooting that much more accurate.
Regarding the quads I suspect that the answer would be to ripple fire them?
Does anyone know what the three light Cruisers in force L were likely to have been?
Given that the Dunkerque was designed specifically with Panzerschiff as her prey if they catch her then yes she is quite doomed.
I've got a copy of a book, somewhere, that gives the OTL compostions for each of the 'hunting groups'... but it's almost certainly in storage, possibly in a box that's buried under several others. However I seem to recall already having posted that list in a previous thread about the Graf Spee in these forums, so searching might find it.
There is actually a pretty good wiki page on the Force de Raid - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_Raid
Cheers - didn't appreciate that Force L and 'Force De Raid' where the same thing.
Well in that case we are limited to Montcalm, Georges Leygues, Gloire
All members of the La_Galissonni class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Galissonnière-class_cruiser
Other than the French sinking the Graf, I'm writing a timeline positing almost exactly this.
The US started working on delay coils in 1935 or so - and IIRC Strasbourg got them in 1941. So this action might bring that forward.
usertron2020
Donor
I hate being ninja'd
But yeah, basically the Panzershiffes were overarmed heavy cruisers. The punch to take on and defeat any other heavy cruiser, but lacking the punch or protection to take on anything else afloat that was stronger. The panzershiffes were exactly the kind of ships that any battlecruiser captain would love to take on, never mind battleship captains who could blow such a ship out of the water. Even the much criticized Alaska-class, had one ever engaged a panzershiff, would have eaten it up had such an encounter ever happened (the Alaska's were also designed for engaging the panzershiffes).
Saphroneth
Banned
Were there more ships designed to engage Panzershiffes than actual Panzershiffes?I hate being ninja'd
But yeah, basically the Panzershiffes were overarmed heavy cruisers. The punch to take on and defeat any other heavy cruiser, but lacking the punch or protection to take on anything else afloat that was stronger. The panzershiffes were exactly the kind of ships that any battlecruiser captain would love to take on, never mind battleship captains who could blow such a ship out of the water. Even the much criticized Alaska-class, had one ever engaged a panzershiff, would have eaten it up had such an encounter ever happened (the Alaska's were also designed for engaging the panzershiffes).