Keynes' Cruisers

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David Flin

David Flin

Gone Fishin'
Cryhavoc101 said:
I would suggest that this raid was better than Dieppe as it has directly impacted an on going land battle both in weakening/attriting the enemy's front line units/reserves - using up thier logistics while preventing further logistics from reaching the front lines for 2 days.
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All true. On a cost/benefit analysis of the operation taken in isolation, it came out better than Dieppe. My point was simply that the biggest potential benefit was the experience and the opportunity to learn the requisite lessons. Sooner or later, it's going to have to be done on a large scale, and no-one knows how that will actually work in practise.
 

sloreck

Raids like this, which are rather more than just hit and run, are going to be costly. This is the calculus of war. IMHO it appears here that a much better plan for withdrawal and disengagement should have been in place. "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em". This raid shows the advantage of sea control, especially when you have a long exposed coastline like North Africa or (later on) lots of islands to defend and the attacker can choose which he will decide to hit. For the Germans and Italians to properly defend against such raids they would have to rob their forward striking forces of men and supplies, and they are already short of both.
 

fester

David Flin said:
All true. On a cost/benefit analysis of the operation taken in isolation, it came out better than Dieppe. My point was simply that the biggest potential benefit was the experience and the opportunity to learn the requisite lessons. Sooner or later, it's going to have to be done on a large scale, and no-one knows how that will actually work in practise.
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I agree 100% with you. At some point this needs to scale. So far the Commonwealth has made two major assault landings. The first was a reinforced brigade landing team at Kasos with another brigade immediately behind them. That went reasonably well as the defenders were grossly outnumbered and cut-off from reinforcements. And now this raid by about 1,500 raiders. I think these are two very different types of operations and learning objectives. Kasos has more immediate lessons to be learned for large scale operations and combat loading the phibs. Ras Lanuf the primary lesson is that the landing zone needs to be taken in overwhelming force and isolated from enemy reinforcements. That problem was identified very early on in the planning stages but the objective of the landing was not to hold the city but to sit on Axis supply lines in order to enable other elements of the 8th Army to operate more freely.

Oh yeah, the battle of the coastal road is not done yet. Remember there is a force that is not part of the main maneuver elements that has been mentioned.
 

fester

Butchpfd said:
Imo the New cruisers, would have the updated 1.1's, but the older Brooklyn's, Helena and St.Louis as well as the Pacific fleet Battleships would have the older models. As far as fester has commented only the Houston of the older treaty cruisers has the new 1.1s.
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About half of the post WNT cruisers have at least a pair of quad 1.1 AA mounts. Some of them have 4 quad mounts like Houston, some have none. At least a few cruisers were scheduled to get the quad 1.1s but they are being held off because the Navy thinks it will be getting Bofors soon enough....
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
Cryhavoc101 said:
(snip) In further 'in addition' those Damned British have proven that they can land combat units anywhere on the coast at will in enough strength to require main combat formations to 'oust them' - only to see them rapidly evacuate
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The Italians/Germans now also need to stage additional reserves at points along the coast to protect against future landings. Under-employed forces and supplies
 

sarahz

Driftless said:
I agree in large part on Percival. He was a very capable General, but probably promoted one notch too high for his personality. He was stuck between the rock and the hard place with his assignment in Malaya, and failed bitterly. Under the conditions, maybe only a few would have done better - and Monty, or Alexander were probably two who would have done much better under the same circumstance. With the way this TL has Monty in place, with some good units, and just a bit of time; I'd guess Fester is setting up the Japanese for a far tougher battle; just as they will face in the Philippine's (no MacArthur) and against Wake Island.

Still, I'm curious to see how Fester develops the Monty/Percival situation; as I think there's some parallels in the interaction between Monty/Auchinlek in 1940 (not very good at all...). Another What If: different career paths have Percival as Monty's subordinate. How might that have looked?
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can we please shoot Bennett for treason or at least being a coward in the face of the enemy..please
 

Cryhavoc101

RyderWest said:
Maybe he gets struck by a random artillery round.

Bennett was a damn coward who left his men behind. And wasn't good either.
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While it's easy to criticise the man I am actually appalled that more was not done to 'at minimum' get more commanders and specialist out

This was after all done at Dunkirk so why not here?

And let's remember that everyone in the Commonwealth forces had been dealt a very poor hand here OTL - in extremis by escaping he provided a Divisional and Corps Commander
 

fester

Butchpfd said:
By mid 42 we had much more WAA, on cruisers and the New fast Battleships, were designed with good AS platforms. At Pearl not all cruisers had 4 quad 1.1" mounts, let alone the 6 many later mounted, before conversion to 40 mm bofors. Heavy AA was a mix of 3"/50 cal, 5" /25 cal, and only the Helena and modern destroyers had 5"/38cal. All light close in AS was 4 to 8 .50 cal WC MG per ship. How much air cover would a fleet at sea have, imo the U.S.N. carriers would have had a hard time reaching the battle fleet and putting CAP over it while keeping a CAP over the carriers? The army never trained for providing CAP for a fleet at sea.. only fighters for U.S.N. would be the Marine squadrons at Ewa.
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Take a look back at Threadmark Story 0286
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/keynes-cruisers.388788/page-56#post-14160545

"June 28, 1940 Puget Sound Naval Shipyard

..........

A few hundred feet away, USS Maryland was busily receiving a modest refit. Her sisters who were still in line would receive the full anti-aircraft upgrade. Maryland would only receive five 1.1 quad machine guns to replace the light machine guns. Her five inch guns would be swapped one for one with the dual purpose versions. There would be no gun houses for the single mounts just gun shields. She would be released back to the fleet in two months. Her sisters would follow her into the dock yards over the next nine months.
 

Peg Leg Pom

sarahz said:
can we please shoot Bennett for treason or at least being a coward in the face of the enemy..please
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You can't do that in the Australian Army. So that's one life saved by Breaker Morant. Still he should have found a loaded revolver and a glass of whisky in his billet. That does assume he had enough honour to do the decent thing, so he wouldn't have taken the hint.
 

mudhead

fester said:
November 24, 1941 1623 east of Benghazi

Corallo fired four torpedoes at the string of Royal Navy battleships at point blank range. The first torpedo missed while the next two torpedoes exploded against the side of HMS Valiant.
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That's a more serious loss than Barham, which was lost a day later IOTL. Valiant had a much more comprehensive modernisation - apparently Barham still possessed no radars at the time of her demise. Less casualties, though.
fester said:
They had the pleasure of already destroying thirty seven Italian trucks and capturing a mobile kitchen.
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Italian (and German) field kitchens had the disadvantage for this theatre that they were wood fired. British models were more expensive and complex - but multi-fuel, and valuable prizes for Axis forces.
Butchpfd said:
Not with 21 knot battleships.
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I've read somewhere that none of the old USN BBs could make much more than 19kts by this date, for a variety of reasons, principally the bulging.
 

Cryhavoc101

Peg Leg Pom said:
The Rs were obsolescent the day they commissioned. Too small, too slow and they burned coal.
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My understanding is that they were mixed boilers oil and/or coal - not sure of the details though

Granted a 2nd batch of QEs would have served better but until the post treaty Battleships started appearing from 1940+ they were still a force to be reckoned with.
 

Peg Leg Pom

You're right they did burn both as had all the 13.5" gunned Super Dreadnoughts before the Queen Elizabeth Class. The choice to go back to duel fuel was a victory for the more conservative Admirals an a large mistake.
 

RyderWest

fester said:
Take a look back at Threadmark Story 0286
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/keynes-cruisers.388788/page-56#post-14160545

"June 28, 1940 Puget Sound Naval Shipyard

..........

A few hundred feet away, USS Maryland was busily receiving a modest refit. Her sisters who were still in line would receive the full anti-aircraft upgrade. Maryland would only receive five 1.1 quad machine guns to replace the light machine guns. Her five inch guns would be swapped one for one with the dual purpose versions. There would be no gun houses for the single mounts just gun shields. She would be released back to the fleet in two months. Her sisters would follow her into the dock yards over the next nine months.
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So the Colorado-class battleships would have received the full quad 1.1' cannon upgrades plus the 5"/38 DP guns by now?
 
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