there might be plans somewhere but those take time and there is an urgent need for aircraft ferries
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The ivory one would be a engraved Colt M1873 Single Action Army Peacemaker revolver, six round capacity of .45 Colt revolver ammo. Single action only and reloaded with a loading gate and individual cartridges.
Pearl one would be the Smith & Wesson Model 27 Registered Magnum, nickel plated with pearl grips, six round capacity of .357 Magnum. DA/SA and can be loaded with a speedloader due to the opened cylinder.
Both guns have his initials stamped on the grips.
I have always wondered if the supports and decking stuck away somewhere on Mare Island Navy Yard. Would be s lively discovery..lock all the assorted weapons found in the Pacific Flet.
The waters south of Ireland were thick with U-boats leaving or returning to the German bases in western France. They mostly stayed submerged by day, but ran surfaced at night (15 hours at this date and latitude), or to the west and south, or in cloudy or foggy conditions (which are common in North Atlantic winters). In 1942, the RAF had no airborne search radar to locate U-boats, and lacked enough VLR patrol aircraft to "blanket" the whole area.
And there would be many U-boats in the bases, either just returned from patrol or working up to go out. The Germans would detect the attacking fleet days before it was in attack range.
Thus it would be quite possible for the Germans to move U-boats in front of an advancing Allied task group; even to assemble a "wolfpack" for a mass attack.
???
Where to start
ASV was in use from late 1940, late 1941 would be improved ASV Mk II
Who needs VLR aircraft a couple of hundred miles from the UK coast
The fleet would not even be at sea for many days, Germans historically were not good at detecting the Home fleet , probably something to do with the oceans being vast and pesky CAP being rather lethal to Condors.
OTL Germans were able to intercept convoys but liners were just too fast , guess what, carriers would be doing 25kts
Wolfpack tactics only work when the subs are faster than the ships , see above
Quite. U-boats do not make good recon platforms as you can't see very far from one. Plus the carriers wouldn't be near Ireland anyway, they'd be attacking from the southwest.
A couple of problems one American carriers did not have enough fighters to both protect the fleet and escort the the attack planes another thing is that the machine guns in the fighters jammed in many cases. The anti-aircraft gunners needed more training. Most of these flaws were not realized until the carrier raids in the Pacific Ocean in February 1942.
Also Coastal command had already won that part of the battle around the British Isles forcing the U-boats to operate where Coastal Command was not able to operate (ie Black Gap) as well as improving escort tactics and increasing numbers of escorts - so it's unlikely that U Boats are going to be operating in the area that close to the UK if they can help it.
Story 0953
December 13, 1941 West of Moscow
The 90th Division had entered combat for the first time that morning. A Soviet cavalry corps was probing forward. The first patrols recoiled as well supplied and warm German infantry outposts machine gunned the Cossacks who had crested a small ridge line that was no more than two men tall.
Along the division’s front, sharp, short actions started and then ended as patrols ran into outposts and scouts battled enemy scouts. Artillery was occasionally called for and seldom released as the infantry regiments with their own assets were able to hold the line so far.
Further west, remnants of German battle groups were congealing and reforming. The Luftwaffe had started to airlift critical supplies including winter clothing, ammunition and fatty food forward. 184 transports had been released from Luftflotte 4 the day before. The trickle of supplies were insufficient for sustained offensive combat but they gave the battered front line units enough to continue to fight and function. The meteorologists were not optimistic about the air supply operations continuing for long as the weather was incredibly cold but every little bit helped.
Ramp-Rat
Monthly Donor
There are going to be few U-Boats, in and around the Brest area, other than close inshore with an escort. These will be, boats proceeding out to their patrol areas, and boats returning from patrol, plus any carrying out tests, very close to shore, after maintenance. There is no reason for U-Boats to be in the area, there are not any targets for them, the targets are much further out to sea. Even the conveys, coming up from Gibraltar, will be much further out from the French shore, to be beyond escorted air attack range. Ships heading for the south coast ports, Falmouth and Southhampton, would split off out at sea, and pick up a costal escort, if that is ocean ships were docking in Southhampton at this time. Ships for the east cost ports and PoL, went up and over.
Even if by chance a U-Boat, observers the carrier group, British or American, and that isn't going to be easy to do. Best chance is to hear them while underwater, and proceeding on batteries, not while crashing through the waves on the surface on main engines. No way are they going to get close enough to actually see, what's what, not in the short daylight hours, and problematic at night, this is a high speed navel group, not a slow plodding merchant convoy. And sends a sighting message, what does it say, and what do the command ashore make of it. Note at least the British will know that a signal has been sent, good chance from where, and even if they can not decode the sighting signal, they should be able to decode the reply. It's going to take luck for the Germans to put everything together, and be prepared for an attack on the twins in Brest. There are lots of reasons why there should be a major navel group in the area, and it would take time, to work out which. Based on a single sighting report, that is singularly lacking in details. First thing command is going to want, is more information, information that is going to be hard to get.
Yes in retrospect, it will all come together, various reports from numerous sources, will with the benefit of hindsight, tell the tale. But that's for the Germans to do after the attack, as they try to find scapegoats for the disaster.
RR.
Even if by chance a U-Boat, observers the carrier group, British or American, and that isn't going to be easy to do. Best chance is to hear them while underwater, and proceeding on batteries, not while crashing through the waves on the surface on main engines. No way are they going to get close enough to actually see, what's what, not in the short daylight hours, and problematic at night, this is a high speed navel group, not a slow plodding merchant convoy. And sends a sighting message, what does it say, and what do the command ashore make of it. Note at least the British will know that a signal has been sent, good chance from where, and even if they can not decode the sighting signal, they should be able to decode the reply. It's going to take luck for the Germans to put everything together, and be prepared for an attack on the twins in Brest. There are lots of reasons why there should be a major navel group in the area, and it would take time, to work out which. Based on a single sighting report, that is singularly lacking in details. First thing command is going to want, is more information, information that is going to be hard to get.
Yes in retrospect, it will all come together, various reports from numerous sources, will with the benefit of hindsight, tell the tale. But that's for the Germans to do after the attack, as they try to find scapegoats for the disaster.
RR.
I seem to recall reading about USN training for night dive bombing attacks. HOWEVER, memory is a frail and unreliable medium,(it is possible I'm confusing this with the RN) so I'm going to state that they did before this time. I've been gathering scattered references to night attacks by DB, from various countries. I can see that it is possible, however I cannot state with any certainty that the USN actually practiced it before 1942. If anyone has a good reference on this, by all means give it, please.
ASV I was nearly useless; ASV II was modestly useful, but the first successful night attack with ASV II was not until 21 December 1941, and there were very few more. Until the H2S centimetric radar became available in 1943, Coastal Command was largely blind at night.
Anyone who wants patrolling aircraft to remain on station more than a few minutes.
It will take several days for the strike force to assemble and move in. If the carriers are running CAP, then they are generating radio traffic that will be picked up by B-Dienst.
OTL Germans were able to intercept convoys but liners were just too fast , guess what, carriers would be doing 25kts[/QUOTE]
If the fleet is moving at 25 kts, then the escorting destroyers aren't doing any sonar or hydrophone searches; WW II sonars wouldn't function at that speed. Which puts the task force at serious risk of running over a U-boat with diastrous results.
Wolfpack tactics only work when the subs are faster than the ships , see above[/QUOTE]
If the fleet is moving at 25 kts, then the escorting destroyers aren't doing any sonar or hydrophone searches; WW II sonars wouldn't function at that speed. Which puts the task force at serious risk of running over a U-boat with diastrous results. (4)
Wolfpack tactics only work when the subs are faster than the ships , see above[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
1) ASW aircraft sinking subs is a big bonus , detecting them and giving warning plus causing them to dive is all that's needed.
2) Looking at range of Wellington,Whitley, Hampden all 1500 miles+ with light bomb load, that is long enough on station that crew fatigue is more limiting.
3) Normal practice would be radio silent, this was the same for all navies with messages sent to the fleet by being sent nominally to other stations with the fleet listening in as an unlisted recipient. Even if a stray signal is detected then the fleet would be assumed to be going to the Med and not attacking Brest.
4) Forgetting the planes sweeping ahead and destroyers ahead of the line of advance sanitizing the route ? Not all escorts will be close and some units doing sweeps/patrols will have routes modified to be of use. The number of radars mean a surfaced sub will be detected by the fleet at night before it can see the fleet. Chances of a submerged sub being just in the right spot, at the right time and being missed are in the slim to none range ( nearly the same odds as a drifting mine which is what the sub is reduced to being ).
All that also misses the point that the area that the fleet will be in is not near convoy routes and the u boats have already been forced deeper into the Atlantic. So assuming the fleet is only closing to 150 miles, then the chances of a boat being in the area is very low.
As for air attack , as others have noted , its December 1941 , its the second team with the first team and a lot of the reserves busy in Russia. Add in that the Germans saw the Med as a higher priority than France and most of the bombers tasked to night attacks on the UK, then the air threat is reduced to acceptable limits with a good chance of only a series of small unescorted attempts.
NOTE: this is still incomplete. I am posting it again to save the draft against glitches.
Which means no air ops. Period.
How long is "the route"? About 1,000 km. And about 50 km wide. So, how many destroyers, frigates, and corvettes would it take to "sanitize" 50,000 sq km? This "advance guard" of 40-60 escorts would have to be deployed along the route beforehand, which just might be a dead giveaway of the Allied plan. Then again, the Allies didn't have 40-60 escorts to spare, so fuggedaboudit.
Maybe... A surfaced submarine has a low profile. In any case, a radar contact is not very much. It could be a U-boat, or a decoy balloon, or a Spanish trawler. One wouldn't detach screen destroyers to close on every radar ghost.
Incidentally, there were lots of Spanish (and Portuguese, and even Irish) vessels in that sea area; it's not like the North Pacific. So the chance of such a force passing unnoticed would be... 50%? Not bad, but hardly good enough for a major operation involving critical and irreplaceable assets.
So what really happened to Courageous, Ark Royal, Saratoga, Audacity, Eagle, Wasp, and Block Island? Officially they were torpedoed by submarines, but you've shown that would have been impossible.
Point taken, but if crew fatigue was a hard limit, then VLR aircraft would not have been any use. IIRC from Dan Gallery's memoirs, his PBYs in Iceland routinely flew 12-14 hour missions. In any case at this time Coastal Command did not have enough LR or VLR aircraft to blanket that area (while also patrolling the Irish Sea and the Western Approaches) until 1943. The German U-boat bases were in western France. Throughout 1941 and 1942, hundreds of U-boats transited the sea area west and south of Brest, on their way to and from patrol areas in the broad Atlantic. Only a few were sunk there - just 4 in all of 1942.
Which means no air ops. Period.
See above.
????
How long is "the route"? About 1,000 km. And about 50 km wide. So, how many destroyers, frigates, and corvettes would it take to "sanitize" 50,000 sq km? This "advance guard" of 40-60 escorts would have to be deployed along the route beforehand, which just might be a dead giveaway of the Allied plan. Then again, the Allies didn't have 40-60 escorts to spare, so fuggedaboudit.
Maybe... A surfaced submarine has a low profile. In any case, a radar contact is not very much. It could be a U-boat, or a decoy balloon, or a Spanish trawler. One wouldn't detach screen destroyers to close on every radar ghost.
Incidentally, there were lots of Spanish (and Portuguese, and even Irish) vessels in that sea area; it's not like the North Pacific. So the chance of such a force passing unnoticed would be... 50%? Not bad, but hardly good enough for a major operation involving critical and irreplaceable assets.
So what really happened to Courageous, Ark Royal, Saratoga, Audacity, Eagle, Wasp, and Block Island? Officially they were torpedoed by submarines, but you've shown that would have been impossible.
[/QUOTE]
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Why could they not run without radios, yes this means they must stick to an pre agreed plan with no ability to change or react but as long as they don't make contact with the enemy prior to the surprise strike this should be fine any radio signal would simply be a we have been found warning and that would require an abort due to the alerted defenders anyway?
Did the strikes on PH or Taranto use radios prior to arriving at the target?
Story 0954
December 13, 1941 near Jitra
The last company from the Thai raiding force had returned to the almost complete defensive positions just outside of Jitra. The brigade that had entered Thailand on the morning of the 8th had returned intact and in reasonably good order. There mission was not to stop the Japanese, it was to delay them by blowing up as much infrastructure while forcing Japanese advance guards to deploy and conduct deliberate attacks.
The III Indian Corps was now ready. The experienced 5th Division had two brigades on line with the last brigade in the corps reserve. The 11th Indian Division also had two brigades on line with the third brigade in close echelon to the forward units. That deployment was not particularly creative but the frontage was narrow enough where firepower and availability most likely would beat creativity.
Heavy rains over the past few weeks had rendered the task of digging in at Jitra painful and inefficient. Trenches were deep enough to offer good protection against shell fire but the water table was highh enough that most feet would be soaked through within minutes of standing in the bottom of the trenches. The experienced men of the 5th had been the more effective scroungers and had built wooden firing steps and otherwise sought to make their defenses more effective and more comfortable. Telephone and telegraph wires were strung all over the battlefield. The artillery lines were more likely to be encased in piping to offer some protection but more than a few wires were shorting out every hour due to seepage. This was not the ideal position but it was strong enough.
Two Japanese divisions with a regiment of tanks were coming down the trunk road. Scouting parties had been tracking the Japanese advance for the past three days. They were advancing with scouts out in front and out wide to avoid ambushes and surprises. As the Japanese advanced down the trunk road, the first heavy artillery batteries consisting of the corps reserve 6 inch guns started to fire high explosive and shrapnel harassment missions against the road. This was still grid square targeted and not observed fire, but it was enough to remind the experienced Japanese soldiers that they were no longer fighting lightly armed Chinese infantry any more.
By mid-afternoon, the Japanese artillery had been brought up and two waves of light bombers had attacked the Indian lines. A regiment of infantry was seen disappearing into the forest east of the trunk road while most of two divisions began to push forward, probing for weak points in the four brigades that blocked the road south into the heart of Malaya.
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Story 0955
December 14, 1941 Wake Island
The last Catalina departed for Midway carrying five stretcher patients. The seaplane base was still operational, but it was not safe to only operate three amphibians when there were only seven fighters available to provide cover for the entire island. The Japanese had accelerated their air raids after the first invasion attempt had been beaten off. The last raid had been successful in damaging an anti-aircraft battery and destroying another Dauntless on the ground. The striking force for the island was now down to four dive bombers.
Thirty miles off shore, one of those dive bombers was conducting an anti-submarine and anti-invasion patrol. Those two tasks were in direct opposition to each other but the lack of aircraft made the pilot attempt the impossible. The single 500 pound bomb slung underneath the belly of the bomber was a significant weapon. The pilot saw a submarine in a zone where he was told that no American submarines would be operating. It was on the surface, evidently charging batteries in the early morning light. His gunner sent in a sighting report and received an acknowledgement even as the bomber edged over into a glide bombing attack. As the plane passed 2,000 feet, the submarine started to dive underneath the waves. It was a race to see who could go as low as they wished to first.
The bomber won the race. The heavy steel egg was dropped and fell forward. The pilot squeezed the trigger and the bomber’s light machine gun armament fired. Most of the bullets just made the water foam but some hit the steel hull of the submarine and made the men inside clench their bowels as they heard the pings and dings of hits and near misses.
The bomb missed, but just barely. It entered the water 15 yards from the submarine’s sail and exploded eleven feet under water. The bomb was now acting as a depth charge and it crippled the submarine as its hull plates were bent and flooding started in two compartments. She was not yet sunk but as the pilot pulled out, he called for the other dive bombers to help him finish her off. The anti-aircraft gun on the submarine was manned as she had to stay on the surface until at least temporary repairs could be made and she could make it back to the Marshalls.
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