I'd argue that by the Hunley's third and final mission (the time it actually managed to sink that US sloop) the crew must have known they were signing up for a suicide mission. After all by that point the Hunley had killed two entire crews.
Warships that should never been built?
- Thread starter Admiral Bloonbeard
- Start date
I'd argue that by the Hunley's third and final mission (the time it actually managed to sink that US sloop) the crew must have known they were signing up for a suicide mission. After all by that point the Hunley had killed two entire crews.
McPherson
Banned
Kamikazes were not invented by the Japanese. We've seen berserkers, janissaries, personal bodyguards (Caesars own Dacians, the original frogmen from classical times.), Blue painted Britons, the crazed Hunter Cushing, USN. the crazed nutjobs, who tried to use the collier Merrimac as a blockship at Santiago de Cuba, any number of Italian 10th Flotilla men, the tars who rammed the drydock at Brest in a ship loaded to the gunwales with high explosives, and those Japanese pilots cheerfully take on the role of suicide volunteers. What is a Confederate whackjob here or there, more or less?
Well, I do think kamikazes are a distinct phenomena from any of those. Plenty of history of men willing to fight at heavy odds or even one-way it in desperate situations; but an entire culture built supporting a systematic strategy of suicide attacks on a large scale was something harder to find precedents for. Which is why it all came as such a shock to American naval officers.
McPherson
Banned
I will just say that this was not even suggested as viable IJN policy until after the Battle of the Philippine Sea demonstrated to the IJNAS and to the IJN admiralty that their conventionally trained pilots no longer could compete in the environment the USNAS had established. And the Americans did ask the Japanese why they would resort to kamikaze tactics.
The Japanese officer, who answered the interrogator, retorted something to the effect; "Our pilots were being massacred with nothing to show for their suicidal sacrifice in attempting to deliver a bomb or torpedo. Diving into a ship with the whole plane was easier for us to train and do, and entailed no practical difference to our pilots as far as they were concerned. They were going to die anyway. They might as well take some of you with them!"
Prettying it up with Bushido and religious mummery was to assuage the consciences of the men and the families who sent those youngsters off to die. The pilots, themselves, had no illusions. Japanese obligation and sense of duty probably helped the young men through it, but they did not naturally want to die more than the American men who flew the torpedo planes at Midway did. They did it as an act of effective desperation.
Steel, well its only about 30% difference between the 1st Sub-Group of the Flowers and 1939 Flowers. The Improved Flowers got heavier as well.
On the time thing, HMS Gladiolus, the lead ship of the Flower Class Corvettes, took 5 1/2 months from laying down to commissioning. HMS Laburnum, of the Acacia Sub-Group of the Flower Class Sloops, and to be honest the only one I could find a construction time for, was 6 months from laying down to commissioning. So not a big issue.
Money, well the WW1 Flowers have a smaller designed crew than the 1939 Flowers. And to be honest the 1939 Flowers were a false economy, being too small and lacking in capability.
Propulsion, the 1939 Flowers were too slow. With a top speed actually slower than a surfaced U-Boat. They were unable to pursue and engage Boats making surface attacks at night. After making an attack on a submerged Boat they often had trouble catching up with a convoy.
(One of the reasons that Compass Rose is lost in The Cruel Sea was that it was lagging behind.)
But then we would have to ask why nations also facing total defeat in the same era did not engage in the same kind of widespread, systematic use of suicide attacks as Imperial Japan did in 1944-45. We don't see it with the Poles in 1939, the French, Dutch, Belgians or Norwegians in 1940, the Italians in 1943, or the Germans in 1944-45.
(We can find isolated episodes in Nazi Germany's final months of what appear to be suicide attacks, but again, they're nothing like the scale or organization we see with Japan.)
I would argue that desperation may be a necessary . . . but not a sufficient explanation.
McPherson
Banned
1. 30% or 20% over a run of 339 units @ 300 tonnes of steel per unit difference = 101, 000 tonnes or 3 aircraft carriers not built or 50,000 trucks or 5 armored divisions not constituted or 1000 assorted landing craft not built.
2. Lead unit always takes the longest. What was the average time per unit?
3. Economy in war is measured in LIVES. What does not get built to shorten the war?
4. Can't pour too many watts through a hull or you increase instability and drag. A knot is not that critical at natural speed. Besides the Flower was supposed to be there to escort. A kill is nice but a U-boat driven off is just as good. .Perfect, but never there, is the enemy of good enough present for duty.
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McPherson
Banned
All I can give you is what the records suggest. We have Chinese soldiers in Korea, we have the soldiers on both sides in the Western Front of WW I. We have Union infantry at Fredericksburg, the aforementioned torpedo plane pilots at Midway and the British commandoes at Brest, the Italians on at least a dozen suicidal attacks on harbors in mini-subs, in the Med in WW II, the German U-boat men who knew they put to sea doomed after 1943, American naval suicide missions in the Spanish American War, and in the American civil war, we even have David Bushnell's Turtle in the American Revolution being sent against the British fleet in what Sergeant Ezra Lee plainly knew was a suicide mission.
YMMV may vary. Human beings are human beings. I think the Japanese conform to the norm, not deviate from it.
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McPherson
Banned
I agree. The culture matters. It is the nature of the culture that the outsider might not understand. This is going off topic. Should we open a new thread for it?
To keep it on topic....
(^^^) "I" is a destroyer. No really...
Uhm...yeah. The only thing missing is a ski-ramp.
I think, sadly, that HMS Vanguard (1946) comes into this category. Not because she was a bad warship but was finished too late to be of use. The material should have been used to complete an Audacious class carrier. Or even just hurry through the Implacables. The manpower used to crew and maintain it was also a drain post war.
I'm going to get lynched for this but the decision (1950?) to complete Ark Royal after it had lain on the slip way for five years was on balance a mistake IMHO. Not as much as the conversion of Victorious or building the Lion class cruisers; but still one that precluded building the larger 1952 carriers needed to give the RN a viable strike carrier into the 1980s.
Going back to warships that were just bad, and even deathtraps,... How about the Indefatigable and its sisters Australia and New Zealand? The latter pair at least should have been Splendid Cats given when they were ordered. Or maybe a slightly smaller version with 12" guns but similar armour.
I'm going to get lynched for this but the decision (1950?) to complete Ark Royal after it had lain on the slip way for five years was on balance a mistake IMHO. Not as much as the conversion of Victorious or building the Lion class cruisers; but still one that precluded building the larger 1952 carriers needed to give the RN a viable strike carrier into the 1980s.
Going back to warships that were just bad, and even deathtraps,... How about the Indefatigable and its sisters Australia and New Zealand? The latter pair at least should have been Splendid Cats given when they were ordered. Or maybe a slightly smaller version with 12" guns but similar armour.
That is a perspective. From my POV Vanguard was a good idea because of naval bombardment and convoy escort. Plus the national prestige.
The real dream would be to trade it for a Malta. That could have been highly useful all the way to the 1980's.
To some degree, this concern sadly applies to all battleships on the slipways during WW2, to varying degrees. I suppose I would say that if I'm making out my list of top 20 offenders (post-1906) on this list, Vanguard isn't really problematic enough to get on it. Maybe because I grade the "good ship but questionable use of resources"candidates on a curve, especially if the power that built them won the war anyway.
Not sure she counts, its being modified to take F-35b so shouldn't be any less capable than any other light....whatever in a couple of years.I agree. The culture matters. It is the nature of the culture that the outsider might not understand. This is going off topic. Should we open a new thread for it?
To keep it on topic....
(^^^) "I" is a destroyer. No really...
Uhm...yeah. The only thing missing is a ski-ramp.
Was it him or some other mad Frenchman that built a floating castle to try and sail over the Channel to invade Britain? I have a vague recollection of something about that from a Horrible Histories book from about twenty years ago that mentioned it.
IIRC Compass Rose was detached because she had put in at Reykjavik and was catching up when she was torpedoed
Not because she was too slow
Not defending the class - it was an expedient design - not a patch on the later Frigates but only 4 odd knots slower than a River Class (20 knots)
Her sinking is a harrowing chapter in that book - more so than the film
To be fair the Flower class weren't intended to serve as long range escorts, but as escorts for coastal convoys.
The Flower class was only meant to be a coastal and local escort. They were not meant to do long range mid ocean escort. They had to be used for that because there was nothing else available. As far as larger crew I suspect that the WWI ships did not have the ASDIC or Radar or HF/DF or AA guns that were fitted in most WWII escorts.