0600 Hours, 27 November 1942, Chittagong, India – Another 16 merchant ships were departing for Trincomalee escorted by the destroyers HMS Duncan and USS John D. Edwards, and the cruisers HMS Capetown and HNLMS Sumatra. The destroyers HMS Laforey and HMS Lightning and the older cruisers HMS Frobisher and HMS Hawkins were remaining behind to serve as a local patrol task force. Four damaged merchant ships were still getting repaired in Chittagong and would depart along the coast later. The Japanese were making their presence felt. In addition to the air attack from three days earlier, during the previous night a Japanese submarine (I-15) had managed to sneak past the patrolling destroyers and sink the freighters SS Severn River and MV Belfast Short and then to add insult to injury, it surfaced within sight of Akyab and lobbed a few shells at the airfield before sneaking away. Fortunately, there was no serious damage done to the facilities at Akyab but the attack demonstrated that now Japanese submarines were in the area.
April 1942 Alternate Indian Ocean
- Thread starter Zheng He
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0800 Hours, 27 November 1942, Norfolk, Virginia – Task Force 22 of the US Navy, the aircraft carrier USS Ranger, the battleship USS Alabama, the heavy USS Augusta, the light cruisers USS Brooklyn and USS Cleveland, and 10 destroyers departed Norfolk Naval Base bound for Scapa Flow. As soon as they were clear of the capes and in open ocean flight operations commenced with Ranger recovering 36 F4F-4 Wildcat fighters, 32 SDB-3 Dauntless dive bombers, and four TBF-1 Avenger torpedo bombers. As soon as Ranger’s air group was safely onboard the ships turned north for Casco Bay, Maine where they would replenish, swap out destroyer escorts and then head for duty with the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet. That evening, the aircrews were gathered in their ready rooms and were briefed on a special mission by their intelligence officers and the Fleet Air Arm pilots who had come aboard earlier that week. The mission was a night strike with the Royal Navy carriers HMS Formidable and HMS Victorious against the German battleship Tirpitz undergoing repairs in fjord near Trondheim. The aircrews were told point blank that they were not discuss the mission with any of their shipmates.
If the manage to sink Tirpitz then it should allow more ships to be transferred to the Indian Ocean in 1943.
I have a WW II "boy's book of US planes". In the article on P-47s, there is discussion of attacks on German railroad trains, the target being the locomotive. One pilot was credited with so many destroyed, so many "steam spewers" (boiler riddled with bullets), and "one enemy tree branch" caught in IIRC the engine cowling.
Errolwi
Monthly Donor
They're going to dive bomb at night with how much training? In a fjord? Going for the battleship, or suppressing the flak?
Dam Busters (the book) talked about Lancasters coming back with branches in the intakes. How you turned with that wingspan at that level is beyond me.
Back when I was in the cadets one of the staff was ex-bomber command late in the war a Navigator in Lancaster's and then Sunderlands I think during the airlift. His second mission was Berlin and recalls seeing another Lanc limping back to base at no more than 20 feet off the ground with most of the tail shot to pieces. Flying a fully functional aircraft low is dangerous enough, but one which is missing half a vertical stabilizer is something else.
There will be training beforehand, both during the transit and after they arrive. Also, ITTL before PEDESTAL, Ranger's air group conducted night training with Victorious and Formidable and then during the operation all three carriers launched night strikes against Italian ships at Sardinia and Sicily. Also, USN CAGs were better trained for night operations than is generally realized. At Midway on 5 June after the failed attack on a well handled Japanese destroyer (Tanikaze), Enterprise and Hornet recovered over 50 dive bombers at night with the loss of only a single aircraft.
I assume the target area will be illuminated by flares, and the Tirpitz is literally a sitting duck. Of course there is a lot of flak in the area, and the approach to the dive and the recovery is probably limited by the terrain - fly up the length of the fjord, do the attack and then out towards inland before gonig for home or the reverse. A certain number of dive bombers, US or UK may end up impacting cliffs.
TBM's and TBF's can also carry bombs although i highly doubt they would be used in this manner, especially when SBD's are available.
Barry Bull
Donor
I find it curious that the RN and USN find it crucial to proceed with this operation. Couldn't Tirpitz be isolated by land-based airpower and/or submarines? Why precious carriers are used to naturalise Tirpitz?
Because the Admiralty is quite paranoid of Tirpitz breaking out into the Atlantic.
Neutralize Tirpitz and the RN will free up a lot of ships for other theaters.
Home fleet could counter the remaining German surface ships with a second rate BB, a CVE or two, and whatever capital ships were working up/refitting at the Home Islands.
Neutralize Tirpitz and the RN will free up a lot of ships for other theaters.
Home fleet could counter the remaining German surface ships with a second rate BB, a CVE or two, and whatever capital ships were working up/refitting at the Home Islands.
Going back to the Buccaneers. The book Red Flag cites two occurrences of extra low flying. In one a Buccaneer lost its radar dome when it struck a power line. The Buccaneer was climbing at the time, the power line was 42 feet above ground level. In the second a Buccaneer lost some paint from one wing tip that was dragged across the desert during a turn.
There were several Bomber Command raids against Tirpitz in 1942 and all were miserable failures.
For those of you who have been reading this TL from the start, you know I like to model major combat operations off of real events from OTL. One guess as to what real world operation this will be based on. Hint, it was named after a rather heavy, rare, and valuable metal.
WRT dive bombers instead of torpedo bombers. In addition to the geography of the fjord, the ship was surrounded by heavy anti-torpedo nets at this time.
There was a discussion on it on PPRUNE a few years ago. One of the posters was a US Marine who was doing a FOD walkdown when the Buccs hit. According to the umpire the RN killed the airfield, the maintenance facility and every high value target on the field in single high speed laydown attack and would have shut it for 72 hours, he recalled ducking when one Bucc over flew them.
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