HMS EAGLE in the Falklands
- Thread starter flasheart
- Start date
A lot of Japanese fighter pilots in WWII took the radios out of their planes to save weight.
SsgtC
Banned
Yeah, but in WWII, a aircraft's radio weighed anywhere from 50 to a couple hundred pounds. And considering the weight of WWII era fighters, that's a huge savings (and a corresponding boost in performance). Of course that boost gets negated when American fighters are actually able to coordinate and ambush or force the Japanese plane into a bad situation.
Sure, but they’re a potential opponent (as are Hunters, Sabres and other first generation jets.
One thing to be aware of - an RWR doesn’t just detect RF energy: if it did it would go off all the time from things like radio masts. Instead it is tuned to look for a library of likely threat radars. At the time this library was very small (hardware limitations) and acquiring it was very hard - you had to get an ELINT aircraft near to enemy radars and record them on tape, hoping you got one of the war modes. Argentina both can’t and pre-1981 has no reason to do this to the UK, so even if fitted an RWR would be useless anyway.
Yeah but certain elements wanted the carriers gone and a minor grounding saw her forced into retirement soon after. One of the worst acts of bean counter stupidity in history. Luckily in the TL that was avoided and Eagle's claws get used one last time.
Also as a hero ship would it be possible to keep her as a museum after she finally leaves service?
True, but it's still weird. Their normal perceived future enemy (Chile) would have jets would radars, I think...
They still might, it only just left Indian service and is still intact at this point. There are some efforts to preserve her but no certainly yet.
Hunters, F-5s or Mirage 50. No BVR, AIUI, which really cuts the value of a RWR.
Great thread and long time lurker here.
I don’t recall it being mentioned, but just before the invasion there was a small group of RN ships on their way down to the South Atlantic after being sold to the Chilean Navy, including the County Class HMS Norfolk (Captain Prat to be) and I believe a couple of RFA ships and perhaps one other.
My father was on the Norfolk as part of the skeleton crew at the time.
They were little use to the RN at the time (minimum crew, no armament) though I understand that Pinochet would have been quite happy to loan them out.
What it could mean is that given the demise of the Argentine Navy, the ability of the Chilean Navy to sabre rattle around disputed areas is increased, thus increasing the need to retain Argentine forces in being as it were.
Might be too late for the timeline now though.
Thanks for the timeline. Really interesting!
I don’t recall it being mentioned, but just before the invasion there was a small group of RN ships on their way down to the South Atlantic after being sold to the Chilean Navy, including the County Class HMS Norfolk (Captain Prat to be) and I believe a couple of RFA ships and perhaps one other.
My father was on the Norfolk as part of the skeleton crew at the time.
They were little use to the RN at the time (minimum crew, no armament) though I understand that Pinochet would have been quite happy to loan them out.
What it could mean is that given the demise of the Argentine Navy, the ability of the Chilean Navy to sabre rattle around disputed areas is increased, thus increasing the need to retain Argentine forces in being as it were.
Might be too late for the timeline now though.
Thanks for the timeline. Really interesting!
I've never conected these dots, that's a nice one! Do you know what the other ships were?
If they were unarmed, then they would be of no use in the near future, I think...
Nick P
Donor
From looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_decommissioned_ships_of_the_Chilean_Navy I can only see these two:
HMS Norfolk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Norfolk_(D21)
RFA Tidepool (which we borrowed back for a while) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFA_Tidepool_(A76)
Maybe the French landing ship Maipo was in the same convoy?
The Chilean Navy certainly bought a lot of ex-Royal Navy ships over the years!
Well it is why those extra counties were built. Getting a bit behind but kept the yards open before the type 82/42 and yet good enough to flog off once next gen destroyers came on line.
That's just it, they were still committed to individual dog fighting tactics which don't work against an enemy that figures out how to fight as a team.
SsgtC
Banned
Yup, pretty much. Which is why in the end it didn't matter. Because the Americans fought as a team, while the Japanese tended to fight individually.
Didn’t the RN pit Late Model Spitfires against Phantoms in order to work out how to deal with P51s both in the Guatemala airforce and the Indonesian airforce as late as the 70s?
I believe they did and figured Heatseekers might not work effectively against them.