Question on Naval Vessels on Patrol/Convoy Escort Mission during WW2

CalBear

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So that explains why Tirpitz was so hard to sink then, wasn't it something like 10 attempts by the British to sink it.
The Tirpitz was hard to sink because of where it was, not due to any superiority in design. The British did obsess over her, but as was demonstrated by her sister ship the design was far from invulnerable.
 
The Tirpitz was hard to sink because of where it was, not due to any superiority in design. The British did obsess over her, but as was demonstrated by her sister ship the design was far from invulnerable.

Her sister as in the Bismark?

The Tirpitz was up in the arctic/Norway wasn't it?
 
Her sister as in the Bismark?

The Tirpitz was up in the arctic/Norway wasn't it?

The Tirpitz was of the Bismarck-class.

Anyway like the Italian the German mostly kept their big ships in port as a threat rather than use them against a superior navy like the RN.

Tirpitz design was quite good, like all german ships robust and well balanced. Insteresting thing about it was that it was given a torpedo array in 1942. Simply because it lacked escort ships that carried torpedos themselves. Originally it was part of a squadron consisting of 5 cruisers and even more destroyers. They were a decent sized force in the Baltic sea, heavily outnumbering the Soviet fleet.
 
They were a decent sized force in the Baltic sea, heavily outnumbering the Soviet fleet.

There is another thing you don't hear much about, the Soviet navy during world war two, I know there was some stuff they did in the Baltic and Black sea, but you don't hear them discussed much outside of using sailors to hold Sevastopol.
 

CalBear

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Her sister as in the Bismark?

The Tirpitz was up in the arctic/Norway wasn't it?

Norway. She was in a fjord, making air attack very difficult with torpedo attack virtually impossible.
There is another thing you don't hear much about, the Soviet navy during world war two, I know there was some stuff they did in the Baltic and Black sea, but you don't hear them discussed much outside of using sailors to hold Sevastopol.

The Marat, a pre-WW I dreadnought, was an active part of the defense of Leningrad as a fixed battery (even AFTER being sunk at her moorings, the upper works of the ship were above the waterline when the ship settled on the bottom), with other sips of the Baltic Fleet performing similar functions.

Soviet subs did some damage (in fact the single greatest loss of life at sea was the result of the Soviet sub S-13 sinking the MV Wilheim Gustoff during the evacuation of Eastern Prussia; deaths are estimated to be in the range of 9,400), but the USSR, like Russia today, have very limited access to the sea.
 
Soviet subs did some damage

How were soviet torpedoes compared to others during the war? I heard the Japanese had some of with a rather long range and decent speed (also something about the Japanese could reload torpedo tubes without needing to go to port).
 
There is another thing you don't hear much about, the Soviet navy during world war two, I know there was some stuff they did in the Baltic and Black sea, but you don't hear them discussed much outside of using sailors to hold Sevastopol.

mostly subs and destroyers, but most of the subs were sunk by mines all over the Baltic. The suface ships were stuck when Barbarossa began, mines blocked their paths.
 

CalBear

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How were soviet torpedoes compared to others during the war? I heard the Japanese had some of with a rather long range and decent speed (also something about the Japanese could reload torpedo tubes without needing to go to port).
The Soviets used versions of a couple Italian designs (the Italians exported the weapon to a number of countries) that they, well stole/reverse engineered. The designs were less sophisticated than those used by the other big players, but they generally ran hot, straight, and normal, which all you really need. The Soviets also used 450mm (17.7") designs from surface ships and submarines much more than any other major power.

The Japanese Type 93 torpedo (the one used on surface ships) had considerable more than decent speed. It was, in many ways, the best surface ship torpedo of the war. At 16,000 yards it made 50 knots, it could be fired from as far as 42,000 yard at 38 knots (not that it had anything more than a gnat's eyelash of a chance of hitting something from that range) with a 1,700 pound warhead. By Comparison the U.S. Mark 15 could manage 42 knots at 6,000 yards and capped out at 15K yards at 26.5 knots with a 823 pound warhead, and German G7a T1 with a max of 44 knots @ 6,500 yards and a max range of 15,000 yards at 30 knots with a 600 pound warhead. The IJN also carried reloads on some of its destroyers. The downside of the weapon, and it is major one, is that it was oxygen powered and remarkable vulnerable to detonation if hit by a shell splinter or even a machine gun bullet. There were a couple cases of warships being sunk, most famously the heavy cruiser Chokai which was hit by a single 5" shell from the CVE Long Island during the Battle of Samar that resulted in the detonation of a torpedo, which started a chain reaction that crippled the ship, with the result of her being scuttled the next day. There are also documented cases of IJN commanders jettisoning their torpedoes when confronted by air attack (one well known example being the CA Chikuma at the Battle of Santa Cruz Island)
 
So that explains why Tirpitz was so hard to sink then, wasn't it something like 10 attempts by the British to sink it.

Not exactly. The German battleships were designed with different considerations in mind, and one consequence of this was that they were "hard" to sink. But really Calbear has it right - Tirpitz was hard to sink because she didn't come out to play.

The German battleship designs were different to British ones because Germany was a prisoner of geography. A British battleship could refuel at multiple bases around the North Atlantic; if damaged in a battle it was likely to be in friendly waters and hence would have a good chance of getting home. In contrast, German battleships had a small corner of the North Sea to call home; any raiding mission would require them to first break through the North Sea and then steam thousands of miles out into the Atlantic. To achieve this, they needed long range, which means space for fuel and a larger, heavier ship. The second problem was more severe - to be able to make it home, they had to be very resistant to crippling damage that would prevent them from getting home under their power. This was a particular problem in the pre-radar days of the 1930s because, given typical North Sea conditions, there was every chance of blundering into a British cruiser at close range and being crippled by gunfire or torpedoes, leaving themselves vulnerable to being cornered and killed by overwhelming firepower.

Germany addressed this in three ways. First, via fine internal subdivision and a broad beam, which cost extra weight again and meant for a larger ship. Second - high speed, which again costs extra weight. The third was an older armour scheme quite different to the ones of modern British and American battleships, one that was specifically designed to defeat close-range gunfire - as received in North Sea murk - via a layered system that essentially accepted devastating damage inside the hull but was quite effective at keeping the engine/boiler rooms intact. The British had moved away from this type of armour scheme because, AIUI, the increasingly powerful shell burster charges meant that they thought it preferable to keep damage outside the hull completely, hence the very thick external armour of the KGVs. The practical result of this was battleships of similar firepower to the British ones, but considerably larger and heavier and hence more resilient. This would have been a problem under the naval treaty system, so Germany just ignored it.

It is therefore ironic that:

a) the lack of German Atlantic bases was solved by occupying Norway and France
b) radar meant that the chance of blundering into a hostile vessel at close range could be reduced, and
c) all the effort that Germany put into designing a battleship resistant to crippling damaged was undone by a single crippling torpedo hit on Bismarck. They'd identified the threat correctly, designed a ship in response, and saw all their efforts in vain. She was quite resistant to sinking via gunfire though, but, just as had been foreseen, it didn't actually help her once she'd been crippled.
 
Tirpitz was hard to sink because she didn't come out to play.

Oh! I remember there was a term mentioned in a different thread (and alluded to in this one) about the Russo-Japanese war and there was something about "power projection" or something that had to do with showing your hand, but not really playing it to scare the opponents. Though in that thread it was pointed out that the Japanese could just hit Russian ships in port Arthur with artillery so they needed to move them (resulting in battle with the Japanese).


all the effort that Germany put into designing a battleship resistant to crippling damaged was undone by a single crippling torpedo hit on Bismarck. They'd identified the threat correctly, designed a ship in response, and saw all their efforts in vain. She was quite resistant to sinking via gunfire though, but, just as had been foreseen, it didn't actually help her once she'd been crippled.

So in general torpedoes were much more threatening (if they hit) to a ship than gunfire, I had assumed as much as it is attacking underwater, is hard to spot and if you do see them you only have so many ways of countering a torpedo.
Can you give me an idea of how effective torpedo bombers were compared to other naval aviation during the war?
 
Ultimately, to sink a ship you need to let water in. Torpedoes are good at this. :p

Level bombers were basically ineffective at hitting moving ships, but most were Air Force aircraft rather than naval aviation. The effective styles were torpedo bombers and dive bombers. Dive bombers were quite accurate, tricky to intercept but lost effectiveness against heavily armoured targets because the explosions didn't tend to let water into the ship. Also, it seems that often the passage of the bomb through heavy armour tended to damage the bomb's fuse, so it didn't explode. Torpedo bombers were effective against all ships, but the predictable, slow, low approach required to launch a torpedo made them dead meat against competent defensive air cover.

As for specific examples, well, it's a bit odd in European waters because the British used torpedo bombers much more than dive bombers, and the Italians and Germans had no naval aviation at all, so it's hard to make any meaningful comparison! But Germany and Italy did have land-based level-, dive- and torpedo bombers.

Of Germany's four battleships, Bismarck was crippled by an aerial torpedo - no dive bombers were used against her. Tirpitz was damaged by numerous dive bomber hits, but not crippled, because of her armour. Neither Scharnhorst nor Gneisenau were ever seriously damaged by dive bombers, I think, but the British didn't use dive bombers much really. Instead they were repeatedly hit by submarine and destroyer torpedos and even level bombers while in port.

In the Med, it was torpedo bombers that crippled half the Italian battle line at Taranto, and crippling damage from aerial torpedoes resulted in a serious Italian defeat in the night action at Cape Matapan. The Italian fleets typically lacked air cover and so were vulnerable to torpedo attack, particularly the heavy ships which were generally more resistant to bomb damage. But the British didn't really use dive bombers much, so the comparison is tricky...

German dive bombers crippled the carrier HMS Illustrious with seven hits - but she survived because bombs aren't that good at letting water into the hull of a well-armoured ship. In contrast, Prince of Wales was crippled by a single aerial torpedo and subsequently sunk.

If I had to summarise things: in the face of defensive fighters, go dive bombers instead of torpedo bombers. Against heavily armoured ships, torpedo bombers are more effective. Against unarmoured carriers, choose dive bombers because you can expect hostile fighters and you just need to put a bomb into the carrier's hangar to cripple it. Against an armoured carrier, it's more equivocal.
 
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