tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post3611775797786055764..comments2024-03-29T05:41:35.119-07:00Comments on Graphic Firing Table: Decisive Battles: Barents Sea 1942FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-42024435749085998792013-01-03T01:50:41.217-07:002013-01-03T01:50:41.217-07:00Or maybe you just need the higher PRF for fire con...Or maybe you just need the higher PRF for fire control against aircraft and other fast movers - I forget.mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-21971557352857016722013-01-03T01:47:37.719-07:002013-01-03T01:47:37.719-07:00cross-posted
FDChief – Regarding the comment on t...cross-posted<br /><br />FDChief – Regarding the comment on the Kriegsmarine page about how ?German airstrikes on the Arctic convoys were a winter thing”: I do not know how to reconcile that with the 200 sorties they flew against convoy PQ-17 in late June – early July 42. And I understood those sorties were flown out of far northern airfields at Norway’s tip far above the arctic circle at Kirkenes, and even from the Petsamo airfield which at that time was part of Finland.<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Convoy_PQ-17_map_1942-en.svg<br /><br />Even PQ-16 in May and PQ-18 in September were attacked by aircraft of Jagdgeschwader 5. They sank some Allied merchant ships anchored in Murmansk harbor. That Kriegsmarine page also says: "...materiel from the west which could be supplied only through a treacherous sea route through the Barents Sea into Murmansk". This was clearly not true as a large chunk of the aid to the Soviets was funneled through Iran. My daughter’s father-in-law set up a US radio station in the port of Bushehr during the war to coordinate many of those shipments. And there was a Pacific route also to the Soviet Far East from Seattle and from your fair city – no American merchant ships though, the Japanese only let Russian flagged ships through.<br /><br />I cannot see that the FuMO-22 (which BTW was also known as the FMG 39 (GgO) Seetakt) would have been used for fire control. Maybe a radar guy could check in as my knowledge on radar characteristics is rusty and was always shallow even years ago. But that FuMO you cite is listed as having an extremely low pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 500Hz. I believe you need a much higher PRF for fire control, something up in the 3 to 10KHz range. Perhaps Andy knows.mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-37355466858866894742013-01-03T01:44:29.354-07:002013-01-03T01:44:29.354-07:00What Admiral Raeder said to Field Marshall Goering...What Admiral Raeder said to Field Marshall Goering after being raked over the coals for not sharing early radar design data: "You want a radar? Go build your own!" Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-3002531929740351382013-01-02T16:50:45.582-07:002013-01-02T16:50:45.582-07:00Ah, the nazis. Their own worst enemy.
I'd gu...Ah, the nazis. Their own worst enemy. <br /><br />I'd guess that the lack of Luftwaffe/Kriegsmarine cooperation was inter service rivalry. Hitler always liked his subordinates to squabble amongst themselves and treat their branch like a fiefdom. Leonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15715768191516712688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-41599425119744828912013-01-02T15:34:12.165-07:002013-01-02T15:34:12.165-07:00I know that the Luftwaffe DID attack the Arctic co...I know that the <i>Luftwaffe</i> DID attack the Arctic convoys regularly until late in 1942/early '43. The WW2 database website has a page for the Arctic Convoys here (http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=298) that gives you a pretty good idea of how nasty the situation was in the first couple of years of the war.<br /><br />Things get a lot less hairy by mid-43, though. I suspect that this had something to do with the withdrawal of German air assets to support ground operations in N. Africa/Italy and Russia and something to do with the arrival of the "jeep" carriers as convoy escorts. Either way, both air and undersea attacks are WAY down by 1944.<br /><br />Thing is, just sailing those waters must have sucked. Here's the WW2DB entry for 9 MAR 1942: <i>"British anti-submarine whaler HMS Shera, escorting Allied convoy PQ-12, capsized possibly due to being top-heavy from heavy ice build-up and having low levels of fuel, although the weather was not particularly bad on this date; only 3 of those aboard survived the sinking."</i><br /><br />Can you imagine? What a fuckstory; killed not by evil Nazi bombs, torpedoes, or shells, but by goddamn icing on the ship itself.<br /><br />War genuinely sucks.FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-62936775872995132682013-01-02T13:21:20.503-07:002013-01-02T13:21:20.503-07:00Good point about the Luftwaffe - what the hell wer...Good point about the Luftwaffe - what the hell were they doing? The long Norwegian coastline was perfect for the Luftwaffe to launch raids against British convoys. Is it just me, or does almost all German strategy vis a vis the UK seem consistently half-baked in WW2? <br /><br />Dead right about those horrible convoys chief. And no recognition - they only got their campaign medal this year! Given the number of veterans left alive, should take them all of 10 seconds to mint those.Don Francisconoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-58967789397067603052013-01-02T11:31:32.170-07:002013-01-02T11:31:32.170-07:00mike: I did wonder about the comment on the Kriegs...mike: I did wonder about the comment on the Kriegsmarine page about how German airstrikes on the Arctic convoys were a winter thing. It would seem the other way around, but I suspect that maybe it was a combination of the opening of the sea routes north of Bear Island, the location of the airbases in the southern part of Norway, and the relatively short range of the DO-17/JU-88 shipkillers...<br /><br />But, you do wonder why, if winter was such a great time for the <i>Luftwaffe</i> how come the Hipper-Lutzow sortie didn't have any air assets laid on. Here again the whole issue of German WW2 inter-service rivalry comes up; was the problem the weather (which does seem to have been pretty bad) or was it some sort of breakdown between the Navy and Air Force chains involved? <br /><br />Whatever it was it seems to have been a problem that the Wehrmacht never did solve; there never seems to have been any prolonged examples of really close coordination between the German Navy and AF during WW2.<br /><br />And the radar thing seems, oddly, to have been a recurring problem for the Axis. I noted the failure of the Japanese to do anything about the radar gunnery failure that was crippling their capital ships as early as 1942 - by 1944 and Surigao Strait Nishimura's force was practically blind compared to the USN vessels.<br /><br />Germany was more technically capable but seems to have had some odd blind spots and naval radar was one of them. Their air defense radar systems were outstanding, and you'd think that it wouldn't have been a big problem to mount something on a capital ship capable of rangefinding/fire control.<br /><br />The NavWeaps page for the Deutschland class http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WRGER_04.htm claims that these pocket battleships were the first to be fitted with radar sets. The Wiki entry for the FMG 39 (GgO) <i>Seetakt</i> sets claims that this system had <i>"...a range accuracy of about 50 m. This was considerably more accurate than the guns they ranged for, which typically had spreads of over 100 m"</i><br /><br />Lutzow is also stated to have shipped a FuMO 22-type radar, which is described as direction finding and ranging, so this appears to have been at least in theory a useful gun-direction system.<br /><br />But as a general note I observe that Friedman and Baker in their book <i>Naval Firepower</i> observe that <i>"German wartime radars were primitive by Allied standards and they never attained sufficient precision in bearing to make blind fire possible."</i><br /><br />Odd, but apparently true, that for all their technical sophistication the German naval fire-direction radars just weren't all that...FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-7527637529784178582013-01-01T23:26:43.677-07:002013-01-01T23:26:43.677-07:00FDChief – Good to see you doing more maritime ba...FDChief – Good to see you doing more maritime battles lately. I like your conclusions on the lessons of the Barents Sea battle. In September 39 when England and Germany went to war, the German Navy had only 57 U-boats of which more than half were small, short range boats only fit for duty in the Baltic or for coastal defense. When questioned in June 45, Donitz said bitterly: <i>”The war was lost before it began…Germany was never prepared for a naval war against England…A realistic policy would have given Germany a thousand U-boats at the beginning.”</i> The geographic point you make is well taken also. What the Germans did to the Soviet Baltic Fleet is reminiscent of the Royal Navy bottling up the Kriegsmarine. I read somewhere in the past (Seaton?) that the Germans and Finns effectively cooped up the Soviet Baltic Fleet in the Gulf of Finland. Supposedly they laid down a submarine net across the mouth of that Gulf running from Estonia to the coast of Finland and supplemented it with three massive mine barrages – end of problem. And when Soviet ships were icebound the Finns attacked them with white clad infantry across the ice.<br /><br />And you have to also ask, where was the Luftwaffe during this time? They had been devastating against convoy PQ-17 during the summer of that same year sinking 15 of the 24 ships while the U-boats only sank nine. Of course at that latitude in the summer they had 24 hours of daylight. And on 31 December 42 they had how many daylight hours - maybe two or three if that, and no nightfighters? I don’t think they were all sent off to Stalingrad. According to wiki entry on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdgeschwader_5/" rel="nofollow"> Jagdgeschwader 5 Eismeer </a> they still had at least six (+) squadrons in northern Norway and only sent part of one Gruppe down to Trondheim due to Allied air pressure in southern Norway.<br /><br />Those long hours of darkness in the polar winters probably also contributed to the Lutzow’s horrible gunnery that you mention. The Kriegsmarine had shipborne ‘Seektat’ radars at that time but I understood they were used primarily for ranging and were not well suited for gun laying. Since the Lutzow was commissioned in 33 did she even have radar? Or if she did I assume it was a recent refit so how much training did the crew have and how much confidence did the officers have in it? That plus the Lutzow crew’s two previous battles where she was heavily damaged - by Norwegian coastal artillery at the Battle of Drobak Sound and then torpedoed by a Brit submarine – probably had something to do with the lack of aggressiveness.mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-28550664142424638662013-01-01T17:12:54.217-07:002013-01-01T17:12:54.217-07:00DF: Yeah, granddad was a hard man; those convoys w...DF: Yeah, granddad was a hard man; those convoys were frightful. I can't imagine the sort of balls it took - not to crew the FIRST one, but every one after that.<br /><br />Can you imagine being the crewman on, say, one of those Liberty-ship tankers? Some slapped-together-in-90-days tin cans filled with aviation fuel?<br /><br />Christ, I'd have pissed myself dry before we left the dock.<br /><br />Anyway, I think the problem starts with German leadership - and the Kaiser was worse, if anything - making the erroneous assumption that Germany really NEEDED a blue-water Navy. What she needed was a sea-denial force, and a flotilla of U-boats, light surface forces, and airpower should have done that trick.<br /><br />The real problem, IMO, was geography. There just isn't a way for a German Navy to get out of the North Sea/Channel trap. Assuming that Britain is anything like halfway vigilant Germany has to fight her way out, and even if she wins her fleet likely suffers so much damage that it can't then do the ocean-control mission...FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-19990738098610399972013-01-01T12:45:00.122-07:002013-01-01T12:45:00.122-07:00As an aside, my grandfather (on my Dad's side)...As an aside, my grandfather (on my Dad's side) was a merchant seaman on the Arctic Convoy route throughout the war. His reason for joining the merchant instead of one of the forces was that he was a conscientious objector.<br /><br />Though you are supposed to respect your olders and betters, I think he was stark raving mad! Of all the jobs to take in the war, I can't think of one that dangerous, cold and miserable. You WERE the target, you were slow, and you could be attacked at any time by uboats, ships or planes. Don Francisconoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-9661700167751127672013-01-01T12:35:03.122-07:002013-01-01T12:35:03.122-07:00Hi Chief,
Hard to disagree with that analysis. Th...Hi Chief,<br /><br />Hard to disagree with that analysis. The surface fleet was a total waste of resource.<br /><br />The u-boats however were a real threat, but it never got enough resources. The political leadership were too late to recognize the advantage it gave them. By the time they did, the UK found a way to negate it via ULTRA, convoys or other means. A bit like German forays into North Africa or planning for the invasion of the UK, there didn't seem to be serious thought as to German plans until it was too late.Don Francisconoreply@blogger.com