Question about WW2 naval vessels

[joppyuk1]

6 hours ago, PatB said:

I may need to reread HMS Ulysses again, after almost 40 years. 

and C.S.Forester's "The Ship".

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

47 minutes ago, joppyuk1 said:

and C.S.Forester's "The Ship".

and if you can find a copy, C.S. Forester's 'Gold from Crete'.

[brianusa]

23 hours ago, joppyuk1 said:

If you want to see open bridges in operation (albeit for the cinema) you can't do better than watch "The Battle of the River Plate", John Gregson, Peter Finch etc.

 

I used to like this type of stiff upper lip film with the usual familiar faces in the cast.  Occasionally they show up on Turner, over here which tends to show them complete and uncut, with even the BBoFC A or U certificate at the beginning.  One which never shows up is C.S Foresters Sailor of the King, again with the usual cast members.

        Brian.

Edited July 10, 2019 by brianusa
missed entry

[Kingzance]

That the UK managed to achieve naval successes in WWII was probably as much due to the fear amongst the German Naval High Command of the wrath of an Austrian corporal as it was of the RN's prowess. The Kriegsmarine had technical superiority, faster ships, better gunnery system and that most potent of weapons, the U-boat. Their crews were certainly not cowards. In the aftermath of the Battle of The North Cape (26 Dec 1943 in which the Scharnhorst was sunk), Admiral Bruce Fraser said of Rear Admiral Erich Bey and Kapitain Fritz Hintz

"Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us. I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today." Only the battleships Duke of York and Scharnhorst had enclosed bridges in that action! Leadership and bravery abounded on both sides - look at the Rawlpindi incident and the Glowworm's defiance as examples from the UK and allies.

WWII was a significant turning point in naval power - it started with Britain's big battleships and battlecruisers dominating, it ended with the aircraft carrier and land-based long-range aircraft as demonstrated by the USN reigning supreme. In between, the submarine almost brought the UK to its knees!

[Ozexpatriate]

13 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

WWII was a significant turning point in naval power - it started with Britain's big battleships and battlecruisers dominating, it ended with the aircraft carrier and land-based long-range aircraft as demonstrated by the USN reigning supreme.

I'd suggest that the aircraft carriers dominated from the outset. This was demonstrated at Taranto as early as 1940 by the ludicrously fragile and obsolete Swordfish, which also of course dealt Bismark its disabling blow in May of 1941.

 

The exclamation point on the lack of dominance by big British battleships and battlecruisers was the tragic but inevitable sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in December of 1941, which directly led to the fall of Singapore - the very thing their presence was intended to prevent. 

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

13 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

In between, the submarine almost brought the UK to its knees!

Certainly. And something which really shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone after the experiences of the first world war.

[J. S. Bach]

20 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

 ...snip... WWII was a significant turning point in naval power - it started with Britain's big battleships and battlecruisers dominating, it ended with the aircraft carrier and land-based long-range aircraft as demonstrated by the USN reigning supreme. In between, the submarine almost brought the UK to its knees!

War became three-dimensional.

 

[Kingzance]

9 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I'd suggest that the aircraft carriers dominated from the outset. This was demonstrated at Taranto as early as 1940 by the ludicrously fragile and obsolete Swordfish, which also of course dealt Bismark its disabling blow in May of 1941.

 

The exclamation point on the lack of dominance by big British battleships and battlecruisers was the tragic but inevitable sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in December of 1941, which directly led to the fall of Singapore - the very thing their presence was intended to prevent. 

 

I would argue that Singapore was doomed as soon as any enemy chose to come down the Malayan peninsular as all the island’s defences faced seaward. The top brass at home and the senior officers of Repulse and Prince of Wales knew they had no chance without a carrier escort. That deployment was real “stiff upper lip” but resulted in a massive loss of life and together with the fall of Singapore, the end of dominance in the Far East. Remember too that HMS Exeter was lost in battles around Indonesia but I think that was down to her coming across Japanese Heavy Cruisers that outgunned her. Pearl Harbour was in my mind the first big carrier offensive, Taranto involved just one carrier, as did the Bismarck incident in which we nearly had a tragic blue-on-blue with HMS Sheffield and Ark Royal’s aircraft.

[Kingzance]

12 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

War became three-dimensional.

 

And “collateral damage” became acceptable too!

[Ozexpatriate]

17 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

Remember too that HMS Exeter was lost in battles around Indonesia but I think that was down to her coming across Japanese Heavy Cruisers that outgunned her.

The Indian Ocean Raid by aircraft of the IJN sank HMS Cornwall, HMS Dorsetshire, the carrier HMS Hermes, HMAS Vampire and HMS Hollyhock off Ceylon in April 1942. 

[62613]

17 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

There you can say unequivocally that both Fisher and Ramsay in their different ways fully upheld that maxim. One by making sure that the right equipment was available to sustain execution of that tradition, the other by using what he had to hand in the best possible way.

 

It's a brave man who can spot when a tradition, or aspects of a tradition, have gone obsolete and require elimination or reform, and then carry it through, and Fisher was that man. An example of the contemporary reverse, RF Scott, as amply analysed by Roland Huntford, whom I have been rereading following Ben Fogle's recent naïve eulogisation of the Antarctic botch up.

 

 

If I could be convinced that this no longer influenced thought processes - even though now rarely spoken - I would feel a lot happier.

Cunningham's remark was made at the time of the Battle of Crete, in 1941, when the army thought the Mediterranian Fleet was going to leave the garrison to its fate. ABC was by general opinion, The Empire's greatest operational admiral of WW2. He had to be, given the odds against him.

[62613]

15 hours ago, peanuts said:

three corvettes by nicholas monserat is an excelent read may have to search out a copy or pinch one 62630 s copys 

Three Corvettes is a very good autobiographical book. Even though I was in the MN and it was 30 years later, I could relate to a some of it. HMS Ulysses is, quite frankly, one of the biggest loads of stinking ordure I've ever read.

[62613]

13 hours ago, brianusa said:

 

I used to like this type of stiff upper lip film with the usual familiar faces in the cast.  Occasionally they show up on Turner, over here which tends to show them complete and uncut, with even the BBoFC A or U certificate at the beginning.  One which never shows up is C.S Foresters Sailor of the King, again with the usual cast members.

        Brian.

THe actual title Forester's book was Brown on Resolution.

[62613]

11 hours ago, Kingzance said:

That the UK managed to achieve naval successes in WWII was probably as much due to the fear amongst the German Naval High Command of the wrath of an Austrian corporal as it was of the RN's prowess. The Kriegsmarine had technical superiority, faster ships, better gunnery system and that most potent of weapons, the U-boat. Their crews were certainly not cowards. In the aftermath of the Battle of The North Cape (26 Dec 1943 in which the Scharnhorst was sunk), Admiral Bruce Fraser said of Rear Admiral Erich Bey and Kapitain Fritz Hintz

"Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us. I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today." Only the battleships Duke of York and Scharnhorst had enclosed bridges in that action! Leadership and bravery abounded on both sides - look at the Rawlpindi incident and the Glowworm's defiance as examples from the UK and allies.

WWII was a significant turning point in naval power - it started with Britain's big battleships and battlecruisers dominating, it ended with the aircraft carrier and land-based long-range aircraft as demonstrated by the USN reigning supreme. In between, the submarine almost brought the UK to its knees!

I would say it was the US submarine campaign which brought Japan to its knees. They took very few anti-submarine precautions. At the end of WW", their merchant marine had ceased to exist. Never mind that US submarines also sank 3 aircraft carriers.

[pete_mcfarlane]

1 hour ago, 62613 said:

HMS Ulysses is, quite frankly, one of the biggest loads of stinking ordure I've ever read.

It does seem to be an extremely unlucky ship, the number of bad things that happen to it during the course of the novel. 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

11 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I'd suggest that the aircraft carriers dominated from the outset...

When present at an action, definitely. The desperate improvisation of catapult launched fighters in the Atlantic campaign rather makes that point (and we look askance at 'Kamikaze'). Naval aircraft present was a crucial advantage.

 

57 minutes ago, 62613 said:

... HMS Ulysses is, quite frankly, one of the biggest loads of stinking ordure I've ever read.

It's a ripping yarn, and damn the plot holes. Much of the writing is good, but one might wish it was deployed more credibly.

 

11 hours ago, Kingzance said:

And “collateral damage” became acceptable too!

Nothing new, I was quite tickled when a niece reading classics for her degree turned up a 3rd century BC example, which might be translated 'friendly stab'.

[Fenman]

1 hour ago, 62613 said:

... ABC was by general opinion, The Empire's greatest operational admiral of WW2. ...

 

Whose opinion would that be, then...?

 

ABC was undoubtedly highly competent, full of the necessary bravado, and a sharply political animal that made him an effective AotF.

 

Ramsay was the leader who conjured the Dunkirk relief out of nothing, who planned the most complex invasions of the whole War, who developed combined ops into their highest form -- in an allied force of extraordinary cultural and political complexity -- and who was the supreme allied commander for the D-Day invasion operation. He also successfully faced-down both the King and Churchill himself, when he thought it necessary. And he outmanouevred ABC when he wanted resources that ABC didn't want to release.

 

Ramsay's biggest mistake was to be killed before the end of the war, so he didn't publish self-aggrandising memoirs...

 

Paul

 

 

[jjb1970]

There are different sorts of Admirals, some Admirals are brilliant administrators, some are great technical innovators, some are great fighting Admirals in the traditional Nelsonian way, others are masters of amphibious operations and lots more.

Jackie Fisher was quite possibly the most brilliant administrator and innovator the RN ever had and an Admiral of prodigious gifts who modernised the RN and oversaw a revolution in warship technology. One of his greatest achievements is also one of his most unheralded in that at least prior to the huge increase in naval estimates as the arms race with Germany accelerated he transformed the RN and made it a massively more militarily effective force and saved money at the same time thanks to his organisational changes. His operational ideas were more questionable and it is probably for the best that his Baltic plan went nowhere beyond the construction of some rather odd ships (such as ships which were effectively cruisers armed with 15” and 18” guns). The nearest modern equivalent to Fisher is probably Hyman Rickover of the USN and the father of the nuclear navy and pressurised water reactor.

ABC was more of an Admiral of the Nelsonian mould and his leadership in the Mediterranean made a great contribution to allied victory in that theatre. Ramsay was a master of amphibious and combined operations, was one a better Admiral than the other? That depends on the criteria applies to assess greatness, ABC was almost certainly the better fighting Admiral if compared to Ramsay but it seems equally apparent that Ramsay’s mastery of combined ops and amphibious warfare was second to none so the better person to command an invasion force.

 

[peanuts]

11 hours ago, 62613 said:

I would say it was the US submarine campaign which brought Japan to its knees. They took very few anti-submarine precautions. At the end of WW", their merchant marine had ceased to exist. Never mind that US submarines also sank 3 aircraft carriers.

having read and re read several books charting the history of the US submarine forces in the pacific during WW2 can only agree they crippled the Japanese supply lines and near destroyed the merchant fleet by 1945 plus caused significant damage the Japanese navy as a fighting force ,namely the  afore mentioned sinking of three carriers .theyre constant interdiction of supply lines lead to the inevitable one way kamikaze action of the Japanese capital ships .

[2750Papyrus]

For those interested, I would recommend "Escort", by D A Rayner.

 

Rayner was an RNVR officer, who specialised in navigation rather than the usual gunnery and commanded a number of escort vessels throughout the war, from a converted trawler through destroyers to command of a group of Castle class corvettes.  He thus served through the progression from obsolete WW1 technology to the luxury of lying on his bunk watching the plot on a repeat  radar screen.  His narrative is very readable, outspoken, humorous and very human.

 

After the war he wrote "The Enemy Below", which was turned into a sadly US centric film

[Ozexpatriate]

29 minutes ago, peanuts said:

having read and re read several books charting the history of the US submarine forces in the pacific during WW2 can only agree they crippled the Japanese supply lines and near destroyed the merchant fleet by 1945 plus caused significant damage the Japanese navy as a fighting force ,namely the  afore mentioned sinking of three carriers .theyre constant interdiction of supply lines lead to the inevitable one way kamikaze action of the Japanese capital ships .

After Okinawa, in addition to the submarine forces, the US blockade of the Japanese home islands involved intensive mining of ports by B29s* and bombing of surface vessels (particularly including the rail ferries between Honshu and Hokkaido**) and airfields by carrier-borne aircraft from the USN and RN carriers in the fast carrier task force.

 

* The cruelly but accurately named "Operation Starvation". The wikipedia page linked offers the following observation: 

Quote

This mining proved the most efficient means of destroying Japanese shipping during World War II. In terms of damage per unit of cost, it surpassed strategic bombing and the United States submarine campaign.

 

** Once the rail ferries were sunk (July, 1945), Japan's ability to prosecute the war was effectively ended.

 

Edited July 11, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[J. S. Bach]

I would put Halsey up against any of those mentioned above (well, except Fisher, different category entirely); and that is even allowing for  even allowing for the "Battle of Bull's Run."

 

[Fenman]

4 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

I would put Halsey up against any of those mentioned above (well, except Fisher, different category entirely); and that is even allowing for  even allowing for the "Battle of Bull's Run."

 

 

The question was about RN admirals, but I’ll bite...

 

The problem is separating man from myth. Anyone who has been portrayed in Hollywood movies by Robert Mitchum and Jimmy Cagney starts with a big advantage in the mind of the Average Jo!

 

Halsey was a matelot’s admiral (just like Patton was a squaddie’s general), and his commands seem to me to have been primarily about the aggressive application of overwhelming force to grind the enemy down. Nothing wrong with that, but it was a long-standing naval doctrine (Nelson was never happier than when doing the same, always seeking not just the defeat but the total annihilation of his enemy).

 

On the other hand, Halsey lost big chunks of his fleet to avoidable typhoon damage - not once, but twice, the second time actually being found to have been negligent. 

 

Equally, he recognised early the dominant naval role that could be played by aircraft carriers, and he put the new doctrine to good use in the Pacific. Unlike Ramsay, he wasn’t almost single-handedly developing whole new fields of warfare (combined ops and overwhelming amphibious invasions of previously unimaginable scale).

 

Halsey was clearly another charismatic and competent leader. But I wouldn’t rank him in the same league as Fisher or Ramsay. 

 

Paul

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I heard a wondrous story about Admiral Halsey last year at Great Gaddesden. The English family home is there, and contact has been maintained with the American side of the family for the circa four hundred years since they first departed for the New World. Halsey had visited New Zealand just before WWII and had received a Maori war skirt. Which he was so pleased with he wore in action whenever possible. At least, so I was told...

[Ozexpatriate]

6 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

I heard a wondrous story about Admiral Halsey last year at Great Gaddesden. The English family home is there, and contact has been maintained with the American side of the family for the circa four hundred years since they first departed for the New World. Halsey had visited New Zealand just before WWII and had received a Maori war skirt. Which he was so pleased with he wore in action whenever possible. At least, so I was told...

Capt. Lionel Halsey of the HMS New Zealand, then to Capt. JFE Green at Jutland, according to this link that Google found.

Edited July 12, 2019 by Ozexpatriate