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Post by Beth on Feb 18, 2017 4:52:14 GMT
Dave the one and only source for the story is a news source run by the Russian government. They claim it involved the US but then perhaps you would see perhaps the story appearing in on a US website or even since it was a US Ship in a Navy oriented website or newspaper. There are none. Just one source and its Russian. Ah I did one more search and found this you can decide which is the fake news for yourself.
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dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
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Post by dave on Feb 18, 2017 13:27:07 GMT
Beth Thank you for the information which is what I asked for in my original post. I am unsure where you get the idea I support/believe the Russians and trust all they say or do. My interest was the Herring and not promoting Fake News. How I hate that term! Regards Dave
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 18, 2017 13:54:55 GMT
My interest was the Herring and not promoting Fake News. How I hate that term! Regards Dave So does Donald.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 18, 2017 16:21:56 GMT
Actually I was surprised that someone did not jump with both feet onto Justin's statement that the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse was a strategic defeat, after all the print that has been spilled here about strategy-operations-tactics.
It was a strategic defeat, not operational or tactical, as one might assume just looking at the circumstances of the battle itself, but why was it considered strategic? Be specific. Justin already knows the answer, but do you?
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 18, 2017 19:20:54 GMT
I just thought that losing two main naval ships to aircraft attack before they had even fired a shot in anger was bad enough, even embarrassing, but I suppose losing two of the best ships you had available in the Indian ocean really left the area open for the Japanese to roam at will. This would leave Singapore plus other British colonies with no navel defense.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 18, 2017 21:15:53 GMT
Keep trying. Think beyond the immediate.
Decide first where you think strategic decisions are made, Washington and London, or Pearl Harbor and Singapore.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 19, 2017 12:30:36 GMT
Well seeing that Great Britain lost these two ships around the same time the American fleet got hit at Pearl Harbour, then this would give the Japanese full control of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
Churchill was guilty of enough gaffs around this period, the British far-east command had no modern aircraft in either Malaya or Singapore and their request for more fighters were turned down, with the answer that we had no forces or weapons available for far-east deployment.
Now Churchill knew air power was key to defending this region and still refused, but it was around this time that he sent over 800 fighters to Russia to help them fight the Germans.
That is why I don’t usually read about the military politics or the higher echelons of war, because you find stuff like this everywhere and I do find it annoying rather than interesting.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Feb 19, 2017 13:11:14 GMT
Ian, Priorities, if you don't have it, you don't have it. Underestimation and enough focus on stalling diplomacy, that the Japanese showed they were through with. But none of this is what Chuck is looking for. Both the US and the Brit intelligence knew a fleet was moving south.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 19, 2017 13:16:01 GMT
I do find some great picture while I am reading up on stuff and here is one below, it is a USAF B-25 Bomber [Mitchell] flying low over a Japanese 75mm anti-aircraft position in Boram New Guinea dated 1943. This version of the Mitchell had four .50 cal HMGs mounted in the nose and could strafe the ground with low level runs like these aircraft are doing, the Japanese type 88 75mm anti-aircraft gun was a sound weapon but was no good against low flying aircraft and you can see the gun crews cowering to shield themselves;
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 19, 2017 13:25:53 GMT
Tom, I really think that Churchill underestimated the Japanese, he virtually said in one of his memos that he expected to Americans to sort out any problems, leaving him to concentrate on the Germans;
"I confess that in my mind the whole Japanese menace lay in a sinister twilight compared with our other needs. My feeling was that if Japan attacked us the United States would come in. If the United States 'did not' come in, we had no means of defending the Dutch East Indies, or indeed our own Empire in the East. If on the other hand Japanese aggression drew in America, I would be content to have it. On this I rested ".
When you mean a fleet was moving do you mean the Japanese move on Pearl? I have read stuff ages ago about the British reporting this fleet to the Americans and this has been brought up on a few conspiracy type TV programs, that the Americans knew of this threat and got the aircraft carriers out of the way. I have no idea if this is true or not, but the part about the British spotting this fleet is true.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Feb 19, 2017 13:28:38 GMT
Ian,
B-25, B-24, and P-38 were among our better multi-mission aircraft, much like A-10.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 19, 2017 13:37:50 GMT
You are right Tom, the B-25 was used by the RAF and the Russians.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 19, 2017 15:05:56 GMT
It is a fundamental tenant of warfare fought on a peninsula that to take or hold (either way) a peninsula you must control the sea that surrounds it. Loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse meant that sea could not be controlled. Singapore was lost from that moment.
British Strategy in the Far East revolved around maintaining Singapore as a base, a power projection platform. Churchill summed up the whole of that strategy in the comments Ian, posted in yellow. Loss of Singapore meant eventual loss of the Dutch East Indies, and the loss of DEI meant a wealth of oil falling into enemy hands.
Island nations depend for their survival on importation of goods. War in the modern era depends upon oil. If you do not have it within your borders it must be sought elsewhere. No oil in from the Dutch East Indies means Japan loses in 1943. With it, they could rule the western Pacific until someone took it from them.
So the loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse was the first, but most important Domino to fall, given the fact that while the Americans were in, they could do nothing about the loss of strategic assets to the enemy any more that the British, Dutch, or Australians could.
Leave aside the strategic implications of the loss of these two ship meant in how every existing war plan for Pacific conflict was scuttled in one day. Our Orange war plan was completely useless. We could not send our battleships across the Pacific to relieve the Philippine and Guam.
I will write more concerning the specific changes in strategic naval policy later but my computer is giving me fits this morning
If then the Orange Plan for us was useless, we must find a way of doing the same thing, taking the war into the Western Pacific. That meant a new way of strategic thinking. We could not cross the Pacific as could have been done 20 years before, by sailing past both the Japanese outer and inner rings of defenses. Some of those defenses must be reduced by assault, lest the airpower based on those islands destroy those fleets in passage. That was the strategic lesson from the loss of PoW and Repulse. Never before had battleships been sunk by airpower alone, while at sea, not at Taranto, and not at Pearl. There was a reason we built six battleships post Pearl Harbor, and over a hundred fifty aircraft carriers. Dominate the air and you dominate the sea below it was the new art of naval war. That shift in emphasis meant a strategic industrial shift. It also meant that we could do little until those platforms came on line in quantity, beyond hit and run and line drawing.
The strategic implications of the loss of those two ships, meant the war would last six months to a year longer than it should have
Sidebar: Churchill made the right call regarding those aircraft. Keeping Russia in the war was far more important to the United Kingdom than anything the had in the Far East including India. Imagine ten German divisions freed up from combat in Russia, inserted into North Africa. How far was the Egyptian Wire from the Suez Canal, not to mention the Persian and Saudi oil fields?
Strafing by aircraft: Attacking a land target is a hell of a lot easier for a low flying attack aircraft than for a low flying attack aircraft to attack ships at sea. PoW and Repulse had diddly squat in the way of high volume fire automatic weapons on board in 1941. Check me out, but I checked the models this morning. For the Betty's and Nell's that attacked those two ships, they were sitting ducks. Integrated air defense is the key. It is not one ship, but a number of ships operating together with assigned and overlapping zones of fire that provide that defense. Those same type aircraft attacked slow transport convoys eight to ten months later, and on a least two occasions there were no survivors out of the 18 and 24 aircraft that attacked. I think we may have lost either two or three transports during the entire period,
On land the low flying aircraft uses terrain to hide in, at sea there is nary a tree or bush.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 20, 2017 11:10:01 GMT
Jeez the Japanese didn’t do things by halves as they sent 88 bombers to hit these ships.
Repulse was relatively lightly armed, but the Prince of Wales was equipped with the best anti-aircraft and radar systems the RN could supply and even the Japanese were impressed with her volume of fire.
But the after the battle reports said that the Prince of Wales had been badly handled and had not acted in accordance with standard Anti-Torpedo bomber tactics. This could not said be about the lightly armed Repulse who avoided being hit until late in the battle.
The Repulse apparently shot down two Japanese planes, but these had already dropped their torpedoes and were shot down as they flew directly over the ships guns.
These two capital ships were to be joined by the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable which was a modern ship carrying fifty aircraft, but this ran aground in the Caribbean, but there are doubts that she would have made the journey to Singapore in time to provide air cover for these ships.
I also didn’t know that there was a bitter rivalry between the crews of these ships, apparently the crew of the Repulse resented having to serve under the command of an untried Admiral [Some considered Admiral Tom Philips to be a desk admiral, but he went down with his flagship along with the ship’s Captain John Leach, so enough said] plus they regarded the Prince of Wales as an unlucky ship, funny lot these sailors. The Captain of the Repulse however had seen two years of constant action and was more experienced in gunnery and combat.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 20, 2017 14:21:09 GMT
Prince of Wales was fitted with six quad pompoms and a single 40mm gun on her stern at the time of her loss. To be fair she had more in the way of rapid fire weapons that the two North Carolinas which were contemporary designs to the King George V Class. Both were grossly insufficient for combat, especially in the Pacific.
If I recall correctly these ships were not hit by all of these attack bombers at once, but rather in two waves.
Prince of Wales was like our Hornet. They never quite got their act together before either of them were lost.
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