On 4/6/2019 at 11:59 AM, Collimatrix said:

 

The Japanese had those really fearsome 800kg armor-piercing bombs, but I can't find any references to them hitting carriers.  They seem mostly to have been used against stationary targets as during the Pearl Harbor and Darwin attacks.

AP bombs have terrible HE fractions - the 800 kg bomb used at pearl had less explosive than the common jap 550 lb anti ship bombs, and less than half as much explosive as the typical jap 550 lb GP bombs. Scary for a battleship (as nothing else will get in), but not the most effective choice for anything lighter

On 4/6/2019 at 2:43 AM, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

 

And you keep acting like a ship that took 10 months to repair, and was still a shitty carrier by almost every measure, is not overrated because it survived a big bomb. If anything, your ravings about the 1100 pound bomb, while ignoring all the major flaws in the ship's design, proves my point about them being overrated.  Taking bomb hits and kinda surviving, but never making full speed again, does not make a ship good. A ship with a larger air group with decent aircraft could have shot down all the Stukas unless you want to argue Stukas are hard to shoot down or something.  

It didn't take 10 months to repair, we've been over this before. A ship afloat is worth more than one sunk, and even the longest repair took less time than it would take to make a new carrier. It's not isolated to the illustrious either - her sisters were tougher than US carriers too, with Formidable surviving two 1000 kg bombs in a single engagement. Can you find a US carrier that took as much punishment and was repaired faster? Secondary damage from the stores on board don't count, otherwise the toughest cruiser in WW2 would be the Chōkai

Bombers will always get through, just look at the USS Franklin or Princeton. No carrier can bring a bigger air wing than all the airfields in range of the med.

On 3/28/2019 at 3:45 AM, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

So I picked up a copy of Dave Hobbs, British Aircraft Carrier Design, and read up a little on the "Armored Deck" Carriers, and boy, I may have been wrong about them being overrated, they simply may in fact, just be horrible designs. 

 

One thing he mentions, is the Royal Navy designed the armored deck carriers, not with the Med in mind, though that at least gives a decent argument for these bad designs, it's wrong if what Hobbs is saying is true, they designed these ships, thinking no amount of CAP could ever stop a raid from getting to the ship before they could attack. The carrier could also not get its interceptors launched, and high enough to stop the attack, so it decided armor and AA guns were the way to defend the ship. This was only a valid idea pre-radar, and even then, they didn't get enough AA firepower or armor on these ships for it to help much. The few times the armored deck was tested, it didn't really live up to its reputation. Once radar was a thing, even the Brits realized this would allow enough time to launch interceptors once the tech matured, and by wars start radar was there.  Now, this gets us into Fleet Air Arms aircraft choices, and this whole area is a nightmare, of poor planning, doctrine, and interservice idiocy.  

 

So the only real test of the Armor came when the Illustrious, was attacked by Stukas, supposedly, elite ship hunters, in January of 1941. Since her CAP got suckered down by a low-level attack, the Stukas had a free hand, and they hit the Illustrious six times, four 1100 pounders, one was a dud, and three 550 pounders,  one near miss. What's interesting here is only one bomb hit the armored deck,  and it went right through the armor, and blew up in the hanger, causing serious damage to the ship's structure. The near miss may have damaged the hull.  She limped to Malta on fire and took another bomb a week later. Once they got her Sea Worthy, they eventually had to send her to the USA for a rebuild. Even the US Shipyards could not fix the ship all the way, she suffered vibration problems from these attacks that eventually required the center shaft to be removed, and the ship limited to 26 knots, later the vibrations got bad again and she had to be limited to 24 knots! She was out of action 10 months and was never right again. 

 

Even the argument that these carriers were good for the Kamikaze threat is a myth since the US Navy deemed them almost not worth the trouble of having around, because of their small air groups, small bunker stores, and stupidly small avgas and ordnance storage.   People do not think about the logistical side of the carrier much. The US Navy designed their carriers around an 80 to 90 plane air group, with enough gas and ord to operate them about five days of moderate operations before they need to refuel and rearm. The Essex class could do 20,000 miles at 15 knots on 6160tons of fuel oil. The Illustrious class was 12,000 NM at 14 knots with 4640 tons of fuel oil. That means the Illustrious class had to pull off the line and refuel, a lot. 

 

The Essex class had 240,000 gallons of avgas.  The Illustrious class only had 50,000 gallons of avgas!  That's a small gas load even for a small air wing. It was stored very safely though... Now, this problem is bigger than you think, because they realized the errors in their thinking and did everything they could to increase the air group size on the ships. They eventually got them up to about 60 planes, Corsairs, and Avengers, and Spits later... They did this by adopting the American style deck storage, and a multi-barrier landing system.  This made problems worse in several ways for these ships, the first, they were already cramped, by packing in more pilots and ground crew to work on the planes, they ended up packing these things like sardines, and their living standards were NOT up to US Navy standards. Maybe US Navy WWI standards. This also made the fuel problem almost unworkable. They would have to take on Avgas daily!  Or they would if they could keep any airplanes working. 

 

So another problem with these ships is their layout. For some reason, the Brits decided these things needed two story hangers. Why? Who knows, on the first four ships, the hangers were different heights, but still to short for good planes. One was 16 feet and one 14. Only the 16-foot hanger could take clipped Corsairs.  Why not one larger normal sized hanger deck?  No idea.  

So the British figured out these were not great ships after the first four, and in the next four tried to fix them, and messed them up much worse. They decided the armored box concept was too much and thinned out the sides. They also decided 30 knots was to slow, and added more boilers and a fourth shaft, in an only slightly bigger ship. This compounded the low living space problems. They did not really increase the bunker fuel or avgas loads much.  Even better, they made both hangers 14 feet, so now they could operate Seafires or Hellcats, but the US Navy didn’t have enough kitties to go around, so they operated the Spits, or more crashed them over and over into the deck, destroying them far faster than enemy action.

If you look at these ships post-war, the ones that took damage didn’t get rebuilds, the ones that did still didn’t operate long after the war. Granted the Brits were broke, but the Essex lasted in US Service well into the 90s and were a bargain compared to a new forrestal class.

Another point was made that the Armored deck Carriers were supposed to take bomb damage better, and then US Carriers get shit talked for their wooden decks. As if they didn’t have an armored deck in the Hanger.  They also forget the Enterprise, the greatest carrier in history, took three bombs, four near misses, and retired under her own power and was back in action in a little over a month.  Later in the Battle of Santa Cruz, her terrible wooden deck took two bombs but was repaired, during the fight, and she was able to land her aircraft and the Hornets and continued to operated.  When she retired from the fight, she was only laid up ten days for repairs before going back out for operations.  One of the selling points of the wooden deck was ease of repair, and her machinery was all just fine after all that. 

 

Granted, two Essex class Carriers caught bombs or Kamikazes at the absolute worst possible time and suffered horrendous damage. That still doesn’t make the case for the Brit Armored CVs being good since they never got tested having a whole, loaded for a strike, deck park going up on them. I bet neither the Bunker Hill or Franklin took ten months to fix either, and both were in “New” condition when mothballed.

I think the US Navy was right, they did a bunch of studies that said the carrier would need to be 60k tons of more to have a viable armored deck, and usable airwing, and thus the Midways were born. 

  

Sources: Anotomy of the Ship, The Aircraft Carrier Victorious, Anatomy of the Ship The Aircraft Carrier Intrepid, British Aircraft Carrier Design and History by David Hobbs, and Fleets of WWII by Richard Worth plus that armored carriers apologist site. 

You keep conflating 550 lb and 1100 lb bomb hits, when they're really not comparable. It's a bigger difference than between the 75mm and 90mm guns! Did any US carrier take a 1100 lb bomb and stay afloat?

On 4/1/2019 at 7:29 PM, Scolopax said:

"MIT and NASA engineers demonstrate a new kind of airplane wing"

 

 

 

 

It's a neat bit of design, but where are the fuel tanks going to go if the wing is full of that truss? I'm also doubtful of the wind turbine applications mentioned - those are FRP for good reason, the tensile stresses in the root are not to be trifled with

Yoink

UK is looking into an off-the-shelf buy of an AShM to fill the gap between harpoon retiring and the Next Big Thing:

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2019/03/uk-mod-issues-notice-for-interim-ssgw-anti-ship-missiles/

Quote

UK MoD Issues Notice for Interim SSGW Anti-Ship Missiles

 

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) issued a prior information notice (PIN) for a Next Generation Surface Ship Guided Weapon (SSGW) contract for the Royal Navy.

Xavier Vavasseur 08 Mar 2019

The UK MoD Weapons, Torpedoes, Tomahawk and Harpoon (TTH) Project Team issued the PIN March 8, 2019. Note that a PIN isn’t a tender but is a notice used to set out a contracting authority’s purchasing intentions. A PIN is mostly used by contracting authorities to provide suppliers with information that they are planning a procurement process and provides suppliers with as much information as possible at an early stage.

August last year, the tower on top of the engine test stand was gone:

https://www.38north.org/2018/11/sohae110818/

More recently, the tower has been rebuilt:

https://www.38north.org/2019/03/sohae030519/

Deconstruction doesn't normally involve making a copy of the previous structure just to tear it down again

Why is a normal bullet guide verboten?

Pakistan found a sub:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2950969591583426

Looks like a snorkelling SSK (note the splashing behind the masts), which isn't the hardest thing to find. They're trying to imply it's a scorpene, but the reference images provided don't look like a great match (the masts appear to be more side-by-side on the scorpene, whereas the sub detected looks to have them in a line). I'd guess it's a kilo, so only an 80's vintage 877 design but still capable of launching cruise missiles

This may turn out to be very significant:

Quote

Washington wants to know if Pakistan used U.S.-built jets to down Indian warplane

ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - The United States said on Sunday it was trying to find out if Pakistan used U.S.-built F-16 jets to down an Indian warplane, potentially in violation of U.S. agreements, as the stand-off between the nuclear-armed Asian neighbours appeared to be easing.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-kashmir-usa-pakistan/us-wants-to-know-if-pakistan-used-us-built-f-16-jets-to-down-indian-warplane-idUKKCN1QK0CV

On 2/20/2019 at 11:30 PM, Ramlaen said:

The FFG(X) selection is not limited to the 5 ships the USN awarded design contracts for, meaning BAE can offer the Type 26.

 

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/2019/02/20/as-an-ffgx-decision-nears-shipbuilder-fincantieri-upgrades-its-wisconsin-shipyard/

If this goes through we'll only have to convince NZ to pick up a couple to make a full set of 5-eyes

On 2/18/2019 at 7:33 PM, Stimpy75 said:

sry don`t know it´s name

Looks like airsoft

The initial indian strike has no visible damage in the area near Balakot

https://medium.com/dfrlab/surgical-strike-in-pakistan-a-botched-operation-7f6cda834b24

I like it, it looks like they're on an arm so they can swing round and fire forwards without increasing the width of the vehicle or getting in the way of the turret

3 hours ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

Horseshoe Crabs are now nested within Arachnida and therefore there must have been either A) multiple terrestrial invasions by stem arachnids or B) horseshoe crabs went back into the ocean. 

 

I'm calling this more Carcinisation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

1 hour ago, Invictus_Maneo said:

I have been quietly lurking on this forum since MP.Net went down and this is an outrage!

No anime avatars, is nothing sacred.

Also I have decided to join the forum and continue to lurk in near absolute quiet but with some comments…. sometimes.

Also also looser, I can never see any of your posted pictures even when changing proxies.

I can't see any pictures hosted on VK either, but right-click and "copy image location" then pasting that into a new tab normally works

Maple-syrup flavoured T26 is confirmed, after the legal challenge fell through:

https://www.janes.com/article/86254/canada-confirms-type-26-frigate-selection

Quote

Canada confirms Type 26 frigate selection

Canada has confirmed the selection of a Lockheed Martin Canada-led industry team to deliver the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN’s) next surface combatant using a design based on BAE Systems’ Type 26 Global Combat Ship (GCS).

I figure this makes it the largest single class of modern warships outside the US and chinese navies

Damn the torpedoes*, full speed ahead!

https://www.janes.com/article/86146/us-navy-to-remove-hard-kill-torpedo-defence-from-carriers

Quote

US Navy to remove hard-kill torpedo defence from carriers

The US Navy (USN) will remove the prototype ‘hard-kill’ torpedo defence system from nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs), the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) has revealed.

* I know, wrong torpedoes

22 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

The USS Franklin took more than two "bomb hits" if you want to be honest about it. The ship was also not at battle stations, but just ignore the full hanger deck and deck park with fuel and armed planes, with bombs, rockets, and full fuel tanks... Nearly 100 of them.  That's going to count more than 7 bombs hits not all at once. Hell the Enterprise took three and kept on operating.  The Illustrious was out of action 10 months after a couple of her bomb hits.  

Can I start counting the AC and munitions on british carriers then? The role of carriers is to transport AC and munitions, and not let the enemy set fire to them - bad damage control is not enemy action.

After tanking more bomb hits than any US carrier, Illustrious went to malta for repairs and was bombed again. Then bombed again (because the med is not the pacific, you're in everyone's airforce's back yard). It took 5 months to get to Norfolk yard, half of the time spent out of action was due to the lack of ports in europe that weren't being bombed

22 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

Besides, no one is saying they were not tough ships, sure they were tough, they could take some damage.

On 2/3/2019 at 4:54 PM, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

I doubt a Brit Carrier would have lived through what the Franklin took under similar circumstances.  

You're the one claiming two bombs is enough to total one

22 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

The Enterprise was still a more useful carrier after three bomb hits in the Solomon Islands.  But how did she operate without an armored flight deck after taking bombs right?

 

Let me spell it out one more time. The armored flight decks crippled them as useful carriers.  The idea that they needed that Armor was flawed, and having an actual usefully sized air group negates the need for the Armor.   I mean YAY, the Brits had tough, but nearly useless carriers, I guess.  I suppose they worked well enough against a second string naval power like Nazi's though. 

 

And having your max speed cut to 24 knots permanently by bomb damage counts as serious structural problems or another of the class taking permanent distortion to the hull. Granted the Brits were not as good at building and fixing ships, even US shipyards couldn't have economically repaired them.  

Up against smaller bombs, and less of them, the US carriers were the right tool for the job. In europe the conditions were different, and so the ideal carrier ends up prioritising other qualities (like ignoring carrier v carrier fleet actions, because nazi's as you point out).

Did any US carrier take a 1-ton bomb and keep on trucking?

4 hours ago, Bronezhilet said:

...and increasing drag together with lowering mass is a double whammy for your deceleration numbers.

Unless you're using the parasitic mass savings to carry a bigger warhead, or a better (e.g. multi-mode) fuse

7 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

11 hours ago, Xlucine said:

 

You say that like the only place the RN operated was the Med.  They had a worldwide empire. 

 

With a bit of experience, the Yorky could have lived, and the US Navy changed A/C fuel handling on Carriers after the Coral Sea and Midway.  

 

US Carriers had an armored Deck below the flight deck, and ships like the Enterprise took bomb hits and kept operating, while not suffering permanent, unrepairable, structural damage. The Idea that the Armored flight deck carriers were Armored enough to defeat a determined air attack is laughable.  

 

I doubt a Brit Carrier would have lived through what the Franklin took under similar circumstances.  

 

You know what, the ENTIRE Royal Navy was overrated in WWII.

The USS Franklin took two 500 lb bombs, and that resulted in the highest casualties by any fleet carrier that survived WW2. HMS Illustrious took 7 hits from 500-1000 lb bombs, and a 2000 lb bomb - and continued in service till 1955 (loads of permanent structural damage there!). Even after changing fuel handling systems on US ships, the Franklin still burnt badly in mid '45. Brit carriers were more survivable - find a US carrier that took 7 bomb hits and survived

4 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

Iran has put its engineers to work very hard to make an M60 look like an Abrams, but they couldn't figure out how to remove that huge cupola?

It's a funny looking gun tube for an M60, and the gunners sight is on the wrong side (for a pukka M1 and M60). I guess the iranians heard everyone saying the zolfaghar looked like the M1, and decided to make the most of the likeness

The V-280 is now worthy of the name:

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/v-280-valor-reaches-namesake-cruising-speed-of-280-knots/

Quote

V-280 Valor reaches namesake cruising speed of 280 knots

The Bell V-280 Valor successfully achieved its namesake optimal cruise speed of 280 knots, say Bell.

Keith Flail, vice president of Advanced Vertical Lift Systems at Bell, said:

“It is a remarkable achievement to hit this airspeed for the V-280 Valor in just over a year of flight testing. Beyond the exemplary speed and agility of this aircraft, this significant milestone is yet another proof point that the V-280 is mature technology, and the future is now for FVL capability set 3.”

10 minutes ago, Xoon said:

Here's a explanation of the hydrogen injection system:

 

"Hydrogen generators" for cars are a classic snake oil product. There are some papers discussing improvements to diesel combustion with additions of H2, but they're looking at far higher concentrations (e.g. here[1], looking at flow rates ~2 orders of magnitude above what's likely from an onboard generation system[2])

40 minutes ago, Xoon said:

It would probably need to suck more. But it is meant as a back up. 

 

But honestly, if your country lacks power, how can it even function? If you knock out the power grid in the US, it would probably surrender it less than a month. Either that or the government would throw the citizen under the bus for a slow Berlin like grind until they lost. 

It's not really a resilient system if you're reliant upon the civilian power grid being able to support sudden demands of 100's of MW at a randomly chosen transformer. It's possible to store enough diesel for a decent attempt at resisting invasion (probably a few days or weeks worth), whereas in an invasion the grid would be a prime and easy target (especially if the military was so reliant on it) - going by recent conflicts and the general plans in the cold war I'd be surprised if any military plans for a invasion to take more than a month

[1]: If the link doesn't work: Emission reductions of Air Pollutants from a Heavy-duty Diesel Engine Mixed with Various Amounts of H2/O2, Hsin-Kai Wang, Chia-Yu Cheng, Yuan-Chung Lin, Kang-Shin Chen, Aerosol and Air Quality Research, 12: 133–140, 2012

[2] The video claims the electrolyser uses "less power than the headlights", and according to this calculator 150 W gets you about 1 l H2&O2/min (at STP) - the paper I linked talks about 60 l/min for a 6 l engine. Getting the H2 production up to levels comparable to those tested means drawing ~9 kW in power to run the electrolyser, and for a ~25l tank engine you might expect the need to scale to about 40 kW. Storage of H2 is a different matter, although that raises other issues.

https://www.janes.com/article/86100/germany-eliminates-f-35-from-tornado-replacement-race

Quote

Germany eliminates F-35 from Tornado-replacement race

Germany has cut the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter from the list of options for its Tornado replacement programme, Ministry of Defence (MoD) sources disclosed on 31 January.

The Luftwaffe had been considering the F-35A as one of five potential replacement platforms for its fleet of 90 Panavia Tornado aircraft. However, a Bundeswehr source has told Reuters that it will now look at just the Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet instead (the Super Hornet is being offered in conjunction with the EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft, while the Boeing F-15 Advanced Eagle that was offered also appears from the source’s comments to have been discounted).

That's an odd choice, F-35 looks like an ideal tornado replacement