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oh well...like if that is an answer or an argument.

There is a good deal of opinion "Japanese weapons were junk/worthless/fill in the blank with explitives" - both at the time and since. And there is a good deal of ignorance - especially at the time - but even since. For example, we just found two very fine eight inch AAA singles at Singapore (in a park, covered in foliage) - and turns out we had found another pair decades ago - but no one competent thought about what they were looking at. Wether or not AA shells for battleships worked, or AA rockets worked, it is pretty clear these were the best "very heavy AA guns" of the era - and virtually no one - then or now - knows about them. I have been reluctant to put them in for fear of howls of controversy - but if there are ALLIED very heavy AA guns - then that might change things.

Most of the "worthless" weapons were not worthless - although some were nearly so - and on both sides. [As I pointed out, the AA rocket was a BRITISH idea, and as you pointed out, it was not worth a whole lot to them either] In many cases we do not have a good handle on how effective a weapon was? Nor do most ordnance types have any idea how anti-air warfare "successes" are classified: you do not have to kill or damage a plane to "win" - you only have to discourage it and prevent delivery of ordnance. How many times did that happen? How can you measure it - for any weapon? These are difficult questions - but the only way to correctly model what happened/could happen. IRL if you stop delivery, you don't get hurt: it matters. The old AAA addage "examination of the wreakage" is the ultimate "confirmation" is true - but not all there is that really matters. Over time we are beginning to learn "hard facts" we were sure of are not actually true - for example see the "ineffective" midgets that actually scored at Pearl Harbor - and we believed that IN SPITE OF KNOWING one reported its success the night after the battle (by radio). It took modern forinsic photographic analysis that the midget was caught in the act to change most of our minds. I think it is better modeling to rate a weapon as marginal than as worthless - to account for uncertainties and unmeasurables.

OT: I would think that the rate of fire on an 8 inch weapon would be too low to make it an effective AA weapon...

I could be wrong though.

ORIGINAL: mlees

OT: I would think that the rate of fire on an 8 inch weapon would be too low to make it an effective AA weapon...

I could be wrong though.

If the theory was to work like a scatter gun against a flight of aluminum skinned aircraft, it might have had merit, with time to work out the aiming and timing problems..

If you think a kind of weapon that no one adopted consistently in war and post war is anything more than inefficient to useless then you are on your own. For me extraordinary claims warrant extraordinary evidence.

ORIGINAL: mlees

OT: I would think that the rate of fire on an 8 inch weapon would be too low to make it an effective AA weapon...

I could be wrong though.

Two concepts for you to consider:

1) A single weapon can be fed more efficiently than a twin can. It also can elevate and train faster. [And I saw triples on USS Newport News that were impressive indeed: she set the all time record for heavy shellfire once in Viet Nam. Automated shell handling is something you have to witness to grasp.]

2) What matters most of all is can you solve the fire control program. On my first ship the Gunnery chief only permitted "one round per tube" (two shots per twin mounting) "to see if you have solved the fire control problem - or not?"
And I implemented that on two other ships - working up for anti-missile duty - I wanted guns as backup for the electronics and missiles. [I wanted point defenses too - but they "approved" the idea and then took 11 years to build them!] IF your first round destroys the target, it does not matter how fast you reload. You then need to train and elevate for a DIFFERENT target.

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: mlees

OT: I would think that the rate of fire on an 8 inch weapon would be too low to make it an effective AA weapon...

I could be wrong though.

If the theory was to work like a scatter gun against a flight of aluminum skinned aircraft, it might have had merit, with time to work out the aiming and timing problems..

It is not clear if the special shells were properly concieved or not? But they didn't try to do this with regular shells - as apparently other navies did. They tried to create a very large numbers of separate projectiles, each of which would explode and then burn. Imagine if some of them did that INSIDE an aircraft. If there were enough guns, and enough targets, sooner or later there probably would have to be damage and losses. What we don't know is the fine details. But here our values are so low (for accuracy) compared to other AA guns, we are unlikely to be exaggerating.

ORIGINAL: Dili

If you think a kind of weapon that no one adopted consistently in war and post war is anything more than inefficient to useless then you are on your own. For me extraordinary claims warrant extraordinary evidence.

Au contraire, mon ami, war justified extraordinary measures, measures never taken in other times. Even balloon barrages were widely used in WWII. Further - your principle can be reversed: some these weapons WERE adopted by several nations - before, during and post war. That should imply to you someone thought they might be effective. Wether you talk about super AA guns or midget submarines, you have post war examples to explain. Worcester class cruisers were too expensive to cost justify - but no one ever claimed their guns were not effective. And the midgets - well we build them still - and today you have formal cost accounting and many competing programs to contend with.

Dont change subject. So what country put in service a ship rocket AAA system after WW2 and retained it until AAA missile age?

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: mlees

OT: I would think that the rate of fire on an 8 inch weapon would be too low to make it an effective AA weapon...

I could be wrong though.

Two concepts for you to consider:

1) A single weapon can be fed more efficiently than a twin can. It also can elevate and train faster. [And I saw triples on USS Newport News that were impressive indeed: she set the all time record for heavy shellfire once in Viet Nam. Automated shell handling is something you have to witness to grasp.]

2) What matters most of all is can you solve the fire control program. On my first ship the Gunnery chief only permitted "one round per tube" (two shots per twin mounting) "to see if you have solved the fire control problem - or not?"
And I implemented that on two other ships - working up for anti-missile duty - I wanted guns as backup for the electronics and missiles. [I wanted point defenses too - but they "approved" the idea and then took 11 years to build them!] IF your first round destroys the target, it does not matter how fast you reload. You then need to train and elevate for a DIFFERENT target.

Your talking about equipment that was (more than likely) not available to the 8 inch mounts you described being found in Singapore.

Never-the-less, you are correct in that the key is fire control. A 5 inch projectile would kill any WW2 aircraft just as dead as any 8 or 18 inch shell can. You have to score a hit hough. With a higher rate of fire in the 5 inch, you get more chances to do so before the plane delivers it's ordnance and/or moves out of range or line of fire.

ORIGINAL: mlees
Never-the-less, you are correct in that the key is fire control. A 5 inch projectile would kill any WW2 aircraft just as dead as any 8 or 18 inch shell can. You have to score a hit hough. With a higher rate of fire in the 5 inch, you get more chances to do so before the plane delivers it's ordnance and/or moves out of range or line of fire.

Fire Control and adjustment has ALWAYS been the key to artillery fire against any target. The Russians were forced to use thousands of guns to achieve the same results as the Western Allies were able to get with hundreds simply because the great majority of their fire was "area fire" rather than "directed fire", and they lacked the "flexibility" to shift targets rapidly and as needed.

ORIGINAL: Dili

Dont change subject. So what country put in service a ship rocket AAA system after WW2 and retained it until AAA missile age?

Is THAT the subject? I thought it was AAA shells for 14 inch guns.

In Russian and Chinese, of course, they call SAMs "rockets" - and they have a point - but it is just an interesting play on words - and not an answer to your question.

I do not think AA rockets were used post WWII.

The word you used was "weapon." The phrase containg it was "any kind of weapon." So my response was to what you said - apparently not what you meant. You meant the post to be a continuation of our sub-topic of rockets, but didn't say so - and I almost always read things literally - which can be good (in a tech manual or computer machine code) but sometimes isn't.

I think we have been "talking" about UK UP's and Japanese AA Rockets but i concede you could have made that confusion since other posts got in between.

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: mlees
Never-the-less, you are correct in that the key is fire control. A 5 inch projectile would kill any WW2 aircraft just as dead as any 8 or 18 inch shell can. You have to score a hit hough. With a higher rate of fire in the 5 inch, you get more chances to do so before the plane delivers it's ordnance and/or moves out of range or line of fire.

Fire Control and adjustment has ALWAYS been the key to artillery fire against any target. The Russians were forced to use thousands of guns to achieve the same results as the Western Allies were able to get with hundreds simply because the great majority of their fire was "area fire" rather than "directed fire", and they lacked the "flexibility" to shift targets rapidly and as needed.

I completely concur with you both (mlees and Mike Sholl). However, there IS a justification for ultra heavy AAA in that era (and possibly in this one): IF you think you may have targets at very high altitudes, you will have problems of shell performance with lower calibers. The ultimate expression of heavy AA guns - in practical terms - may be the automatic six inch guns found on the Worcester class cruisers - and a number of almost identical projects in several countries - including an IJA project (with just a single battery defending the Imperial Palace) - which I think was 149.2 mm (talk about a wierd caliber). But if you are familiar with the eight inch guns on the Des Moines class cruisers, there is a possibility of making an effective AAA single from that technology - and it probably would be possible to mount six single eights of that sort on a Worcester. These Japanese eight inch guns LOOK LIKE that sort of mounting - they really look like a modern AAA mounting. At Singapore we have the possibility of looking at the handling gear - because the guns were not known - and not messed up by scrap hunters. They may also have achieved their design purpose - to discourage B-29 raids at full altitude. In air defense, (see Freeman Dyson in Weapons and Hope: he was the RAF statistical analyst during the war who later became a famous physicist) we count "targets not engaged" as victories. This is usually said to mean "if you must send more planes to destroy this target, then those more planes cannot fly at that target, so the mission not flown is a victory for the defense." But it can mean "if you are unwilling to attack the target, at all, ever, because of the defense" - it is a victory for the defense - no matter they never shot anything down in the raids you never flew. Later SAMs became deadly at very high altitudes - so that for a while we preferred "low penetration" at the risk of AA - and probably got rid of the need for very heavy AA. And the Worcester class shows that it can be very expensive to get this sort of protection. But note our present SAM ships are even more expensive (even in relative terms). What killed the number of heavy AA escorts may be the lack of threat: there have not been very many attacks on our carriers. Perhaps if we were being actually engaged we would regard AA escorts as more cost worthy?

JF Dunnigan points out the USN NEVER solved the problem of the kamakaze, and STILL would be hurt by the tactic. In 1945 we were playing catch up ball in the air defense battle - and the technologies we worked on (including our own very heavy AAA guns) might look a lot better if the war had gone on a few more years. Similarly, had the IJA mass produced its six inch, and eight inch, AAA mountings, at least in a relative sense, because the war went on longer, we might have a better grasp of their significance. [Or not - we did abandon high altitude bombing - so maybe like the very heavy fighters they were no longer germane to the problem]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
JF Dunnigan points out the USN NEVER solved the problem of the kamakaze, and STILL would be hurt by the tactic. In 1945 we were playing catch up ball in the air defense battle - and the technologies we worked on (including our own very heavy AAA guns) might look a lot better if the war had gone on a few more years. Similarly, had the IJA mass produced its six inch, and eight inch, AAA mountings, at least in a relative sense, because the war went on longer, we might have a better grasp of their significance. [Or not - we did abandon high altitude bombing - so maybe like the very heavy fighters they were no longer germane to the problem]

Hmmm. While I am just a "lay person" (compared to you guys) in terms of my WW2 knowledge, it seems to me that the USN did solve the kamikaze "problem".

IIRC, upthread somewhere someone states that the kamikaze success rate was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the planes flown hit a target. NOTE: this does NOT mean a carrier target, but could be anything from a radar picket destroyer, or an LST off a landing beach, some cruiser or battleship operating independantly from the main fleet, the minesweepers, and so on.

In fact, the majority of ships damaged or sunk where not capital ships (where the heaviest AA is found).

The centrally coordinated, radar directed CAP intercepts made the fleet a tough target, and I assume that the auxiliary ships were damaged more often because they were easier targets in terms of AA installed and CAP available. (Please do not read this as some attempt to belittle the accomplishments made on the USS Franklin, or any other folks who suffered.)

But anyway, IMO, a 10% success rate is not something to crow about. Nor is it a rate that indicates to me that the USN failed to counter it.

Isn't it possible that the 10% success rate may actually have more to do with the sheer numbers of aircraft that Japan was able to gather together for their last line of defence, rather than the viability of a human guided missile tactic.

The USN had to adopt a new variation of fleet defence v. the kamikaze tactics, sure. And they had to adjust to the necessity of operating close to large numbers of land based aircraft. But they did do it.

Caveat time: I agree that a heavier shell retains more of its energy longer, and therefore is more effective at higher altitudes. However, the move away from gun barrel based AA to missle type AA systems was that the likely opposition (aircraft and missiles) would be flying much faster than before, and the fleet needed something that could be guided to the target. This usually requires a seeking warhead of some kind. (Either self guided, like a heat seeker, or launcher guided, where the shell homes in on radar reflections and/or emissions.) A gun shell is subjected to great shock when fired, and those older electronics weren't capable of taking that shock. Missiles dont have that launch shock.

I wonder: The Mighty U.S. 8th AF bombed Germany from these high altitudes (20,000 - 30,000 feet. What was the best ground based AA system used by Germany against high altitude targets, and why? (I bet it wasn't some 8 inch or greater gun tube... maybe in the 150mm range?) "Best" as in best rate of hits per shot fired.

Thanks for your patience. [:)]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: Dili

Dont change subject. So what country put in service a ship rocket AAA system after WW2 and retained it until AAA missile age?

Is THAT the subject? I thought it was AAA shells for 14 inch guns.

In Russian and Chinese, of course, they call SAMs "rockets" - and they have a point - but it is just an interesting play on words - and not an answer to your question.

I do not think AA rockets were used post WWII.

The word you used was "weapon." The phrase containg it was "any kind of weapon." So my response was to what you said - apparently not what you meant. You meant the post to be a continuation of our sub-topic of rockets, but didn't say so - and I almost always read things literally - which can be good (in a tech manual or computer machine code) but sometimes isn't.

for a non native speaker... what´s the difference between rocket and missile? [&:]

ORIGINAL: mlees

ORIGINAL: el cid again
JF Dunnigan points out the USN NEVER solved the problem of the kamakaze, and STILL would be hurt by the tactic. In 1945 we were playing catch up ball in the air defense battle - and the technologies we worked on (including our own very heavy AAA guns) might look a lot better if the war had gone on a few more years. Similarly, had the IJA mass produced its six inch, and eight inch, AAA mountings, at least in a relative sense, because the war went on longer, we might have a better grasp of their significance. [Or not - we did abandon high altitude bombing - so maybe like the very heavy fighters they were no longer germane to the problem]

Hmmm. While I am just a "lay person" (compared to you guys) in terms of my WW2 knowledge, it seems to me that the USN did solve the kamikaze "problem".

This is a widely held view. This is also my problem: fleet anti-air warfare. And in particular I study the possibility of fleet air defense re Chinese aircraft. There are a lot of dimensions to AAW, and it is a difficult thing to get it right: you can even lose if you have got it right technology wise, but are not paying attention operationally (VERY likely with Americans).
IDF spotted incoming Styx missiles when Elat was hit - visually (they don't show up on search radar). Contemplating Styx attack a year later (assigned to defend against it) we had NO hope OUR lookouts would spot such a small target in time even to give a British style "brace, brace, brace" warning. So we sought detection by what was then termed passive ESM (and is usually called ESM now): listen for the radar on the missile as a flag "it is coming." In WWII it was marginally better - when you are losing ships every few hours it focuses the attention. Consider the northern picket station off Okinawa: the time a destroyer was able to be on station was measured in single digit hours! When the enemy can do that to you - things are pretty awful.

Most kamakazes were inexperienced pilots who could barely hold formation. But Adm Ukazi died leading a raid - so sometimes you had really experienced pilots. Using statistics diluted by large numbers of people with 15 hours of flight time dilutes the danger potential of the threat. If PLAAF decides to run such missions, it is the opposite case: their pilots are given 10 hours on a flight simulator for 1 in the air on their primary type, and UNLIMITED time in older, high performance types (which they have in thousands). Further - the problem we solved (re anti-ship missiles) was easier than the kamakaze problem - missiles are far dumber and more predictable than humans. And note the problem didn't exactly stay solved: a US frigate in the Persian Gulf was hit by French Exocet missiles in spite of having anti-missile technology (soft and hard) we would have drooled to have (and which we designed): they were not even manning their ECM equipment in a shooting war years long where most missiles were hitting bouys - that is how dumb they are - and the captain was foolish enough to think "my American flag will save me from being a target." [If the missiles attack bouys, they don't care about your flag] Not manning his ECM, he had no warning. He STILL believes the "fatal flaw" lie in Pentagon design of a ship whose search radar cannot spot a tiny head on missile: he says so in interviews and his book.
Yet the real flaw lies in the failure to train him to "think electronically" - and use what he had effectively. Few navy captains think electronically - almost all think in terms of using radar all the time - which in fact permits an attacking jet or missile to come in passive - homing on your signal! THEN there is NO ESM warning. This problem is far from solved - and Dunnigan is right.

USN is particularly vulnerable to a Chinese attack because we "know" they "cannot be any good." A friend who teaches at the US Naval War college says pilot students say they don't need to study their Chinese counterparts. But the Chinese do it the other way around: they have "blue" units that imitate our tactics, and their pilots have to train against those who do things the way we do. They are flying variants of the Su-27 and the F-16 - and also some local derivitives of the MiG-21 which do things no MiG-21 we know about ever could do. They are buying and developing short range and long range missiles for use from aircraft, large and small, and from ships and submarines. On land the entire short and medium range missile force - the world's largest - has converted over to conventional warheads - and one of these is designed to rain BALLISTIC missiles onto ships at sea. [The captain of a US Ticonderoga type cruiser believes they sent a message during a crisis - by hitting the center of pre published aiming boxes as closely as radar can measure - to show they can hit a ship at sea that simply stays on course for a few minutes WITHOUT onboard guidance.] There isn't much difference between a missile and a kamakaze - they are one way attack aircraft - and these can come at us in numbers likely to saturate the defenses (what do you do when you have no more SAMs????) - some of them at speeds most of our ships cannot solve fire control problems for (we have - what is it ? - five experimental anti-missile variants of one of our AAW classes which probably can track them). And the manned ones may be determined and clever. I don't really care if a target is a kamakaze or an attack pilot intending to go home either - it is almost the same threat - but a kamakaze can turn the entire aircraft into warhead (and fire is the most deadly enemy to a ship) - and a kamakaze won't break off when damaged or wounded. Not nice.

I remember a time when we lost every air to air engagement in a shooting war for five months running - and when our planes were not properly fitted with guns (a lesson learned, they are now) nor their pilots trained to dog fight (not so well learned, we now are teaching that you should depend on BVR weapons and long range radar to set them up - and dogfighting is not going to be necessary - political nonsense - you cannot shoot what you cannot see in most situations - and if you see it well enough to identify it you probably cannot use BVR weapons any more). There are other potential problems as well - our latest generation (untested) technology uses continuous data links between planes as well as continuous use of search radar (similar to an unsinkable battleship, there is no such thing as undetectable radar: if it could not be detected WE could get no target data!) - the very opposite of what "electronic thinking" would advise (which, to oversimplify, begins with "be passive unless your position is already known or there is some CLEAR advantage to being active") - and we have a problem with contractors selling our secrets to China. We may find they are reading our signals - real time - and managing the battle with them. Stuff like that - and more we should not talk about. The arrogance we once had about Japan we are now repeating with China - and we may come to regret it. [I was pleased to hear the USAF COS last week saying HE was worried in a press conference. It isn't those who are worried that bother me - it is those who are sure there is "nothing to worry about."]

ORIGINAL: castor troy




for a non native speaker... what´s the difference between rocket and missile? [&:]

Its technical: a rocket is ANY rocket propelled flying thing; a missile is an unmanned flying thing (which may NOT be a rocket at all - USAF had Bomarc SAMs that were more or less unmanned jet fighters - and cruise missiles are usually jet propelled rather than rocket propelled) with an intelligent guidance package (in some sense, even if just intertial guidance). A German V-1 (not a rocket) and V-2 (a rocket) were BOTH missiles - because both had primitive guidance. Actually, the V-2 was not used as planned, but in an emergency mode from mobile launchers. The plan - kyboshed by Bomber raids on its launch sites - was to have it taken off UNDER RADIO CONTROL where guidance was worked out real time by computers using the best long range precision radar system in the world. To combine radio command during the power phase with intertial guidance would have greatly increased their accuracy. The point here is V-2 had two kinds of guidance - interial and command. That makes it a missile. Early cruise missiles were propeller driven - the US had one in WWI. If there is no propulsion, it is not a missile. But some new shells have on board guidance - making them very like missiles except they either do not maneuver or they only maneuver slightly along a nearly ballistic path.

ORIGINAL: mlees



I wonder: The Mighty U.S. 8th AF bombed Germany from these high altitudes (20,000 - 30,000 feet. What was the best ground based AA system used by Germany against high altitude targets, and why? (I bet it wasn't some 8 inch or greater gun tube... maybe in the 150mm range?) "Best" as in best rate of hits per shot fired.

Thanks for your patience. [:)]

Good guess. The Flak 39 was 150 mm (nearly 6 inch) - and it is the ONLY case of AAA greater than 5.25 inch caliber being used extensively in AA combat. I forgot about that - but it does show that the six inch - at least - were indeed viable and feasible weapons (which I thought likely - but was not sure was combat proven). IF that is the case, eight inch guns of the ROF of USS Newport News should be up to it - if you gave them single mountings that could elevate and traverse faster - and they should have higher reach than 6 inch.

what´s the difference between rocket and missile

 
 
Not all use this definition but like el cid again said a Missile is a rocket with guidance that can change or correct course and a plain Rocket cant . Of course nothing of this has much connection with traditional meaning of the words and technological twists like artillery granades with rocket assistence, non-rocket propulsion and course corrected rounds, etc.