Nobody calls to defeat enemies with one blow, guided by the legend of David and Goliath. But, on the other hand, one must observe at least some facets of decency!
Admiral Mark Mitscher won the main battle of his life by sinking the Yamato with nearly three hundred aircraft. However, there is nothing to blame the American officer for: he rightly believed that only with this amount of aircraft would he be able to prove anything to the Japanese monster. And in case the air attack fails because of the weather, he ordered six battleships and a "support group" of 7 cruisers and 21 destroyers to prepare for battle.
But what would have happened if you hadn't been in the squadron of Admiral Mitscher Hornet, Hancock, Bennington, Bellow Wood, San Jacinto and Bataan? If only Essex and Bunker Hill were in his squadron? (In reality, it had all eight of the listed aircraft carriers.)
Four times less aircraft would not have allowed the Yamato to be drowned in time. The battleship would have managed to reach Okinawa and run aground there, turning into an impregnable fort. It was necessary to quickly turn the monster with torpedoes while it was walking through deep water. And Mitscher sent 280 aircraft into battle (of which 53 got lost and could not reach the target).
The Yamato was sunk, but one question remained: did every admiral have 8 aircraft-carrying ships at hand?
Sistership “Yamato” overgrown “Musashi” died under similar circumstances. The battleship for four hours went under the hurricane fire of the US Navy (in total, two hundred aircraft from seven aircraft carriers took part in the attacks).
Despite severe damage to the upper deck (the Japanese super-battleships received, according to various estimates, from 13 to 19 bomb hits), the death of both ships was a direct consequence of damage in the underwater part of the hull. This is a very important point.
The inglorious death of battleships in Taranto and Pearl Harbor is entirely on the conscience of the command of these bases. The cheerful Italians were too lazy to pull up the anti-torpedo net, for which they paid. Results of American negligence: Four of the five sunk battleships were victims of Japanese torpedoes. The only victim of the bomb was a small, outdated battleship Arizona (1915), the thickness of the main armor deck of which was 76 mm. The Japanese, in turn, used 800 kg bombs created by welding stabilizers to 356 mm armor-piercing shells.
Landing "West Virginia" (9 torpedoes) and "Tennessee" (hits from two bombs caused only cosmetic damage), Pearl Harbor, 1941
Where they did not forget to install an anti-torpedo net, everything turned out to be much more serious. During the war years, the British had to fly 700 times to the Tirpitz camp in the Kaafjord. Most of the attempts were unsuccessful; British aircraft lost 32 aircraft in these raids.
… Her Majesty's battleships "Anson" and "Duke of York", aircraft carriers "Victories", "Furies", escort aircraft carriers "Sicher", "Empuer", "Pesyuer", "Fanser", cruisers "Belfast", "Bellona", "Royalist", "Sheffield", "Jamaica", destroyers "Javelin", "Virago", "Meteor", "Swift", "Vigilent", "Wakeful", "Onslot" … - only about 20 units under the British, Canadian and Polish flags, as well as 2 naval tankers and 13 squadrons of carrier-based aircraft.
It was in this composition that the British fell on a visit to Tirpitz in April 1944 (Operation Wolfram). And, of course, they did not achieve anything - despite 14 hits from aerial bombs, the battleship returned to service after 3 months of intensive repairs.
The summer campaign ("Talisman", the 16th operation to sink the fascist beast) became equally ineffectual - the planes did not achieve a single hit in the ship at all.
“Tirpitz” was scored only in the fall of 1944 with the help of fantastically powerful bombs.
The seismic Tallboy was no doubt an interesting and formidable weapon. But its mass and dimensions (as well as its carrier - the four-engine "Lancaster" with the bomb bay doors removed and the defensive weapons dismantled) are silent evidence of the amazing resilience of the German battleship. Having exhausted all the usual methods, the British came to the use of five-ton bombs.
"Tirpitz" towered gloomily among the Norwegian rocks. British squadrons were sailing the Norwegian Sea, trying to get hold of the German monster. Burning tens of thousands of tons of fuel and diverting significant forces to attempts to destroy the battleship.
"As long as the Tirpitz exists, the British Navy must have two King George V-class battleships at all times. There must be three ships of this type in the waters of the metropolis at all times, in case one of them is being repaired."
- First Sea Lord Admiral Dudley Pound
The panic in the British Admiralty was the result of an unforgettable meeting with the same type “Bismarck”. During his first (and last) raid into the Atlantic, he crashed the battle cruiser Hood along with a crew of 1,400. The alarm was raised - in pursuit of the fascist killer 200 ships of the British fleet rushed.
The battleship "Rodney" was at that moment going to the USA for repairs, at the same time escorting the high-speed liner "Britannic" (used to transport military cargo). "Throw the liner to hell!" - that was the order of the Admiralty. And “Rodney” joined in the pursuit of “Bismarck”.
The battleship Ramilles accompanied the HX-127 convoy. Order: "Immediately follow to the West, pinch the German raider between yourself and the pursuers from the other side." And the convoy? The convoy will handle it on its own.
And nothing would have come of them, if not a stray torpedo from the deck plane "Suordfish", which got into the most successful place. The rudders were damaged by the explosion and the German lost control.
In the morning battleships and heavy cruisers approached and fired 2,500 rounds of main and medium caliber at the Bismarck. Then they hit him with four torpedoes. Finally, the "wunderwaffe" sank.
It would seem that only one torpedo destroyed a first-class ship!
A rare piece of luck. Which could not be counted on in subsequent battles. The Italian battleships "Littorio" and "Vittorio Veneto" were torpedoed twice, but each time they reached the base safely. The American North Caroline was torpedoed. Another time the Yankees torpedoed the Yamato. Alas, never a single (or even two at a time) torpedo could lead to such fatal consequences.
History shows that the likelihood of a repetition of the fate of “Bismarck” was extremely low. In March 1942, a single "Tirpitz" (the destroyers were released to the base due to lack of fuel) came under a massive attack from aircraft from the aircraft carrier "Victories". The British fired 24 torpedoes, but were unable to achieve a single hit on the fast battleship. “Tirpitz”, in turn, shot down two planes, then cut 29 knots against the wind and left the slow-speed “Suordfish” as if they were standing. This is how "a plywood shelf easily sank battleships."
Attacking a battleship from the air has always been a risky undertaking. And okay Germans or British. For the Americans, the ship's air defense was five years ahead of all the developments of other countries. As a result, the battleship "South Dakota" once overwhelmed 26 Japanese aircraft, out of 50, trying to attack the American formation (even if half of the indicated number were shot down by the escort destroyers - the results of the air pogrom at Santa Cruz Island have an amazing military-technical record).“Smart” projectiles with built-in radars and centralized guidance of anti-aircraft guns according to radar and analog computers. Tell the South Dakota anti-aircraft gunners about the power of plywood airplanes!
Among the sunk battleships, Barham and Royal Oak took a quick death from torpedoes. Both were launched in 1914. Both were torpedoed during WWII by German submarines and “ran out” from only 3-4 torpedo hits. These cases can be taken out of the brackets. Battleships of the era of the First World War had very weak anti-torpedo protection, due to the conditions in which these ships were designed.
As the reader has already guessed, we are considering only battleships built in the late 30s - mid 40s, when these ships reached the peak of their development.
British LCs such as "King George V" and "Vanguard"
French LCs of the "Richelieu" type
German aircraft of the "Bismarck" type.
Italian LCs of the "Littorio" type
Japanese LCs of the "Yamato" type
American LCs such as North Caroline, South Dakota and Iowa.
Masterpieces of world shipbuilding. Huge and powerful. Real floating fortresses, perfectly protected from all types of threats. Despite numerous attempts to destroy them, none of them could be sunk by “conventional” methods using a sane number of aircraft (at least by the forces of a couple of squadrons; for example: Midway, where one McCluskey group decided the outcome of the entire battle) or conventional aerial bombs (weighing up to 1 ton, dropped from average heights for that time).
Even the Bismarck, damaged by a torpedo, did not have any major destruction and loss among the crew at first. In other conditions, he could reach the coast and return to service after a short repair. For the final solution of the issue, it was necessary to "perforate" the wundarwaffe with large-caliber ammunition for hours, and then finish off the fascist reptile with a volley of torpedoes.
The illustration shows the Italian LK "Roma" (such as "Littorio"). Killed in September 1943 after being hit by two Fritz-X guided bombs. Armor-piercing ammunition of a special design weighing 1380 kg, dropped from a height of 6 kilometers.
In view of its mass and dimensions, the range of possible carriers of "Fritz" was limited to two- and four-engine bombers. It could not be used in the open ocean, because was too heavy for carrier-based aircraft of that time (if the Reich even had aircraft carriers). Moreover, he did not give a 100% guarantee: in the same year, 1943, the Germans attacked the elderly British battleship Worspite with Fritz-X bombs three times (one direct hit, one close explosion at the side and one miss). “Worspight” returned to service six months later, and the irrecoverable losses among its crew amounted to only 9 people.
French LC "Jean Bar" (like "Richelieu"). It took two days of shelling for the stationary unfinished battleship with no air defense, unpressurized compartments and a reduced crew to finally throw out the white flag. Despite the hit of three 450-kg aerial bombs and shells from the American LK "Massachusetts" (five 1220-kg supersonic "blanks" of 406 mm caliber), the French battleship still retained its combat capability, and after the war was repaired and put into operation. The losses of the Jean Bara crew in that two-day battle amounted to 22 sailors (out of 700 on board).
Some of you will reproach the author for bias, citing as an example the rapid death of the British battleship Prince of Wales (sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers in the battle of Kuantan, 1941).
The death of the battleship was surprisingly quick (only a couple of hours of resistance and four torpedoes), but one cannot turn a blind eye to such obvious factors! Of all the LKs of the late period, the British LKs of the "King George V" type had the worst anti-torpedo protection. The width of the PTZ of the British battleship was 4, 1 - 4, 4 meters, while the German “Bismarck” had as much as 6 meters! In addition, they had the worst air defense systems, and the King George V-class LCs themselves were a budget version of a real battleship, designed to “plug the gap” in the Royal Navy, before the new Vangards and Lyons appeared. It is enough to compare the main caliber of the “Briton” (356 mm) and its foreign counterparts (from 381 mm and above). Strictly speaking, there is a whole technological gap between King George V (1940) and some American Iowa (1944), and the British battleship itself does not quite fit into the concept of battleships of the later period.
Reservation "Iowa" - the main internal armor belt (310 mm) gradually passed into the lower one, which was part of the ship's anti-torpedo protection system
"Prince of Wales" died quickly: the explosion of the first torpedo bent the propeller shaft, which, when rotating, turned the entire port side of the battleship. Then another torpedo hit the LK. The "Prince" still remained buoyant, could move on its own and use weapons, but the new attack put an end to this sad story.
conclusions
The 23 battleships of the late period accounted for seven combat losses. Six out of seven are completely wild cases with colossal efforts to incapacitate these giants.
That's all the statistics.
"Atlantic nose" of the battleship "Bismarck"
The heavy cruiser "Prince Eugen" is preparing for the "last parade" on at. Bikini
Decontamination of TKR "Prince Eugen" after a nuclear explosion
During the battle at about. An Okinawa kamikaze broke through to the battleship Missouri and crashed on its side, flooding anti-aircraft gun No. 3 with burning fuel. The next day, a ceremony of burying the remains of the pilot with military honors took place on the ship - the battleship commander William Callaghan considered that this would be an excellent lesson in courage and patriotism for his crew.
"Missouri" nowadays
The modern standard of a super-surviving ship. In 1992, the newest "superlinkor" USS Ingersol entered the battle with the tanker "Matsumi Maru 7" for the first right of passage through the Strait of Malacca. The fast American nearly won the race, but the enemy struck a sneaky blow. Hooked on the USS Ingersol with her anchor and ripped open the warship like a tin can.
