Posted on 12/27/2013 5:27:07 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/battleswars1900s/p/falklands.htm
Fighting at Sea:
While cruising west of the Falklands on May 1, the submarine HMS Conqueror spotted the light cruiser ARA General Belgrano. Conqueror fired three torpedoes, hitting Belgrano twice and sinking it. This attack led to the Argentine fleet remaining in port for the rest of the war. Two days later, they had their revenge when an Exocet anti-ship missile, launched from an Argentine Super Étendard fighter, struck HMS Sheffield setting it ablaze. After attempts to stop the fire failed, the ship was abandoned. The sinking of Belgrano cost 323 Argentines killed, while the attack on Sheffield resulted in 20 British dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_General_Belgrano
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy light cruiser in service from 1951 until 1982. Previously named USS Phoenix, she saw action in the Pacific theatre of World War II before being sold to Argentina. The vessel was the second to have been named after the Argentine founding father Manuel Belgrano (1770–1820). The first vessel was a 7,069-ton armoured cruiser completed in 1899.
After almost 31 years of service, she was sunk during the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas or Guerra del Atlántico Sur) by the Royal Navy submarine Conqueror with the loss of 323 lives. Losses from the Belgrano totalled just over half of Argentine deaths in the war.
She is the only ship ever to have been sunk during military operations by a nuclear-powered submarine[1] and the second sunk in action by any type of submarine since World War II, the first being the Indian frigate INS Khukri by the Pakistani Hangor during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Phoenix_%28CL-46%29
On 7 December 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor she was anchored southeast of Ford Island near Solace. Observers on board Phoenix sighted the rising sun of Japan on planes coming in low over Ford Island and a few seconds later the ship’s guns took them under fire[clarification needed]. Phoenix escaped the disaster unharmed and shortly after noon was underway to join St. Louis, Detroit and several destroyers in an impromptu task force searching, unsuccessfully, for the enemy aircraft carriers.
Sub vs. surface ship, air vs. surface ship. No cruiser vs. cruiser. Oh well.
I believe the Battle of the North Cape was the only time HMS Duke of York fired her main battery guns in anger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Duke_of_York_%2817%29
http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-01BB-Duke%20of%20York.htm
DeSeversky is back, getting it wrong again. He draws wild conclusions from a remark by Kaiser with no data to support them. Overall war material production numbers are no doubt classified. And Kaiser was right - most of the Pacific fleet has been built and it is only now swinging into heavy action.
de Seversky lost me for good a few days ago when he said the bomber offensive against Japan could only come out of Alaska and that weather was not a problem. At that point, I became convinced that he was practicing maskirovka on behalf of the United States government.
If the Japanese didn’t have such empty stomachs and the knowledge that the war was “not necessarily progressing to Japan’s advantage,” the Japanese would be laughing at him.
Do not let de Seversky draft your fantasy football team.
de Seversky running a deception operation for the government to misdirect the enemy? I love it!
Interesting small article on concerns that Australians are concerned MacArther may focus on a presidential run instead of the Pacific Campaign. Didn’t know it started this early.
He also turned the ME 262 the fastest fighter in the world at the time into an ineffective bomber
Yep. The fueling system was a real problem.
The P-51 was nearly as fast even with the efficiency loss at high speeds.
Argentinian cruiser -v- British submarine
In the animated Disney feature ‘Victory Through Air Power’, de Seversky only illustrated the concept of strategic long range bombing from the Aleutians in the final segment. I don’t know if that was a deliberate masquerade, but the Disney animators took enough time animating it in 1943 for it to be a red herring. Does anyone have any insight on whether that was the case?
That island hopping campaign in the interests of securing bases for strategic bombing did indeed cause war materiel production to focus on amphibious warfare, and the blue water navy was indeed already complete by this time in 1943. What did the IJN have left that wasn’t a big target?
They tried basing B-29's in China, but without a coastal port or a Burma road, supply is just too big a problem.
Googling reveals the Air Force actually built runways capable of handling B-29's in the Aleutians, but by the time the B-29's were deployed we were in the process of taking the Marianas, which were much more advantageous from a weather and available targets perspective. So, de Seversky wasn't completely crazy about using the Aleutians, but had he more faith in the Navy's fast carrier task forces he could have foreseen the Central Pacific advance to take land bases there.
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