Posted on 12/08/2009 12:09:56 PM PST by jazusamo
The Navy presumably has documentation on the damage to West Virginia & Oklahoma. If they’d been hit below the keel or by impact below the water line the damage would have been unmistakeable.
I think that the Japanese had a kind of 'Beehive' round for their 18" naval gun. Don't know if it was ever fired in action.
“The Navy presumably has documentation on the damage to West Virginia & Oklahoma. If they’d been hit below the keel or by impact below the water line the damage would have been unmistakeable.”
Not really. The Japanese used aerial torpedoes at Pearl Harbor. Telling apart the damage from a sub torpedo and an aerial one would probably prove very difficult, especially at the time, when they were far more concerned with rescuing those trapped in the bottoms of the ships and/or getting them salvaged and returned to service. Those priorities vastly exceeded the need to tell the difference.
Figure 1/60th to say 1/500th of a second exposure (considering daylight, but still in a fast moving aircraft - the faster) on the picture. Probably right before any secondaries (if any from those particular torpedoes) touched off.
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If you think about the weight difference between an aerial torpedo & the sea launched variety, the damage caused by the heavier warhead should be distinguishable. The Navy had salvage divers all over those vessels carefully assessing the damage. But I confess that I don’t know much about the torpedo type carried by the mini-sub.
Yeah, but if you're a politician, you can do that all the time.
The Japanese BBs used their main guns against torpedo bombers at Midway. The idea was to raise a geyser in front of the bomber, and cause the bomber to crash when they collided with it. Apparently, it worked, too. They bagged a couple of the old Devastators from Torpedo 8 that way.
The mini-sub torpedoes were pretty darn big. The ones on the History Channel show had I think an 800lb or so warhead on them. I’m not sure what their aerial ones had, but it’s probably about that size or so. Given the state of the art in salvage diving at the time, I doubt they could have told the difference. I’d make a guess that it was more along the lines of “ That hole is about X feet across, so we’ll need a patch bigger than that...”
That’s a creative use for a BB main gun.
It’s possible that the minisubs used some sort of aerial torpedo. I’ll have to look that up. I would seriously doubt that it was a “Long Lance” — that was a big sucker. Plus they wouldn’t need that kinda range.
I hear what your saying, but at some point each of those hulls went into drydock for serious repair. Everybody got a good look at the damage when they were fully out of the water. In the case of Oklahoma — she capsized — so the extent of the damage may have been visible until she began to settle.
It sure didn’t look like the Long Lance.. that truly was a big ol’ thing. I didnt know the airplanes used the LL... I thought that was just from full-size subs and surface ships.
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