US Navy Strike Tactics - WW2
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- čas přidán 13. 04. 2023
- The Battle of the Philippine Sea was the largest aircraft carrier battle ever. In this video we look at the evolution of US Navy carrier bomber naval strike tactics.
Bibliography
Boyne, Walter J. “The Last of the Dive-Bombers.” Air & Space Forces Magazine, December 1, 2010.
Doll, Thomas E. The Douglas TBD Devastator. Leatherhead, England: Profile Publications, 1967.
Hanson, David. “Torpedo Attacks: The Naval Air War in the Pacific.” daveswarbirds.com. Accessed April 1, 2023. www.daveswarbirds.com/navalwar....
Kleiss, Norman Jack, Timothy J. Orr, and Laura Orr. Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway. New York, NY: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2018.
Newpower, Anthony. Iron Men and Tin Fish: The Race to Build a Better Torpedo during World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 2010.
Prange, Gordon. Miracle at Midway. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1982.
Volo, James M. Slow but Deadly: The Dive-Bombers of World War II. 5. Vol. 5. Traditional American History. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
The USN air power in WWII was scary towards the end. You had so many escort fighters not only brushing off enemy air combat patrols but you can harass ship borne AA guns before the attack. Then Torpedoes box them in followed by accurate diving bombing. It was like Kamikaze without the suicide.
Even today the U.S. Navy sports the world's 2nd largest air force, 2nd only to the U.S. Air Force itself.
I've been watching WWII documentaries since before I could walk, and I had no idea the F-6F Hellcat was so effective. I always thought the Corsair was the turning point, but I guess it was the Hellcat.
@@casesully50 large wars like WW2 basically never have an exact turning point. Even so, it’s possible to argue that if there is a turning point, it happened before large scale introduction of the F6F. Their predecessor, the F4F, got the US through the toughest battles of the early pacific war. Its inferiority compared to the zero is usually overstated. Yes, the zero was very likely the best fighter aircraft at its introduction and had extreme good range, maneuverability at low speed, and climb rate. However, these advantages came at a cost, it had no hydraulic control surfaces, no self sealing fuel tank, and no armor. Once the US developed actual tactics to fight the zero such as boom and zoom and the thatch weave, they started gaining a positive K/D ratio against it, even when using the wildcat. Additionally, as Maverick says, “It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot”. There are examples such as “Swede” Vejtasa winning a dogfight against 3 Japanese planes while he was flying a SBD Dauntless dive bomber, not even a fighter aircraft.
Watch his series on desert storm. The US has gotten MUCH scarier since then.
It's one of the reasons why these guys and the younger test pilots were chosen for NASA astronauts later on. They could take the G-Force and knew how to handle it.
The captain of that single Japanese Destroyer that was hit by a B-17 (7:15) refused to take evasive maneuvers because he didn't believe level bombers could hit a ship. Statistically he was right too.
The bombs are more likely to land close to the aiming-point than away from it. Any manoeuvring by the ship, at the moment of bomb-release or even after, would reduce the likelihood of being hit.
Statistically, level bombers don't hit any ships because their target usually maneuvers.
@@aaroncabatingan5238 You'd think that, but the actual factor are the wind directions at different altitudes and the fact there is no way to take those into account.
@@well-blazeredman6187 Only if the process of aiming has a positive influences the outcome. Otherwise it just distributes the error over the whole group.
In this case it's more that the fundamental concept of high altitude level bombing over open water is flawed because the bombs drop through different layers of air moving at different speeds and in different directions.
This wasn't really recognized because who'd think of testing over a random plot of water 800 miles away when you have perfectly serviceable random plots of water 8 miles of the coast? Turns out that near the coast the sea winds and land winds influence each other and take out a lot of the randomness that can occur over open water.
There's also the issue of lack of practice doing that kind of bombing. They did have some success using skip bombs against transports. 1
The one two punch of content from both channels is staggering!
#sycophant
@@ebisu8824ur dad shoulda nutted u in the sheets instead
Finally, a Billy Mitchell we can look up to.
Gold
Too bad it's not the real Mitchell.
The OG Billy Mitchell wa a great American.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of this lmao
Just finished part 2 on the Operations. These two channels are brilliant. Well done. Cheers from Tennessee
It's no wonder why so many dive bombers missed. Holy shit. 280mph is about 410fps, which means if you release bombs at 2500 feet, you have six seconds until impact with the ocean.
Exactly, it was a poor showing by the US navel air arm.
@@scottperry7311 As compared to what exactly?
@@scottperry7311somebody's angry that their weeb ass japanese navy got destroyed 😂 😂 😂
@@scottperry7311 please, by all means attempt it yourself, I’m sure the fish will say it was a poor showing of your skill too
@@ExHyperion You can always tell a clown by their facepaint.
I just want to say, I love how you release both Part 2 on the Operations and the Intel Report same time.
Keep this strategy please.
If you get embarrassed in a war game or a demonstration, you have a chance to embarrass the enemy when the real thing comes around. Good leaders embrace that sort of thing when it happens.
The world has never been blessed with an excess of good leaders.
@@recoil53 I'd disagree. I think it's more that the people who are best suited for leadership either don't want to or the people who do ware willing to work the system in order to get to places of leadership are often not good leaders
Punishing people for being right has never been a good long-term strategy.
The aircrews also analyzed their attacks and changed their tactics. To sink the IJN Yamato, the torpedo bombers all attacked one side which caused her to capsize quickly unlike her sister ship which went down like a submarine bow first and took a lot of punishment.
Salute Col. Mitchell for having the foresight 20 years before the top brass in US Navy realised that air power is the backbone of naval power.
He was a General. Brigadier General to be exact. But yes. He was a smart man and predicted a future war with Japan. And he was laughed at for making that prediction 20 years before Pearl Harbor.
By the way, a movie was made for him in the 1950s. THE COURT MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL. You can probably find it here on youtube.
He also believed in an independent USAF, (Which he got in ‘47) but uh, reminder that he tried to say that an independent US Airforce should have control of warships like Langley, Lexington and Saratoga, because they carried aircraft. This would also include later US carriers.
I’m personally happy that it never came to fruition, tbh. Even with a Grandfather who *was* USAF.
@@SeismicGuide Its too bad Mitchell never seen the USAF come to life. He passed away in 1936. But America should've followed Britain's example of creating an Air Force in the 1920's.
Thank you for a great overview of the US Naval experience in WW 2.
Starting to gain traction this channel and I'm most grateful for your work and efforts uploading. 👍
I'm kinda surprised that there was no mention of rockets. When reading The Fast Carriers, it was driven home how effective rocket attacks vs ships could be, and how much the pilots loved "Holy Moses".
USS Yorktown used a very effective combined arms attack during the battle of Midway. They sent their Dauntlesses and Avengers, plus a small Wildcat fighter escort, to attack as a group. Once close to the Japanese fleet, they split up. The Dauntlesses went approached from the north at a high altitude, while the Avengers and Wildcats came in low from the east.
Japanese Zero fighters attacked the Avenger group, expecting an easy victory. However, the American fighters used a new tactic known as the "Thatch Weave" to counter and shoot down the faster Zeros. This minimized American losses, allowing the Avengers to close in on the Japanese carriers. This in turn alarmed the rest of the Japanese combat air patrol, causing them all to descend on the Avengers and destroy most of them. No torpedoes scored a hit. But the torpedo+fighter group had done an excellent job of acting as a Zero magnet, leaving the rest of the Japanese fleet without cover.
The Yorktown's Dauntlesses approached from the north, undetected and unopposed, and dove in on the carrier Soryu. Three bombs hit her, resulting in a series of secondary explosions in her hangars, full of fueled and armed bombers. The ship soon became an unsalvageable inferno. Yorktown's attack had brilliantly achieved its goal.
Due to a long series of coincidences, the USS Enterprise's dive bomber squadrons, launched hours earlier, happened to reach the Japanese fleet from the south at the *exact same time* the Yorktown's attack was ongoing. They took advantage of the Japanese fighters's preoccupation with the Yorktown's Avengers and dove in on the Kaga and Akagi, hitting both and causing similar chain reactions in their hangars. In a matter of minutes, three Japanese fleet carriers had been set ablaze.
Swiftly going to point out that most of the success at Midway was completely unintentional and a lot of it was dumb luck
@@chadthundercock5641 I disagree. A lot was done to put first the US fleet, then the US strike gropus into a position where they could get lucky.
Very well described, but I HAVE TO nitpick and point out that the torpedo bombers were Devastators, not Avengers.
@@gasperpoklukar8372 you are wrong
@@gasperpoklukar8372that is true. Had they been avenger torpedo bombers they would have held up much better.
The fact that Colonel Mitchell was court martialed and forced out of the service but those who tried to hide the results and keep America weak against her enemies faced zero consequences is absolutely pathetic.
Having realized converting the two Lexington BCs to CVs that resulted in the best naval treaty carrier conversion of all the conversions in the world, the brass in the Navy already started to think of how carrier aircraft should be an advantage in naval warfare going forward. In Fleet Problems exercise in the pre war proves that carriers could control and interdict enemy shipping in much wider area than what the battleships could do.
Halsey and Fletcher were the first wartime carrier force commander, by that time Mitscher was still a CO of USS Hornet (CV-8) during trying times of early to mid 1942 these 3 commanders utilized their carrier force to strike back at the Japanese even with hit and run tactics (other than Coral Sea). This carrier mindset changed the whole ballgame for the USN by end of 1942 where they started to center their main striking force around the fleet carrier force, the Fast Carrier Task Force (TF58/38), using the Fast battleships as bodyguards of the new Essex class, instead of using them as the main striking force. The doctrine of USN changed in my opinion since the 1930s with the Navy realizing with having Lexingtons they could hammer the enemy far away from you, outside their naval gun range with an aircraft striking force, was the way forward, instead of risking your capital ships in a close quarters combat.
I'd argue that the change began after Pearl Harbor. It's kinda difficult to have a battleship-centered naval doctrine when every single battleship in the Pacific Fleet got sunk before the war even began.
@@aaroncabatingan5238 Not every single battleship was sunk at Pearl Harbor. All eight battleships were damaged in the attack. If you put Utah in with them, then that's nine. The reason it's not considered a battleship is because Utah was at the end of her life and was being used as a platform to test aa guns and as a target ship for US pilots to do dry bomb runs on.
In the end, four battleships were sunk, one was beached, and the other three were damaged. Again if you count Utah that would be five sunk. Utah could have been salvaged and put back into service like Nevada, California, and West Virginia were, but it wasn't again because it was at the end of its life.
Beings that Nevada, California, and West Virginia were repaired and put back into service the US really only lost two battleships at Pearl Harbor. Even if Japan had caught the carriers in port and were able to sink them what's to say that they wouldn't have been repaired and put back into service. Would that delay the US? Yes. Would it keep the US from winning the war in the Pacific? No. The US still had five more carriers and made even more of them after Pearl Harbor.
Now, the missile knows where it is and where it isn't.
Mitchell was a genius. He also helped develop the tactic, during WW1, where artillery, tanks, and massed bombers worked together to punch through the trench defenses. The Germans later refined this as the blitzkrieg.
No he didn't
The German studied Roy Geiger's tactics in Central America. When Geiger was later serving as attache to the British in North Africa he mentioned how the Luftwaffe was using his tactics.
@@mikeff15 no they didn't
@@chadthundercock5641 Yes he did. His tactics for supporting ground forces, and later, bombing naval vessels, were genius.
@@fearthehoneybadger nah
upon returning from the war, the pilots did not use their expertise in pulling out
brehhh, cue baby boomers.
Thank you for this video! Now I can appreciate why my city named it's airport after Billy Mitchell. (General Mitchell International Airport)
Make Milwaukee great again.
Can you do a video on Soviet ambush tactics deployed by MiGs during the Vietnam war? I think it would be fascinating for such an overlooked topic on how they managed to down so many US jets throughout the war
There is a reason they are the chess masters decade after decade.
Thanks again. Always looking forward to these.
I'm not a fan of animated war videos, but you do a stupendous job. A very good mix of animation & pictures. 🫡 🇬🇧 🇺🇸
4:47-4:50
"A straight vertical dive of 90 degrees was discouraged."
*shows plane model smashing into ship*
Don't know why but that one had me dying over here lol
I mean that is what might happen to the plane so yeah but the timing is just funny so yeah.
Maybe it's outside the scope of this video but Billy Mitchel was full of at least as much hot air as good ideas. He adamently stated that air power would make navies obsolete as it would be impossible to opperate ships in range of hostile aircraft. Lots of the early air power advocates went much too far in their claims.
Also that there should be a USAF.
And that the carriers should be USAF.
*Look who's advocating for ships in range of hostile aircraft* Lol
And, like, seriously, Submarines are still relevant today, I wonder where the hell he would've gotten a consistent ASW from kek.
And he put both ketchup and mustard on his hotdogs.
Thanks for this presentation. So so good
Nicely informative video
Thank you for such insightful report!
Great video!
Awesome!
Love this content! No other channel like it
Great video again. I m always waiting at Friday just to eager to watch new vlog from your channel
Super fascinating
Some of the best content on CZcams. Thank you all for what you do.
Good info.
Thanks!
Love TOR and TIR; keep up the great work gentlemen! Best wishes from Texas
There were 3 Avengers at Midway that were the first ones to the Pacific and made it to Pearl before the battle but after the carriers left so they flew to Midway and were a part of the attack on the Japanese from the island. The men were part of the same Torpedo 8 Squadron that was completely wiped out (sans Ensign George Gay) from the Hornet. 2 of the 3 were shot down. The third was shot up so badly it barely made it back to midway to land with one wheel and one dead, two crewman alive but wounded. It was shipped back to the US to be studied and is in the Naval Air museum at Pensacola today. The pilot Ensign Albert Ernest said that the only reason he thinks the plane survived was because it turned out that it was the first Avenger off the line with 001 serial code and he thinks it was made perfectly.
A quick salute to those early Brit aviators and the Royal Navy bureaucrats who had enough sense to trust the judgement of their warriors. I could go on about the injustice Col. Mitchell endured or the incompetence surrounding the early MK13 torpedo but, fortunately, that's well documented elsewhere.
SB2C Helldiver, crews called it "Son of a B*tch 2nd Class".
Thank you - this is the type of history retelling that i enjoy - Factual, without bias or exaggeration.
had an issue with being unable to load anything between 5:00 and 6:00, probably not on your end but figured youd want to be aware. good as always man
Y'all should really put the link to the other channel in the description, great work!
7:15 The B-17s were obviously not *entirely* withdrawn from service in the Pacific, although they were largely replaced in the bombing role by B-24's, and then B-29's.
A shame that the torpedoes used early in the war were such total dogshit. They nearly never went off correctly due to a series of fuckups during their design process
Yeah, and the department said it the pilot fault and didn't even test the torpedo to save money.
@@Boomkokogamez tbf, it was during the Depression
You can always tell by someone's use of profanity their lack of maturity.
@@timf2279 you can always tell someone’s arrogance through their pretentiousness
@King Muddy True but they didn't even try to fix it until ehat 1943?
Mitchells test was not only against stationary targets. Those targets weren't under power (pumps) or crewed. So they eventually sank due to inaction as even minor leaks remained unattended.
That is true, but the Navy didn't think even such vulnerable ships would be sunk. The Navy lost the P.R. war, so they tried to cover up the results. Mitchell let the fame go to his head. He made the Amirality look bad, pushed his luck too far, and was canned in the long run. Had he been a little more diplomatic, he might have helped the Navy air arm be more capable by the start of the war. He forgot the basic fact that the military is not a Democracy. By making the Admirals look like idiots, he was destined to being fired, right or wrong.
Those dive bomber pilots, and particularly the torpedo bomber pilots, were gutsy AF.
Thank you, another great video. 🙏🙏The Royal Navy did use dive bombers & torpedo planes.
This video really shortchanges the massive contribution that the B17 made to the war in the Pacific.
I’m just imagining Billy Mitchell looking down from heaven on US WW2 aviation with just the smuggest look imaginable on his face.
10:13 not 1,000 feet
The TBD Avenger released it's Mark 13 torpedo at 1,000 yards. 100 to 150 feet altitude is correct though.
1,000 feet (333 yards) is much too close to pull away and be clear of AA fire
Funny how bureaucracy got mitchell despite his innovation
That's what happens when you try to stop the Navy from developing its own airpower because you want it all under army control...
Not so funny how it happens most of the time!
Corruption, not bureaucracy.
@@walterhammond290 the top administrators are usually threatened by forward looking ideas. if you are an innovator eventually you get used to it.
I find it odd you didn't mention Roy Geiger at all in the dive bombing segment. It was his tactics that he developed in Central America that would form USMC's dive bombing tactics going into World War 2. Fun fact, Geiger would command the Marine part of the landings on Okinawa, Where, after the loss of General Buckner, would be the only Marnie to command a field army.
Impressed that those airframes could take 9g.
HOW¡¡¡¡ HOW he did know that this was the biggest question I had after seeing the previous video???, For an uncoordinated attack it was incredibly deadly and worked very well, I bet that for the japanese looked very coordinated.
Absolutelly top quality content.
A PBY Catalina launched a successful torpedo attack against the Akebono Maru. It was the only successful torpedo attack by an American aircraft during the Battle of Midway.
A suggestion to future episodes; if possible can you include the speeds and numbers to metric as well, as not everyone want to do conversions when just listening!
Poor misunderstood Mitchell, died of a broken heart I think
2:46 left bottom side of the screen the guy smiling kind of looks like cilian murphy lol
Mitchell: Why are you booing me, I'm right
Awesome as always. Something I would be interested to understand on this channel based on what was said in the corresponding Operation's vid to this - how on earth did the Americans get 200+ aircraft airborne from several (6?) aircraft carriers in 10 minutes???
Most US carriers can carry 90+ Aircraft, so once the engines are warmed you can actually get them airborne pretty quickly, so...
6x90=540, although IIRC USN doctrine said to keep reserves, which does drop the number down, also like, Japan was able to do the same with the Kido Butai, they just needed 45 minutes of planes on the deck because they couldn't warm the engines in the hangar.
The joys of having open hangars, you can warm the oil in the HD rather than on the FD.
The US also pioneered "skip bombing" attacks against ships using the B-25, etc.
Very effective.
👁️
Book, "Whip", by Martin Caiden
also, "Battle of the Bismarck Sea".
Love the video. I just wish you'd include the different parameters for launching late war torpedoes. The speed and altitude difference was massive. Per the Wikipedia article (for what it's worth) - "To speed the availability of the modified torpedo the Bureau built tail assemblies with the shroud ring attached, then sent them to the fleet as substitutes for the equipment on hand. By the fall of 1944 the revamped weapon had a wide distribution. As a result of the new improvements, torpedo drops at altitudes up to 800 feet (240 m) and at speeds up to 300 knots (560 km/h) were authorized. Experience soon indicated that these limits could be extended even further. On one occasion in early 1945, 6 Mark 13 torpedoes were released from altitudes between 5,000 and 7,000 feet (1,500 and 2,100 m); 5 out of the 6 were observed to run hot, straight, and normal. Combat use increased rapidly and the new effectiveness seemed out of all proportion to the changes made. On one air strike on April 7, 1945, Mark 13's sent to the bottom the 45,000 ton (sic) battleship Yamato, a light cruiser, and several destroyers. "
That dude at 3:04 to the left of MItchell creeps the hell out of me.
Dive bombers had to be fearless. Regardless of country, once you pulled out of that dive, you had lsot all energy, and you were a sitting duck for AA and, god forbid, fighters wanting easy aces.
Uh, no, once you pulled out of the dive, you were likely flying at relatively high speed - just at low altitude. Fearless, yes.
I would definitely describe being strafed by a fighter plane as distracting
Hey Intel report. Big fan of your videos but could you maybe also provide metric measurements in the future?
Poor Mitchell, damn.
What Happened to Sir Mitchell, is he reinstated?
what's the music being used in their videos? can some someone please tell me?
Playlists. Make them.
what was the German Stuka Tactics and Doctrine then? 1939-1944? In the south West pacific Campaign area Australian RAAF used skip bombing from their Beaufighters and were highly successful . They probably brought this from the Western Desert /Mediterranean War earlier than 1942 . Can do a story on these 2 ?
Stuka technique was like Dauntless technique, but they had to pull out even later because their targets were smaller. Interestingly, dive bombers are more accurate if they can go slower, a major reason why the Dauntless was better than the Helldiver. Even today, being able to go slower likely accounts for some of the effectiveness of certain ground attack planes, like the A10.
It was in this moment that "Brittania rule the waves" was truly made a historical tune, rather than a declaration of fact.
Anyone wishing to learn about dive bombing should read Wildenberg’s “Destined for Glory.”
I thought the usn started the war with the devastator torpedo bomber, have I got that wrong? Also the swordfish seems to have been so successful because it was so flimsy the flak wasn't able to produce catastrophic damage.....
👍
at 2:31 I almost spat out my milk
10:16 Pardon me, but is this supposed to yards instead of feet? Because the math just doesn't add up when you calculate the distance travelled using 40 seconds as time and 45 knots as speed. Or perhaps I am just terrible at math lol.
Also loved the video, very insightful!
This feels kinda incomplete to be honest. No mention of late war torpedo could be dropped at faster and higher altitudes or that dive bombing gradually lost favor after gaining more favor from both IJN and USN in 1942.
I believe a more current phrase to describe dive bomber and torpedo bomber crews is “having sufficient testicular fortitude”.
...and the B-25 bomber was eventually named after Mitchell.
>Billy Mitchell
A cursed name
Excluding the Battle of Midway i want to say the overwhelming tonnage of Japanese shipping was sunk by the US Navy *"Submarine Fleet"* (Admiral Nimitz was a famous Submarine Commander before becoming Admiral Nimitz) and then after the B-17 was withdrawn from US Army Air Force service the ironically named B-25 "Mitchell" (so named presumably for Court Martialed General Billy Mitchell i imagine) Medium Bomber using a "skip bombing" technique. Still the skill of *"dive bombing"* as a pilot became invaluable to the US military effort against wartime Japan especially in these latter on or about Years 1944-1945 as the Chance-Vought F4U Fighter added a secondary but far more important role as Close Air Support for both the US Marine Corps and US Army Island Hopping both. Don't know of any ships sunk by the F-4U "Corsair" but a quick Google search would answer that no doubt.
Did that search had no idea how important Charles Lindbergh became to the War effort for Air Power upon the entire Pacific Theater thanks to Henry Ford (as usual) who had no issue with standing up to ridiculous threats made by the FDR Crazies...anyhow the Battle of the Phillipines under Douglas Macarthur saw a massive use of both Army and Marine Corps land based Air Power for both interdiction and close air support role. The dive bomber mentioned here also played a role as the effective fighting distances were so close and Japanese anti-air defenses deminimus/being overrun by both Phillipino and US Army massed infantry and mechanized and some armor as well which freed up the US Navy to launch truly massive Naval Operations upon both the Central Pacific then later in the direction of Southern Japan. Both range and speed of the F4U dramatically increased because of #Lindbergh effectively marking the end for all other piston driven aircraft excepting the B-29 #Superfortress for combat roles on or about 1945.
I don't think it's fair to say the tests Mitchell's dive bombers performed were a "major success". They did prove that aircraft could sink ships but it took them several hours and their targets were stationary and, as they had no crew aboard, could not make an efforts to defend themselves either through anti-aircraft fire or damage control. Additionally all ships tested were designed and built before the first combat use of aircraft and therefore had not been built with any consideration towards air power.
While Aircraft were very important from the start due to their scouting abilities. It's very hard to argue that they were a major threat to warships until the late 1930's when their payload and speed increased such that they could do meaningful damage and could not be countered simply by the use of a few machine guns.
1. Entja Istpa 2. Top seven rules in every nation and top three rules for life………….3. Buffers safeguards and precision….
My great aunt was engaged to a torpedo bomber pilot during ww2. He was shot down and killed. My grandpa was the one who picked up the phone when the news came. A couple years later, she met a C-47 pilot and married him.
I think there's a lot of quirky, funny history going on here.
Billy Mitchel did that demonstration in the 1920s to embarrass traditional naval power and to show the supremacy of air power. However, the US Navy years later started cramming in airplanes on warships on some new fangled thing called, "The Aircraft Carrier."
Lastly with the dive bombing tactics, the US Army Air Corps by WWII, was not into dive bombing anymore. It was the Department of the Navy: The US Navy and Marine Corps that had dedicated dive bombing squadrons, tactics, aircraft for such attacks. The Department of the Navy would stick with it through the entirety of the US at war in WWII.
The Army Air Corps did eventually use fighter bombers - basically fighters - as dive bombers.
I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian here. Considering the number of U.S. aircraft involved in the attack of the Japanese fleet and their "training", I think the result was relatively poor. 26 dive bombers attacked a damaged Japanese carrier which had been hit by two torpedo and they only scored 2 hits with 1000 pound bombs. Dive bombers were actually very effective at hitting targets compared to other types of bomber/torpedo aircraft so that's a very poor showing. All those aircraft and they sunk one carrier and two oilers, damaging 2 other carriers and a battleship, again I think that's a pretty poor showing. Remember unlike previous battles the U.S. had air superiority, so the attackers were not under pressure by enemy fighters while they made their attacks. The only excuses, and they are very valid excuses, for the poor performance of the attack is that the US aviators were concerned with by the time of the attack and the possibility of running out of fuel before being able to land. In hindsight I think the US attack was ill conceived and should not have been launched. The performance of the Japanese naval air units was so poor in this battle it should have been obvious that Japanese carriers were no longer anywhere as effective as they once had been, and therefore no longer a major threat. In fact the Japanese themselves knew how ineffective their carrier air arm would be in the next battle they fought, using their carriers as decoys to draw away major units of the US fleet so their surface units could attack the US invasion fleet off the Philippines, and it worked.
In an ideal world, each bomb is a hit, but it doesn't work like that. Expert pilots who could release in training were supposed to hit 80% of the time, while the Japanese at the end of the war were hitting 20%. However, the dive bombers may be damaged (& pushed off course) or put off their aim by flak, fighters, bad visibility, others getting in their way, nerves/excitement, winds/buffeting, as well as experienced Japanese captains steering. You have also mentioned the fair point of distraction by fuel worries.
Despite the skill of ALL the Japanese bomber/torpedo pilots in the early stages of the pacific war, they didn't always hit or sink the US carriers, compared to the numbers that attacked. It's probably a lot harder to do than we think.
The US Carrier commander wanted a knock out blow. He didn't get it, but still damaged the them & effectively he left the Japanese Fleet 'de-planed'. For the cost of US planes & pilots, he thought it was worth a shot, & so it proved.
I noted the 6 Japanese CAP planes being distracted by planes going after the tankers, but these planes weren't the biggest threat, perhaps more Japanese inexperience here?
The Japanese didn't have the planes/pilots for the Philippine battle anyway, so used their carriers in the best role available.
@@eze8970 I looked up scot Perry's bombing data. He never landed one on target.
could you guys add metric measurements to the vids? as someone not from the US it would be appreciated :)
a person becomes automatic with recalculation after deciding to just depend on himself.
@@wisconsinfarmer4742 well, i invite you to be automatic on recalculating everything you see online, i will stick to the scientific and engineering international standards
@@Cristian_1_CL no problem I have it covered. Put in a little effort and you will not have to be spoon fed.
"Intense Resistance?" NO! Mitchel was Driven Out and "COURT MARTIALED!" for his dedication to the Truth!
Billy Mitchell let all them old heads know what the future would be 😎
If the B-17 had an MCLOS guided bomb (something similar to the Fritz X), it could have made the B-17 a viable naval bomber.
The USN actually had a superior guided bomb with the ASM-N-2 Bat which was the first radar-guided anti-ship munition. Rather than a TV-guidance system like the fritz, it used an ARH seeker to target ships from 15k-25k feet. Quite a few japanese ships were sunk with it.
Edit to add they were dropped from the PB-4Y which was essentially a modified B-24
Wait... the first dive bomb was the day I was born!
Skip bombing was used too more often than gets mentioned, even with Avengers.
It's a pitcy MItchell wasn't around to see his ideas so well implemented.
I wonder why the carrier groups didn't include a few ships that had no other purpose than to be bristling with anti aircraft guns with a cargo hold of millions and millions of rounds.
Having 'some' guns on battleships and carriers did a lot of damage to attacking planes. Surely a carrier size ship with 100x the amount of guns could have output so much anti aircraft fire that nothing would have a chance of getting through. Just four of these such ships on the perimeter of the fleet could have created a near permanent wall of lead to prevent planes getting close then move to the centre or rear when there is ship to ship action.
They did. These ships were called "cruisers".
@@psychohist So a cruiser had no ship to ship shell guns and only had tons of ship to air guns? I think not.
After 1min 9 sec the video just goes to hour glass buffering. Just came from watching the main channel where I had no buffering at all. I've tried skipping forward still won't load, very odd. Almost like youtube doesn't want me to watch it.
Worked fine for me.
Dive bomber pilot.......how did they stay in the air with balls so big?
1. Entja istpa 2. Top seven rules in every nation abd top 3 three rules fir life……….. 3. Buffer safeguards and its vision…….
Billy Mitchell haha
Mitchell the genius
Mitchell the a-hole.
The man tried to STOP development of a naval air arm by making it part of the army.
It's too bad that the authors of this channel only read Mitchell's propaganda rather than the whole story.
@@dclark142002 Mitchell had his blind spots but there’s no doubt he was far ahead of his time in advocating for air power. The Navy constantly undermining him at every turn certainly didn’t help his opinion of them, even when they were right and he was wrong.
@@historyeverday, he WASNT 'far ahead of his time'.
He was deliberately trying to SABOTAGE research and development so that he could gain more power for his admin area.
You really need to read about the problems and issues caused by the creation of the Air Board and the removal of the Royal Navy's independent air arm...
There are a variety of books covering this subject, including assessments of all three major navy approaches to air power in the interwar years.