New Weapons-Old Tactics

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JOHN THURSTON
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New Weapons-Old Tactics

Post by JOHN THURSTON »

there are Several alient and bloody instances of the use of old tactics when weaponry had evolved.

The Loss of the Hood to the the Bismarck is a minor example of this (althought the loss was great). The Hood wasa a "Fisher" Class of one Battle Cruiser built in the 1930's.

Her Armor scheme did not recognize the fact that pure ship to ship surface fights in World War II required parity in armor, speed, weapons and detection gear or great disasasters resulted.

In WWII we mention that Prince of Wales, a State of the art Battleship, was lost because, conversely, up to date Tactics were used (lack of soa air Cover, HMS Hermes, the aircraft carrier sent to the provide this cover was sunk at Trincomalee off the Indian Coast). The sorties against invasion forces en route to the Malay Peninsula was ordered anyway and more deaths resulted in the the loss of the 2 BBritish Capital Ships by far that than the number of troops we have lost in Iraq thus far ((over 10,000 sailors were lost).

No other KGV Battleship was lost during this war to my knowledge. A costly lesson well learned..

Hermes' aircraft would have been of little help in any case as the British had no aircraft in the far East that could match the Zero Sen by Mitsubishi.

Brewster Buffalos, Warhawks, Hurricanes and even the vaunted Spitfire were absolutely no match for the Zeke (Zero) which, although underarmored and somewhat undergunned afforded superior speed, manueverability, and range.

Thus proving again that parity of combined arms was required for ultimate success in conventional actions.

As an Afterthought, the remaining KG V's should NOT have been Scapped at at war's end---nor should the beautiful new HMS Vanguard.

Just one of these ships, and a fixed wing Carrier would have made the Falkands Wars in 1982 a very one sided affair and given the British Forces adeguate gunfire support (60lb 4.5 in. vs 1800 lb 14 in projectiles) from the available naval guns.

J
"All Enlightenment Gratefully Accepted"
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