Subject: SMML VOL 2999 Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:55:48 +1100 The Ship Modelling Mailing List (SMML) is proudly sponsored by SANDLE http//sandlehobbies.com For infomation on how to Post to SMML and Unsubscribe from SMML http//smmlonline.com/aboutsmml/rules.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS INDEX 1 Zeros and Buffalos and Wildcats, Oh My ... 2 Catch me on The History Channel Monday Night (US) 3 Antiaircraft Gun Effectiveness? 4 TAMIYA's Missouri colour scheme -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD INDEX 1 Still thinning out my library! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From Ned Barnett Subject Zeros and Buffalos and Wildcats, Oh My ... John - You made some interesting comments - some of which I agree with, others - uh-uh. Read on to see which is which >>If had not been for the Australian officer in the Royal Navy (Whose name escapes me for the present!) who cracked the Japanese codes, Pearl Harbour would have been a success! << Uh, pardon me, John, but Pearl Harbor was a success (for the Japanese). They devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet (ensuring that the P.I. could not be resupplied in time), and the USAAF forces on Oahu. Yes, they missed the carriers, but not for lack of trying - the carriers weren't there, a factor known as "the fortunes of war." Their two big mistakes, IMO, were as follows a. No third strike - they left the oil tank farm untouched (wipe that out and the fleet would have had to operate out of San Diego) and they left the Pacific Sub base untouched (permitting the Silent Service to go over onto the offensive immediately). b. No invasion - they had no idea how effective their strikes would have been. If they'd stuck around to invade, three US carriers would have been drawn into the defense, defeated piecemeal, and Oahu would have become another Japanese possession - with the re-invasion force having to come from San Diego and San Francisco - thousands of miles away (a distance at that time impossible to bridge by existing naval and amphibious forces). But within the realm of their goals (and neither of these items were among their goals), the Pearl Harbor attack succeeded admirably. Japan got what it wanted - a free hand in the WestPac for the six months needed to occupy all of the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. That they couldn't hold it is no surprise - but their vision was nothing if not short-range. They really believed that the Americans (like the Russians in '05 and the Germans in '18) would sue for a negotiated peace - that was their only direct experience of Western reaction to military defeat, and it was a logical conclusion to draw (unless you know how Americans thought and felt prior to the Cold War). >> They got some ancient warships (all but one were back in sevice in 6 months,) << Odd, but I recall three or four that were never back in service - and I can't recall any of them (other than the USS Pennsylvania) that were anywhere near back in service within 6 months. You might want to check your sources - two battleships (Arizona and Oklahoma) were never put back into service (nor was Utah, Oglala and probably several more that escape me), and others took till '43 or '44 to be refloated, repaired, rebuilt, remanned and recommissioned. Oh, by the way - some of those "ancient" warships were as modern as most of the BB fleets forwarded by the Japanese and the British - the "average" battleship in 1942 was a rebuilt veteran of the World War I era - and all that were rebuilt remained viable through August of '45 (otherwise Oldendorf would have had a tough time being victor at Surigao Strait - the last BB to BB battle in history). You make them sound like museum relics, when in fact they were still viable in many combat roles (most roles except as consort for the fast carrier task forces). >> Pearl Harbour was a failure in that they missed the Aircraft Carriers! << While the carriers were a hope, they weren't a requirement of success. Otherwise, the fast carrier striking force would have hung around in the NorthPac until Japan's many on-Oahu spies reported that the carriers were in harbor. They knew they were taking pot-luck, and they succeeded admirably in their strategic goal - stop the resupply of the Philippines and give them a six-month free hand. >> The War would have gone a lot differently if they had! << Short-term, probably. Long-term, probably not. We still would have had the A-Bomb in '45, and from Day-One, we still would have had the submarine assault that gutted Japan's navy and merchant marine. The war would have gone differently, but we still would have won, IMO (if for no other reason than the correlation of potential forces, our population and huge industrial base). >>Political shenanigans not withstanding, the need to get the Americans involved in the war in Europe, Pearl Harbour was allowed to go ahead. 6 monthes later, the Battles of the Coral Sea & Midway stopped the Japs in their tracks - They were dead, but wouldn't lie down! The Americans couldn't have succeded without carriers & air power! It took those two enormous lifesavers, the Atomic Bombs to end the War, because even at the end the Japanese military mind refused to accept defeat, and it would have cost hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of Allied, Japanese & civilians lives had it been neccessary to winkle the japs out of all the islands, China & invade Japan!! I have diverged onto one my favourite hobby horses! However back to things with wings! The Gentleman, who admitted he wasn't a "Buffalo" fan, obviously overlooked the incredible success the Finns had with a near obsolete aircraft! << Bad news - they weren't the same plane. The Finns had the first (light-weight) version, which actually performed pretty well. The Brits had the later version, that was an overweight slug. The late model was so overweight that the biggest problem they had was landing gear that would collapse (from the weight) if you looked at them funny. So, except for the name, they really weren't the same plane. >> The secret of the Zero & Oscars success was they were so lightly built, mainly with rifle calibre weapons, << True for Oscar, not for Zero, which had two (fairly low-velocity) 20 mm cannon - 60 RPG - and one of those could blast a part a self-sealing tank or pierce pilot armor (or knock out an engine, etc.). >> no radio, << Zeros had radios - many pilots uninstalled them (esp. on land-based Zeros) for weight/range reasons, but they came equipped with radio. Don't know about the Oscar. >> or armour plating, that a relatively small engine enabled them to climb like a homesick angel, and turn like a barmaid. In the case of the Zero, although nearly obsolete at Pearl Harbour << Ahem. The Zero, at the time of Pearl Harbor, was nothing short of the most advanced carrier-based fighter aircraft in the world - and it was also one of the most advanced of any fighter type (regardless of basing). It outranged every other single-engined fighter of 1941/42 (it's range wouldn't be approached until the P-38 got drop tanks). It had effective fighter armament for it's day - equivalent to that of the Bf-109 (which also had a mixed rifle-caliber/cannon armament at that time), it was more maneuverable than the Spit - and it was far from the only front-line fighter in December, 1941, that didn't have self-sealing tanks or armor. Both of those, for instance, were field-modification-added to F4F-3s in the spring of '42, just barely in time for Coral Sea and Midway, but not before then. Even in '45, the "52" Zero remained - in the hands of an experienced pilot - competitive with the best carrier planes in the field. Recall that Boyington, who downed 26 Japanese planes (almost all of them fighters, almost all of them flown by experienced pilots) was downed by a Zero - while flying a Corsair. And if you read Saburo Sakai's autobiography, you know that he outfought a flight of Hellcats over the Marianas - also in a Zero (and he did that with just one eye). He did that by utilizing the Zero's superior maneuverability, which was (in his hands) better than what the Hellcat could deliver. Sorry, but the Zero was not obsolete in '41/'42 - it was the best in the world at what it did. >> was able to be upgraded, albeit at the expense of a reduced performance until the wars end. When they were hit they stayed hit! << That last item is true - the plane never had self-sealing tanks; and while it did (in late models) have pilot armor (and better weapons), it was still more vulnerable to enemy fire than were America's planes (even the Buffalo was not as vulnerable to the impact of bullets, though it was in all other ways inferior). >> Take the famous case of Flt Lt Jack Archer who although flying a Wirraway ground attack/army cooperation aircraft (basically a souped up Harvard/T6) 0n 26/12/42 caught a zero napping over New Guinea, dived & blew it away. << The key was "napping" - although that's not entirely true. In '42, Americans used SBD's as auxiliary fighter aircraft flying anti-torpedo-plane patrols at Coral Sea, Midway and the various Guadalcanal campaigns - and occasionally, a Dauntless would get a Zero in it's sights - and the twin-fifties would blow it away. Not often, but enough to show that good pilots - with good luck - could nail even a Zero (usually, after the Zero overshot the slower plane, and on pulling up, came briefly into the gunsights of the twin-seat Allied aircraft). >> That little bit of initiative earned a case of beer, an item of rarity in that location! It also shows what could have been done, as it was, once the allies realised what the score was, the Japanese did not get it all their own way. Buffaloes and belatedly Hurricanes & other oddments available were surprisingly, though much played down by the Japs, successful! If one gets hold of the Japanese records at that time, one will realise that the elite core of Japanese pilots at the start of war, had been wiped out almost to a man by Midway! This is not the hallmark of a successful war! The new recruits were definitely not up to the calibre of the old, mainly as a result of lack of training, being chucked into the fray as soon as humanly possible! A fact overlooked by all the Axis forces, none of them being prepared for along dragged out "knuckle & skull" war aiming instead for "Blitz Krieg!" << Actually, this is an exaggeration. The best of the Japanese CARRIER fighter pilots were decimated at Coral Sea and Midway, and their training system wasn't up to replacing them. But the Japanese Army had great pilots, too, and it took longer to attrit them (primarily over New Guinea) - and you're forgetting the land-based Japanese Navy Air Force - I'm thinking here of the Tainan Unit - which had all of Japan's top-scoring ace (one with something like 87 confirmed kills, Saburo Sakai with 64 kills). These folks weren't even IN the battles of Midway and Coral Sea - it took the six-month meat-grinder over Guadalcanal to put a dent in that group's roster of expert aces. You are right that Japan had a lousy training program (for replacement pilots) - we were much more flexible in our training, which produced a horde of adequately-trained pilots in the '43-45 time-frame, something they were increasingly less able to do. The recent, excellent book "The First Team" looks at this in depth in one of the appendices - I strongly recommend it. FWIW, I strongly recommend both of the "First Team" books (one on the US carrier-based fighter pilots during the Pearl-through-Midway period, the other covering the critical first three months of the Guadalcanal campaign). Incredibly detailed, they also have well-researched paint schemes for Wildcats in that era, a discussion of the evolving national markings, and lots on the performance of those aircraft vs. the Zero. Fascinating reading for modeler or history buff (or both). >> So with intelligence performances, like "Enigma", Automedon, Pearl Harbour, "The man who never was!" There were successes & failures on all sides. It could be argued that "Munich" was a sellout, or that it very cleverly bought Britain time to rearm, as for certain, had war broken out in 1938 things would have been vastly different! << Not necessarily in the way you think. Hitler was incredibly unprepared in '38 - even with bad leadership, France alone should have been able to stomp him into the ground. That last year brought massive tank rearmament (thanks in part to capture of the Czech Skoda Works), the introduction of the definitive E-model Messerschmitt 109, etc. Hitler was NOT ready in '38 - it was a bluff. He was only marginally ready in '39 (making it all the more tragic that the numerically superior French army didn't move on the border in September '39), but after another 9 months of rapid build-up, he was more than ready in May, 1940. The Allies missed a real opportunity when they sat on their hands for two years, from Munich to May 10. Bottom line, John. While you've got some interesting ideas, your facts seem a bit weak or selective 1. The RAF/USN Buffalo was nothing like as maneuverable and effective as the early-model Finnish Buffalo. 2. The Zero was anything but obsolete - rather, for what it did, it was the best in the world through 1942 - and it remained, in the right hands, a viable fighter through the end of '45. 3. The first-rate Japanese fighter pilots were not all wiped out by Midway - it took Guadalcanal's meat-grinder to decimate the land-based Naval fighter units, and New Guinea's two-year campaign to put a major dent in the Japanese Army Air Force fighter cadre. 4. The ships we lost at Pearl were neither so obsolete as you seem to feel, nor as quickly repaired - all too many of them were never raised or repaired, and others took two or more years to be brought back into service - but when they were back in service, they were fully-functional and valuable additions to the fleet, fully akin (in most cases, better than) to the 25-year-old battleships serving actively with Britain, Italy and Japan (all to one degree or other modernized, and all very effective combat ships). 5. The Japanese achieved all of their strategic objectives at Pearl - it was a huge success - their big problem was that their strategy itself was short-ranged and in some regards flawed - but they won a free hand in the P.I. and completely derailed War Plan Orange, which is what they were after. 6. Also, the Japanese war strategy was based on the assumption that the US (a Western power) would behave in WW-II the way other Western powers had behaved in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 and in WW-I (i.e., when things get tough, sue for a negotiated settlement) ... this was a huge mis-reading of the US spirit, but if you think about the only examples the Japanese had of Western war to go on, it was a logical conclusion. Thanks for your invitation to debate - fascinating stuff, eh? Ned ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) From Ned Barnett Subject Catch me on The History Channel Monday Night (US) Not on nautical issues this time, but on castles. I'm the resident historian on "Castle Towers" in the program "The Big Build" - it premiers on November 21 (Monday) at 11 p.m. Eastern, rerun at 3 a.m. Eastern (check local listings). This is my 7th or 8th appearance on the History Channel, several of which have dealt with nautical subjects - Submarine Disasters, D-Day Tech, World War I Tech, etc. Still, you may find this interesting - you may even learn where the "real" dungeons were located (hint - not underground). Ned ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) From deanmarkley@comcast.net Subject Antiaircraft Gun Effectiveness? The discussion on AAA is very interesting but I have a slightly different question to pose What is fired up must come down, even with proximity fuses or timed fuses, there's fragments coming down. Did ships take much damage from these? At least some had to hit at the end of there ballistic trajectories. Also, I am sure there were incidents of ships hitting others directly through either poor aiming or maneuvering errors. Can anyone elaborate on these circumstances? And speaking of modeling, why do you hardly ever see combat damaged ship models? Dean ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) From "Brett Soden" Subject TAMIYA's Missouri colour scheme Hi all, does anyone out there know what AS stands for? As I have just obtained TAMIYA's 1/700 scale kit of the Missouri and has for some of its colour scheme an AS prefix. ie AS-10 Ocean Gey (RAF) and AS-16 Light Grey (USAF). Any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated. Brett Soden Townsville Australia. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From "John Lambert" Subject Still thinning out my library! Hi folks We have put another 12 or so Naval or Military books on e-bay. Have a look see. There might be something of interest to you. I visited the IPMS show at Telford last Saturday. It was nice to meet a number of fellow SMMLS again. Always interesting to exchange views and meet old friends. John Rule was over from Canada (with his distinctive non-Canadian accent). White Ensign as is usual, were dressed up to the nines in RN uniform apart from John who gave himself three stars. He has the face (and accent) to go with it. A nice day out! Yours "Aye" John ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the SMML site for the List Rules, Reviews, Articles, Backissues, Member's models & Reference Pictures at http//smmlonline.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- End of Volume