The Three Things That Led To Naval Aviation

[Robbie Stuart]

From; Navy Times


darn the torpedoes!: Pearl Harbor shattered conventional thinking

By Charles Jones
Special to the Times


Three U.S. events led to the development of naval aviation — the weapon Japan used so effectively Dec. 7, 1941 — and all three shared a connection with Hampton Roads, Va.

The first: The 1862 battle in Hampton Roads between the ironclads CSS Virginia and USS Monitor marked the end of the wooden warship.


The second: The 1910 flight from the cruiser Birmingham, anchored in Hampton Roads — the first flight from a ship — marked the end of the gun as the deadliest naval weapon.

Combining the ironclad and the airplane resulted in naval aviation, which would make aircraft carriers and airplanes, not battleships and guns, the most dangerous naval weapons.

The third event would determine whether naval aviation was effective — i.e., could aircraft in fact sink ships? The answer came in tests in the 1920s conducted by the aircraft of Army Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell. His aircraft — operating from Langley Field near Hampton Roads and from a primitive airfield on North Carolina’s Outer Banks — sank old ships.

Conventional thinking, however, persisted through Dec. 6, 1941: Battleships and guns were the main naval weapons, and ships in shallow harbors — such as Pearl Harbor — were safe from aerial torpedo attacks, since torpedoes dropped from airplanes traveled downward several hundred feet upon hitting water before leveling off and running toward targets.

Two men who noticed changes in naval weapons and believed in air power’s supremacy over battleships were Japanese naval officers Minoru Genda, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack in detail, and Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack’s first wave.

Three types of Japanese aircraft inflicted an excruciating deathblow on conventional thinking, proving dramatically that carriers, not battleships, were now the premier combat ships: • Mitsubishi Zero fighter-bombers protected other Japanese aircraft, strafed ground targets and engaged U.S. fighters.

• Aichi Val vertical bombers dive-bombed and strafed ships and installations.

• Nakajima Kate carrier-borne horizontal bombers attacked ships, particularly battleships, with torpedoes and bombs.

Because of Pearl Harbor’s shallow depth, Japanese torpedoes were fitted with special wooden fins, limiting how far they sank before leveling out.

While conventional torpedoes would have hit bottom, these torpedoes hit American ships moored in Pearl Harbor with deadly results.

Some Kates carried 16-inch naval shells converted into armor-piercing bombs that could penetrate the deck armor of ships moored between Ford Island and another ship.

The effectiveness of the Japanese weapons is still seen in Pearl Harbor, where the battleships Arizona, hit by aerial bombs, and Utah, hit by aerial torpedoes, rest peacefully as graves and memorials at the same berths they occupied Dec. 7.

The writer, a Marine Corps Reserve colonel, is a writer and lawyer in Norfolk, Va. His e-mail address is cajones@earthlink.net.

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Thought this to be interesting, as tomorrow will be 65 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor. My father would always reflect that on that morning he was in Macon Georgia playing a game of "Archery Golf" (whatever that was), when someone came running out of the clubhouse yelling about the attack. I have always heard that folks from that era always could recall exactly where they were, & what they were doing when they heard news of the attack.
Robbie

Last edited by Robbie Stuart on Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Mudge]

Coming home from church.

Mudge the geezer

[coldaffyduck]

My great uncle was playing golf on Diamond Head on 12/7/01. He always said that if he would have known exactly what was going on, he could have thrown his golf club up in the air and downed a few planes.

[JDK]

There's always something new to learn in history, but clearly not from Navy News. Gee, how'd they manage to write so much without mentioning the invention of the through-deck carrier or Taranto? Willful ignorance based on the Not Invented Here syndrome's not a good idea.

Most sources manage to mention Japanese interest in the Royal Navy attack on the Italian Fleet in harbour as a partial insparation for the Pearl Harbor attack. You'd expect Navy News to do better. Poor.

I have always heard that folks from that era always could recall exactly where they were, & what they were doing when they heard news of the attack.

No.1 Sqn of the Royal Australian Air Force were using American built Lockheed Hudsons in combat with the Japanese at Khota Baru; an hour before the Pearl Harbor attack. Because of the international date line, that was also the 8th December, to subsiquent confusion.

http://www.geocities.com/dutcheastindie ... bharu.html

[phil65]

My great uncle was playing golf on Diamond Head on 12/7/01. He always said that if he would have known exactly what was going on, he could have thrown his golf club up in the air and downed a few planes.

I hope that was 1941

[Tulio]

There was a book -or was it a study- written around 1925-30 by an American (whose name, as usual, I cannot recall) and which basically laid the plan for a fictional attack on the U.S. Fleet in the Territory of Hawaii.

According to some of the books I have read (At Dawn we Slept, for example) the Japanese took a very keen interest in this document.

Anyone knows or remembers this guy's name?

Saludos,


Tulio

[JDK]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

Additionally, some Japanese strategists may have been influenced by U.S. Admiral Harry Yarnell's approach in the 1932 joint Army-Navy exercises, which assumed an invasion of Hawai?i. Yarnell, as commander of the attacking force, placed his carriers northwest of O?ahu in rough weather and launched "attack" planes on the morning of Sunday, February 7, 1932. Umpires noted Yarnell's aircraft were able to inflict serious "damage" on the defenders, who were unable to locate his fleet for 24 hours after the attack. Conventional U.S. Navy doctrine of the time (and other naval opinion as well) believed any attacking force would be destroyed by the battleship force (the "battle line") and dismissed Yarnell's strategy as impractical in the real world.

[Tulio]

Not Yarnell..... I will come up with the name.

Saludos,


Tulio

[Originalboxcar]

From; Navy Times


darn the torpedoes!: Pearl Harbor shattered conventional thinking

By Charles Jones
Special to the Times



The second: The 1910 flight from the cruiser Birmingham, anchored in Hampton Roads — the first flight from a ship — marked the end of the gun as the deadliest naval weapon.

Combining the ironclad and the airplane resulted in naval aviation, which would make aircraft carriers and airplanes, not battleships and guns, the most dangerous naval weapons.
Robbie

I disagree with that statement with respect to amphibious assault. Read any historical naval action book written about WWII with interviews with the invadees. Think Germans in Silicy, Italy and Normandy as well as the Japanese from every island campaign. The Japanese changed there entire island defense stategy as a result of Naval Arterilly. They'll tell you that the weapon that they feared the most was naval artillery bombardment of which aerial bombs didn't even come close to doing the same job or with the same force/power.

Ask any Marine today what he would want for for support and he'll tell you, give me a couple Iowa's behind me. The penetration and destructive power of a HE or AP 16" round is still unequalled today.

regards,

t~

[JDK]

Ask any Marine today what he would want for for support and he'll tell you, give me a couple Iowa's behind me. The penetration and destructive power of a HE or AP 16" round is still unequalled today.

...and often (in Royal Naval use) directed from an AOP Auster aircraft... Certainly in Normandy and Salerno among others.

Also that use assumes air superiority. May I present HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse, and the IJN Yamato?

[L2Driver]

A bit of drift from the original topic here. I apologize.

While the current crop of super carriers are indeed formidable weapons systems, I still think the battleships are the epitome of warships.

When the USS New Jersey turned up during the mess in Beirut, pretty much everyone, including myself, were trying to find a way to see her -- preferably while blasting a few 16" shells down range. I'm not a sailor but I must admit the Iowa-class battleships are awe-inspiring. The Navy should have kept at least one going.

Definitely not something you'd want to be on the receiving end of! I think these are shots of the USS Iowa.

Last edited by L2Driver on Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

[Originalboxcar]

Ask any Marine today what he would want for for support and he'll tell you, give me a couple Iowa's behind me. The penetration and destructive power of a HE or AP 16" round is still unequalled today.

...and often (in Royal Naval use) directed from an AOP Auster aircraft... Certainly in Normandy and Salerno among others.

Also that use assumes air superiority. May I present HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse, and the IJN Yamato?

No doubt CAP and AA is necessary as history shows. Again, I'm talking amphibious assault here and not ruling out carriers. Air power has its role, but they can work in concert efficiently.

This arguement comes out every year, "the battleships are dead, blah, blah, blah" but the Navy keeps bringing them out (wwii, korea, 'nam, PG1). Let me tell you, they know there's a need as shown by the DDX which by the way won't be commissioned until 2020. With the Korea problem among other, the BB's can fill the gap.

If the blasted navy wasn't run by carrier admirals, you would see the Iowa's in commission and used effectively against embargos, NFS, etc..

Interesting article including the DDX/BB debate here (yeah, yeah, i know this a warbirds forum so I'll quit here)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt_class_destroyer

The Iowa's rock! Thx for the photos.

regards,

[k5083]

There's always something new to learn in history, but clearly not from Navy News. Gee, how'd they manage to write so much without mentioning the invention of the through-deck carrier or Taranto? Willful ignorance based on the Not Invented Here syndrome's not a good idea.

Most sources manage to mention Japanese interest in the Royal Navy attack on the Italian Fleet in harbour as a partial insparation for the Pearl Harbor attack. You'd expect Navy News to do better. Poor.

You are right; this guy was straining to find some local connection to the Pearl attack, but as history, it's very silly. The Civil War clash of ironclads obviously has nothing to do with naval aviation except in the sense that it marked a stage in the development of the modern warship. I suppose the invention of rudders was also a precursor to Pearl Harbor in that sense. The Mitchell experiments were actually a failure -- what they proved was that it took all day for the puny, inaccurate bombers of the time to sink an already dead-in-the-water hulk. Admirals could, and did, reasonably conclude from that experiment that a warship actually capable of maneuvering and defending itself would be almost impossible to sink with high-level horizontal bombers -- which, in fact, proved to be true.

The 1910 event at least is related to naval aviation, but flying a flimsy unarmed biplane off a deck hardly "marked the end of the gun as the most dangerous naval weapon." That either happened at Coral Sea in 1942 (first naval battle where the opposing ships never sighted each other) or 1945 in Leyte Gulf (last major gun fight among battleships).

Besides the lack of mention of Taranto, the use of Allied code names for the Japanese aircraft is annoying. We know what their real names were now, and "B5N" and "D3A" are not all that hard to spell.

But, hey, the guy is just a lawyer after all.

August

[Jiggersfromsphilly]

You are most likely refering to a book from 1931 called

"The Great Pacific War"

By Hector C Bywater.

Mr Bywater worked for British Naval Intelligence during the First World War. He had published a work called American/Japanese Sea Problem as early as 1921. He wrote the The Great Pacific War as a followup to the mistakes of teh 1922 Washington Naval Conference. His work was used extensively in War Plan Orange. He died suspiciously in 1940. His predictions about the way the Pacific would collapse to the Japanese War machine were almost exact.

[Tulio]

Yup! That's the one!

I remembered Hector, but was thinking of a last name "Ely" [surely mixing him up with the Naval Aviator of same last name].

Thank you for the data! It has helped me to stop looking for the books . . . who knows where they are? : )


Saludos,


Tulio