Re: Re: Re: Jeep Carriers vs Fleet Carriers
Problem is, you're talking about different weapons here. The Graf Spee (one of Germany's pocket battleships during WW2, btw) was sunk by shellfire, not dive bombers and torpedoes. Torpedoes were designed to hit ships below the waterline, where their armor was often much lighter. And while bombs might be somewhat similar to shellfire, it might also be useful to compare the weights of the shells vs. the bombs (I don't know either bit of information, unfortunately).
Also worth mentioning is that as far as the Japanese carriers at Midway are concerned (sunk strictly by bombs), the carriers largely went down due to the ordinance for the planes being improperly secured. Bombs outside of magazine equals big trouble when carrier gets bombed. And incidentally, while the Hiryu was turned into an unusable flaming wreck, it didn't actually sink until a day or two after the battle (This turned out to be fortunate for the engineering crew as they were assumed dead by the Japanese and left behind. The US Navy picked up the very bitter engineers who managed to abandon ship just before she finally went down.).
The moral of this story is that torpedoes are superior to bombs and shellfire.
Originally posted by Starkey
True. Some of the ships that could sustain more hits were the German´s Bismarck and the Graf Spee.
Problem is, you're talking about different weapons here. The Graf Spee (one of Germany's pocket battleships during WW2, btw) was sunk by shellfire, not dive bombers and torpedoes. Torpedoes were designed to hit ships below the waterline, where their armor was often much lighter. And while bombs might be somewhat similar to shellfire, it might also be useful to compare the weights of the shells vs. the bombs (I don't know either bit of information, unfortunately).
Also worth mentioning is that as far as the Japanese carriers at Midway are concerned (sunk strictly by bombs), the carriers largely went down due to the ordinance for the planes being improperly secured. Bombs outside of magazine equals big trouble when carrier gets bombed. And incidentally, while the Hiryu was turned into an unusable flaming wreck, it didn't actually sink until a day or two after the battle (This turned out to be fortunate for the engineering crew as they were assumed dead by the Japanese and left behind. The US Navy picked up the very bitter engineers who managed to abandon ship just before she finally went down.).
The moral of this story is that torpedoes are superior to bombs and shellfire.