"New" book on Pearl Harbor, attack analysis.

Gawdzilla said:
He further notes that a .50 cal. bullet might have penetrated the tanks, but the Japanese had 7.63mm machine guns. (Probably off on that exact number.) Some also had 20mm guns, but the shells were fused to explode when hitting the aluminum skin of an aircraft, and the .5-1.5 inch thick tank walls would have been unimpressed by them.
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I assume a bomb would do the trick. ;)
 
Gawdzilla said:
Just received A War It Was Always Going To Lose: Why Japan Attacked America in 1941, by Jeffrey Record. This was ordered on a dare...
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That's my view of the Pacific War. What in heaven's name did the Japanese think they were doing? We are asked to believe that the Nomonhan reverse deterred Japan from going to war with Russia, and they abstained from this course even when the Russians and the Germans were slugging it out thirty kilometres from the Kremlin. That was prudent.

So what do they do instead that very month? Go to war with the USA, the British Empire and Dominions, and the Netherlands Empire. Not so prudent.
 
Corsair 115 said:
I assume a bomb would do the trick. ;)
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Actually, no, not to any great extent. Zimm says if the bombs they carried would have, optimistically, the same hit rate as they got in training, they wouldn't damage more than about 25% of the fifty-four above-ground tanks. And damage doesn't mean total destruction of the fuel, bunker oil needed to be heated before it would burn in the ships boilers. Setting it afire with bombs would be highly doubtful. The berms were built to contain a total collapse of the tanks, so they'd most likely just pump it into empty tanks. And, of course, the Japanese wouldn't know which tanks were empty.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Except the Japanese destroyers had very little in the way of anti-aircraft armament at the time, often only a pair of twin 25mm cannon mounts. Due to the lack of radar, the Japanese used their DDs as air raid warning picket ships, locating them far from the centre of the formation. The idea of using the destroyers closer in as anti-air support wasn't in Japanese doctrine at the time of Midway:
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Yeah, I'm going on capabilities, not probabilities. When you come right down to it the Japanese were just crap at this whole Navy thing. :D
 
Gawdzilla said:
Yeah, I'm going on capabilities, not probabilities. When you come right down to it the Japanese were just crap at this whole Navy thing. :D
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They weren't too bad in 1905, or at least they won that one. What went wrong after that?
 
Gawdzilla said:
...bunker oil needed to be heated before it would burn in the ships boilers.
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Isn't it heated and then sprayed in order to make it suitably combustible? Or am I thinking of an earlier oil?

Gawdzilla said:
In 1905 they were fighting ships that had, among other things, opened fire on the British North Sea fishing fleet, thinking they were Japanese warships. :D
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And then proceeded around the globe, south of Africa as after the above event the British had no intention of letting them through Suez, with no suitable bases of their own in the Pacific to stop off and get properly maintained.

It's amazing they made it at all. It's not so amazing they lost.
:)
 
Tolls said:
Isn't it heated and then sprayed in order to make it suitably combustible? Or am I thinking of an earlier oil?
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Yep, the atomizers were very important. Changing them to clean them was an amusing process for me, as I wasn't the one that had to do it. :D

And then proceeded around the globe, south of Africa as after the above event the British had no intention of letting them through Suez, with no suitable bases of their own in the Pacific to stop off and get properly maintained.

It's amazing they made it at all. It's not so amazing they lost.
:)
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The tribulations of the Great White Fleet serve as an example of what the Russian Baltic Fleet went through to get to a place where they could die.
 
Gawdzilla said:
In 1905 they were fighting ships that had, among other things, opened fire on the British North Sea fishing fleet, thinking they were Japanese warships. :D
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Well, the Russians "won" there. They sank a trawler, losing none of their own ships, and killed three fishermen for a loss (to "friendly fire") of only two of their own men, including a chaplain. :D
 
Tolls said:
And then proceeded around the globe, south of Africa as after the above event the British had no intention of letting them through Suez, with no suitable bases of their own in the Pacific to stop off and get properly maintained.

It's amazing they made it at all. It's not so amazing they lost.
:)
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To make it they had to stack coal all over the decks, so there was no gunnery practice to be had. That ended well.
 
Bunker Oil will burn quite happily. Getting it to burn efficiently in a boiler Firebox is a different thing entirely though. It needs to be heated to get it to flow at any kind of rate through the pipework and to atomize well.
Many moons ago I was helping to get a WW2 vintage Admiralty Trawler Minesweeper.
It had a standard RN Boiler install and triple Expansion Engine. Exactly the same Plant as a Flower Class Corvette.
It had been used for many years as a Tender for Oil tankers coming in to the tees and offered Tank Cleaning services.
Anyway to get the oil flowing and atomizing when starting the boiler from cold we used to put a blowtorch on to the pipe to get things warmed up when using Bunker C oil.

there are several grades of oil of different viscosity that need different levels of preheating. Get a big tank of it burning going though and it will be self sustaining
 
Gawdzilla said:
Actually, no, not to any great extent. Zimm says if the bombs they carried would have, optimistically, the same hit rate as they got in training, they wouldn't damage more than about 25% of the fifty-four above-ground tanks. And damage doesn't mean total destruction of the fuel, bunker oil needed to be heated before it would burn in the ships boilers. Setting it afire with bombs would be highly doubtful. The berms were built to contain a total collapse of the tanks, so they'd most likely just pump it into empty tanks. And, of course, the Japanese wouldn't know which tanks were empty.
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Interesting, thanks. :)


Gawdzilla said:
Yeah, I'm going on capabilities, not probabilities. When you come right down to it the Japanese were just crap at this whole Navy thing. :D
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That's one of the interesting things about Shattered Sword, it lays out the Japanese approach to doctrine, carrier design and operation, etc., and much of this was quite different to USN or RN methods. And one can then trace how these sometimes seemingly minor differences at the time actually had disastrous consequences down the line.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Bunker Oil will burn quite happily. Getting it to burn efficiently in a boiler Firebox is a different thing entirely though. It needs to be heated to get it to flow at any kind of rate through the pipework and to atomize well.
Many moons ago I was helping to get a WW2 vintage Admiralty Trawler Minesweeper.
It had a standard RN Boiler install and triple Expansion Engine. Exactly the same Plant as a Flower Class Corvette.
It had been used for many years as a Tender for Oil tankers coming in to the tees and offered Tank Cleaning services.
Anyway to get the oil flowing and atomizing when starting the boiler from cold we used to put a blowtorch on to the pipe to get things warmed up when using Bunker C oil.

there are several grades of oil of different viscosity that need different levels of preheating. Get a big tank of it burning going though and it will be self sustaining
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The problem is getting it going. You have to preheat it, ambient temps are not going to cause a conflagration like would be needed to burn up 20,000 gals. of oil unless you put WP into it. Then you'd have to wait.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Interesting, thanks. :)





That's one of the interesting things about Shattered Sword, it lays out the Japanese approach to doctrine, carrier design and operation, etc., and much of this was quite different to USN or RN methods. And one can then trace how these sometimes seemingly minor differences at the time actually had disastrous consequences down the line.
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They believed that the "Yamato spirit" counted for as much as anything else on the battlefield. This was cheap, so they bought lots of it. :p
 
Regarding Eri Hotta's Japan 1941, I was hoping she would explain the logic of Japan's decision for war. Now, with less than 50 pages left I realize that she has been explaining why there was no logic to Japan's decision for war.
 
Gawdzilla said:
One thing Zimm notes is/was of relevance to the sidebar debate about the IJN's supposed failure to launch an attack on the infrastructure. Over and above the obvious inability of a carrier force to do any serious damage to the sprawling base's repair shops it would also have been futile to attack the oil storage tanks. Why? Zimm notes that 42 tankers were sunk during The Happy Time, and that ~30 tankers were needed to fully replace the oil that might have been lost if the IJN pulled some rabbit out of their hat to destroy the oil on hand within one month. So attacking the tank farms would have been an inconvenience at best. He further notes that a .50 cal. bullet might have penetrated the tanks, but the Japanese had 7.63mm machine guns. (Probably off on that exact number.) Some also had 20mm guns, but the shells were fused to explode when hitting the aluminum skin of an aircraft, and the .5-1.5 inch thick tank walls would have been unimpressed by them.
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Absolutely. Plus even if a few shells had penetrated would they have had much effect?

Gawdzilla said:
Actually, no, not to any great extent. Zimm says if the bombs they carried would have, optimistically, the same hit rate as they got in training, they wouldn't damage more than about 25% of the fifty-four above-ground tanks. And damage doesn't mean total destruction of the fuel, bunker oil needed to be heated before it would burn in the ships boilers. Setting it afire with bombs would be highly doubtful. The berms were built to contain a total collapse of the tanks, so they'd most likely just pump it into empty tanks. And, of course, the Japanese wouldn't know which tanks were empty.
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Agreed.

Craig B said:
Well, the Russians "won" there. They sank a trawler, losing none of their own ships, and killed three fishermen for a loss (to "friendly fire") of only two of their own men, including a chaplain. :D
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Imagine if the trawlers had had a few bricks to throw...
 
catsmate1 said:
Absolutely. Plus even if a few shells had penetrated would they have had much effect?
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The fire triangle comes into play here. Exploding a shell well below the surface of a low-volatility fuel wouldn't start a fire. The tanks also had floating tops, intended to keep the amount of air available to a minimum.

And all the tanks had water fog systems, so any fire that started stood a good chance of being extinguished rather quickly.
 
catsmate1 said:
Imagine if the trawlers had had a few bricks to throw...
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Then they would have done better than at least one of the Russian warships.
More serious losses on both sides were only avoided by the extremely low quality of Russian naval artillery fire, with the battleship Oryol reported to have fired more than 500 shots without hitting anything.
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