Update: Video of kamikaze attacks on BPF

I've found an Australian War Memorial video package on the BPF which includes wobbly and poorly aligned footage of the kamikaze attacks upon HMS Formidable and HMS Indomitable. Clearly the video editor did not realise that more than one carrier had been attacked on May 4 - he intercut the very brief piece of footage of the kamikaze sliding off Indomitable's deck between scenes showing the attack run, and aftermath, on Formidable.

The Formidable footage shows a kamikaze diving from astern but pulling up away from the crowded deck. The second Formidable cut, from the same distance and angle,  shows a kamikaze slamming into the deck from a stern approach.

The Indomitable footage shows the ship, with a clean flight deck, at a greater distance and more acute angle than the Formidable footage. The kamikaze is clearly hit and begins to burn moments before impact.

Despite the tight - inaccurate - cuts, it is fascinating footage. Clearly the reason it has not been widely used is the exorbitant cost of obtaining digitised footage from the AWM. According to their guidelines, the 3 minutes of footage here will cost in excess of $5400 (3 minutes at $30 per second)!

Footage of the British Pacific Fleet off Sakishima Gunto, with clips of attacks by kamikaze's upon HMS Formidable and HMS Indomitable.


Emden v. Sydney: Special presentation

Something I wrote for the office.

NARRATIVE: 'Sink the Emden: Australia's titanic first victory at sea'

Didn't get enough time to integrate this newly digitised 1920s newsreel covering the famous action:

The NFSA is marking the centenary of Australia's first victory at sea, when the HMAS Sydney defeated the SMS Emden on 9 November 1914, with the publication of the 1931 silent film Sea Raider. The first film about this battle, Unsere Emden, was made in Germany in 1926.


Update: Report of Proceedings from Commanding Officers

I have added from the British National Archive the following Admiralty documents:

ADM 267/ 83 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS FROM COMMANDING OFFICER, HMS ILLUSTRIOUS - 1941 

ADM 199/810: REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS FROM COMMANDING OFFICER, HMS FORMIDABLE - 1941

While these reports are not as accurate as the later Admiralty Damage Reports (Bomb and Shell), they do provide details not reproduced there as well as an insight to the process of compiling an accurate representation of action events and damage details.

They also help explain the errors and discrepancies in many accounts of the above actions. Many academics and authors have placed their full faith in these initial reports, made days after the events, and did not examine the more considered and studied Admiralty damage reports compiled up to a year afterwards.
 

Update: FAA Pilot Hugh Popham's view: From "Sea Flight: The Wartime Memoirs of a Fleet Air Arm Pilot"

Added first-person extracts relating to the Seafire from FAA Pilot Hugh Popham's book, "Sea Flight: The Wartime Memoirs of a Fleet Air Arm Pilot", to the Seafire pages.

Popham flew Sea Hurricanes before moving on to the Seafire. He suffered a fractured spine in an in-flight collision while in a training flight with the Seafire, but went on to serve in HMS Illustrious over Salerno before being relegated to "bats" duty aboard HMS Campania.

Update: FAA pilot Henry "Hank" Adlam's view: From "On and Off the Flight Deck: Reflections of a Naval Fighter Pilot in World War II"

Added extracts from the book by FAA pilot Henry "Hank" Adlam, "On and Off the Flight Deck: Reflections of a Naval Fighter Pilot in World War II" relating to the Seafire to the Seafire Development page.

Adlam few Wildcats and Hellcats during his operational service during World War II and held a generally contemptious view of the Seafire. But his view as to its value was mollified by its performance as an interceptor with the British Pacific Fleet (and the additon of 89 gallon fuel tanks).

Immediatley after the war he few one for the first time: 

Well, I flew the damn thing and found that it was a beautiful machine to fly. An absolute thoroughbred of an aircraft requiring only the most delicate pressures on the controls for it to respond immediately and perfectly. 

Update: Original ADM 267/84 report on Formidable

An OCR (Optical Character Recognition) transcript of HMS Formidable's damage report for Operation MAQ3 is attached here.

Rights to reproduce in full the photographs and drawings which were part of ADM 267/84 have not been purchased.

To see images sourced elsewhere, as well as my depictions of some of the engineers drawings and first-person accounts of the action, follow this link to HMS Formidable's bomb damage page.

It is also disappointing to note that most of the pictures detailed in the National Archive report's index appear to be missing. From the descriptions, it is possible some may have been mixed with other reports and inappropriately attributed to Illustrious, for example.

* CLICK HERE to read the original ADM 267/84 report for HMS Formidable

* CLICK on the title of this post to activate the feedback panel

 

Update: Original ADM267/83 report on Illustrious

An Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capture of the original Damage Report (Shell and Bomb) for HMS Illustrious, January 1941, has been uploaded.

Crown Copyright rights to reproduce the associated pictures and drawings have not been purchased.

The drawings and pictures on the Bomb Damage to HMS Illustrious page have been sourced from elsewhere or are my own interpretations of the original diagrams.

* CLICK HERE or on the pointer panel at the right of this post to go to ADM267/83.

* CLICK on the title of this post to activate the feedback panel

Update: Links added

Have added links to external War Damage Reports for United States Naval carriers.

Any comparison, of course, is only approximate with so many variables to be taken into account (weapon weight, weapon velocity, weapon type, structural nature of impact point, structural nature of detonation point...)

But they can give a general point of comparison.

Links to Fulmar and Seafire pilots notes, as well as original performance data, also have been added to the appropriate pages.

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Debunking the armoured carrier essays of Slade and Worth

This website originated after my interest in the history of carrier combat led me to these articles, which are generally touted online as the definitive word on armoured carriers.

Even at that very early stage, I noticed several substantive errors of fact being used to justify their position.

I don't have a problem with their position.

I'll state right now that I think that, overall, the US Essex class carriers were clearly the superior assault carriers of World War II.

But there seems to be a certain insecurity about that in some circles, perhaps because so many assault carriers were "mission killed" by kamikazes while the armoured carriers appeared to shrug them off. Then there's the extraordinary difference in casualty figures.

Opinions are opinion.

But these need to be argued against a background of fact and "apples-versus-apples" context.

 

Regrettably, these error-riddled essays are cited as authoritative wherever the armoured carriers are mentioned on the web.

That needs to end.

 

For this purpose I have accessed as much "primary source" material as I can afford to obtain (unlike the bomb damage reports for Franlkin, Enterprise etc, those for Illustrious, Formidable, Indomitable etc are only available through purchase through Britain's National Archives) along with as many first-person accounts and well-cited analyses as I can find..

With the correct information in hand - feel free to form your own opinions.

CLICK HERE for my line-by-line rebuttal of Slade and Worth.

* Click on the link above to be taken to the full rebuttal, where you can leave specific comments in the panel at the bottom of the article. Click on the headline above to leave more general comments on this introductory panel.

Update: More video, screen captures

I've found another handful of relevant British Pathe Youtube videos. These are scattered through the site (though the 'Home Fleet at Sea' showing the carriers in huge seas on the Design and Development page is a doozy, and the "In Action in the Mediterranean" video - the first one you come across on the MAQ3 page - contains quite rare footage of the carriers in the Mediterranean during the early war years).

A heavy sprinkling of screen captures from various Fleet Air Arm / British Pacific Fleet DVDs has been scattered through the Task Force 57 / Operation Iceberg battle reports.

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Stuka Ju87B performance data needed

I've borrowed, bought and scrounged as may books as I can find on the iconic Stuka, but have not had much success finding detailed payload-range-performance data.

Specifically I'm looking for the operational radius of the Ju87B while carrying a 1000kg (2200lb) bomb.

There are several first-person accounts stating how the gunner had to be left behind and how sluggish the aircraft was under that load ... but most range/performance tables only detail 500kg  (1100lb) bomb data - it's normal load.

Can anyone point me to a good source of such obscure, detailed information?

It is particularly relevant to these pages as 1000kg (2200lb) bombs were used against both HMS Illustrious and Formidable and were attributed to being dropped by II/SG2's Ju87Bs. However, Ju88 and He111 squadrons also claimed hits in these actions - and to me they seem to have been more likely to carry that weight of bomb over the ranges involved.

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Update: Fulmar and Seafire pages live

The Fulmar and Seafire pages are now up (see bottom of the homepage), though I am continuing to gather first-person accounts and archive documents to flesh them out.

The Seafire articles will soon be fleshed-out with more technical data and a section on the Seafire's performance during Operation Iceberg added to the Operational History page.

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