Well the first Monitor was a ship they slapped together in 90 days. I read it almost sank when they first put it in water. It’s purpose was to be a counter for the Virginia. I’m sure later on they made the ships more seaworthy. For example they added a smokestack.
The US Navy ramped up warship production, both ironclad and not, pretty fast so I have no doubts that by say 1863 they could have challenged the fleets of Great Britian.
Yes, it was the only one to take part, so? They still built four, had another class of four +1 building (never bother to finish them, they weren’t needed at the time), and there was also the Dictator. That’s nine ocean going Monitors, 20 coastal Monitors and dozens of other river & harbor monitors.
Yes, it was towed, as it couldn’t carry enuf coal. It was still capable of sailing in high seas. "Departing St. John’s on 5 June, the three ships crossed the Atlantic in less than 11 days. Fox described the first ocean crossing of an ironclad monitor as “a pleasant trip.” During much of the voyage she was towed by Augusta “as a matter of convenience and precaution rather than necessity.”…In company with Augusta, Miantonomoh departed Gibraltar on 15 May 1867. Steaming via the Canary and Cape Verde. Islands, Caribbean ports and the Bahamas, she anchored off League Island, Philadelphia, 22 July, thus completing a cruise of more than 17,700 miles.
The reaction of the British? She returned to the English coast on 7 July and a week later received visitors including British royalty, government officials, and members of the press, all of whom viewed her with wonderment and amazement. Her departure in naval design caused considerable comment in the English press, and the Times exclaimed: “The wolf is in our fold; the whole flock at its mercy.”
They laid down their first turreted battleship as soon as they heard about it. It wasnt launched until 1869, and was rather similar except it still had sails and a high board. The Monarch* “Having determined that Monarch would carry her main artillery in turrets, the Board of Admiralty then stipulated that, as she was destined for overseas service, and steam engines were not at that time wholly reliable, she must carry a full ship-rig and be fitted with a forecastle. Reed objected to this concept, which had the effect of totally preventing the main artillery from firing on any other angle than on the port and starboard beams. He was overruled, and is reported to have taken little pride in the resulting ship. He himself wrote, in 1869 “no satisfactorily designed turret ship has yet been built, or even laid down…the middle of the upper deck of a full-rigged ship is not a very eligible place for fighting large guns”.”
*
It wasnt until 1873 that the British navy had anything that could match the US Navy’s monitors.
Note the rest of your quote “In 1865/6 she went to San Francisco, **via the Strait of Magellan **and although three ships were in company, she was not towed.”
Even the best sea-keeping ships of the time were in danger going thru the Strait of Magellan.
I don’t disagree at all. My concern is more along the lines of why certain people feel they get to hand out passes. I think the criteria they use to decide who gets one is also a valid topic of discussion.
But not the topic of this thread.
It rather speaks for itself. A grand total of one was actually built in the Civil War.
Do you happen to have a cite for any of this aside from putting it in italics? It also contradicts your assertion that the reason she was towed was not enuf [sic] coal. If she was towed due to a lack of coal, how is that “a matter of convenience and precaution rather than necessity”?
I did note the rest of my quote, that’s why I included it. Travelling to San Francisco via the Straights of Magellan meant she never left sight of land during the voyage, and was still traveling in the company of three other ships. You’re sorely mistaken on the amount of danger involved in travelling the Strait of Magellan in 1866 as well; it had been being travelled for 336 years by that point. It’s coast had most recently been the subject of a five year study by Phillip Parker King presented to the Royal Geographical Society in 1831.
Yes, cause they didnt need any more. If they had needed more, they would have built them.
You need to read about coaling ships. You can certainly coal mid-ocean but it’s a really dirty nasty job. It was common to do so, but no one wanted to do so if they could avoid it.
Yes, the Straights were well mapped out. So? Even today they are considered rather dangerous due to high seas.
The only “guerrilla” stuff I can recall was those in the Phillippines armed by MacArthur from mid '42 to '44. I have no idea how much effect they had on the Pacific War. (Did they tie down troops? Did they provide much intel on Japanese troop, ship, and planes? Probably a little bit of “yes” to both.)
The OSS led and supplied many bands of partisans against the Nazis. Similar groups worked vs the Japanese.
I’ve heard this for years, from Germans, British and Canadians. It’s false – but where does the notion come from? Perhaps because Americans fought differently in the war than most other nations. They put resources preferentially into artillery, and the American artillery arm was far and away the best in the war – spectacularly better, in fact – whereas American armor was always inferior to German armor (except for the very rapid tank destroyers, whose numbers, however, were small). And in any war, soldiers adjust to using the advantages they have. I’ve heard Poles, for instance, say that the Germans weren’t really that good – not nearly as good soldiers as the Poles. Why did the Germans defeat Poland? Tanks. As a Dutch WWII veteran once told me, the Americans had artillery and they used it.
By all accounts, from September 1944 onwards, the average American frontline soldier had equalled, and from then on surpassed, his German counterpart in skill. From what I’ve read, the British solider never did surpass his German counterpart in skill, except by the very end of the war. Of course, you do have two trends – the general improvement of the American soldier as the American army gains experience, and the general decline in German ability as some of the best get killed off.
An interesting book to read on this, which analyzes the myth of German superiority through a detailed study of the Vosges Campaign, is When the Odds Were Even by Keith Bonn.
In addition you may read about the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge), especially the fighting by the German 6th Panzer Army (the northernmost German army in the battle). The commanders’ aggression and the SS soldiers’ fanaticism far exceeded sound judgement and skill, resulting in the virtual destruction, in the early period of the Offensive, of the 6th Army’s strongest and most elite units. What were the factors in this destruction? On the American side superior artillery, superior infantry tactics in defense, aggression and good combined arms coordination. On the German side, poor tactics coupled with a blind aggression, and poor combined arms coordination.
Incorrect. The German 88mm multipurpose gun (anti-air, anti-personnel, armor piercing) was, by acclamation, the best mass produced field piece of the war, and the USSR also had excellent artillery, and IIRC more of it than anyone else, including the US.
Ah, but he said the US artillery arm was the best. This is correct, and there’s much more to an effective artillery arm than just the guns themselves:
What Human Action said. Also, the 88mm wasn’t a field artillery weapon, it was an anti-aircraft artillery piece that was also used as an anti-tank gun and later in the war mounted on a carriage as a dedicated anti-tank gun. One thing that can’t be emphasized enough is that the US artillery arm was fully motorized. Most German artillery and its supply train were horse-drawn. Ultimately the artillery shell itself is the actual weapon, the tube that it is fired from is simply the delivery device, and as Louis Simpson put it in his poem “A Bower of Roses”:
[INDENT][INDENT]For every shell Krupp fired,
General Motors sent back four.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
Thank you for the interesting and informative cite, which however does not support the thesis of a “spectacularly” better US artillery arm. Also NB this cite documenting typical motorization of 88mm gun transport, with a 2-minute set-up time for a trained crew.
88mm AA used explosion and shrapnel to do its damage, and I would be surprised if it was not also used, when appropriate, in that capacity against personnel.
Horses certainly helped enable a potent German offence for several years! I would like to know much more about the negative force multiplier of horses in the specific Italian and Western Front German defensive situations 1943-45.
A 4:1 shot ratio means little against enemy armor if your shot cannot penetrate, meaning only the rare Pershing tank and I think the rare Jackson tank destroyer, with their 90mm guns, could be counted on to get through at anywhere near the rate of the still superior German 88mm. Also, the German 75mm gun was effective against any US tank.
Of course the favorable US overall 4:1 ratio ought to prevail against other artillery, and to confer significant advantage against infantry. No doubt that advantage contributed to the success of US arms.
To add to Human Action, et al., the Americans had vast more resources for utilizing their artillery. They rarely had to ration their ammunition like the Axis did. I believe Stephan Ambrose discusses this in Citizen Soldier; the Germans looked down upon the Americans as a “rich army” because the US would sit back and hammer away with artillery before moving in. During the street fighting in Aachen (?) one of the American generals used 105mm howitzers to blow holes through the row houses and this avoid sniper fire in the streets. A captured German officer declared this “unfair”.
I can understand how Germans might have looked down upon this style of fighting but it sure made a lot of sense.
Except most German tanks were the Panzer IV, and the Sherman could penetrate that: wikwi “M61 had a muzzle velocity of 617 m/s (2024.28 ft/s) and was credited with the ability to penetrate 3.3 inches (84 mm) of Rolled Homogeneous Armor plate (0° from vertical) at 500 yards range, which was a quite acceptable performance by the standards of 1942. This ammunition type proved lethal to the Panzer III and IV (up to Ausf. F2) as these tanks were protected by a maximum of 50mm of FHA with little slope, which the 75 mm M3 was capable of penetrating from 1500 m”
Later the Sherman had the 76 mm gun M1- could penetrate *109 mm (4.3 in) of armor at 1,000 m (3,300 ft), with a muzzle velocity of 792 m/s (2,600 ft/s). The HVAP round was able to penetrate 178 mm (7.0 in) at 1,000 m (3,300 ft), *. That even get thru a Tiger.
But there were few Tigers or Panthers, and neither could withstand rockets from a Thunderbolt or a 155mm howitzer barrage.
“Spectacularly” is a subjective term, but US artillery was clearly the best in the war: the most mobile, the best organized, the best supplied, and with a clear technological advantage. The 88 could be set up in two minutes, but it couldn’t operate in close coordination with a great mass of guns via a corps fire direction center using aerial photographs and precalculated solutions.
You misunderstand. The 88mm was an AA gun, it was not field artillery. It was not capable, nor was it used for, meaningful indirect fire. Its direct equivalent in the US Army was the 90mm M1A1 AA gun. It too could be and was used as an anti-tank and anti-infantry weapon; it was used as the main armament on the M26 Pershing tank and the M36 Hellcat tank destroyer. It too was not a field artillery weapon; it was not capable of nor was it used for meaningful indirect artillery fire. The artillery arm being talked about is indirect fire field artillery such as the M2 105mm howitzer, M1 155mm howitzer, M1 155mm gun “Long Tom”, and M1 4.5" gun. As individual weapons German field artillery such as the 10.5 cm leFH 18 and 15 cm sFH 18 were indifferant at best, as a combat arm as a whole US artillery was simply superior. A US forward observer could theoretically call the fire of every artillery battery in range on a target, a German forward observer could direct the fire of his own battery.
I said: “anywhere near the rate of the still superior German 88mm”, not that our guns could not get through at all.
I am having difficulty finding complete performance tables for the 88mm. One thing I notice is the very high combat accuracy rate of 85-89% at a range of 1000m, but target armor thickness is not given. I will do some more checking and post any full stats I come across.
Another thing- the 88m was also mounted as a self propelled units, and as a non-mechanized unit.
I will not grant this without a lot more research, which I am not am not sure I feel like spending several hrs on.
Research to now reveals that the USSR produced 516k guns to our 254k, so the word “spectacularly” belongs to them as far a numbers go. Stalin is reported to have said “Quantity has a quality all its own”, and I wonder if our technical superiority was enough to offset the spectacular difference in firing unit quantity and the throw-weight that would go along with it.
You show evidence of not having read my last post carefully: among other things I mentioned the Pershing and the M36 (nicknamed the “Stonewass Jackson”).
Getting back to the 88mm, though, see links which state the 88mm had an occasional indirect fire role:
The Book of Gun Trivia: Essential Firepower Facts
Also please note I made no claim for the 88mm having been used in great masses as an anti-personnel piece, but only that it might have been used as such “when appropriate.”
As for the other artillery pieces and overall technical capacity and organization I will grant we may have been well ahead by mid to late 1944, but I will continue to hold out against the term “spectacular” which was what first move me to comment here.