Musings on Naval matters ·
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Maryellen Reilly

Fri
A reboot of this share…….. Hey Rube!

Roy Grumann was able to get the price of the Hellcat down to $35k ……
there's a switch

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L. Thomas Rouse
Former Senior Chief Electronics Warfare Technician at United States Navy
(USN)Updated 1y

Did the Japanese forces suffer such horrific losses in the WWII
“Marianas Turkey Shoot” air encounter due mainly to the American
aircraft carriers advantage of being equipped with radar?
The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot was the unofficial name the press gave
to the aerial phase of the Battle of the Phillippine Sea. The name comes
from a remark given during debriefing by a USS Lexington pilot, which
found its way into a Navy press release. Once the press got hold of it,
the description was ensconced in history.

By mid-1944, several factors had come together to seal the fate of
Japanese air power in the Pacific. American carrier strength had fully
recovered and far exceeded what it had been in 1942 - 43 as the Essex
Class fleet carriers, bolstered by dozens of light, and escort carriers,
became available. These ships were manned by highly trained crews and a
flood of pilots from a training pipeline that had hit maximum efficiency.

A key factor in creating that pipeline was the US policy of removing
experienced pilots from combat and rotating them into training roles, so
new pilots benefitted from their experience. This contrasts with the
Japanese policy of keeping pilots in combat until they were killed or
too severely injured to fly. The result was the American Air Forces grew
stronger as the war went on, while the Japanese grew progressively
weaker. To compensate for these shortcomings, the Japanese rushed pilots
through training. They were often posted to frontline units with half
the flight hours of their American opponents.

The American mass production method of pilot training was coupled with a
logistics system unlike anything seen before. By 1944, American forces
in the Pacific went into battle with not just a sufficiency of supplies
but an embarrassment of plenty.

The hub of this logistics system was the world’s largest naval facility
at Ulithi Atoll.

It included everything from drydocks capable of servicing battleships to
an ice cream plant that produced 1500 gallons of ice cream per day.

At the same time, The much-ballyhooed Zero had become obsolete, and by
1944, American pilots had been thoroughly trained in its weaknesses and
the tactics to defeat it. At the same time, American forces had fully
deployed the F6F Hellcat, a vast improvement over its predecessor, the
F4F Wildcat.

The Hellcat was the perfect fighter for the conditions of the Pacific
War. It was not the fastest, it did not have the greatest range, nor was
it the most maneuverable. It could take a lot of punishment and bring
its pilot home, but most importantly, it was easy to build, easy to fly,
and easy to maintain. The F4U Corsair enjoyed the post-war glamor, but
the Hellcat shot down more airplanes.

The American submarine campaign was also having its effect on the
Japanese supply system. Chronic fuel shortages hampered training, and
what fuel was available was often of low quality, reducing engine
performance in combat. Spare parts were constantly in short supply, and
many airplanes were grounded for lack of spares.

The result was the Japanese fought the battle with out-of-date
airplanes, manned by under-trained and inexperienced pilots while
outnumbered by a force equipped with the latest technology manned by
highly trained aircrews. The outcome was never in doubt.

Radar was still relatively new in naval warfare but had developed
rapidly during the war. Shipboard air search radar and air intercept
controller procedures gave the US a significant advantage in protecting
their ships from Japanese air attacks. Good radar and the tactics for
using it meant that Combat Air Patrols could be vectored to incoming
raids well before the attackers gained visual contact with their
targets. The days of waiting for the enemy to appear on the horizon were
over.

Radar was an important factor in that it acted as a force multiplier.
Instead of airplanes flying endless patrol patterns hoping to spot the
enemy, radar could do the spotting and send the defending fighters to
intercept. This meant fewer airplanes could patrol larger areas.

Any hostile aircraft that made it past the Combat Air Patrol then had to
run the gauntlet of the gun line, escorting destroyers, cruisers, and
even battleships equipped with radar-controlled AA guns firing the new
and still secret VT (Variable Time) fuzed shells.

These shells contained a tiny radar unit that burst the shell when it
passed near a target, exponentially increasing the likelihood of a kill.

As important as technology was, in the end, the Japanese losses were
caused by numerous failures of the Japanese government and military
leadership.

They did not plan for a long war. When their knockout punch at Pearl
Harbor and threatening moves early in the war failed to bring on the
decisive battle around which Japanese doctrine revolved, they had no
Plan B. Their desire to force that decisive battle led directly to the
ambush and defeat at Midway and began their decline.

They failed to recognize trained military specialists such as pilots,
technicians, and naval crewmen as the valuable assets that they were.
Instead of preserving them for future battles and to train the next wave
of recruits, they squandered them in fruitless suicidal attacks out of
an overblown sense of honor.

In the end, they set themselves on a course of steady decline against an
enemy that had nearly unlimited reserves of strength. They never stood a
chance.

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35 comments from
Byron Arnason
and more

On 12/5/23 09:40, a425couple wrote:
> Musings on Naval matters ·
> Follow
> Posted by
> Maryellen Reilly
>
> Fri
> A reboot of this share…….. Hey Rube!
>
> Roy Grumann was able to get the price of the Hellcat down to $35k ……
> there's a switch
>
> Profile photo for L. Thomas Rouse
> L. Thomas Rouse
> Former Senior Chief Electronics Warfare Technician at United States Navy
> (USN)Updated 1y
>
> Did the Japanese forces suffer such horrific losses in the WWII
> “Marianas Turkey Shoot” air encounter due mainly to the American
> aircraft carriers advantage of being equipped with radar?

Byron Arnason
· Fri
Nice article but a significant error, the new fuses did NOT employ RADAR
which is an ElectroMagnetic WAVE phenomenon. Those marvelous fuses
relied on a simpler, more rugged and more elementary MAGNETIC INDUCTIVE
COUPLING methodology.

The fuse would cause electrical currents to flow in the aluminum skin of
the foe and the magnetic field caused by those currents would activate
the fuse. Marvels of Vacuum Tube technology.

NOT RADAR !

Nearly as marvelous were the new “saturated magnetics” magnetometers
which made sub hunting much easier. An unintended result of those new
magnetometer surveys was the analysis of SEA FLOOR SPREADING and BINGO!
PLATE TECTONICS.

MAGNETRONS, RADAR, PENICILLIN, Saturated Magnetometers. These are all
resulting blessings of deadly WAR.

Profile photo for John Boudrea
John Boudrea
· Sat
True that.

I only wish I could photograph the cool display about the Fuse that I
walk past were I work, where it was developed (JHUAPL). Taking photos is
prohibited on campus

Duncan McDougall
· Sun
Wondering about that one … According to Wikipedia:

“… Radio frequency sensing (radar) is the main sensing principle for
artillery shells.

The device described in World War II patent[63] works as follows: The
shell contains a micro-transmitter which uses the shell body as an
antenna and emits a continuous wave of roughly 180–220 MHz. As the shell
approaches a reflecting object, an interference pattern is created …”

Also, this might lead to a few issues with such aircraft as the RAF
Hurricane and Mosquito, or the Italian SM79 Sparviero, which were mainly
wooden construction so would not generate electrical currents.

Profile photo for Byron Arnason
Byron Arnason
· Sun
Yes, note that the Patent states that the transmitter emits a
“continuous” signal. RADAR does NOT emit a “continuous” signal. RADAR
emits very short high energy PULSES and records the two-way travel TIME
for the reflected pulse to return to the shell.

One of the biggest challenges of that development was that the xmitting
antenna was ALSO the receiving antenna AT THE SAME TIME! It was truly
amazing that they could make those FUSES work using vacuum tube
technology, old carbon style batteries, with the shell spinning and
speeding at thousands of feet per second.

That development was NOT the result of sloppy contaminated laboratory
work as in the case of Fleming's dirty petri dish. The best Electrical
Engineering minds were focused on that FUSE development.

It was so futuristic and innovative that, even when the Japanese and
NAZIs discovered the FUSES, they thought it was an Allied Hoax.

>

"a425couple" wrote in message news:HgJbN.77269$%p%e.22022@fx43.iad...

At the same time, The much-ballyhooed Zero had become obsolete, and by
1944, American pilots had been thoroughly trained in its weaknesses and
the tactics to defeat it. At the same time, American forces had fully
deployed the F6F Hellcat, a vast improvement over its predecessor, the
F4F Wildcat.

------------------------------

I have Zero chief designer Jiro Horikoshi's book on the subject. Japan's
Army and Navy were arch rivals who could barely be forced to cooperate
occasionally. The Army developed better planes that nearly kept up with our
best though they had serious manufacturing problems.
https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/p-51d-vs-nakajima-ki-84-frank.15295/

The Zero's planned replacement was stalled by an unreliable larger engine
with vibration problems they couldn't solve, he claims partly because they
lacked skilled test technicians. Germany also drafted too many technically
skilled personnel to support later developments. We suffered from vibration
damage in high powered aero engines too, luckily we had a Russian
engineering genius named Timoshenko who mastered them.
https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Elasticity-Timoshenko/dp/0070701229

Another hard limit to Japanese naval aircraft weight/power was lack of a
catapult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Taih%C5%8D
"Taihō's original design specified installation of two catapults on her
forward bow for power-assisted take-offs. However, as the Imperial Japanese
Navy had not developed a workable catapult for carrier decks by the time of
Taihō's construction, these were eventually deleted from the requirements."

Thus although Army planes kept improving the Navy was limited to slightly
enhanced versions of the old Zero. Cooperation was so poor that the Army
declined the Navy's request to provide air cover over the superbattleship
Musashi and US planes sank it without opposition.

"a425couple" wrote in message news:wkJbN.77270$%p%e.28415@fx43.iad...

Byron Arnason
· Fri
Nice article but a significant error, the new fuses did NOT employ RADAR
which is an ElectroMagnetic WAVE phenomenon. Those marvelous fuses
relied on a simpler, more rugged and more elementary MAGNETIC INDUCTIVE
COUPLING methodology.

The fuse would cause electrical currents to flow in the aluminum skin of
the foe and the magnetic field caused by those currents would activate
the fuse. Marvels of Vacuum Tube technology.

NOT RADAR !

Nearly as marvelous were the new “saturated magnetics” magnetometers
which made sub hunting much easier. An unintended result of those new
magnetometer surveys was the analysis of SEA FLOOR SPREADING and BINGO!
PLATE TECTONICS.

MAGNETRONS, RADAR, PENICILLIN, Saturated Magnetometers. These are all
resulting blessings of deadly WAR.

Profile photo for John Boudrea
John Boudrea
· Sat
True that.

I only wish I could photograph the cool display about the Fuse that I
walk past were I work, where it was developed (JHUAPL). Taking photos is
prohibited on campus

Duncan McDougall
· Sun
Wondering about that one … According to Wikipedia:

“… Radio frequency sensing (radar) is the main sensing principle for
artillery shells.

The device described in World War II patent[63] works as follows: The
shell contains a micro-transmitter which uses the shell body as an
antenna and emits a continuous wave of roughly 180–220 MHz. As the shell
approaches a reflecting object, an interference pattern is created …”

Also, this might lead to a few issues with such aircraft as the RAF
Hurricane and Mosquito, or the Italian SM79 Sparviero, which were mainly
wooden construction so would not generate electrical currents.

Profile photo for Byron Arnason
Byron Arnason
· Sun
Yes, note that the Patent states that the transmitter emits a
“continuous” signal. RADAR does NOT emit a “continuous” signal. RADAR
emits very short high energy PULSES and records the two-way travel TIME
for the reflected pulse to return to the shell.

One of the biggest challenges of that development was that the xmitting
antenna was ALSO the receiving antenna AT THE SAME TIME! It was truly
amazing that they could make those FUSES work using vacuum tube
technology, old carbon style batteries, with the shell spinning and
speeding at thousands of feet per second.

That development was NOT the result of sloppy contaminated laboratory
work as in the case of Fleming's dirty petri dish. The best Electrical
Engineering minds were focused on that FUSE development.

It was so futuristic and innovative that, even when the Japanese and
NAZIs discovered the FUSES, they thought it was an Allied Hoax.

--------------------------------------
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/09/retrotechtacular-a-closer-look-at-the-vt-proximity-fuze/

Yes Radar, it doesn't have to be pulsed to give useful data and Arnold
Wilkins' first British radar demonstration wasn't though Taylor and Young
pulsed their (earlier) US version. Properly equipped radio experimenters in
many nations independently and secretly developed radar in 1935-36. The VT's
radar was similar to police speed radar that transmits a continuous wave
(CW) and detects the reflection from a moving target using its Doppler
shift, which produces a low beat frequency output that is filtered to
separate it from the strong signal at the transmit frequency. The amplitude
increases as it nears the target and in the VT when strong enough triggered
the explosion.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Doppler-effect

Multiple tones only mix to produce their sum and difference frequencies in a
non-linear device like a diode where the amplitude of one affects the
amplitude of others. Musical notes remain independent in the air and your
ear. The explanation requires applying algebra to trigonometry. Each tone is
represented by its peak amplitude times the sine function (in Radians) at
its frequency.

I built a CW radar from a Gunn diode oscillator with a 1N23 diode detector
in the same 10GHz resonant cavity, and a soldered brass horn antenna to aim
it. The detector output was DC from the detected oscillations plus sum &
difference frequency as the oscillator frequency mixed with Doppler-effect
frequency shifted reflections off nearby moving objects like waving my hand
or tennis balls. An AC-coupled op amp amplified only the low audio frequency
to a speaker, so the pitch of the sound indicated the speed of detected
objects. The target does NOT have to be metal, it detected the moving legs
of people near my lab as a very low frequency buzz-buzz-buzz.

Driving with it produced a weird cacophony of descending notes as the
relative motion of roadside objects changed from toward to past me. Bridge
beams made BoiOiOiOing.

Notice that VT could detect ocean waves, or the ground which made it
tempting for low level air bursts against infantry and artillery without the
uncertainty of timed fuses, though any recovered duds would have revealed
its secret to the Germans so land use wasn't permitted. They did observe it
easily downing V-1 missiles at Dover and wondered how British AA could be so
accurate.

Other proximity fuse attempts employed only the inductive or capacitive
"near field" instead of radio, which is a balanced combination of both. The
Germans experimented with capacitive detection for their failed VT fuse
attempt, somewhat like a Theremin.

>

"a425couple" wrote in message news:wkJbN.77270$%p%e.28415@fx43.iad...

Nearly as marvelous were the new “saturated magnetics” magnetometers
which made sub hunting much easier. An unintended result of those new
magnetometer surveys was the analysis of SEA FLOOR SPREADING and BINGO!
PLATE TECTONICS.

------------------

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener

After his death the Nazis trumpeted his continental drift and other theories
to such an extent that they became untouchable, until an untainted grad
student rediscovered them.

On 12/5/23 10:33, Jim Wilkins wrote:
> "a425couple"  wrote in message news:HgJbN.77269$%p%e.22022@fx43.iad...
>
> At the same time, The much-ballyhooed Zero had become obsolete, and by
> 1944, American pilots had been thoroughly trained in its weaknesses and
> the tactics to defeat it. At the same time, American forces had fully
> deployed the F6F Hellcat, a vast improvement over its predecessor, the
> F4F Wildcat.
>
> ------------------------------
>
>snip good stuff.
>
> Thus although Army planes kept improving the Navy was limited to
> slightly enhanced versions of the old Zero. Cooperation was so poor that
> the Army declined the Navy's request to provide air cover over the
> superbattleship Musashi and US planes sank it without opposition.
>
Hmmm. Wonder why the common trend?

This is reminiscent to me of the situation with the
German Battleship Tirpitz. It was in a fjord in Norway,
(actually settled on a squishy bottom)
and for at least one of the many UK airplane raids
to 'put her down', the German Luftwaffe fighter planes
seemed to be unreasonably slow to try to protect.

"a425couple" wrote in message news:pI2cN.73471$yAie.66496@fx44.iad...
>
> Thus although Army planes kept improving the Navy was limited to slightly
> enhanced versions of the old Zero. Cooperation was so poor that the Army
> declined the Navy's request to provide air cover over the superbattleship
> Musashi and US planes sank it without opposition.
>
Hmmm. Wonder why the common trend?

----------------------------

This is a good source on the battle off Samar, better than Admiral Kurita's.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1953/february/kurita-battle-leyte-gulf

The message from Toyoda appears to have been a demand that Kurita reverse
his retreat after losing Musashi.

IIRC the Army claimed their planes were fully occupied with opposing the
landing, justifiably perhaps because they failed. We wasted no time
bulldozing out airstrips for the fighters that defended it. The US carriers
that were attacked were one of a group of three, totaling 16 smaller
carriers, also providing air support for the landing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Mat
"A runway 200 feet (61 m) wide and 5,000 feet (1,500 m) long could be
created within two days by a small team of engineers."