Apollo11
Posts: 24082
Joined: 6/7/2001
From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline
|
Hi all,
quote:
ORIGINAL: bobogoboom
quote:
ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk
quote:
ORIGINAL: Apollo11
quote:
ORIGINAL: sprior
And here's John Moffatt. John Moffat joined the Royal Navy in September 1939. In December he moved to a flying school in Belfast. Moffat originally trained on Gloster Gladiator and Blackburn Skuas. Moffat was then transferred to 818 Squadron HMS Ark Royal, based at Gibraltar in January 1941. On 24 May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck sunk the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood, and HMS Ark Royal was released, as part of Force H, to hunt down Bismarck and sink her. On 26 May 1941 the Bismarck was nearing the safety of the French port Saint-Nazaire. A last ditch attempt to slow the battleship down, so that the British heavy units could catch up with her, was made that night.
At 21:05 hours, Moffat and his observer T/S-Lt.(A) J. D. "Dusty" Miller, flying in the Fairey Swordfish 5C/L9726, crippled the Bismarck with a hit on her port stern. The blow jammed Bismarck's rudder 12° to port. This enabled the Home Fleet and Force H to catch up with and destroy Bismarck.
This pic was taken earlier in the week:
I didn't know that he survived the WWII and that he is still alive!
Takes large cajones to do an attack run in a plane as slow as the Swordfish, especially when the ship was probably going about 1/3 the speed of the plane.
Don't know if this is myth or not but I remember reading that the minimum speed input on the targeting computers (for lack of a better word) on the Bismark's aa directors was sufficiently higher than the Swordfish's loaded speed . . . explaining to an extent the poor performance of Bismarck's aa suite. Sounds plausible I guess. Any ideas?
i remember reading that also. plus from what i have read bismarks aa suite was pretty horrible.
Bismarck (and similary all other non US ships of that time) had extremely poor AA...
BTW, the large caliber AA Bismarck had on board were total waste of space and weight (i.e. instead of dual purpose secondary batteries teherw were standard secondary batteries for naval battle and dedicated large caliber AA batteries)...
Leo "Apollo11"
_____________________________
 Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance! A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE
|
Printable Version
RE: THE THREAD!!! - 
I'll be reading it soon.
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread