Originally posted by HaHa:
It usually only took 1-2 torps to sink a big ship, whereas at least 10-15 500lb bombs were required to sink a ship.
Humpf. Crap I say. Depends on the ship.
US CVs were able to stand good ammounts of bomb and torpedo damage (as was seen in the USS Yorktown and the USS Enterprise, not to mention all those kamikaze-ed Essexes), but still those bomb hits were VERY Damaging. REmember that a CV has a lot of fuel tanks and fuel lines, and a nice Hangar full of refuelling planes with ammo ready to kaboom...
Definitely you dont want a fire to spread in a Carrier, and bomb hits were very prone to cause fatal fires into the carriers.
IJN CVs were able to go down with only a couple of 500kg bomb hits. Remember Midway?...and the Phillipine Sea?...JApanese ships were very exposed to bomb hit damages because the lack of security regarding fire control. A torpedo would do damage to Japanese ships, but not so much as a bomb (Japanese carriers had quite good internal subdivision, better than british and American midwar carriers).
The best carriers regarding fire control were the British CVs. Those ships were able to stand severe punishment (HMS Illustrious off Malta, took several 1100lb hits from Stukas and while having some bad moments, survived). That is because those ships had an armoured deck that helped to keep bombs off the interior of the ship. YOu'd need torpedoes to kill a British CV, because bombs wont do much damage. And then they had very good fuel isolation systems, and state of the art fire control parties...
And also were ships with enclosed hangars, with flastight curtains to isolate burning zones. The Enclosed hangar cut a lot of the # of planes that could be embarked, but the trade off was that a fire in the hangar -by much the most dangerous place for a fire to take place aboard a carrier- was almost guaranteed to be controlled.
Americans were a middle point even after the Essexes. Those ships had good fire control parties and better internal subdivision than Japanese fleet carriers.
Still they were more prone to bomb serious damage than British CVs, because they had no armoured deck , and they had an open hangar while the english had an enclosed hangar, making a fire control duty easier in a brit ship than in an american ship.
And dont forget that, too, bombs were highly dangerous for some kind of ships and not so for others. As simple as that. A bomb that can be deadly for one ship, can be harmless for another. A bomb will prolly bounce off a battleship instead of penetrating, so doing minimal damage...but that same bomb can penetrate three decks of an Essex CV and explode in the middle of the Hangar causing major fires and a real and serious threat to the very existance of the ship.
On the torpedo is not the same thing. A torpedo will be HIGHLY Dangerous for ANY ship...but ,still, depends on the ship that sustains the damage, and the nation of that ship.
In 1940, 10 torpedo carrying Swordfishes (the remainder carried bombs or flares) sank or damaged severely 4 italian battleships on Taranto. one was a complete write-off for the remainder of the war, the other three had serious to medium damage taht put them out of action for months.
In 1941 almost 50 Kates were able to cause ONE write-off in Pearl Harbor (USS Oklahoma, the USS Arizona blew up on a 800kg bomb hit on the Magazines). They did severe damage to the other ships, right...but the resistance of the USS ships to the torpedo hits was amazing, and everyone agrees that the ships in PH standed extremely well against that kind of damage (Oklahoma needed SIX torpedo hits to capsize!!!! while Cavour took ONE).
Relative damages are easily mistook...and you simply can't compare torpedo hits to bomb hits in Battleships than in carriers, for instance, and even more if the carriers had no armour deck (And only the british CVs featured an armour deck until the arrival of the USS Midway and the IJN Shinano), for the simple reason that the armour on a BB would make bounce a bomb, while a CV will see that same bomb penetrating.
I say that bombs should be VERY damaging for the CV and not so for the Cruisers and Battleships.
[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 12-24-2000).]
