WARSHIPS VERSUS AIRCRAFT

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 4, 29 September 1939, Page 8

WARSHIPS VERSUS AIRCRAFT

The first serious attack on the British Fleet has come from the air, when a flight of 20 German seaplanes unsuccessfully attempted to bomb a naval squadron in the North Sea. The fact that the squadron, which included battleships, an aircraft-carrier, cruisers and destroyers, escaped casualties, while damage was inflicted on the enemy, is considered to strengthen the school of opinion which holds that navy ships can outmatch aircraft. Any ground gained bv the opposing opinion that ships could easily lie sunk by modern aircraft was due to the fact that the Navy until the last two or three years had been inadequately equipped with anti-aircraft guns. The development of this arm since then, however, has been so remarkable that this opinion has made no impression on naval construction beyond the demonstrated and obvious necessity of strengthening the decks of the fighting ships. , It has been shown that for effective attack aircraft must resort to “dive-bombing,” a manoeuvre which, it has been pointed out, imposes such a severe strain on the framework of the bomber that even a minor hit by light anti-aircraft guns would probably destroy it. Furthermore, it has been calculated that no fewer than 50 bombs would be necessary on the average to achieve one hit under wartime conditions. On the other hand, a modern fully-equipped fleet constitutes such an immense concentration of anti-aircraft arms as no air pilot would be called upon to face on land. By way of illustration the American fleet has an armament of 800 anti-aircraft guns of 5-inch calibre, while the maximum considered necessary a year ago for the defence of London was 400. Discussing the subject in the National Review, “Miles” considers that the mass attack of planes upon a modern fleet would have to be considered a highly risky adventure, and the probability is that they will be employed upon less dangerous and more promising tasks.

The modern battleship (he adds) differs markedly in most respects from its World War predecessors. The light and medium quickfiring guns have been to a large extent replaced by powerful batteries of similar high-angle weapons. The light armoured deck of the pre-war era has had to give way to a heavy horizontal protection averaging no fewer than Gin. and generally distributed over several superirhposed steel decks. As the space that has to be covered by this horizontal protection is on the average about four times as large as that to be protected by vertical armour, the increase in weight is commensurately large. Since the hazards attached to “dive-bombing” are so great as to discount the menace of such attacks, the only recourse for aircraft attacking warships is bombing from a height, and the greater the bombing altitude the less accurate, it is considered, is likely to be the drop. The best type of modern anti-aircraft gun has a “ceiling” of some 40,000 feet, compared with the effective range of 20,000 feet in the older types. The enemy must, therefore, fly very high and very fast, and his difficulties are made greater by the fact that he has to drop on a moving target capable of high speed and quick change of direction. The German High Command is said to have built great hopes on the prospect of sinking British warships by massed air attacks to offset the inferiority in numbers and size of their surface warships. If the result of this first attempt is any criterion, these hopes are doomed to destruction.