"Close down RAF' says Naval whippersnapper

[WE Branch Fanatic]

Oh dear, Flatus, you do seem to have an interesting view of history. And what exactly do you mean by "my" logic? As my postings on the (sunk without trace) SHAR thread should prove my logic is based on facts.

Now for your points....

In WWII the man threat to Britain was attacks on merchant shipping. The first method of dealing with this threat was the convoy system. There was a threat from enemy warhips, submarines and aircraft. The real menace of course was the U boat, being responsible for 68% of shipping losses.

Whether the RN or RAF sank the greater number of U boats is frankly neither here nor there. The Kreigsmarine plan (produced by Admiral Donitz) was that the Ubootwaffe would be divided into three. A third would be attacking the Allied convoys, another third would be traveling to/from the convoys and the remaining third would be in refit etc. The in theatre U boats were divided in Wolfpacks. In 1939, radar was still in its infancy and had not found any large scale naval use. Therefore an attacking U boat (on the surface) could be detected only by visual means, and on a dark night that was nearly impossible. Being on the surface, the boat would be able to attain a much greater speed than when submerged. So they were used a torpedo boats initially. A torpedo attack was much more difficult to achieve submarged. The Wolfpack tactic was that one boat would find a convoy, and shadow it. HF radio would be used to inform other boats and they would attack on mass.

Defending the convoys were the ships of the Royal Navy. Very early on it was found that the key to preventing a succesful U boat attack was to keep them at a distance. The introduction of radar aboard escort vessels made this feasible. HF/DF (again carried by escorts) made the wolfpack tactics very dangerous. ASDIC allowed the enemy to be located underwater, and attacked with new weapons such as Hedghog or Squid. These efforts denied the U boats an easy victory. Carrier based aircraft also played an important role in dealing with U boat threat. RAF and RCAF aircraft often acted with naval forces. Thus the credit for defeating the U boats must go, in the main, to the Royal Navy, and to its sailors. Let us hope that their succesors (and I'm including myself here) are made of the same stuff - guts, determination, bravery and a hundred other qualities that are sadly lacking in 2002.

So what about the Tirpitz? Well yes the RAF (617 sdn) sent her to the bottom. But she had already been attacked before, by the X Craft (midget submarines) and by RN aircraft from SIX carriers in Operation Tungsten. The net result of these attacks was that she was imobilised and was no longer a serious menace.

Now for more recent events. You claim that the Sea Harrier did not achieve a favourable air situation in San Carlos. Well it did achieve a degree of air superiority in the Falklands', enough for landing to be conducted. As for San Carlos, it should be remebered that whilst we called it bomb alley, the Argentine pilots (Navy as well was Air Force) called it Death Valley due to their losses, many of which were down to the Sea Harrier. Why did they fly so low (which caused many bombs to fail to arm)? It was to avoid shipborne radars (see below) and also the Sea Harriers. In a study of the conflict, the USAF concluded that over 450 Argentine sorties had been prevented due to the deterent affect that the Sea Harrier had. Those 450 extra sorties by Skyhawks/Daggers etc could have resulted in defeat for Britain.

There were a number of problems with the task group's air defence.

1. Not enough Sea Harriers.
2. No AEW.
3. Only two ships with Sea Wolf.
4. Inadeqaute radar on/in the Type 42 Destroyers.

Lets consider point 4. When the Type 42s were designed/built, the government of the day decided to give them Type 965 radar for long range air search. One problem: excessive beamwidth. Hence aded clutter, adding to the problem of picking out the target. In Engineering terms you would consider this as the Signal to Noise ratio being reduced. A good analogy is if you have your pupils dilated by eye drops (so they can look inside the eyeball) your pupilsdilate, letting large amouts of light in from all directions. And your vision is seriously reduced, so much so you can read. Back to radar, the excessive beamwidth problem was made more serious by operating close to shore, where the enemy hid behing the hills until he went feet wet, and there was more clutter anyway.

AEW would have been a massive help.

Finally lets consider Bosnia. Deny Flight was the codename for the NATO operation to prevent aircraft being used in Bosnian airspace. This was on behalf of the UN. Yugoslav aircraft still flew traing sorties. At times these got VERY close to NATO warships on duty just off the coast of Montenegro. The Sea Harriers were there for TWO purposes. Firstly to contribute to patrolling Bosnia's skies, and secondly to provide Close Air Support to UNPROFOR. When push came to shove and NATO gave the Bosnian Serbs a good lesson, the Sea Harriers flew air defence, recce and attack sorties.

The Royal Navy is overstretched. Considering its considerable problems, most of which are due to politics, it does a very good job. If we ae not attacked because the attacker is detered, then that IS a victory. God willing the politicians can be disuaded from the current ideas to get rid of he Sea Harrier before the JSF comes along.

One final point. I don't and have never advocated the idea of scrapping the RAF. What a stupid idea. My earlier post simply made the pont that all the services have a lot of high technology systems.