Those may be the only instances of enemy warships actually being destroyed by coastal artillery.

But there are certainly plenty more instances in WWII where ships were deterred from entering/attacking a location because of its heavy land-based guns. The Germans (as part of the Atlantic Wall - in fact, the strongest parts of it) defended all of the French ports with a combination of heavy fortifications, large gun emplacements, and mines. It certainly didn't prevent the Allies from landing or winning the war. But it did prevent them from undertaking a head-on attack (besides Dieppe) against any of the ports. Instead, we had to invest even greater resources in amphibious ships and craft and figure out ways to rely on over-the-beach supply lines for weeks or months until a real port could be captured and rehabilitated. So, it didn't win the war for the Germans. But I guess the port defenses (including coastal artillery) performed a certain function for them and forced us to adjust and commit resources to overcome it.

Don't point out that the Marine Corps sank a Japanese warship months before the Navy did. We'll have another heated interservice row.

Walt

Nice post and thanks for the tip about the video. I did not see the ‘expeditionary aspects’ in the film. Have to agree with Tom about the viability of such defenses. More than likely, the ‘bomb’ will arrive in an old shipping container. This slick propaganda film stokes fear of a new missile (defense) gap! While the video brings up some valid points, one can hear the ringing cash-registers of the MIC in the background. Moreover, why is an AF General advocating (trying to sell) this system?

Cetainly the defensive and WWI-all-over-again mindset of the French was key to their defeat in 1940. And the decision to build the Maginot Line was both an outcome and a cause of that mindset and complacency.

But, in and of itself, the Maginot line accomplished a good part of its role, at least the portion that was built. It prevented the Germans from attacking directly across Lorraine, forcing them to again detour around it through the Low Countries. And this was also a major reason for building it - to make sure a future war with Germany was fought primarily on Belgian, rather than French, soil to avoid devastating one of France's most important regions again. Unfortunately, the French (and British) bungled the battles at Sedan and in Belgium.

If the French had had the money, and if they'd been able to convince the Belgians to join them in building an extension of the line along the Belgian-German border, it might have been relatively effective there as well. Not that the Germans would have been completely unable to deal with it, but it would have made life much more difficult for them in 1940.

Brits facing the same enemy, at same time, in adjacent battle-space came up with a good solution. Because they had 23 miles of channel and the Royal Navy, they fashioned a workable defense against Blitzkrieg. The Brits invested in Radar, radio compass, IFF, radio, sector stations, hard surface runways, 8 gun mono-planes. Not a bad investment. It still impresses me that w radar so new, chain home radar was practically a proto-type, VF radio was not too good, but they invested heavily and integrated Air defense system was ready just in time for Battle of Britain.

Did you know that naval or coastal) gun (naval rifles) fire projectiles become a bit wobbly in flight, affecting accuracy as they reach their maximum effective range?

My wobbly point in using the example of the Maginot Line was that it not only cost money the French could ill afford, but it took the emphasis off diplomacy and soft power in addressing Germany’s grievances from the Treaty of Versailles. . .was it really necessary?

There you go BEARCAT using facts to destroy a good story.

"Singapore was the exception they had some 15" guns, I have actually read that most of the 15" guns at Singapore could fire on Malaya, all they had was AP anti-ship ammo, no HE."

The 15" ordnance had 360 degrees of fire.

I think WS Churchill was one of the guys the started the myth about Coast Defense at Singapore. He wasn't kidding about "history will be kind" he was a true as his word.

Churchill also sent Force Z to Singapore. He actually expected a couple of battleships to have a strategic impact and deter the Japanese from attacking. That battleship era was long gone. The only carrier Brits had available was Invincible, it struck a rock and was sent to the yard. The Prince of Wales and Repulse were just targets for Japanese Navy Aviation, they flew down from Saigon!?!? and sank them both. The Brits had fought Germans and Italians for over two years w/o losing any battleships to air attack, it only took about 2 days (more like 2 hours after the fight started) for the Japanese to sink 2 battleships.

It was not only Churchill that overestimated the deterrent effect of the battleship so did the U. S. Navy. Having the core of your battle fleet sunk or disabled at Pearl Harbor forced the Navy to turn to the carrier as the central element of naval power. Even then the battleship faction still having yet to be displaced by the aviation mafia were able to force through the Iowa class program. While these ships were positively impressive their presence probably didn’t shorten the war by a single day. The money could have been better spent on a host of other programs. Interestingly, it was discovered that the older classes of battleships turned out to be better shore bombardment platforms than the new fast Iowa’s.

Eric Hammel where are you? I would enjoy some correction if anything I have written is in error?

The fleet in being concept might have been what WSC had in mind. As long as Repulse and Prince of Wales stayed on top of the water, the Japanese were forced to concentrate their capital ships into no more task forces each of which could deal with a TF built around those two ships.

Same thing for the Brits and the German battleships, especially Bismarck and Tirpitz. The Brits did confront Bismarck and Prinz Eugen with a superior force - Hood and POW, but it didn't go the way they planned.

Walt

Basically, the IJN was overstretched in that the simultaneous advances in early December 1941 into the Central Pacific, SE Asia, Malaya and Indonesia consumed all their naval resources plus some. The land attack seems to have been a reflection of this shortage of naval assets.

Tom Clancy's The Cardinal of the Kremlin is mainly about missile defense. To date, that is the only good thing to come out of the missile-defense concept.
(I don't claim that he wrote actual literature, but before the mid-90s Tom Clancy was a reliably good storyteller.)

But they used regular Artillery, not the big fixed guns of the Coast Artillery. And the channel was narrow and heavily mined which limited the ship's ability to maneuver.

Also lead to the fiasco of the Gallipoli Campaign trying to break that barrier.

BUCHERM, while the RN and French battleships were prevented from navigating the Dardanelles it had to do more with the mine barriers than the gun positions. What the guns were able to do was halt effective mine sweeping by the smaller auxiliary vessels.

This had more to do with the inadequacy of the minesweeping force available than it did either with the mines themselves or the coastal guns defending them. A few old British (and one French) battleships, sent to the eastern Med. precisely because they were thought expendable, struck mines in one day's action, during which most of the Turkish coastal guns' artillery was expended. Thereafter the makeshift British minesweeping force lost its nerve, as did the British admiral commanding the Allied squadron. The naval attempt to pass the Dardanelles lasted all of one day, its failure one of the war's great tragedies.

"The 198th Coast Artillery, Delaware National Guard converted to AAA and deployed with the Marines to Guadalcanal."

The 198th CA Regiment (Antiaircraft) arrived at Guadalcanal from Efate in October 1943, eight months after Guadalcanal was declared secure, then on to the Treasury Islands in November. It probably never fired a hostile round.

The 3rd Defense Battalion did land early in the Guadalcanal action. Gen Vandegrift was convinced that the Japanese would try a counter landing into the Lunga perimeter.

"By October 1941, the tables of organization for the new defense battalions had certain features in common, each calling for a headquarters battery, a sound-locator and searchlight battery, a 5-inch seacoast artillery group, a 3-inch antiaircraft group, and a machine-gun group."

http://www.network54.com/Forum/594514/thread/1293035041/3rd+Defense+Battalion+AA+guns+on+Guadalcanal

Vandegrift remained convinced the Japanese would come across the beach even as they massed inland for an attack on what became known as Edson's Ridge.

Walt

Recall however how P'O'd the USN was when three Baker Wun Sevens intercepted the liner Rex in 1938. At USN insistence, B-17's were restricted to within 100 miles of the coast. Gen. Frank Andrews, truly a great leader for this country, wanted the order in writing but ACOS Malin Craig refused.

Curtis LeMay was the lead navigator.

Long and interesting google article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interception_of_the_Rex

Walt

I read and enjoyed very much "The Road To Big Week", but I don't recall how much if any the Air Corps liked the flying coastal artillery motif to justify the B-17 and how much it was just lip service to enbale the concept of bombing industrial centers and eliminating the enemy's ability to resist at the root, which the Air Corps very much wanted to pursue.

I am thinking Andrews, Spaatz, Arnold and the guys didn't really care much about intercepting and bombing ships at sea.

Walt

It was lip service, but it was also a reasonable idea for the time and taken seriously enough by the aviation practitioners, because it kept the strategic bomber concept alive in a tactical form. I know of very few actual bomb hits scored on ships by B-17s. In fact, I can only bring to mind one photographically supported claim off Guadalcanal. In WWII, there was effectively no such thing as high-altitude precision bombing.

What was really lip service in the 1930s was the entire deployment of coastal batteries. There weren't many modern guns to deploy along thousands of miles of coastline.

I live in a coastal town south of San Francisco. Between here and the next town to the south are remnants of concrete observation posts overwatching long, sheer drops from the coast road to the sea. The ridgeline immediately behind the coastal road masks an old artillery road that was used in WWII to move and deploy long-range artillery, probably WWI-era 155mm guns. I cannot fathom why someone thought the Japanese would arrive at the base of a nearly sheer drop in order to invade the U.S. when there's a perfectly good beach near the northwest corner of San Francisco. Land, take in Seal Rock, and barrel down Geary seven scenic miles to the Financial District. Tres easy.

Bringing us full circle, I gather from civilian deaths that there's still no such thing as precision aerial bombardment--unless, maybe, you only need to be precise enough to nuke a city.

"I cannot fathom why someone thought the Japanese would arrive at the base of a nearly sheer drop in order to invade the U.S. when there's a perfectly good beach near the northwest corner of San Francisco."

Maybe it is like the story of the guy who dropped his car keys in the dark. He looks for them under a street light.

"But you dropped them over here," his friend says.

"I know, but the light is better over here."

Walt

B-17's dropping bombs on ships had dismal results. Fortresses dropped 480 bombs during the Battle of Midway without a single hit.

They dropped from high altitude using about the same techniques they used on land targets.

In Europe with the 'bomb on the leader' technique and combat boxes devised by Curtis LeMay, good concentrations could be obtained if conditions were just right.

The Germans became very concerned when only a few dozen B-17's were available for day to day operations.

Walt

Bomb on leader was effectively ruined by target creep, wherein bombardiers behind the lead bombardier instantly turned to anticipating the actual drop, then subsequent bombardiers anticipated the anticipation, and on and on until bombardiers near the tail of the formation dropped miles before they arrived over the target, the better to lighten the bomber and break out of straight-and-level flight through heavy antiaircraft fire.

Give humans a perfect system and see how long it takes them to create a shambles by adhering to perfect self interest.

Not long. Never long.

"Over Kiel we run into heavy flak from our own guns. The shooting by the Navy is unfortunately so good that we are considerably disorganized. I observe the Yank bombing. They dump their load right on the German shipyards. I am impressed by the precision with which those bastards bomb: it is fantastic."

--"I Flew for the Fuhrer" by Heinz Knoke

"On March 18th at Vegesack, the 305th managed to place 76% of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the MPI [mean point of impact] in the most precise piece of bombing so far turned out by the B-17's. After two further missions to other French railyards without loss, the Force revisited to Germany. In perfect visibilty 73 B-17s and 24 B-24's dropped 268 tons of high explosive squarely on Bremer Vulkan Schiffbau, the submarine yards at Vegesack that had also been the briefed target for the first raid on the Reich back in January. From the evidence of reconnaisance photographs, seven submarines were assessed as severely damaged and two thirds of the shipyard buildings and much of the plant appeared to have been demolished....this mission was later said to have proved the case for high-altitude precision bombing, and its success doubtless influenced those US war leaders who sought evidence to justify the direction of a goodly part of the US war effort to creating a strategic bombing force."

"The first mission of April brought more evidence of the value of the bombardment campaign when Fortresess left the Renault works at Paris a smoking ruin; It took six months to resume full production, denying the enemy 3,075 lorries...the target was picked out inspite of industrial haze that shrouded much of the city...bombs of the 305th Fortresses struck at least 19 factory buildings..."

"The first mission fulfilled under the new directive was the disruption of the synthetic rubber plant at Huls...Although the Eighth's first large scale penetration of the Ruhr, the most heavily defended area of the Third Reich at that time, the mission resulted in the most effective bombardment of a strategic target yet achieved...just under one quarter of the bomb tonnage dropped, exploded within the factory area rendering the plant inoperative for a month. Full production was not resumed for six months."

--The Mighty Eighth, by Roger Freeman

"The raiders managed to inflict heavy damage on the Focke-Wulf Factory at Oscherleben, where half their bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point, and on one of the three targets near Brunswick, where three quarters of the bombs found their mark."

"Despite the punishment they took, both the Regensburg and Schweinfurt raiders managed to inflict substantial damage on their targets. At Regensburg every important building was hit by incendiary or high explosive bombs."

--The Airwar in Europe, Time Life books

Erhard Milch, reich minister for production:

"The two great achievements of the Allied strategic air offensive must be conceded to the Americans: the defeat of the Luftwaffe by the Mustang escort-fighter, and the inception of the deadly oil offensive. 'The British inflicted grievous and bloody injuries upon us' said Milch after the war, 'but the Americans stabbed us to the heart.'

--"Bomber Command" p. 408 by Max Hastings

B-17's rule.

Walt

It was an analogy about roles, not an attempt to equate the two as technologies.

Reminds me of an observation I read recently that strategy is about doing synthesis, and so is difficult for people trained to do analysis.

best,
Tom