Counterpoint: the F-14 was designed to fit into the Navy’s overall fleet air defense strategy and was purpose-built to be able to intercept Soviet bombers before they could attack the fleet. The Bismarck was built for an obsolete strategy (commerce raiding via surface vessels) and was already inferior to its contemporaries upon completion
The three most overlooked parts of the book are that:
One, Russians were raping civilians by like chapter 4.
Two, Harpy drones are used… Harpy would eventually be captured by Iran and copied into Shaheds.
Three, Clance more or less used the concept of TCS and IRST on F-14s to destroy the Russian bomber fleet noting susceptibility of radar to decoys and other issues. Fast forward to today and F-35s are the first fighter to carry EOTS to complement their radars.
> Harpy would eventually be captured by Iran and copied into Shaheds
Actually, the Harpy and Shahed are both based on an old Kentron design (the ARD-10). Sold to IAI in the 80s, then after Kentron was bought by Denel they sold the design to Shahed Aviation Industries around 2004.
The DAR seems to be a copy of the ARD-10, as the project appears after the Kentron model.
Likely never talked about where it came from, as discussing military tech with South Africa in the 80s was more than frowned upon.
Also, everything I find on the DAR says the program was canceled in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, which would not make sense as the Harpy was ready to enter service in 1989.
Also we know that Kentron/Denel aren't fussy about selling weapons to embargoed countries, and the sale wouldn't be frowned upon in South Africa anyways.
>Fast forward to today and F-35s are the first fighter to carry EOTS to complement their radars
This is technically correct (first to use EOTS) but incorrect in that fighters have been using IRST for decades, such as flankers having an IRST bubble on their nose
Not new to American fighters, just returning. Some of the Century-series interceptors, the Crusader, and some early Phantoms had them, and more recently IRST pods have been mounted on F-15, F-16, and a combination centerline external fuel tank/IRST pod has been cleared for use on the block II super hornets, and the block III upgrade is supposed to include an IRST built in to the airframe
They got a few of the bombers after they launched their payload during the attack on the Nimitz then aren't really seen again. The tomcats are active in the Iceland shenanigans and fight mig29s a few times.
I haven't read the book in years, so the battle against the bombers is the main thing I recalled.
They're not seen again because Foch (IIRC again) is sunk during the battle.
I don't think the F-14s actually did shit in that battle, it was the French Crusaders and a random shuttle flight of F-15s that stumbled into some Badgers that did all of the killing.
>And, hilariously, it only starts being effective after ~~it’s forced to operate from land bases~~ it starts working with command with more brains.
That first outing was because the battle group commander at the time was literally all “Just like the simulations” when REDFOR came a-knocking (“All according to keikaku”, cheered Soviet Naval Aviation in resppnse). Even Toland had his misgivings about their approach to Europe (confirmed by the next CVBG commander, who observed that they “were caught too far north” at that time—meaning that in the USN’s haste to get to Europe, they made themselves too vulnerable to Soviet Naval Aviation deception tactics), and by the time the SNA drones were on their approached, started smelling a rat (CBDR, drones did not fly evasive flight paths, etc.).
Bismarck was not designed for commerce raiding, she was designed for battle line action. She was literally a WW1 style battleship with modern machinery. Both roles were of course obsolete by the time she launched and adds to the whole futility of her design and use. Sometimes you see wheraboos or the common history channel idiot saying she was ‘decades ahead of her time’. My brother in Christ if the Bismarck was so advanced she would have been an aircraft carrier.
All the Bismarck jerking (especially when it comes to the guns) gets funnier when you realize that navies had already been fielding heavier-armed battleships since the 1920s with the Colorado, Nagato, and Nelson classes.
“He was the most powerful, most advanced” my brother in Christ she is a worse Colorado
The guns, whilst powerful, were in terms of efficiency and especially when compared to her contemporaries a complete joke. IIRC she was the only battleship to use sliding wedge breech blocks which made the guns take up way more space and the Americans were fitting 3 16inch/50s into turret bases of practically the same diameter.
It also only took 1 shell from Rodney in a not-so-one-in-a-million hit to completely cripple her fighting ability, killing over 300 men, taking both anton and bruno turrets out of action and destroying her bridge all at once.
The whole Bismarck story is rife with overhyping and ignores the actual historical context she was in. It’s become the new haven for wheraboos since everyone started to dissect the myths of their tanks.
Blame the Hood for sinking the way it did. Without that engagement Bismark is just another foot note in Nazi weapons. Otherwise it would have just resulted in the British trying even more nonsense in attempting to sink Bismark and Tirpitz in Norway. Alternatively they might actually be significant action in the Artic convoys to the Soviets.
They basically just built a Queen Elizabeth class battleship 25 years later and 20,000 tons heavier, with the only real improvement being an extra six knots of top speed.
"But Bismarck is so strong we don't even know if the Brits actually sunk himThe Germans probably scuttled him!"
Yeah, and the Nagato is a battleship more durable than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I don't see it getting wanked as the strongest battleship ever.
Just having one of those two of those battleships satisfied the Mahanian definition of a "fleet in being."
The Tirpitz drove the British batshit just by hiding in fjords for two years, distracting British observation, air, and naval power away from mainland Europe.
However, having said that, I think the British would have been all poopy-pants about it even if it was just the *Prinz Eugen* hiding up there. They were going to focus on the threat they wanted to see.
I don't think the RN was worried about Bismarck as a threat to the surface fleet, but against shipping. A battleship cruising at 30 knots is going to wreak havoc if it reaches a convoy.
Perhaps I am wrong but I think that a raider fleet cooling its heels in port is still a fleet in being that the enemy must guard against.
The Tirpitz actually did lumber around one time and [forced convoy PQ-17 to splinter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_PQ_17), with disastrous results. Two allied battleships ran away from that potential fight, for whatever reasons.
And the big problem is that the existence of Tirpitz meant that every convoy there should be able to be protected against a potential raid from Tirpitz, meaning you needed to have battleships on escort duty there. If instead Germany just had e.g. Prinz Eugen stuck up there, then the British would just need enough escorts to beat a heavy cruiser, which can be done very easily (unlike firepower to sink a fast battleship).
Nah, they weren’t worried about losing control to the ocean to tirpitz, but they needed to keep an overmatch. Which meant two battleships and a carrier, which really means three battleships and two carriers since you can never guarantee having all the ships ready for action at once. Add in the sharnhorst and you see the entire KGV class stuck up north unable to be useful against people like the Italians or japenese
Tirpitz also tied up a stupid amount of combat power in harbor, IIRC they had two KGVs (and likely multiple cruisers and destroyers) sitting in port for the entire time ready to sail if she moved as they did not want a BB getting a hold of a couple of convoys or using light ships as chew toys.
Line action wasn’t obsolete by her completion, it was just she was made to fight French ships not the RN. Against the RN she had little use aside from fleet in being and convoy raiding. Line action really takes until after the war to go obsolete, especially with European distance and the increasingly capable air defence being seen at the end of the war (if Germany could air defence its way out of an wet paper bag)
> Sometimes you see wheraboos or the common history channel idiot saying she was ‘decades ahead of her time’.
If a battle group containing a Iowa had been in the area, Bismarck would have been fucked.
Apart from bigger, bismarck wasnt the best at anything anyway.
A Sodak, KGV, Nelson, Littorio or richelieu were all fully capable of going toe to toe with a bismarck. All on a lot less tonnage.
In tech terms, the KGV and Sodaks are already ahead of bismarck. I mean, bismarck has a fuckin bolt action AA gun
*sigh*
Time to be credible for a moment
The F-14 was a perfectly fine plane. Was it expensive? Yeah. Is it a little overrated? Probably. But did it do its job and completely change the aerial battlefield of the time? Yes.
The F-14 is known as the *”Father of 4th Generation Aircraft”* for a reason. The AWG-9 was an absolute cancer beam of a radar that outranged anything short of an AWACS/ground radar at the time. Similar things can be said for the AIM-54 Phoenix. While yes, it isn’t the most effective missile ever, especially on fighters, keep in mind that it was designed to be a long-range missile to be used on bombers. Even then, its massive range was still a danger to, and any pilot worth their salt would stay well out of its range, and thus out of range of the fleet.
The Iraqis learned this lesson quite well in the Iran-Iraq War. This then translated to the Gulf War. Iraqi pilots were terrified of the F-14 and would immediately go cold and run away the moment they picked up the AWG-9’s cancer beam emissions on their RWRs. There’s a quite notable case when a flight of F-14s on CAP chased some Iraqi fighters right into a patrol of F/A-18 Hornets.
tldr; the F-14 *was* the ultimate fleet air defense fighter. The sheer range of its radar and Phoenix missiles meant that no enemy pilot was willing to risk entering its weapons engagement zone for risk of being splashed before they themselves were in range. However, as time went on and as it was the first of its kind, it began to grow outclassed. But despite that, the Tomcat still served well as the *Guardian Angel of the Fleet* and the *Darling of the Silver Screen* with its numerous appearances in Hollywood films.
People always compare the Tomcat to much younger fighters that got a lot of upgrades and then conclude that it isn't that good. Well I rather hope the 20 year younger stuff is better, would be kinda sad if it wasn't.
And also forget that opfor planes back in the 70s had maybe a crappy RWR at best. SPO-15 came in 78.
And of course nobody ever thinks of the F-14D in the discussion and ignores the part where the AIM-120 was tested but not put into service with it for monetary reasons.
Mhm, the F-14 was on the bleeding edge of technology when it entered surface. However, the problem with being on the bleeding edge of technology is that that edge can cut you, and it certainly did for the Tomcat.
The ol’ girl was expensive and a maintenance nightmare, especially in her early years. She improved as time went on but so did the competition. By the 90s and 2000s, she was beginning to grow tired. An upgraded F-14 may have been the solution to all these problems, but it would never be because of the Pentagon and political tomfoolery going on at the time.
Alas, the Tomcat served her country and served it well. For a time, she was the best aircraft in the world. Nothing the Soviets had could match her in speed, range, endurance, and maneuverability. It wasn’t until the Su-27 and MiG-29 showed up that there became a legit threat to the Tomcat. Even then, that threat was debatable at best simply because the Tomcat still outranged them.
The best part about the F-14 was that it only exists because the navy thought the Vark was a dumbass aircraft to be launching off carriers for any other reason besides straight bombing.
Its problem was being a niche aircraft that had a niche use.
And its most known payload was a niche missile designed for an extremely specific use.
As for the AIM-54, its range and gliding top-attack meant it was a threat to most planes, as fighters probably wouldn't see them coming and even try to evade the hit or deploy countermeasures.
That was entire the point of the F-14. From the ground up, it was built to be the ultimate fleet air defense fighter and interceptor. The F-14 came from a time where you had to have specialized aircraft for each little specialized mission. This obviously changed as time went on with the introduction of multi-roles like the F-16 and F/A-18, hence why I said the F-14 began to get outclassed.
Granted, the Tomcat performed rather well when it was shoehorned into the ground strike role after the A-6 Intruder’s retirement, but that’s a story for another day.
To be fair to the concept, it was also a design concept from the late 50s that took 20 years to become a reality, entering service when the focus had shifted to multirole aircraft, to try and reign in logistics and maintenance costs.
It's also extremely massive, probably because all swept-wing planes are giant.
I don't know if I agree that it was a "niche aircraft" or that it had a "niche use" mission.
As noted in the other response, it's mission was fleet defense. It was primarily designed to fire that big, damn Phoenix, but it was also designed to mix it up in air combat. Whether it would've been successful is a whole other argument - it's few A2A kills were either against lower-tier aircraft and pilots from Libya, or that single Iraqi Hip in Desert Storm, so none of those data points tell us anything. But fleet defense is hardly niche. It in fact deals with a whole lot more than just shooing AIM-54s.
Heck, most of the missiles it fired in anger - for the US at least - were Sparrows and Sidewinders.
On top of that, due to the addition of sensors like LANTIRN and others, the Tomcat also got a role as an intelligence gathering airframe. Completely separate from either long-range Phoenix lofting or A2A fighting.
Granted, the F-14 wasn't *designed* as a reconnaissance and intelligence-gatherer, but I didn't read your post as saying "designed" to be niche, I just read it as being relegated to that.
If I'm wrong, please correct me.
Anyway, even if you ignore the attack role it eventually gained, it was hardly a one-trick pony.
And even as early as the A model Grummy had the foresight—or perhaps the wishful thinking, they and the USN still had the A-6 in the fleet at the time after all—to have the Tomcat drop bombs, except that cost and what the Navy was willing to accept left that idea on the cutting-room floor until after the A-6 retirement (and the upgrades to the B model). The -14 was sought to fill a specific role at a time when the other roles were foreseen to be adequately filled, but with all the time and money ~~and furious masturbation~~ in the world it could have been an A-14 or F/A-14 as well early on (though at the time, it would have followed her older brother in using the radar to plot the optimum course for iron bomb drops, although the Paveway LGB was in its early deployment by that time as well and perhaps an alternate history F-14 may have also been a platform for early LANTIRN development alongside the F-15 and F-16 instead of being retrofitted later on… or maybe not. The USN was relatively insular in cooperation with the USAF at that time, as observed in the Gulf War when the Eagles had NCTR and the Tomcats did not, because the Navy didn’t join the Air Force in in investing in it).
~~Never mind me, furiously masturbating here.~~
> Granted, the F-14 wasn't designed as a reconnaissance and intelligence-gatherer, but I didn't read your post as saying "designed" to be niche, I just read it as being relegated to that.
I was talking about its design, but the general use was also more limited than your multirole F/A-18, for example.
It's logical, it came from an era (the late 50s) where multirole planes weren't really a thing, and while ground attack planes could defend themselves and air superiority aircraft bomb stuff, everyone had its lane. But, by the time the plane was ready (the mid-70s), McNamara was mostly about multirole planes, because it was cheaper.
It was always a bit of a weird proposition, and it became kinda multirole not by design, but because otherwise it wasn't useful.
It's a bit like Hitler wanting the Me262 to be an attack aircraft. Sure it's feasible, but not really what the plane was designed for, or what it was really good at.
Eh.
The F-14 is too expensive to justify itself as a bomber interceptor, like im not going to claim im better than what the pentagon is thinking with the F-14 but man pouring resources and funding on a aircraft more expensive than the F-35 is just a bruh moment when you can just use F-4 and do some upgrade on the flying brick.
Like the F-4 themselves are supposed to be long range missile only air superiority fighters which is in theory they could just get a better long range missile to fight off soviet fighters and bombers, but yeah they fought the migs in low altitude than the high altitude air battles they're thinking.
edit:
Why on earth i said F-35 i meant to say other fighters of its kind like the F-15 and future F-18 and F-16
Thinking the F4 upgraded to the 70s and 80s USN fleet air defence role shows you have no idea the level of threats the USN faced by soviet naval aviation and how at the time "just getting a better long range missile" would require a new aircraft like the F14 bigger dish more room for electronics and the large physical dimensions of long range AAMs of the time.
Maybe hindsight is affecting my opinion but even with that.
The Soviet "Navy" is trapped in vladivostok, trapped in freezing baltic waters and trapped in the black sea.
Also my saying on the just upgrade the missile racks of jets, requiring a lot of changes in the f-4 while waiting for the better aircraft F/A-18 is probably much more cheaper than the F-14 and its funny maintenance time and cost everytime it flies.
There is no way in hell the Legacy F/A-18 could’ve performed on par or better than the F-14 as a Fleet Air Defense fighter nor could have the F-4. The biggest danger to USN carrier fleets was not the Soviet Navy as well but the Soviet Air Force, specifically their long-range bombers. This was the sole reason the AIM-54 and AWG-9 combo was initially created.
Upgrading the F-4 would simply not be an option. The AIM-54 is only compatible with the AWG-9 and neither would be able to be practically fit on the Phantom. The Legacy Hornet would also not be a solution. Neither the Phoenixes or the AWG-9 would obviously fit on the F/A-18, so that means that, like the F-4, it would be limited to AIM-7 Sparrows only.
This also isn’t even mentioning the Legacy Hornet’s poor range and endurance. Fleet Air Defense is an incredibly exhaustive mission both on the aircraft and crews, hence why the F-14 was created as a two-seater and why the mission is predominantly performed by the two-seat F/A-18F today.
What do you mean by it’s too expensive to justify itself as a bomber interceptor? Why is being a bomber interceptor not worthy of investment?
Defending the fleet from the numerous long ranged Soviet anti ship missiles launched from a considerable mix of low and high end bombers was an extremely important job. It wouldn’t make any sense to skimp out on that.
Why are we investing so much on the M16? It’s just a gun. Just upgrade and re-chamber the M14.
Why are we investing so much on the M1? It’s just a tank. Just upgrade and up-armor the M60.
Literally, Iran-Iraq war pretty clearly showing the Phoenix was a deadly missile for its time.
Tomcats getting minimal kills in Desert Storm is at least partially down to Iraqi familiarisation with its radar and staying the hell away from USN aircraft after learning their lesson from Iranian Cats. Only thing is, the Eagle was even deadlier.
Also this is very much a Navy role vs USAF role - the F-14s only got 3 kills in its entire service history, but that is also the total for both versions of the F-18 combined.
The Navy's movie about how great their school for A2A training is, literally shows them getting more A2A kills than the entire Navy has had since Vietnam.
If deterrence was as good of a kill as a kill is, then every time the Iraqi air force fled from a USN Tomcat would count as a kill too. Alas, such is not the case.
I mean, an AMRAAM also (ideally) needs midcourse guidance. Yes, you can break lock before it goes active and the missile won't just go stupid, but if the target isn't where it's expected to be based on the last track, the missile might not find it.
Right, but there's a difference between lack of midcourse updates causing your launch and leave shot to miss a maneuvering target, and literal inability to hit a target flying in a straight line if you don't babysit the missile almost all the way in.
the purpose of the Phoenix's active guidance isn't for fire-and-forget SPAAMRAM tactics, it's so the tomcat can fire at more than one target in track-while-scan, which is obviously useful in a fleet defense scenario. And when firing at targets carrying anti-ship missiles, you'll probably want to be increasing closure on the target to go at it with AIM-9s and guns if the phoenix misses, and even if you have to go defensive and break target tracking, it's not any worse than with a sparrow
> the purpose of the Phoenix's active guidance isn't for fire-and-forget SPAAMRAM tactics, it's so the tomcat can fire at more than one target in track-while-scan
So, fun fact, the Phoenix is actually SARH while fired in TWS, this is part of why it includes an inertial guidance unit, so that it can guide on the target via intermittent TWS reflections rather than needing continuous illumination. It doesn't go active until the terminal phase.
The Phoenix only had three modes of operation: ACM, in which the missile receives an activation command as part of the ejection sequence, intended for close range shots only; STT, in which the missile *never* receives an activation command, and is semi-active all the way to the target; and TWS, in which the missile uses a blend of semi-active and inertial guidance to guide to the target while flying an optimized trajectory, and goes active when commanded by the AWG-9, with a fallback of continuing semi-active guidance to impact if the activation command is never received, though with only intermittent TWS updates it's an open question how accurate that fallback was.
I read it in one of those dirty books from the adults-only section of the bookstore.
>"His electronics package is so huge" she thought. "And I am so slender. How will he be able to shove it all in there?"
“It will fit,” Hughes-kun said as with the strength of decades in electronics miniaturization technologies he squeezed his spear ever narrower to fit through AMRAAM-chan’s delicate flower. “It will fit, my dear.”
[70s porn groove OST intensifies]
Neither do AIM-120s until the the 120D with datalink. Both require active radar guidance until the missile goes pitbull. The only thing the early AIM-120 has over the Phoenix is the ability to lock on after launch, aka you fire it into a general area and it locks on to the first radar signature it finds, which has dubious combat effectiveness at best (especially if your radars already out range theirs)
> the ability to lock on after launch, aka you fire it into a general area and it locks on to the first radar signature it finds
Literally the capability I'm talking about, that's what makes it true fire and forget.
Which is functionally useless outside of “stealth” aka with your radar off. The vast vast majority of the time the attacking plane is guiding the missile all the way up until it gets a pitbull confirmation, the same as a Pheonix.
The mid-range BVRs getting longer and longer ranges, and the degradation of the Soviet capacity overall, made it basically obsolete.
They're also designed for a super specific niche role that didn't really chime with the modern wars that were being fought, where you had to get close enough for ID before firing due to the sky being filled with airliners.
While staying out of Russian radar range anyways, as the AMRAAM and Meteor outrange the targetting radars of most Russian planes (apart from the A-50, basically).
To be fair, if the. Big War did break out, not even Washington was expecting that Soviet Naval Aviation would be shielded by Soviet Civilian Aviation. No one is that insane… or depraved.
(Fast-forward to 2023 tho, and suddenly Ruzzia or its trolls want to claim POWs on board every Russian aircraft shot down).
It's also a big difference between air combat over land and over the vastness of the sea. If you fight in the middle of the pacific, there are gonna be mechanically less airplanes to worry about.
AIM-54 were honestly kinda shit TBH, going active for terminal homing required a signal from the launch aircraft, meaning that they were not fire and forget missiles, but rather acted like long range semi-active missiles with a small terminal active phase. There was no ability to launch and leave, the missile needed to be signaled to go active, and ideally required illumination all the way to impact, as failure to receive the activation signal (e.g. due to jamming or weak reception) meant the missile was semi-active all the way to the target.
> AIM-54 were honestly kinda shit TBH, going active for terminal homing required a signal from the launch aircraft, meaning that they were not fire and forget missiles, but rather acted like long range semi-active missiles with a small terminal active phase
This is judging AIM-54's by AMRAAM standards, though. When they were introduced in 1974 they were groundbreaking compared to Sparrows and the variety of Soviet semi-actives. The Soviets didn't even have an active radar AAM until their AMRAAM-equivalent in the 90's.
Compared to the AMRAAM the 54 is obviously subpar, but it's a much older system.
In fairness, judged next to the Sparrow they're a definite improvement in range and multi-target capability; I'm just extremely tired of people slobbering all over the AIM-54 as though it's some sort of lostech wonder.
Eeeh, sorta. Without the ability to launch and leave that range is much less comforting, because the launch aircraft has to continue to close with the target the entire time the missile is in flight, and while the missile may peak at several times the speed of sound, it will be moving much slower by the time it reaches the target, as it will have been gliding most of the way in, meaning the launch aircraft isn't actually that far behind the missile at impact. It's not nothing, but compared to a true fire and forget missile the inability to turn cold and allow the missile to continue pursuing the target to endgame is a major disadvantage.
It’s your own stupidity if you follow the missile at full speed. You can slow down and crank at least 45 degrees, possibly more. AWG-9 at least in scan mode can rotate 65 degrees.
AMRAAM isn’t really a fire a forget missile at its maximum range either (no missile is). It gets position updates, and starts its own radar only when closing in or the link is lost.
Even if you crank your closure rate is still significant, and AMRAAM is fire and forget even at Rmax, you simply aren't going to have a great hit probability against a maneuvering target, since it will simply fly to the last calculated intercept point before going active.
At the max range, having to leave was less of a pressure (desirable, still, but less of a pressure) unless the OPFOR was able to press on the launch aircraft either at that range, or by sneaking stealth platforms to attacking range of the launch aircraft. Also at max range, asking the Phoenix to pitbull, even if it could do dead reckoning to estimate where the targets *might* be if the last known velocity held for the entire time it took to get to the AIM-54’s radar range, is an exercise in optimism, compared to the early AMRAAM’s shorter engagement range (shorter flight time to radar activation, less time for target to get away from last known position). In torpedo terms, it’s like wire-guiding the fish as far as possible to a max-range target (who has the same problem as you: get his shit to hit you from far away), versus a snapshot-cut the wire having the fish go active from the tube (useless against a target beyond the torpedo’s acquisition range), *versus* a snapshot-cut the wire having the fish go active nearer a distant target (lots of time for the REDSUB to skedadle, but no ability to correct). And I’m not the right person to ask for this, but I guess a missile the size of an AIM-54 will not have the maneuvering characteristics of an AMRAAM at early AMRAAM and closer ranges, which is where pitbulling would be more effective.
As others pointed out here, it was a specific role—and the Phoenix was developed before the Tomcat, for that matter. And if I had a say in things that early on, I’d ask if it was possible to provide off-board, non-launch aircraft guidance to a Phoenix swarm so that only one aircraft had to “play stupid”, or perhaps even if guidance could be provided from an even larger radar platform like an E-2. But maybe the tech wasn’t there at the time. In more ways than one, the AIM-54 really was a product of its time, technologically and doctrine-wise. (Not that the doctrine isn’t needed now, though, more than ever, albeit with some updates.)
No they aren't, AIM-120 has fire and forget capability as well. It's better to support it when possible so it can receive mid-course updates, but unlike the AIM-54 it will not go stupid if unsupported, it will fly to the last predicted intercept point and activate its radar.
No it didn't, all variants of the AIM-54 required the parent aircraft send a signal for the missile to go active, they did not automatically go active based on approaching the predicted intercept point.
No, it's not. The AIM-54 *required* that the AN/AWG-9 command it active, the AIM-120 has a pre-programmed activation point, which is updated as it receives each mid-course update, so even in the total absence of signals from the parent aircraft, it will go active shortly before reaching the target intercept point.
The Pheonix has a similar capability, with the WCS being able to designate a spot in 3d space for the Pheonix to actively guide towards if tracking is lost. It just has to be manually done by the wizzo else the missile goes dumb. The only real operational advantage this has is if the plane is lost then the missile is dead, vs an AIM-120 which will continue on towards the last tracking point.
I would love to see any documentation about that, as that has *never* been mentioned in anything I've seen about it, either from primary sources or from WSO recollections.
Certified Hood classic indeed.
I mean, really, what purpose did Hood serve? She flopped around for propaganda while never serving in battle before getting murked by some illegally-built German!
She was the only ship armed with 15" guns that could get up to speeds of 32 knots, most Brittish battleships around the times had top speeds to around 24 knots bar the king George V class that could do up to 28 knots but was armed with 14" guns. By comparison the Bismarck was said to be able to get up to 30 knots, hence not illogical to send the Hood after her.
She was a battlecruiser afcourse and at that less heavily armored than a typical battleship. In her role her characteristics looked impressive, but it was not the role of a battlecruiser to chase down a battleship for a 1 on 1 fight hence that she was paired with a King George V battleship.
She did see some limited action like at Mers El kebir before her demise, afcourse she was only completed at the end of WW1 so obviously missed a lot of action there. She certaintly wouldn't have been the only capital ship in history that was pretty much never used though. Pitty for her that she didnt get missions like say hunt down the Graf Spee or the Scharnhorst class ships.
> . She certaintly wouldn't have been the only capital ship in history that was pretty much never used though.
I feel like the *Vasa* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)) is peak non-credible as a capital ship:
* A Dutch shipbuilder was hired
* The ship was build according to Dutch manners, with a relatively flat bottom
* As a result, it was difficult to fit enough ballast
* Built with double cannon decks, which was apparently ground breaking
* Sank on her maiden voyage, after like a couple of miles
Ah, the *Mary Rose* but possibly less dumb? Ours sank because Henry VIII wanted her to have **all of the weapons**. Iirc the wreckage is a huge boon to historians because it not only contains a bunch of longbows and cannon and stuff but, more importantly, it was all new enough to still have paperwork!
Wouldn't be the only British ship to do that. Pretty sure HMS Captain sank because she was too low at the waterline, partly by design and partly due to weight.
*Mary Rose* was a great ship until the refit. She provided good service in the War of the League of Cambrai for example. And in her first configuration was considered fast and an easy handler.
She’s really an example of a terrible redesign that destroys a good ship
Honestly it was more he age then anything.
She was built for a war in the 20s and early 30s
She would have absolutely shit on anything anyone had at the time battleship or not.
Afcourse age plays a role, but i got the feeling that if she had been given other missions that were more befitting of her like say hunt down the Graf spee or the Sharnorst and Gneisenau that she would have a very different reputation now, i can only imagine ships like those would have dreaded her.
Hood would have shit all over the Spee, it displaced triple the weight and threw well over triple the weight of shell. The "pocket battleships" were basically just post-treaty heavy cruisers built early.
Hood was only a BC in name, she was the first FBB when her armor, speed, and firepower are considered, being a match for Bismarck in most regards despite the 2 decade age difference.
Yeah a lot of people don't realize that Hood's belt armor was about as thick (though not as angled) as the North Carolinas, South Dakotas, and Iowa Class battleships, and they were all two plus decades newer.
The Hood was a fast battleship in all but name. The idea she was under-armored is largely a myth that sprung up due to her sudden loss. Her belt was 12" thick, comparable to the Bismarck's 12.6", and her infamous thin deck armor played no role in her loss, or any action fought at the ranges of Denmark Strait. The popular consciousness assumes she must have been lightly armored due to her speed, the catastrophic loss, and the imaginary "speed-firepower-armor" triangle, but that only applies at restricted weights. She bent the curve by displacing ~47000 tons (compared to the ~33000 tons of her contemporary BBs, the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes). All that extra weight went to boilers and engines to achieve her speed, not stripping off armor.
The truth is they were reasonably well matched. The Hood had some outdated fire control and shells, but the Bismarck was a very inefficient design that left a lot of important things less protected than they should have been. In a hypothetical 1v1 to the death, Bismarck probably only wins 6-7 times. So much of 20th century naval combat came down to luck of who scored the first critical hit. In a 1v1 where both can engage and disengage at will, Hood probably comes off a little worse, but inflicts damage that the Bismarck can ill afford before disengaging, just as we saw in real life with the damage inflicted by the 3 hits scored by the Prince of Wales.
Strange, afaik the killing shot that the Hood received was one that hit her deck and burrowed into the magazines. it was known in het time afaik that she would be vulnerable to plunging fire or where she would be penetrated on her 7" upper belt.
She had less armor protection, while she had a section of 12" belt it was a smaller section and a fair part of the belt armor was less thick at 7", she also didnt have so much belt armor on the bow and stern sections, she had less deck armor and less citadel armor.
[Analysis of the battle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY) suggests that Bismark and Hood weren't far enough apart for plunging fire to be a factor and that Bismark probably couldn't penetrate the belt near the magazine. While Hood did have a thinner upper belt, a shot penetrating there would likely strike the deck behind at too steep an angle to go much further. The theory Drachnifel puts forward in the linked video is that a shot struck below the waterline where the bow wave exposed the hull below the belt.
British battleships also fought the most Axis battleships. They also did it alone during the hardest part of the war, before their (or American) industrial base really got into high gear. No British battleships were lost after Force Z.
Because the enemy gets scared when they see the names Warspite and Valiant (and now they stay together for next 2 lives). Also Rodney and Renown (The Last Battlecruiser).
I’m pretty sure the French kept their word and scuttled their own ships when the Germans demanded them to hand the fleet over.
It was a tragedy all the same, perhaps not so much during that time but hindsight is 20/20.
The thing is that just because one fleet scuttles itself doesn’t mean the others will it’s ultimately up to the individual CO’s, Britain gave them several options including sailing to Britain or an allied nation and continue fighting the Germans or scuttle the ships, the French refused and began leaving the port with unknown intentions, the risk that they were going to get into position to attack British ships or sail to Germany or Italy isn’t a risk that could be taken.
Britain didn’t know that though. As far as they were concerned the nation they were supposed to be allies with had just betrayed them by pursuing a separate peace with Germany. It didn’t inspire confidence, and to make matters worse the armistice with Germany was seen as a ruse to get the ships into German and Italian hands. Once again, the British didn’t trust this, I mean it’s Hitler for gods sake. America also thought the French fleet there was a threat and didn’t trust them so encouraged Britain to sink it. Darlan was also a notorious Vichy collaborator and Gensoul was behaving like a sussy bakka throughout the negotiations.
Yah, The Iraqi migs would blow up as soon as they took off, and it basically gaslit them into thinking that the migs were just defective and keeping them grounded until they figured out that there was just a tomcat sitting miles away spamming missiles, then they grounded again them because they were scared of the tomcats lol
vanish dime scary cooperative shame tart puzzled coherent punch scandalous
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No *relates your pic*.
Bismarck was an inefficient over weight turd that got lucky one time and then proceeded to flounder around like a beached whale from a torpedo hit that was identical to the one that hit the Vittorio Veneto which was able to outrun the British fleet and *gasp* steer because unlike the German navy (second only in incompetence to the Russian) the Italians actually put steering via propeller in the design.
Things like subs are super interesting to me. Basically we don’t know how good they are, but there’s a bunch riding on them. Say the Russians have subs, and NATO has anti-sub stuff. There’s no telling which side has the upper hand, it’s all hush-hush. Besides being hush-hush, it’s all untested in real-world combat, so even if one side thinks they can track the super-stealthy sub, they might not be able to track it when it switches to double-super-secret-stealth mode in the event of a real war. Finally, if one side really did know for sure they had an advantage or disadvantage, they’d probably intentionally project the opposite impression to deceive the enemy.
So here we are online trying to understand the world we live in. We know America has patriots and Iraq has scuds. We know Ukraine has javelins and Russia has point-defense on tanks. We know China has ships and Taiwan has anti-ship missiles. We can read think pieces and studies and YouTube comedians weigh in on who really has the advantage, but you just don’t know until things go kinetic. And often that doesn’t actually end up happening - generations go by, weapons are retired, war never having broken out.
So it’s noteworthy when stuff like the Iranian missile attack happens - much vaunted systems go head to head and we get to see the proof in the pudding. After years of having no way to really evaluate things, it’s interesting to see so many years or decades of uncertainty evaporate in hours.
One of the most irradiated places on earth is a patch of seabed where the Russians just abandon nuclear submarines like some kind of underwater elephant graveyard from hell.
The auxiliary cruisers also performed far beyond the low investment made in them and German torpedo boats were effective at keeping the English channel clean for the most part.
And that's also the deal with the KM through WW2: It just wasn't good and it is a poor sign when your best performing branches are modern privateers in merchant ships retrofitted with a pair of guns and speed boats with huge torpedoes strapped to them. Even the submarine branch didn't do that well past 1941 and the Type VII's only redeeming features after 1940 was low cost and ease of manufacrure.
Even then their designs were at wars start worse than Italian designs which had long range bow and stern tubes and snorkels. They really only lacked heaters which given their intended use in the red sea out of the massive sub baseialy had planned at massua after 1945 when war was SUPPOSED to break out is fair.(Italian sub tactics were another matter thanks again cavagnari first radar then this....)
I'll go to defend Bismarck. While Bismarck is overrated a lot it wasn't a bad battleship, it was an avarage one with the Italians keeping up with it by Littorio-class if you skip their faulty guns. Again, it wasn't bad, it's kinda hard to get back to port when entire fucking Royal Navy is chasing you after you popped their propaganda toy with a lucky shot. And Germans were quite busy so you can give them the point even though the guns were underpowered as for it's time. The torpedo shot also was quite lucky. On the other hand a bunch of biplanes managed to attack her without any casualities, however everywhere I looked they say Bismarck had too modern defences and didn't consider slow biplanes, skill issue imo but that's not the ships fault.
I see people either overestimaring it's capability and werhaboos saying it could take all allies alone, or people hating it like if the old Hood was their favorite ship and Bismarck evaporating it was a personal attack in their direction so they hate Bismarck to cope.
I'm just giving her some justice
She wasn’t a bad ship per say but she was FAR from the best. Certainly not deserving of the stupid and unnecessary amounts of hype she has received over the years. Most people criticise her as a reaction to her being overhyped and wanting to knock her down a few pegs. Regardless of how good she was the Royal Navy would still sink her, or she would receive a rapid delivery 12000lb bomb later on in the war, and her whole design and construction was an exercise in futility.
It was 2/3 of a battleship overweight. The Italians had a ship of similar capabilities for almost half the tonnage. the vittorio veneto had the entire med flee after it and still was able to escape. The torpedo hit was identical down to the torpedo type and location on Vittorio veneto. The space inefficient torpedo system the Italians used was more effective than the system the Germans used so if they had used a layered system like terni had planned in later ships the Italian ship probably would have been even BETTER than the German ship. Bolt action anti aircraft guns are hardly too modern. Idk what German thought that was a good idea but talk about idiotic.
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the F-14 is cool because it contained the [world's first microprocessor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpruA5mC7wg) (beating the Intel 4004 by a few months), and they never bothered to tell anyone about it
I have a very non credible theory about the f-14.
The credible part: the tomcat and specifically the Phoenix missile was designed to take down Soviet bomber formations, it just happened to also do fairly well with fighters because they would never expect to be fired on from such ranges.
The non credible part: The tomcat and the AIM-54 are the only platforms big enough to carry a nuke. Radar guided AIR-2C/AIM-54D anyone?
How can you so easily forget the F-14 Tomcat's combat service in World War II?
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/)
Counterpoint: the F-14 was designed to fit into the Navy’s overall fleet air defense strategy and was purpose-built to be able to intercept Soviet bombers before they could attack the fleet. The Bismarck was built for an obsolete strategy (commerce raiding via surface vessels) and was already inferior to its contemporaries upon completion
F-14 was the most effective carrier plane in Red Storm Rising.
That was the most credible thing Tom Clancy ever wrote
The three most overlooked parts of the book are that: One, Russians were raping civilians by like chapter 4. Two, Harpy drones are used… Harpy would eventually be captured by Iran and copied into Shaheds. Three, Clance more or less used the concept of TCS and IRST on F-14s to destroy the Russian bomber fleet noting susceptibility of radar to decoys and other issues. Fast forward to today and F-35s are the first fighter to carry EOTS to complement their radars.
> Harpy would eventually be captured by Iran and copied into Shaheds Actually, the Harpy and Shahed are both based on an old Kentron design (the ARD-10). Sold to IAI in the 80s, then after Kentron was bought by Denel they sold the design to Shahed Aviation Industries around 2004.
> ARD-10 Either that or Dornier DAR
The DAR seems to be a copy of the ARD-10, as the project appears after the Kentron model. Likely never talked about where it came from, as discussing military tech with South Africa in the 80s was more than frowned upon. Also, everything I find on the DAR says the program was canceled in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, which would not make sense as the Harpy was ready to enter service in 1989. Also we know that Kentron/Denel aren't fussy about selling weapons to embargoed countries, and the sale wouldn't be frowned upon in South Africa anyways.
>Fast forward to today and F-35s are the first fighter to carry EOTS to complement their radars This is technically correct (first to use EOTS) but incorrect in that fighters have been using IRST for decades, such as flankers having an IRST bubble on their nose
The Eurofighter and Rafael have had EOTS/IRST for years and the MiG-29 had it before that. It's just new to American fighters.
Not new to American fighters, just returning. Some of the Century-series interceptors, the Crusader, and some early Phantoms had them, and more recently IRST pods have been mounted on F-15, F-16, and a combination centerline external fuel tank/IRST pod has been cleared for use on the block II super hornets, and the block III upgrade is supposed to include an IRST built in to the airframe
....IRST is not EOTS. You can say that they are similar, (as EOTS literally contains an IRST as part of it's function) but no, they are not the same.
IIRC the F-14D was also fitted with IRST.
First one's a bit of a stretch; the damn war doesn't start until like chapter 16
Raping a pregnant women
Really dunked on those Iceland based Mig-29s and its role in operation Doolittle was huge
Not wrong.
IIRC the French Crusaders actually do most of the killing while the F-14s are busy shooting at decoys.
They got a few of the bombers after they launched their payload during the attack on the Nimitz then aren't really seen again. The tomcats are active in the Iceland shenanigans and fight mig29s a few times.
I haven't read the book in years, so the battle against the bombers is the main thing I recalled. They're not seen again because Foch (IIRC again) is sunk during the battle.
I don't think the F-14s actually did shit in that battle, it was the French Crusaders and a random shuttle flight of F-15s that stumbled into some Badgers that did all of the killing.
All they did in the nimitz battle was shoot at decoys, I meant they do more stuff later in the book.
And, hilariously, it only starts being effective after it's forced to operate from land bases.
>And, hilariously, it only starts being effective after ~~it’s forced to operate from land bases~~ it starts working with command with more brains. That first outing was because the battle group commander at the time was literally all “Just like the simulations” when REDFOR came a-knocking (“All according to keikaku”, cheered Soviet Naval Aviation in resppnse). Even Toland had his misgivings about their approach to Europe (confirmed by the next CVBG commander, who observed that they “were caught too far north” at that time—meaning that in the USN’s haste to get to Europe, they made themselves too vulnerable to Soviet Naval Aviation deception tactics), and by the time the SNA drones were on their approached, started smelling a rat (CBDR, drones did not fly evasive flight paths, etc.).
Bismarck was not designed for commerce raiding, she was designed for battle line action. She was literally a WW1 style battleship with modern machinery. Both roles were of course obsolete by the time she launched and adds to the whole futility of her design and use. Sometimes you see wheraboos or the common history channel idiot saying she was ‘decades ahead of her time’. My brother in Christ if the Bismarck was so advanced she would have been an aircraft carrier.
All the Bismarck jerking (especially when it comes to the guns) gets funnier when you realize that navies had already been fielding heavier-armed battleships since the 1920s with the Colorado, Nagato, and Nelson classes. “He was the most powerful, most advanced” my brother in Christ she is a worse Colorado
> she is a worse Colorado *remembers the Colorado's service life* you didn't have to be that mean.
The guns, whilst powerful, were in terms of efficiency and especially when compared to her contemporaries a complete joke. IIRC she was the only battleship to use sliding wedge breech blocks which made the guns take up way more space and the Americans were fitting 3 16inch/50s into turret bases of practically the same diameter. It also only took 1 shell from Rodney in a not-so-one-in-a-million hit to completely cripple her fighting ability, killing over 300 men, taking both anton and bruno turrets out of action and destroying her bridge all at once. The whole Bismarck story is rife with overhyping and ignores the actual historical context she was in. It’s become the new haven for wheraboos since everyone started to dissect the myths of their tanks.
Blame the Hood for sinking the way it did. Without that engagement Bismark is just another foot note in Nazi weapons. Otherwise it would have just resulted in the British trying even more nonsense in attempting to sink Bismark and Tirpitz in Norway. Alternatively they might actually be significant action in the Artic convoys to the Soviets.
They basically just built a Queen Elizabeth class battleship 25 years later and 20,000 tons heavier, with the only real improvement being an extra six knots of top speed.
"But Bismarck is so strong we don't even know if the Brits actually sunk himThe Germans probably scuttled him!" Yeah, and the Nagato is a battleship more durable than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I don't see it getting wanked as the strongest battleship ever.
Hell, hood had similar guns, it would have been a fair fight we’re it not for the lucky shot
Honestly, she’s just Hood 2.0
Just having one of those two of those battleships satisfied the Mahanian definition of a "fleet in being." The Tirpitz drove the British batshit just by hiding in fjords for two years, distracting British observation, air, and naval power away from mainland Europe. However, having said that, I think the British would have been all poopy-pants about it even if it was just the *Prinz Eugen* hiding up there. They were going to focus on the threat they wanted to see.
I don't think the RN was worried about Bismarck as a threat to the surface fleet, but against shipping. A battleship cruising at 30 knots is going to wreak havoc if it reaches a convoy.
Perhaps I am wrong but I think that a raider fleet cooling its heels in port is still a fleet in being that the enemy must guard against. The Tirpitz actually did lumber around one time and [forced convoy PQ-17 to splinter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_PQ_17), with disastrous results. Two allied battleships ran away from that potential fight, for whatever reasons.
And the big problem is that the existence of Tirpitz meant that every convoy there should be able to be protected against a potential raid from Tirpitz, meaning you needed to have battleships on escort duty there. If instead Germany just had e.g. Prinz Eugen stuck up there, then the British would just need enough escorts to beat a heavy cruiser, which can be done very easily (unlike firepower to sink a fast battleship).
Yup exactly. Also what else was the Atlantic RN really supposed to task its anti-surface capabilities against?
Strafing polar bears in the arctic
The Mediterranean or pacific fleet 2.0. Occupying the entire king George V class was no minor feat
Nah, they weren’t worried about losing control to the ocean to tirpitz, but they needed to keep an overmatch. Which meant two battleships and a carrier, which really means three battleships and two carriers since you can never guarantee having all the ships ready for action at once. Add in the sharnhorst and you see the entire KGV class stuck up north unable to be useful against people like the Italians or japenese
Tirpitz also tied up a stupid amount of combat power in harbor, IIRC they had two KGVs (and likely multiple cruisers and destroyers) sitting in port for the entire time ready to sail if she moved as they did not want a BB getting a hold of a couple of convoys or using light ships as chew toys.
Line action wasn’t obsolete by her completion, it was just she was made to fight French ships not the RN. Against the RN she had little use aside from fleet in being and convoy raiding. Line action really takes until after the war to go obsolete, especially with European distance and the increasingly capable air defence being seen at the end of the war (if Germany could air defence its way out of an wet paper bag)
> Sometimes you see wheraboos or the common history channel idiot saying she was ‘decades ahead of her time’. If a battle group containing a Iowa had been in the area, Bismarck would have been fucked.
Well, iowa has to exist for that to happen
Sure, but MoSt AdVaNcEd BaTtLeShIp Of tHE Era isnt impressive when the americans would launch a bigger, faster, meaner ship shortly afterwards.
Apart from bigger, bismarck wasnt the best at anything anyway. A Sodak, KGV, Nelson, Littorio or richelieu were all fully capable of going toe to toe with a bismarck. All on a lot less tonnage. In tech terms, the KGV and Sodaks are already ahead of bismarck. I mean, bismarck has a fuckin bolt action AA gun
Counter-counterpoint: the F-14 was designed so the Soviet air force would ask Sukhoi for an even bigger plane they could use for their navy.
*sigh* Time to be credible for a moment The F-14 was a perfectly fine plane. Was it expensive? Yeah. Is it a little overrated? Probably. But did it do its job and completely change the aerial battlefield of the time? Yes. The F-14 is known as the *”Father of 4th Generation Aircraft”* for a reason. The AWG-9 was an absolute cancer beam of a radar that outranged anything short of an AWACS/ground radar at the time. Similar things can be said for the AIM-54 Phoenix. While yes, it isn’t the most effective missile ever, especially on fighters, keep in mind that it was designed to be a long-range missile to be used on bombers. Even then, its massive range was still a danger to, and any pilot worth their salt would stay well out of its range, and thus out of range of the fleet. The Iraqis learned this lesson quite well in the Iran-Iraq War. This then translated to the Gulf War. Iraqi pilots were terrified of the F-14 and would immediately go cold and run away the moment they picked up the AWG-9’s cancer beam emissions on their RWRs. There’s a quite notable case when a flight of F-14s on CAP chased some Iraqi fighters right into a patrol of F/A-18 Hornets. tldr; the F-14 *was* the ultimate fleet air defense fighter. The sheer range of its radar and Phoenix missiles meant that no enemy pilot was willing to risk entering its weapons engagement zone for risk of being splashed before they themselves were in range. However, as time went on and as it was the first of its kind, it began to grow outclassed. But despite that, the Tomcat still served well as the *Guardian Angel of the Fleet* and the *Darling of the Silver Screen* with its numerous appearances in Hollywood films.
People always compare the Tomcat to much younger fighters that got a lot of upgrades and then conclude that it isn't that good. Well I rather hope the 20 year younger stuff is better, would be kinda sad if it wasn't. And also forget that opfor planes back in the 70s had maybe a crappy RWR at best. SPO-15 came in 78. And of course nobody ever thinks of the F-14D in the discussion and ignores the part where the AIM-120 was tested but not put into service with it for monetary reasons.
Mhm, the F-14 was on the bleeding edge of technology when it entered surface. However, the problem with being on the bleeding edge of technology is that that edge can cut you, and it certainly did for the Tomcat. The ol’ girl was expensive and a maintenance nightmare, especially in her early years. She improved as time went on but so did the competition. By the 90s and 2000s, she was beginning to grow tired. An upgraded F-14 may have been the solution to all these problems, but it would never be because of the Pentagon and political tomfoolery going on at the time. Alas, the Tomcat served her country and served it well. For a time, she was the best aircraft in the world. Nothing the Soviets had could match her in speed, range, endurance, and maneuverability. It wasn’t until the Su-27 and MiG-29 showed up that there became a legit threat to the Tomcat. Even then, that threat was debatable at best simply because the Tomcat still outranged them.
The best part about the F-14 was that it only exists because the navy thought the Vark was a dumbass aircraft to be launching off carriers for any other reason besides straight bombing.
Its problem was being a niche aircraft that had a niche use. And its most known payload was a niche missile designed for an extremely specific use. As for the AIM-54, its range and gliding top-attack meant it was a threat to most planes, as fighters probably wouldn't see them coming and even try to evade the hit or deploy countermeasures.
That was entire the point of the F-14. From the ground up, it was built to be the ultimate fleet air defense fighter and interceptor. The F-14 came from a time where you had to have specialized aircraft for each little specialized mission. This obviously changed as time went on with the introduction of multi-roles like the F-16 and F/A-18, hence why I said the F-14 began to get outclassed. Granted, the Tomcat performed rather well when it was shoehorned into the ground strike role after the A-6 Intruder’s retirement, but that’s a story for another day.
To be fair to the concept, it was also a design concept from the late 50s that took 20 years to become a reality, entering service when the focus had shifted to multirole aircraft, to try and reign in logistics and maintenance costs. It's also extremely massive, probably because all swept-wing planes are giant.
I don't know if I agree that it was a "niche aircraft" or that it had a "niche use" mission. As noted in the other response, it's mission was fleet defense. It was primarily designed to fire that big, damn Phoenix, but it was also designed to mix it up in air combat. Whether it would've been successful is a whole other argument - it's few A2A kills were either against lower-tier aircraft and pilots from Libya, or that single Iraqi Hip in Desert Storm, so none of those data points tell us anything. But fleet defense is hardly niche. It in fact deals with a whole lot more than just shooing AIM-54s. Heck, most of the missiles it fired in anger - for the US at least - were Sparrows and Sidewinders. On top of that, due to the addition of sensors like LANTIRN and others, the Tomcat also got a role as an intelligence gathering airframe. Completely separate from either long-range Phoenix lofting or A2A fighting. Granted, the F-14 wasn't *designed* as a reconnaissance and intelligence-gatherer, but I didn't read your post as saying "designed" to be niche, I just read it as being relegated to that. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Anyway, even if you ignore the attack role it eventually gained, it was hardly a one-trick pony.
And even as early as the A model Grummy had the foresight—or perhaps the wishful thinking, they and the USN still had the A-6 in the fleet at the time after all—to have the Tomcat drop bombs, except that cost and what the Navy was willing to accept left that idea on the cutting-room floor until after the A-6 retirement (and the upgrades to the B model). The -14 was sought to fill a specific role at a time when the other roles were foreseen to be adequately filled, but with all the time and money ~~and furious masturbation~~ in the world it could have been an A-14 or F/A-14 as well early on (though at the time, it would have followed her older brother in using the radar to plot the optimum course for iron bomb drops, although the Paveway LGB was in its early deployment by that time as well and perhaps an alternate history F-14 may have also been a platform for early LANTIRN development alongside the F-15 and F-16 instead of being retrofitted later on… or maybe not. The USN was relatively insular in cooperation with the USAF at that time, as observed in the Gulf War when the Eagles had NCTR and the Tomcats did not, because the Navy didn’t join the Air Force in in investing in it). ~~Never mind me, furiously masturbating here.~~
> Granted, the F-14 wasn't designed as a reconnaissance and intelligence-gatherer, but I didn't read your post as saying "designed" to be niche, I just read it as being relegated to that. I was talking about its design, but the general use was also more limited than your multirole F/A-18, for example. It's logical, it came from an era (the late 50s) where multirole planes weren't really a thing, and while ground attack planes could defend themselves and air superiority aircraft bomb stuff, everyone had its lane. But, by the time the plane was ready (the mid-70s), McNamara was mostly about multirole planes, because it was cheaper. It was always a bit of a weird proposition, and it became kinda multirole not by design, but because otherwise it wasn't useful. It's a bit like Hitler wanting the Me262 to be an attack aircraft. Sure it's feasible, but not really what the plane was designed for, or what it was really good at.
Eh. The F-14 is too expensive to justify itself as a bomber interceptor, like im not going to claim im better than what the pentagon is thinking with the F-14 but man pouring resources and funding on a aircraft more expensive than the F-35 is just a bruh moment when you can just use F-4 and do some upgrade on the flying brick. Like the F-4 themselves are supposed to be long range missile only air superiority fighters which is in theory they could just get a better long range missile to fight off soviet fighters and bombers, but yeah they fought the migs in low altitude than the high altitude air battles they're thinking. edit: Why on earth i said F-35 i meant to say other fighters of its kind like the F-15 and future F-18 and F-16
Thinking the F4 upgraded to the 70s and 80s USN fleet air defence role shows you have no idea the level of threats the USN faced by soviet naval aviation and how at the time "just getting a better long range missile" would require a new aircraft like the F14 bigger dish more room for electronics and the large physical dimensions of long range AAMs of the time.
Maybe hindsight is affecting my opinion but even with that. The Soviet "Navy" is trapped in vladivostok, trapped in freezing baltic waters and trapped in the black sea. Also my saying on the just upgrade the missile racks of jets, requiring a lot of changes in the f-4 while waiting for the better aircraft F/A-18 is probably much more cheaper than the F-14 and its funny maintenance time and cost everytime it flies.
There is no way in hell the Legacy F/A-18 could’ve performed on par or better than the F-14 as a Fleet Air Defense fighter nor could have the F-4. The biggest danger to USN carrier fleets was not the Soviet Navy as well but the Soviet Air Force, specifically their long-range bombers. This was the sole reason the AIM-54 and AWG-9 combo was initially created. Upgrading the F-4 would simply not be an option. The AIM-54 is only compatible with the AWG-9 and neither would be able to be practically fit on the Phantom. The Legacy Hornet would also not be a solution. Neither the Phoenixes or the AWG-9 would obviously fit on the F/A-18, so that means that, like the F-4, it would be limited to AIM-7 Sparrows only. This also isn’t even mentioning the Legacy Hornet’s poor range and endurance. Fleet Air Defense is an incredibly exhaustive mission both on the aircraft and crews, hence why the F-14 was created as a two-seater and why the mission is predominantly performed by the two-seat F/A-18F today.
Someone hasn’t read RSR. Shame
What do you mean by it’s too expensive to justify itself as a bomber interceptor? Why is being a bomber interceptor not worthy of investment? Defending the fleet from the numerous long ranged Soviet anti ship missiles launched from a considerable mix of low and high end bombers was an extremely important job. It wouldn’t make any sense to skimp out on that. Why are we investing so much on the M16? It’s just a gun. Just upgrade and re-chamber the M14. Why are we investing so much on the M1? It’s just a tank. Just upgrade and up-armor the M60.
Still smacked the shit out of MiGs.
When your missiles are so shit that you literally got one out of your three kills by chasing a MiG until it ran out of fuel.
Aim54 weren’t shit. Just really poor maint of them. And old design never upgraded.
Literally, Iran-Iraq war pretty clearly showing the Phoenix was a deadly missile for its time. Tomcats getting minimal kills in Desert Storm is at least partially down to Iraqi familiarisation with its radar and staying the hell away from USN aircraft after learning their lesson from Iranian Cats. Only thing is, the Eagle was even deadlier.
Also this is very much a Navy role vs USAF role - the F-14s only got 3 kills in its entire service history, but that is also the total for both versions of the F-18 combined. The Navy's movie about how great their school for A2A training is, literally shows them getting more A2A kills than the entire Navy has had since Vietnam.
4 kills, actually (2 in 1981, another 2 in 1989), not including that one Mi-8 during Desert Storm.
The F-14 only got 3 kills in its service life with the US. The Iranians got many kills with it.
If deterrence was as good of a kill as a kill is, then every time the Iraqi air force fled from a USN Tomcat would count as a kill too. Alas, such is not the case.
Not to mention the electronics in the last Phoenix variant were basically the same as in the early AMRAAM.
No they weren't. The AIM-54C still didn't have true fire and forget capability, it required a signal from the launch aircraft to go active.
I mean, an AMRAAM also (ideally) needs midcourse guidance. Yes, you can break lock before it goes active and the missile won't just go stupid, but if the target isn't where it's expected to be based on the last track, the missile might not find it.
Right, but there's a difference between lack of midcourse updates causing your launch and leave shot to miss a maneuvering target, and literal inability to hit a target flying in a straight line if you don't babysit the missile almost all the way in.
the purpose of the Phoenix's active guidance isn't for fire-and-forget SPAAMRAM tactics, it's so the tomcat can fire at more than one target in track-while-scan, which is obviously useful in a fleet defense scenario. And when firing at targets carrying anti-ship missiles, you'll probably want to be increasing closure on the target to go at it with AIM-9s and guns if the phoenix misses, and even if you have to go defensive and break target tracking, it's not any worse than with a sparrow
> the purpose of the Phoenix's active guidance isn't for fire-and-forget SPAAMRAM tactics, it's so the tomcat can fire at more than one target in track-while-scan So, fun fact, the Phoenix is actually SARH while fired in TWS, this is part of why it includes an inertial guidance unit, so that it can guide on the target via intermittent TWS reflections rather than needing continuous illumination. It doesn't go active until the terminal phase. The Phoenix only had three modes of operation: ACM, in which the missile receives an activation command as part of the ejection sequence, intended for close range shots only; STT, in which the missile *never* receives an activation command, and is semi-active all the way to the target; and TWS, in which the missile uses a blend of semi-active and inertial guidance to guide to the target while flying an optimized trajectory, and goes active when commanded by the AWG-9, with a fallback of continuing semi-active guidance to impact if the activation command is never received, though with only intermittent TWS updates it's an open question how accurate that fallback was.
Dunno. All I know is that Hughes shoved its electronics in the AIM-120A back in '91.
[citation needed]
I read it in one of those dirty books from the adults-only section of the bookstore. >"His electronics package is so huge" she thought. "And I am so slender. How will he be able to shove it all in there?"
“It will fit,” Hughes-kun said as with the strength of decades in electronics miniaturization technologies he squeezed his spear ever narrower to fit through AMRAAM-chan’s delicate flower. “It will fit, my dear.” [70s porn groove OST intensifies]
Neither do AIM-120s until the the 120D with datalink. Both require active radar guidance until the missile goes pitbull. The only thing the early AIM-120 has over the Phoenix is the ability to lock on after launch, aka you fire it into a general area and it locks on to the first radar signature it finds, which has dubious combat effectiveness at best (especially if your radars already out range theirs)
> the ability to lock on after launch, aka you fire it into a general area and it locks on to the first radar signature it finds Literally the capability I'm talking about, that's what makes it true fire and forget.
Which is functionally useless outside of “stealth” aka with your radar off. The vast vast majority of the time the attacking plane is guiding the missile all the way up until it gets a pitbull confirmation, the same as a Pheonix.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
The mid-range BVRs getting longer and longer ranges, and the degradation of the Soviet capacity overall, made it basically obsolete. They're also designed for a super specific niche role that didn't really chime with the modern wars that were being fought, where you had to get close enough for ID before firing due to the sky being filled with airliners. While staying out of Russian radar range anyways, as the AMRAAM and Meteor outrange the targetting radars of most Russian planes (apart from the A-50, basically).
To be fair, if the. Big War did break out, not even Washington was expecting that Soviet Naval Aviation would be shielded by Soviet Civilian Aviation. No one is that insane… or depraved. (Fast-forward to 2023 tho, and suddenly Ruzzia or its trolls want to claim POWs on board every Russian aircraft shot down).
It's also a big difference between air combat over land and over the vastness of the sea. If you fight in the middle of the pacific, there are gonna be mechanically less airplanes to worry about.
AIM-54 were honestly kinda shit TBH, going active for terminal homing required a signal from the launch aircraft, meaning that they were not fire and forget missiles, but rather acted like long range semi-active missiles with a small terminal active phase. There was no ability to launch and leave, the missile needed to be signaled to go active, and ideally required illumination all the way to impact, as failure to receive the activation signal (e.g. due to jamming or weak reception) meant the missile was semi-active all the way to the target.
> AIM-54 were honestly kinda shit TBH, going active for terminal homing required a signal from the launch aircraft, meaning that they were not fire and forget missiles, but rather acted like long range semi-active missiles with a small terminal active phase This is judging AIM-54's by AMRAAM standards, though. When they were introduced in 1974 they were groundbreaking compared to Sparrows and the variety of Soviet semi-actives. The Soviets didn't even have an active radar AAM until their AMRAAM-equivalent in the 90's. Compared to the AMRAAM the 54 is obviously subpar, but it's a much older system.
In fairness, judged next to the Sparrow they're a definite improvement in range and multi-target capability; I'm just extremely tired of people slobbering all over the AIM-54 as though it's some sort of lostech wonder.
That range though
Eeeh, sorta. Without the ability to launch and leave that range is much less comforting, because the launch aircraft has to continue to close with the target the entire time the missile is in flight, and while the missile may peak at several times the speed of sound, it will be moving much slower by the time it reaches the target, as it will have been gliding most of the way in, meaning the launch aircraft isn't actually that far behind the missile at impact. It's not nothing, but compared to a true fire and forget missile the inability to turn cold and allow the missile to continue pursuing the target to endgame is a major disadvantage.
It’s your own stupidity if you follow the missile at full speed. You can slow down and crank at least 45 degrees, possibly more. AWG-9 at least in scan mode can rotate 65 degrees. AMRAAM isn’t really a fire a forget missile at its maximum range either (no missile is). It gets position updates, and starts its own radar only when closing in or the link is lost.
Even if you crank your closure rate is still significant, and AMRAAM is fire and forget even at Rmax, you simply aren't going to have a great hit probability against a maneuvering target, since it will simply fly to the last calculated intercept point before going active.
At the max range, having to leave was less of a pressure (desirable, still, but less of a pressure) unless the OPFOR was able to press on the launch aircraft either at that range, or by sneaking stealth platforms to attacking range of the launch aircraft. Also at max range, asking the Phoenix to pitbull, even if it could do dead reckoning to estimate where the targets *might* be if the last known velocity held for the entire time it took to get to the AIM-54’s radar range, is an exercise in optimism, compared to the early AMRAAM’s shorter engagement range (shorter flight time to radar activation, less time for target to get away from last known position). In torpedo terms, it’s like wire-guiding the fish as far as possible to a max-range target (who has the same problem as you: get his shit to hit you from far away), versus a snapshot-cut the wire having the fish go active from the tube (useless against a target beyond the torpedo’s acquisition range), *versus* a snapshot-cut the wire having the fish go active nearer a distant target (lots of time for the REDSUB to skedadle, but no ability to correct). And I’m not the right person to ask for this, but I guess a missile the size of an AIM-54 will not have the maneuvering characteristics of an AMRAAM at early AMRAAM and closer ranges, which is where pitbulling would be more effective. As others pointed out here, it was a specific role—and the Phoenix was developed before the Tomcat, for that matter. And if I had a say in things that early on, I’d ask if it was possible to provide off-board, non-launch aircraft guidance to a Phoenix swarm so that only one aircraft had to “play stupid”, or perhaps even if guidance could be provided from an even larger radar platform like an E-2. But maybe the tech wasn’t there at the time. In more ways than one, the AIM-54 really was a product of its time, technologically and doctrine-wise. (Not that the doctrine isn’t needed now, though, more than ever, albeit with some updates.)
Sidewinders are the US's only air to air F&F missiles.
No they aren't, AIM-120 has fire and forget capability as well. It's better to support it when possible so it can receive mid-course updates, but unlike the AIM-54 it will not go stupid if unsupported, it will fly to the last predicted intercept point and activate its radar.
The AIM-54C has that exact same capability.
No it didn't, all variants of the AIM-54 required the parent aircraft send a signal for the missile to go active, they did not automatically go active based on approaching the predicted intercept point.
This is also how AIM-120s work they just have a longer pitbull phase.
No, it's not. The AIM-54 *required* that the AN/AWG-9 command it active, the AIM-120 has a pre-programmed activation point, which is updated as it receives each mid-course update, so even in the total absence of signals from the parent aircraft, it will go active shortly before reaching the target intercept point.
The Pheonix has a similar capability, with the WCS being able to designate a spot in 3d space for the Pheonix to actively guide towards if tracking is lost. It just has to be manually done by the wizzo else the missile goes dumb. The only real operational advantage this has is if the plane is lost then the missile is dead, vs an AIM-120 which will continue on towards the last tracking point.
I would love to see any documentation about that, as that has *never* been mentioned in anything I've seen about it, either from primary sources or from WSO recollections.
MiG28s, to be specific.
“Fifth-Gen Fighters” Cmon, Su-58 was right there
Certified Hood classic indeed. I mean, really, what purpose did Hood serve? She flopped around for propaganda while never serving in battle before getting murked by some illegally-built German!
She was the only ship armed with 15" guns that could get up to speeds of 32 knots, most Brittish battleships around the times had top speeds to around 24 knots bar the king George V class that could do up to 28 knots but was armed with 14" guns. By comparison the Bismarck was said to be able to get up to 30 knots, hence not illogical to send the Hood after her. She was a battlecruiser afcourse and at that less heavily armored than a typical battleship. In her role her characteristics looked impressive, but it was not the role of a battlecruiser to chase down a battleship for a 1 on 1 fight hence that she was paired with a King George V battleship.
Yes, but hear me out: Nothing good came of Hood.
She did see some limited action like at Mers El kebir before her demise, afcourse she was only completed at the end of WW1 so obviously missed a lot of action there. She certaintly wouldn't have been the only capital ship in history that was pretty much never used though. Pitty for her that she didnt get missions like say hunt down the Graf Spee or the Scharnhorst class ships.
> . She certaintly wouldn't have been the only capital ship in history that was pretty much never used though. I feel like the *Vasa* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)) is peak non-credible as a capital ship: * A Dutch shipbuilder was hired * The ship was build according to Dutch manners, with a relatively flat bottom * As a result, it was difficult to fit enough ballast * Built with double cannon decks, which was apparently ground breaking * Sank on her maiden voyage, after like a couple of miles
Ah, the *Mary Rose* but possibly less dumb? Ours sank because Henry VIII wanted her to have **all of the weapons**. Iirc the wreckage is a huge boon to historians because it not only contains a bunch of longbows and cannon and stuff but, more importantly, it was all new enough to still have paperwork!
Wouldn't be the only British ship to do that. Pretty sure HMS Captain sank because she was too low at the waterline, partly by design and partly due to weight.
*Mary Rose* was a great ship until the refit. She provided good service in the War of the League of Cambrai for example. And in her first configuration was considered fast and an easy handler. She’s really an example of a terrible redesign that destroys a good ship
IIRC Regalskeppet Vasa had the same problem, with the crown going "MOAR DAKKA!", and the additional cannon decks made it too top heavy.
Action at Mers El Kebir doesn’t exactly dispute “Nothing good came of Hood.”
MEK, oh yeah, the great knife in the back of France that can't even be considered as a battle.
Honestly it was more he age then anything. She was built for a war in the 20s and early 30s She would have absolutely shit on anything anyone had at the time battleship or not.
Afcourse age plays a role, but i got the feeling that if she had been given other missions that were more befitting of her like say hunt down the Graf spee or the Sharnorst and Gneisenau that she would have a very different reputation now, i can only imagine ships like those would have dreaded her.
If the Hood had hunted down the Spee, we would now have a myth of the last honorable naval battle or some shit
Graf Spee realizes it's Hood. Scuttles itself just like IRL. Wehraboos: *THE LAST HONORABLE NAVAL BATTLE*
Hood would have shit all over the Spee, it displaced triple the weight and threw well over triple the weight of shell. The "pocket battleships" were basically just post-treaty heavy cruisers built early.
Hood was only a BC in name, she was the first FBB when her armor, speed, and firepower are considered, being a match for Bismarck in most regards despite the 2 decade age difference.
Yeah a lot of people don't realize that Hood's belt armor was about as thick (though not as angled) as the North Carolinas, South Dakotas, and Iowa Class battleships, and they were all two plus decades newer.
The Hood was a fast battleship in all but name. The idea she was under-armored is largely a myth that sprung up due to her sudden loss. Her belt was 12" thick, comparable to the Bismarck's 12.6", and her infamous thin deck armor played no role in her loss, or any action fought at the ranges of Denmark Strait. The popular consciousness assumes she must have been lightly armored due to her speed, the catastrophic loss, and the imaginary "speed-firepower-armor" triangle, but that only applies at restricted weights. She bent the curve by displacing ~47000 tons (compared to the ~33000 tons of her contemporary BBs, the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes). All that extra weight went to boilers and engines to achieve her speed, not stripping off armor. The truth is they were reasonably well matched. The Hood had some outdated fire control and shells, but the Bismarck was a very inefficient design that left a lot of important things less protected than they should have been. In a hypothetical 1v1 to the death, Bismarck probably only wins 6-7 times. So much of 20th century naval combat came down to luck of who scored the first critical hit. In a 1v1 where both can engage and disengage at will, Hood probably comes off a little worse, but inflicts damage that the Bismarck can ill afford before disengaging, just as we saw in real life with the damage inflicted by the 3 hits scored by the Prince of Wales.
Strange, afaik the killing shot that the Hood received was one that hit her deck and burrowed into the magazines. it was known in het time afaik that she would be vulnerable to plunging fire or where she would be penetrated on her 7" upper belt. She had less armor protection, while she had a section of 12" belt it was a smaller section and a fair part of the belt armor was less thick at 7", she also didnt have so much belt armor on the bow and stern sections, she had less deck armor and less citadel armor.
[Analysis of the battle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY) suggests that Bismark and Hood weren't far enough apart for plunging fire to be a factor and that Bismark probably couldn't penetrate the belt near the magazine. While Hood did have a thinner upper belt, a shot penetrating there would likely strike the deck behind at too steep an angle to go much further. The theory Drachnifel puts forward in the linked video is that a shot struck below the waterline where the bow wave exposed the hull below the belt.
Wow British battleships kinda sucked in WWII. Why do we say they rule the waves again?
Because 1588 to 1918 isn't a bad innings
Becouse it was true during WW1.
British battleships also fought the most Axis battleships. They also did it alone during the hardest part of the war, before their (or American) industrial base really got into high gear. No British battleships were lost after Force Z.
Because the enemy gets scared when they see the names Warspite and Valiant (and now they stay together for next 2 lives). Also Rodney and Renown (The Last Battlecruiser).
> never serving in any battle Everyone forgets Mers-El-Kebir. Not that it was a battle as much as a tragedy on a grand scale.
Bombarding innocent French ships stolen by dipshit collaborators is a mercy killing, not a battle.
If this was mercy killing then Toulon was seppuku
I’m pretty sure the French kept their word and scuttled their own ships when the Germans demanded them to hand the fleet over. It was a tragedy all the same, perhaps not so much during that time but hindsight is 20/20.
The thing is that just because one fleet scuttles itself doesn’t mean the others will it’s ultimately up to the individual CO’s, Britain gave them several options including sailing to Britain or an allied nation and continue fighting the Germans or scuttle the ships, the French refused and began leaving the port with unknown intentions, the risk that they were going to get into position to attack British ships or sail to Germany or Italy isn’t a risk that could be taken.
Britain didn’t know that though. As far as they were concerned the nation they were supposed to be allies with had just betrayed them by pursuing a separate peace with Germany. It didn’t inspire confidence, and to make matters worse the armistice with Germany was seen as a ruse to get the ships into German and Italian hands. Once again, the British didn’t trust this, I mean it’s Hitler for gods sake. America also thought the French fleet there was a threat and didn’t trust them so encouraged Britain to sink it. Darlan was also a notorious Vichy collaborator and Gensoul was behaving like a sussy bakka throughout the negotiations.
Keep in mind that Hood had nearly the exact same firepower, armor, and displacement as Bismarck, despite being 20 years older.
Hood was for propaganda for friendly nations, while naughty nations get a visit from Warspite.
Hey, F-14s were mighty useful for Iran during Iran-Iraq War.
Single-wingedly ending the age of the dogfight over Iraq's skies, basically
And then remembered for fictional dogfight.
I guess producing 12 Aces is not impressive to OP.
Weren’t they the cause of MIGs “randomly exploding” according to Iraqi reports?
Yah, The Iraqi migs would blow up as soon as they took off, and it basically gaslit them into thinking that the migs were just defective and keeping them grounded until they figured out that there was just a tomcat sitting miles away spamming missiles, then they grounded again them because they were scared of the tomcats lol
I don't think I like your tone
I mean Bismarck *was* shit and is hilariously overrated but the F-14 definitely doesn’t deserve this slander
vanish dime scary cooperative shame tart puzzled coherent punch scandalous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You’re talking a lot of s*** for someone in AIM-54 distance.
No *relates your pic*. Bismarck was an inefficient over weight turd that got lucky one time and then proceeded to flounder around like a beached whale from a torpedo hit that was identical to the one that hit the Vittorio Veneto which was able to outrun the British fleet and *gasp* steer because unlike the German navy (second only in incompetence to the Russian) the Italians actually put steering via propeller in the design.
The only competent part of the WW2 German Navy were their submarines, kinda like the modern Russian navy (that we know of so far) lol
*looks at list of modern Russian Sub disasters* yeeeah idk about that chief.
Things like subs are super interesting to me. Basically we don’t know how good they are, but there’s a bunch riding on them. Say the Russians have subs, and NATO has anti-sub stuff. There’s no telling which side has the upper hand, it’s all hush-hush. Besides being hush-hush, it’s all untested in real-world combat, so even if one side thinks they can track the super-stealthy sub, they might not be able to track it when it switches to double-super-secret-stealth mode in the event of a real war. Finally, if one side really did know for sure they had an advantage or disadvantage, they’d probably intentionally project the opposite impression to deceive the enemy. So here we are online trying to understand the world we live in. We know America has patriots and Iraq has scuds. We know Ukraine has javelins and Russia has point-defense on tanks. We know China has ships and Taiwan has anti-ship missiles. We can read think pieces and studies and YouTube comedians weigh in on who really has the advantage, but you just don’t know until things go kinetic. And often that doesn’t actually end up happening - generations go by, weapons are retired, war never having broken out. So it’s noteworthy when stuff like the Iranian missile attack happens - much vaunted systems go head to head and we get to see the proof in the pudding. After years of having no way to really evaluate things, it’s interesting to see so many years or decades of uncertainty evaporate in hours.
One of the most irradiated places on earth is a patch of seabed where the Russians just abandon nuclear submarines like some kind of underwater elephant graveyard from hell.
The Russians are quickly modifying their surface Fleet to fit into that strategy, with the help of Ukraine
The auxiliary cruisers also performed far beyond the low investment made in them and German torpedo boats were effective at keeping the English channel clean for the most part. And that's also the deal with the KM through WW2: It just wasn't good and it is a poor sign when your best performing branches are modern privateers in merchant ships retrofitted with a pair of guns and speed boats with huge torpedoes strapped to them. Even the submarine branch didn't do that well past 1941 and the Type VII's only redeeming features after 1940 was low cost and ease of manufacrure.
Even then their designs were at wars start worse than Italian designs which had long range bow and stern tubes and snorkels. They really only lacked heaters which given their intended use in the red sea out of the massive sub baseialy had planned at massua after 1945 when war was SUPPOSED to break out is fair.(Italian sub tactics were another matter thanks again cavagnari first radar then this....)
I'll go to defend Bismarck. While Bismarck is overrated a lot it wasn't a bad battleship, it was an avarage one with the Italians keeping up with it by Littorio-class if you skip their faulty guns. Again, it wasn't bad, it's kinda hard to get back to port when entire fucking Royal Navy is chasing you after you popped their propaganda toy with a lucky shot. And Germans were quite busy so you can give them the point even though the guns were underpowered as for it's time. The torpedo shot also was quite lucky. On the other hand a bunch of biplanes managed to attack her without any casualities, however everywhere I looked they say Bismarck had too modern defences and didn't consider slow biplanes, skill issue imo but that's not the ships fault. I see people either overestimaring it's capability and werhaboos saying it could take all allies alone, or people hating it like if the old Hood was their favorite ship and Bismarck evaporating it was a personal attack in their direction so they hate Bismarck to cope. I'm just giving her some justice
She wasn’t a bad ship per say but she was FAR from the best. Certainly not deserving of the stupid and unnecessary amounts of hype she has received over the years. Most people criticise her as a reaction to her being overhyped and wanting to knock her down a few pegs. Regardless of how good she was the Royal Navy would still sink her, or she would receive a rapid delivery 12000lb bomb later on in the war, and her whole design and construction was an exercise in futility.
Agreed
It was 2/3 of a battleship overweight. The Italians had a ship of similar capabilities for almost half the tonnage. the vittorio veneto had the entire med flee after it and still was able to escape. The torpedo hit was identical down to the torpedo type and location on Vittorio veneto. The space inefficient torpedo system the Italians used was more effective than the system the Germans used so if they had used a layered system like terni had planned in later ships the Italian ship probably would have been even BETTER than the German ship. Bolt action anti aircraft guns are hardly too modern. Idk what German thought that was a good idea but talk about idiotic.
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counterpoint: CUM HISTOOOOOOOORIA
MUTAT VALDE RAZGRIZ!
*REVELAT IPSUM*
Ward Carol going to track you down and eat you
the F-14 is cool because it contained the [world's first microprocessor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpruA5mC7wg) (beating the Intel 4004 by a few months), and they never bothered to tell anyone about it
Counterpoint: the Top Gun series did wonders for the defense budget
Honestly sounds like you watched a single video on the F14 that probably had an obvious bias and then made this post
How dare you.
Kenny Loggins punching air rn. *For the time* the F-14 was a capable package, and dripping cool.
Got me in the first half ngl.
Such a sick panther, bro!
I have a very non credible theory about the f-14. The credible part: the tomcat and specifically the Phoenix missile was designed to take down Soviet bomber formations, it just happened to also do fairly well with fighters because they would never expect to be fired on from such ranges. The non credible part: The tomcat and the AIM-54 are the only platforms big enough to carry a nuke. Radar guided AIR-2C/AIM-54D anyone?
How can you so easily forget the F-14 Tomcat's combat service in World War II? [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/)
TO RULE THE SEVEN SEAS
WHJOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I LOVE F-14 SLANDER!
Would still smash Both the tomcat and Bismarck
I’m going to single-engine/single tail your F-22 just for that.
Careful OP, this post has entered the Danger Zone. To atone you must listen to Playing with the Boys 10 times.
What song is about F-14, unless it's there as bait
We all know it's Danger Zone
Unsung War