The USN air power in WWII was scary towards the end. You had so many escort fighters not only brushing off enemy air combat patrols but you can harass ship borne AA guns before the attack. Then Torpedoes box them in followed by accurate diving bombing. It was like Kamikaze without the suicide.

The captain of that single Japanese Destroyer that was hit by a B-17 (7:15) refused to take evasive maneuvers because he didn't believe level bombers could hit a ship. Statistically he was right too.

The one two punch of content from both channels is staggering!

It's no wonder why so many dive bombers missed. Holy shit. 280mph is about 410fps, which means if you release bombs at 2500 feet, you have six seconds until impact with the ocean.

Just finished part 2 on the Operations. These two channels are brilliant. Well done. Cheers from Tennessee

Finally, a Billy Mitchell we can look up to.

If you get embarrassed in a war game or a demonstration, you have a chance to embarrass the enemy when the real thing comes around. Good leaders embrace that sort of thing when it happens.

The aircrews also analyzed their attacks and changed their tactics. To sink the IJN Yamato, the torpedo bombers all attacked one side which caused her to capsize quickly unlike her sister ship which went down like a submarine bow first and took a lot of punishment.

I just want to say, I love how you release both Part 2 on the Operations and the Intel Report same time. Keep this strategy please.

Salute Col. Mitchell for having the foresight 20 years before the top brass in US Navy realised that air power is the backbone of naval power.

Thank you for a great overview of the US Naval experience in WW 2.

Starting to gain traction this channel and I'm most grateful for your work and efforts uploading. 👍

I'm kinda surprised that there was no mention of rockets. When reading The Fast Carriers, it was driven home how effective rocket attacks vs ships could be, and how much the pilots loved "Holy Moses".

Having realized converting the two Lexington BCs to CVs that resulted in the best naval treaty carrier conversion of all the conversions in the world, the brass in the Navy already started to think of how carrier aircraft should be an advantage in naval warfare going forward. In Fleet Problems exercise in the pre war proves that carriers could control and interdict enemy shipping in much wider area than what the battleships could do. Halsey and Fletcher were the first wartime carrier force commander, by that time Mitscher was still a CO of USS Hornet (CV-8) during trying times of early to mid 1942 these 3 commanders utilized their carrier force to strike back at the Japanese even with hit and run tactics (other than Coral Sea). This carrier mindset changed the whole ballgame for the USN by end of 1942 where they started to center their main striking force around the fleet carrier force, the Fast Carrier Task Force (TF58/38), using the Fast battleships as bodyguards of the new Essex class, instead of using them as the main striking force. The doctrine of USN changed in my opinion since the 1930s with the Navy realizing with having Lexingtons they could hammer the enemy far away from you, outside their naval gun range with an aircraft striking force, was the way forward, instead of risking your capital ships in a close quarters combat.

USS Yorktown used a very effective combined arms attack during the battle of Midway. They sent their Dauntlesses and Avengers, plus a small Wildcat fighter escort, to attack as a group. Once close to the Japanese fleet, they split up. The Dauntlesses went approached from the north at a high altitude, while the Avengers and Wildcats came in low from the east. Japanese Zero fighters attacked the Avenger group, expecting an easy victory. However, the American fighters used a new tactic known as the "Thatch Weave" to counter and shoot down the faster Zeros. This minimized American losses, allowing the Avengers to close in on the Japanese carriers. This in turn alarmed the rest of the Japanese combat air patrol, causing them all to descend on the Avengers and destroy most of them. No torpedoes scored a hit. But the torpedo+fighter group had done an excellent job of acting as a Zero magnet, leaving the rest of the Japanese fleet without cover. The Yorktown's Dauntlesses approached from the north, undetected and unopposed, and dove in on the carrier Soryu. Three bombs hit her, resulting in a series of secondary explosions in her hangars, full of fueled and armed bombers. The ship soon became an unsalvageable inferno. Yorktown's attack had brilliantly achieved its goal. Due to a long series of coincidences, the USS Enterprise's dive bomber squadrons, launched hours earlier, happened to reach the Japanese fleet from the south at the *exact same time* the Yorktown's attack was ongoing. They took advantage of the Japanese fighters's preoccupation with the Yorktown's Avengers and dove in on the Kaga and Akagi, hitting both and causing similar chain reactions in their hangars. In a matter of minutes, three Japanese fleet carriers had been set ablaze.

The fact that Colonel Mitchell was court martialed and forced out of the service but those who tried to hide the results and keep America weak against her enemies faced zero consequences is absolutely pathetic.

Thanks again. Always looking forward to these.

Thank you for such insightful report!

Now, the missile knows where it is and where it isn't.

Mitchell was a genius. He also helped develop the tactic, during WW1, where artillery, tanks, and massed bombers worked together to punch through the trench defenses. The Germans later refined this as the blitzkrieg.

Some of the best content on KZfaq. Thank you all for what you do.

Great video again. I m always waiting at Friday just to eager to watch new vlog from your channel

Thank you for this video! Now I can appreciate why my city named it's airport after Billy Mitchell. (General Mitchell International Airport)

upon returning from the war, the pilots did not use their expertise in pulling out

Thanks for this presentation. So so good

Can you do a video on Soviet ambush tactics deployed by MiGs during the Vietnam war? I think it would be fascinating for such an overlooked topic on how they managed to down so many US jets throughout the war

I'm not a fan of animated war videos, but you do a stupendous job. A very good mix of animation & pictures. 🫡 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

Love this content! No other channel like it

Love TOR and TIR; keep up the great work gentlemen! Best wishes from Texas

SB2C Helldiver, crews called it "Son of a B*tch 2nd Class".

Maybe it's outside the scope of this video but Billy Mitchel was full of at least as much hot air as good ideas. He adamently stated that air power would make navies obsolete as it would be impossible to opperate ships in range of hostile aircraft. Lots of the early air power advocates went much too far in their claims.

Thanks!

Good info.

Awesome!

Great video!

Nicely informative video

Super fascinating

My Uncle was a machine gunner on a Dauntless and was shot down in the battle of the Philippines Sea. The pilot was killed and Irv was picked up by a Japanese destroyer and spent the rest of the war as a POW on the Philippines islands. He was liberated at the end of the war when he was 20 years old. I am happy to say he lived into his late 80’s. Go Navy!

There were 3 Avengers at Midway that were the first ones to the Pacific and made it to Pearl before the battle but after the carriers left so they flew to Midway and were a part of the attack on the Japanese from the island. The men were part of the same Torpedo 8 Squadron that was completely wiped out (sans Ensign George Gay) from the Hornet. 2 of the 3 were shot down. The third was shot up so badly it barely made it back to midway to land with one wheel and one dead, two crewman alive but wounded. It was shipped back to the US to be studied and is in the Naval Air museum at Pensacola today. The pilot Ensign Albert Ernest said that the only reason he thinks the plane survived was because it turned out that it was the first Avenger off the line with 001 serial code and he thinks it was made perfectly.

4:47-4:50 "A straight vertical dive of 90 degrees was discouraged." *shows plane model smashing into ship* Don't know why but that one had me dying over here lol

had an issue with being unable to load anything between 5:00 and 6:00, probably not on your end but figured youd want to be aware. good as always man

A quick salute to those early Brit aviators and the Royal Navy bureaucrats who had enough sense to trust the judgement of their warriors. I could go on about the injustice Col. Mitchell endured or the incompetence surrounding the early MK13 torpedo but, fortunately, that's well documented elsewhere.

Y'all should really put the link to the other channel in the description, great work!

A shame that the torpedoes used early in the war were such total dogshit. They nearly never went off correctly due to a series of fuckups during their design process

Mitchells test was not only against stationary targets. Those targets weren't under power (pumps) or crewed. So they eventually sank due to inaction as even minor leaks remained unattended.

7:15 The B-17s were obviously not *entirely* withdrawn from service in the Pacific, although they were largely replaced in the bombing role by B-24's, and then B-29's.

Those dive bomber pilots, and particularly the torpedo bomber pilots, were gutsy AF.

Thank you - this is the type of history retelling that i enjoy - Factual, without bias or exaggeration.

Thank you, another great video. 🙏🙏The Royal Navy did use dive bombers & torpedo planes.

This video really shortchanges the massive contribution that the B17 made to the war in the Pacific.

I’m just imagining Billy Mitchell looking down from heaven on US WW2 aviation with just the smuggest look imaginable on his face.

Funny how bureaucracy got mitchell despite his innovation

Impressed that those airframes could take 9g.

Poor misunderstood Mitchell, died of a broken heart I think

I find it odd you didn't mention Roy Geiger at all in the dive bombing segment. It was his tactics that he developed in Central America that would form USMC's dive bombing tactics going into World War 2. Fun fact, Geiger would command the Marine part of the landings on Okinawa, Where, after the loss of General Buckner, would be the only Marnie to command a field army.

10:13 not 1,000 feet The TBD Avenger released it's Mark 13 torpedo at 1,000 yards. 100 to 150 feet altitude is correct though. 1,000 feet (333 yards) is much too close to pull away and be clear of AA fire

A PBY Catalina launched a successful torpedo attack against the Akebono Maru. It was the only successful torpedo attack by an American aircraft during the Battle of Midway.

A suggestion to future episodes; if possible can you include the speeds and numbers to metric as well, as not everyone want to do conversions when just listening!

I would definitely describe being strafed by a fighter plane as distracting

HOW¡¡¡¡ HOW he did know that this was the biggest question I had after seeing the previous video???, For an uncoordinated attack it was incredibly deadly and worked very well, I bet that for the japanese looked very coordinated. Absolutelly top quality content.

The US also pioneered "skip bombing" attacks against ships using the B-25, etc. Very effective. 👁️ Book, "Whip", by Martin Caiden also, "Battle of the Bismarck Sea".

That dude at 3:04 to the left of MItchell creeps the hell out of me.

2:46 left bottom side of the screen the guy smiling kind of looks like cilian murphy lol

Love the video. I just wish you'd include the different parameters for launching late war torpedoes. The speed and altitude difference was massive. Per the Wikipedia article (for what it's worth) - "To speed the availability of the modified torpedo the Bureau built tail assemblies with the shroud ring attached, then sent them to the fleet as substitutes for the equipment on hand. By the fall of 1944 the revamped weapon had a wide distribution. As a result of the new improvements, torpedo drops at altitudes up to 800 feet (240 m) and at speeds up to 300 knots (560 km/h) were authorized. Experience soon indicated that these limits could be extended even further. On one occasion in early 1945, 6 Mark 13 torpedoes were released from altitudes between 5,000 and 7,000 feet (1,500 and 2,100 m); 5 out of the 6 were observed to run hot, straight, and normal. Combat use increased rapidly and the new effectiveness seemed out of all proportion to the changes made. On one air strike on April 7, 1945, Mark 13's sent to the bottom the 45,000 ton (sic) battleship Yamato, a light cruiser, and several destroyers. "

Hey Intel report. Big fan of your videos but could you maybe also provide metric measurements in the future?

Mitchell: Why are you booing me, I'm right

what's the music being used in their videos? can some someone please tell me?

Awesome as always. Something I would be interested to understand on this channel based on what was said in the corresponding Operation's vid to this - how on earth did the Americans get 200+ aircraft airborne from several (6?) aircraft carriers in 10 minutes???

What Happened to Sir Mitchell, is he reinstated?

Poor Mitchell, damn.

Dive bombers had to be fearless. Regardless of country, once you pulled out of that dive, you had lsot all energy, and you were a sitting duck for AA and, god forbid, fighters wanting easy aces.

10:16 Pardon me, but is this supposed to yards instead of feet? Because the math just doesn't add up when you calculate the distance travelled using 40 seconds as time and 45 knots as speed. Or perhaps I am just terrible at math lol. Also loved the video, very insightful!

👍

Playlists. Make them.

Anyone wishing to learn about dive bombing should read Wildenberg’s “Destined for Glory.”

It was in this moment that "Brittania rule the waves" was truly made a historical tune, rather than a declaration of fact.

I thought the usn started the war with the devastator torpedo bomber, have I got that wrong? Also the swordfish seems to have been so successful because it was so flimsy the flak wasn't able to produce catastrophic damage.....

what was the German Stuka Tactics and Doctrine then? 1939-1944? In the south West pacific Campaign area Australian RAAF used skip bombing from their Beaufighters and were highly successful . They probably brought this from the Western Desert /Mediterranean War earlier than 1942 . Can do a story on these 2 ?

at 2:31 I almost spat out my milk

...and the B-25 bomber was eventually named after Mitchell.

I believe a more current phrase to describe dive bomber and torpedo bomber crews is “having sufficient testicular fortitude”.

This feels kinda incomplete to be honest. No mention of late war torpedo could be dropped at faster and higher altitudes or that dive bombing gradually lost favor after gaining more favor from both IJN and USN in 1942.

could you guys add metric measurements to the vids? as someone not from the US it would be appreciated :)

"Intense Resistance?" NO! Mitchel was Driven Out and "COURT MARTIALED!" for his dedication to the Truth!

>Billy Mitchell A cursed name

After 1min 9 sec the video just goes to hour glass buffering. Just came from watching the main channel where I had no buffering at all. I've tried skipping forward still won't load, very odd. Almost like youtube doesn't want me to watch it.

Excluding the Battle of Midway i want to say the overwhelming tonnage of Japanese shipping was sunk by the US Navy *"Submarine Fleet"* (Admiral Nimitz was a famous Submarine Commander before becoming Admiral Nimitz) and then after the B-17 was withdrawn from US Army Air Force service the ironically named B-25 "Mitchell" (so named presumably for Court Martialed General Billy Mitchell i imagine) Medium Bomber using a "skip bombing" technique. Still the skill of *"dive bombing"* as a pilot became invaluable to the US military effort against wartime Japan especially in these latter on or about Years 1944-1945 as the Chance-Vought F4U Fighter added a secondary but far more important role as Close Air Support for both the US Marine Corps and US Army Island Hopping both. Don't know of any ships sunk by the F-4U "Corsair" but a quick Google search would answer that no doubt. Did that search had no idea how important Charles Lindbergh became to the War effort for Air Power upon the entire Pacific Theater thanks to Henry Ford (as usual) who had no issue with standing up to ridiculous threats made by the FDR Crazies...anyhow the Battle of the Phillipines under Douglas Macarthur saw a massive use of both Army and Marine Corps land based Air Power for both interdiction and close air support role. The dive bomber mentioned here also played a role as the effective fighting distances were so close and Japanese anti-air defenses deminimus/being overrun by both Phillipino and US Army massed infantry and mechanized and some armor as well which freed up the US Navy to launch truly massive Naval Operations upon both the Central Pacific then later in the direction of Southern Japan. Both range and speed of the F4U dramatically increased because of #Lindbergh effectively marking the end for all other piston driven aircraft excepting the B-29 #Superfortress for combat roles on or about 1945.

I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian here. Considering the number of U.S. aircraft involved in the attack of the Japanese fleet and their "training", I think the result was relatively poor. 26 dive bombers attacked a damaged Japanese carrier which had been hit by two torpedo and they only scored 2 hits with 1000 pound bombs. Dive bombers were actually very effective at hitting targets compared to other types of bomber/torpedo aircraft so that's a very poor showing. All those aircraft and they sunk one carrier and two oilers, damaging 2 other carriers and a battleship, again I think that's a pretty poor showing. Remember unlike previous battles the U.S. had air superiority, so the attackers were not under pressure by enemy fighters while they made their attacks. The only excuses, and they are very valid excuses, for the poor performance of the attack is that the US aviators were concerned with by the time of the attack and the possibility of running out of fuel before being able to land. In hindsight I think the US attack was ill conceived and should not have been launched. The performance of the Japanese naval air units was so poor in this battle it should have been obvious that Japanese carriers were no longer anywhere as effective as they once had been, and therefore no longer a major threat. In fact the Japanese themselves knew how ineffective their carrier air arm would be in the next battle they fought, using their carriers as decoys to draw away major units of the US fleet so their surface units could attack the US invasion fleet off the Philippines, and it worked.

My great aunt was engaged to a torpedo bomber pilot during ww2. He was shot down and killed. My grandpa was the one who picked up the phone when the news came. A couple years later, she met a C-47 pilot and married him.

I think there's a lot of quirky, funny history going on here. Billy Mitchel did that demonstration in the 1920s to embarrass traditional naval power and to show the supremacy of air power. However, the US Navy years later started cramming in airplanes on warships on some new fangled thing called, "The Aircraft Carrier." Lastly with the dive bombing tactics, the US Army Air Corps by WWII, was not into dive bombing anymore. It was the Department of the Navy: The US Navy and Marine Corps that had dedicated dive bombing squadrons, tactics, aircraft for such attacks. The Department of the Navy would stick with it through the entirety of the US at war in WWII.

1. Entja Istpa 2. Top seven rules in every nation and top three rules for life………….3. Buffers safeguards and precision….

Wait... the first dive bomb was the day I was born!

I don't think it's fair to say the tests Mitchell's dive bombers performed were a "major success". They did prove that aircraft could sink ships but it took them several hours and their targets were stationary and, as they had no crew aboard, could not make an efforts to defend themselves either through anti-aircraft fire or damage control. Additionally all ships tested were designed and built before the first combat use of aircraft and therefore had not been built with any consideration towards air power. While Aircraft were very important from the start due to their scouting abilities. It's very hard to argue that they were a major threat to warships until the late 1930's when their payload and speed increased such that they could do meaningful damage and could not be countered simply by the use of a few machine guns.

Billy Mitchell let all them old heads know what the future would be 😎

Billy Mitchell haha

Mitchell the genius

Skip bombing was used too more often than gets mentioned, even with Avengers.

Dive bomber pilot.......how did they stay in the air with balls so big?

It's a pitcy MItchell wasn't around to see his ideas so well implemented. I wonder why the carrier groups didn't include a few ships that had no other purpose than to be bristling with anti aircraft guns with a cargo hold of millions and millions of rounds. Having 'some' guns on battleships and carriers did a lot of damage to attacking planes. Surely a carrier size ship with 100x the amount of guns could have output so much anti aircraft fire that nothing would have a chance of getting through. Just four of these such ships on the perimeter of the fleet could have created a near permanent wall of lead to prevent planes getting close then move to the centre or rear when there is ship to ship action.

If the B-17 had an MCLOS guided bomb (something similar to the Fritz X), it could have made the B-17 a viable naval bomber.