During the Fleet Problems, Admiral Richardson twice found himself in night actions. At the time, he suggested training for this. When he become CINCUS, he did not act on his own suggestion.
Sounds about right for high command, if there's anything they hate more then suggestions for change it's sensible action. I remember reading about some piece of equipment the US military was developing, they asked for a specific function, likely paid extra for, and then told their men not to use because they were worried an extra superfluous function added on at the last minute may not be reliable so they didnt want the men using it so they told their soldiers to ignore the added function.
I knew quite a bit about US naval radar and how it works, but I knew almost nothing about the fire control radar on German ships like Bismarck and Scharnhorst - I cannot find any information at all regarding their capabilities and how they function. It will be great if you can do a topic in that, cheers!
In terms of gunnery, it appears that the U.S. Navy was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the evelving fire control radars. The U.S. Navy had, through the 1930s, made enormous strides in automating and integrating the entire fire control chain from director/rangefinder to gun, with directors/rangefinders (and later, radars) feeding range and bearing information to a central fire control computer (which knew its orientation and ships motion from the Stable Vertical and Gyrocompass gyroscopes), and the gun orders from the computer automatically transmitted to the guns, in most cases, controlling aiming and pointing (azimuth and elevation) via remote power control of the turrets/mounts, with the computers feeting its predictions back to the directors to allow its tracking to be corrected. Inserting a radar into this system was relatively easy. Other Navys didn't have this level of integration, with the fire control information being passed from system to system via voice or manual telegraph, and gun orders being transmitted as "match pointers" - a remote dial indicator with a manual followup by the gun crew. From what I've been able to find out, of all the combatants, the Japanese came closest to the USN in terms of the sophistication of the individual components, but fell short on the integration and communication, with the data transmission being pretty much manual.
My dad was in the Navy before WWII started and he remembered seeing people installing a antenna on a ship. He asked the technician what they were doing and the technician said it was top secret but that nobody would ever sneak up on the U.S. Navy ever again. This was a couple of months before Pearl Harbor.
Irony of course was the radar station at Pearl Harbour tracked the enemy aircraft in but a total breakdown in communications and chain of command meant the information wasnt acted on.
I didn't know the US had radar on their ships during Guadalcanal. I've always been amazed at the IJN's night fighting ability and the Savo Island battle exemplifies that.
Kind of a running theme with the early Axis vs Allies fights is the Axis relied heavily on well trained, disciplined men employing innovative tactics while the Allies relied more on technology and their inexhaustible manufacturing potential. It went well for the Axis at first but once they exhausted their army of crack pilots/soldiers their performance plummeted _fast_ while the Allies only improved their tech more and more, and one of the benefits of great tech is it help increase your soldiers survivability.
i am currently writing a journal article on Guadalcanal and its importance in the pacific war and this podcast was very useful and interesting with it touching on parts of what me and my fellow writer are looking at
To me it boils down to this, if you have SG and well trained crews versed in the fire control system then once you locate the enemy and lock on you can win your fight.
Great stuff! How about a video about the use of Proximity Fuses during the Battle of the Bulge. The only time they were allowed to be used against the Germans - with devastating effect. 🤔💀
I've seen sea conditions and rain make radar completely useless , admittedly a commercial set on a trawler . But I'm assuming it's still ok by ww2 standards
The question is what is the radar on a trawler used for? (earnest question, i have been tought about radar for aircraft detection but not for naval use). If you got a primary radar just for detecting weather and ground, you most certainly have problems with rain. The use dictates the wavelenght, and the wavelength dictates the size of objects you detect. (in principle the higher the frequency the smaller the object you can detect and the smaller the object that can make problems. If you only plan to use it for moving targets (in aviation that is called ground clutter suppresion) than rain should not affect your radar. I am not sure how much of that they had back then, or if you want to use it in on a ship (not being able to detect a floating ship that only moves with the ocean?) but from what i found they used a sort of tube computer for processing already in 42. So it seems possible that they could do that.
Your trawler radar probably works at high frequency, say, 10Ghz. The type 284 artillery radar, used extensively by the Royal Navy notably by Duke of York in the Barents sea, worked at 600Mhz. The much lower frequency gives a big advantage in penetrating rain.
And the coolest thing to me are the "passive primary radars" Where they are able to get a picture without sending out any signal of their own. Just by using anything that's already out there in the electromagnetic spectrum. (Radio, TV ect. reflections are received and added up and processed.) It's like having everybody else screaming and just listening at the echos... (From a technical standpoint i find them more interesting than phased array antennas where the beam is moved without the antenna moving)
@@nirfz Hunh ... I was aware of the first radar demonstration using a 3rd party source of emissions but not that this had been further developed into systems of it's own. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar Thanks. .
@@BobSmith-dk8nw 2 or 3 years back i have seen one from Hensoldt being tested. (for location, not for if it works in general) I wasn't involved in the testing, sadly i wasn't able to see more than the processed picture at the end. (but it looked fine) www.hensoldt.net/products/radar-iff-and-datalink/twinvis-passive-radar-for-atc/ The biggest issue for them was that the "local" transmission station for TV and radio was on a mountain in visual range with a pretty big signal, so they had to supress in that direction. (but those few degrees weren't that big of a deal for the whole picture as the main approach routes weren't in that direction) Sadly the deciding guys in our ANSP weren't interested...
It is impressive how the Japanese manage to inflict troubles in night fighting to the Americans even without the support of radar. They relied heavily on their aircrafts to support a fast fleet of cruisers and destroyers to launch their torpedos and quickly get away. I wonder if the battle Kirishima was sunk, had the Japanese their aircraft in the air, if it would be easy for Washington to get the close to hit Kirishima. Both American battleships were pretty much alone there, and alone against a fleet of very capable cruisers and destroyers. But the Japanese lacked the awareness to actually change the corse of the battle.. They lacked the organization to properly use the tactics they developed for so many years, had things being different, I think they could certainly match the Radar capabilities the allies were using back then, at least during the fight in the Solomons. Had to write this two times since RUclips ate my earlier comment. At least I wrote the second version with better English. 😁👍
While the aircraft were a factor, Japanese optics were incredibly good - their lookout's night binoculars and their directors/rangefinders had, for the time, incredible light-gathering specs, almost at the limit of what could be done by optics alone - to get better takes things like the photomultiplier tubes used in Low Light Television systems.
@@issacfoster1113 it wasn't just Kirishima there, you know. Kirishima had support. In any case, those Japanese pagoda things had many observation rooms for all sides of the ship. Someone could have spotted Washington. Perhaps their optics were not that great, but we have to consider all the smoke from the fight and things like that. But still though, it was a fleet with expertise in night combat missing an entire battleship there.
@@TheStugbit I think that japanese that time were too focused on South Dakota that the awareness is gone like "target fixation" that help Washington sneak up undetected.
Could you make a video about the waffen ss being effective or being not effective ? I mean you only find (at least in german) "dokus" about SS war crimes but not about the military perspective.
What is a "range band"? Its an undefined phrase, but its limitation is cited as a problem for tracking a ship while tracking shell splashes. This is really unclear
Thanks. That was really interesting. I was aware that the SG radars were better than the SC radars but not that one of the reasons was that the SG radar came with a PPI. I never used the oscilloscope version but I've seen it in movies like The Battle of Britain and - yes - to the untrained eye it's vastly more difficult to determine what's going on. I found this presentation: ruclips.net/video/UvddsMPeqyc/видео.html Likewise I was aware of the differences between search radars and fire control radars - but not the nuances of the early war fire control radars or that they were developed by different departments in the Navy than the search radars. Lastly, one of the problems with the American Navy (which I know something about as opposed to other navies) - is that there - the Enlisted men operate the equipment and the Officers manage the Enlisted men. Thus - the Enlisted men know how the equipment works - what it can do and what it can't - and the Officers don't. Thus - when a new technology such as radar becomes available - while the Enlisted Men trained to use it know what they are doing - the Officers making decisions about what the ship is going to do - take an extra amount of time to learn how to use it. It's like there's two layers. One is the technical capabilities of the equipment and the other is how to integrate that equipment tactically into what they were doing. Because of not only the hierarchal divide between Officers and Enlisted (Officers do not like Enlisted telling them what to do) you also have organizational communications problems. Just because the radar operator can see the enemy ships, knows where they are and what they are doing - does not in the least translate to the Captain knowing what the radar operator knows. Captains still fought their ships from the bridge - as there was no Combat Information Center. At Pearl Harbor and The Solomon's, while the operators knew how to use radar - the Officers were still learning how to employ it. In addition to that - there was no electronic method of sharing information - so that just because one ship (one with an SG radar) could see something - that didn't mean that the Task Force Commander had any idea about that information. Because they were still participating in the learning curve Task Force Commanders would base their choice of a Flagship on such things as office space for their staff - rather than the quality of the ships radar. For the Japanese - before the war - they were frightened by the western navies. It was NOT that they were afraid of dying - it was that they were afraid of failure. While they had built themselves a fairly good navy - they knew - that they could not replace their losses. This fear of failure had caused them to put some very serious training into effect before the war. Their exercises were dangerous and they lost ships in them - but - they got to where they were really good at the things they were technically capable of doing. They didn't have radar but their night vision was very good and they had their doctrine down pat. The biggest problem the Japanese had - which you saw at both Pearl Harbor and Savo - was that they were afraid of losing ships - that they could not replace. The great thing about Halsey - was that he threw his ships at the Japanese without hesitation. He lost ships - but - we could replace them. This ... mentality ... came back to bite him in the ass at Cape Engano - but - in the Solomon's - was just what was needed. .
A most useful perspective for understanding the oddities of several major naval encounters.
Thank you, for posting this, the description of the limitations of the radar systems on US warships and how the crews had to process the information.
During the Fleet Problems, Admiral Richardson twice found himself in night actions. At the time, he suggested training for this. When he become CINCUS, he did not act on his own suggestion.
Sounds about right for high command, if there's anything they hate more then suggestions for change it's sensible action. I remember reading about some piece of equipment the US military was developing, they asked for a specific function, likely paid extra for, and then told their men not to use because they were worried an extra superfluous function added on at the last minute may not be reliable so they didnt want the men using it so they told their soldiers to ignore the added function.
I knew quite a bit about US naval radar and how it works, but I knew almost nothing about the fire control radar on German ships like Bismarck and Scharnhorst - I cannot find any information at all regarding their capabilities and how they function.
It will be great if you can do a topic in that, cheers!
Look for "Seetakt' radar.
In terms of gunnery, it appears that the U.S. Navy was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the evelving fire control radars. The U.S. Navy had, through the 1930s, made enormous strides in automating and integrating the entire fire control chain from director/rangefinder to gun, with directors/rangefinders (and later, radars) feeding range and bearing information to a central fire control computer (which knew its orientation and ships motion from the Stable Vertical and Gyrocompass gyroscopes), and the gun orders from the computer automatically transmitted to the guns, in most cases, controlling aiming and pointing (azimuth and elevation) via remote power control of the turrets/mounts, with the computers feeting its predictions back to the directors to allow its tracking to be corrected. Inserting a radar into this system was relatively easy. Other Navys didn't have this level of integration, with the fire control information being passed from system to system via voice or manual telegraph, and gun orders being transmitted as "match pointers" - a remote dial indicator with a manual followup by the gun crew.
From what I've been able to find out, of all the combatants, the Japanese came closest to the USN in terms of the sophistication of the individual components, but fell short on the integration and communication, with the data transmission being pretty much manual.
My dad was in the Navy before WWII started and he remembered seeing people installing a antenna on a ship. He asked the technician what they were doing and the technician said it was top secret but that nobody would ever sneak up on the U.S. Navy ever again. This was a couple of months before Pearl Harbor.
Irony of course was the radar station at Pearl Harbour tracked the enemy aircraft in but a total breakdown in communications and chain of command meant the information wasnt acted on.
I didn't know the US had radar on their ships during Guadalcanal. I've always been amazed at the IJN's night fighting ability and the Savo Island battle exemplifies that.
Kind of a running theme with the early Axis vs Allies fights is the Axis relied heavily on well trained, disciplined men employing innovative tactics while the Allies relied more on technology and their inexhaustible manufacturing potential. It went well for the Axis at first but once they exhausted their army of crack pilots/soldiers their performance plummeted _fast_ while the Allies only improved their tech more and more, and one of the benefits of great tech is it help increase your soldiers survivability.
i am currently writing a journal article on Guadalcanal and its importance in the pacific war and this podcast was very useful and interesting with it touching on parts of what me and my fellow writer are looking at
To me it boils down to this, if you have SG and well trained crews versed in the fire control system then once you locate the enemy and lock on you can win your fight.
Thanks for sharing and Merry Christmas!
Thank you guys for this, I can barely wait for the whole thing!
I was hoping for information on Surigao Straight since that engagement was supposed to have gone very well due to radar.
I think it is in the full video, scheduled for next week, it is about one hour.
will add it to early access today
done, it actually takes more than 80 minutes :)
A really well presented explanation of how the radar was techinically applied in night actions.
Ten minutes and only 219 views! Underappreciated channel.
I didn't know that about the shell splashes. Cool info. Thanks.
Water is a good radar reflector
@@benwilson6145 Yeah, I knew that, and I knew that shells made splashes. I just never put 2 and 2 together, or ever heard 4.
Looking forward to seeing it. That sound very interesting
Thanks for the memories of my Class A School.
Great stuff! How about a video about the use of Proximity Fuses during the Battle of the Bulge. The only time they were allowed to be used against the Germans - with devastating effect. 🤔💀
I've seen sea conditions and rain make radar completely useless , admittedly a commercial set on a trawler . But I'm assuming it's still ok by ww2 standards
The question is what is the radar on a trawler used for? (earnest question, i have been tought about radar for aircraft detection but not for naval use). If you got a primary radar just for detecting weather and ground, you most certainly have problems with rain. The use dictates the wavelenght, and the wavelength dictates the size of objects you detect. (in principle the higher the frequency the smaller the object you can detect and the smaller the object that can make problems. If you only plan to use it for moving targets (in aviation that is called ground clutter suppresion) than rain should not affect your radar. I am not sure how much of that they had back then, or if you want to use it in on a ship (not being able to detect a floating ship that only moves with the ocean?) but from what i found they used a sort of tube computer for processing already in 42. So it seems possible that they could do that.
Your trawler radar probably works at high frequency, say, 10Ghz. The type 284 artillery radar, used extensively by the Royal Navy notably by Duke of York in the Barents sea, worked at 600Mhz. The much lower frequency gives a big advantage in penetrating rain.
MHV -- Was there any discussion of the limitations of US radar/fighter direction at Okinawa in the longer version?
can't remember edited it back in August/September, but it will be released next week and it has timestamp/chapters.
Hi Trent,
Unfortunately not as the focus of the podcast is on night fighting specifically rather than fleet defence.
Love seeing more naval stuff!
Radar would not really come into it's own until the CIC was developed.
RadarS are pretty cool to think about. It’s like echolocation.
that's what it was based on, the device "screams" and locates based on how that "scream" went.
Yes - using Microwaves instead of Sound Waves.
.
And the coolest thing to me are the "passive primary radars" Where they are able to get a picture without sending out any signal of their own. Just by using anything that's already out there in the electromagnetic spectrum. (Radio, TV ect. reflections are received and added up and processed.) It's like having everybody else screaming and just listening at the echos... (From a technical standpoint i find them more interesting than phased array antennas where the beam is moved without the antenna moving)
@@nirfz Hunh ... I was aware of the first radar demonstration using a 3rd party source of emissions but not that this had been further developed into systems of it's own.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar
Thanks.
.
@@BobSmith-dk8nw 2 or 3 years back i have seen one from Hensoldt being tested. (for location, not for if it works in general) I wasn't involved in the testing, sadly i wasn't able to see more than the processed picture at the end. (but it looked fine) www.hensoldt.net/products/radar-iff-and-datalink/twinvis-passive-radar-for-atc/
The biggest issue for them was that the "local" transmission station for TV and radio was on a mountain in visual range with a pretty big signal, so they had to supress in that direction. (but those few degrees weren't that big of a deal for the whole picture as the main approach routes weren't in that direction)
Sadly the deciding guys in our ANSP weren't interested...
“...which were developed by the Navy Dept of Ordinance” oh that’s never gonna end well.
World War II Night Fighting? Is the full video going to just be navy stuff or will the M3 Carbine get a mention?
It is impressive how the Japanese manage to inflict troubles in night fighting to the Americans even without the support of radar.
They relied heavily on their aircrafts to support a fast fleet of cruisers and destroyers to launch their torpedos and quickly get away.
I wonder if the battle Kirishima was sunk, had the Japanese their aircraft in the air, if it would be easy for Washington to get the close to hit Kirishima. Both American battleships were pretty much alone there, and alone against a fleet of very capable cruisers and destroyers. But the Japanese lacked the awareness to actually change the corse of the battle..
They lacked the organization to properly use the tactics they developed for so many years, had things being different, I think they could certainly match the Radar capabilities the allies were using back then, at least during the fight in the Solomons.
Had to write this two times since RUclips ate my earlier comment. At least I wrote the second version with better English. 😁👍
While the aircraft were a factor, Japanese optics were incredibly good - their lookout's night binoculars and their directors/rangefinders had, for the time, incredible light-gathering specs, almost at the limit of what could be done by optics alone - to get better takes things like the photomultiplier tubes used in Low Light Television systems.
@@peterstickney7608 how could they have missed Washington the way they did, though.
@@TheStugbit South Dakota
@@issacfoster1113 it wasn't just Kirishima there, you know. Kirishima had support. In any case, those Japanese pagoda things had many observation rooms for all sides of the ship. Someone could have spotted Washington. Perhaps their optics were not that great, but we have to consider all the smoke from the fight and things like that. But still though, it was a fleet with expertise in night combat missing an entire battleship there.
@@TheStugbit I think that japanese that time were too focused on South Dakota that the awareness is gone like "target fixation" that help Washington sneak up undetected.
Could you make a video about the waffen ss being effective or being not effective ? I mean you only find (at least in german) "dokus" about SS war crimes but not about the military perspective.
What is a "range band"? Its an undefined phrase, but its limitation is cited as a problem for tracking a ship while tracking shell splashes. This is really unclear
Thanks. That was really interesting. I was aware that the SG radars were better than the SC radars but not that one of the reasons was that the SG radar came with a PPI. I never used the oscilloscope version but I've seen it in movies like The Battle of Britain and - yes - to the untrained eye it's vastly more difficult to determine what's going on. I found this presentation:
ruclips.net/video/UvddsMPeqyc/видео.html
Likewise I was aware of the differences between search radars and fire control radars - but not the nuances of the early war fire control radars or that they were developed by different departments in the Navy than the search radars.
Lastly, one of the problems with the American Navy (which I know something about as opposed to other navies) - is that there - the Enlisted men operate the equipment and the Officers manage the Enlisted men. Thus - the Enlisted men know how the equipment works - what it can do and what it can't - and the Officers don't. Thus - when a new technology such as radar becomes available - while the Enlisted Men trained to use it know what they are doing - the Officers making decisions about what the ship is going to do - take an extra amount of time to learn how to use it. It's like there's two layers. One is the technical capabilities of the equipment and the other is how to integrate that equipment tactically into what they were doing.
Because of not only the hierarchal divide between Officers and Enlisted (Officers do not like Enlisted telling them what to do) you also have organizational communications problems. Just because the radar operator can see the enemy ships, knows where they are and what they are doing - does not in the least translate to the Captain knowing what the radar operator knows. Captains still fought their ships from the bridge - as there was no Combat Information Center. At Pearl Harbor and The Solomon's, while the operators knew how to use radar - the Officers were still learning how to employ it.
In addition to that - there was no electronic method of sharing information - so that just because one ship (one with an SG radar) could see something - that didn't mean that the Task Force Commander had any idea about that information. Because they were still participating in the learning curve Task Force Commanders would base their choice of a Flagship on such things as office space for their staff - rather than the quality of the ships radar.
For the Japanese - before the war - they were frightened by the western navies. It was NOT that they were afraid of dying - it was that they were afraid of failure. While they had built themselves a fairly good navy - they knew - that they could not replace their losses. This fear of failure had caused them to put some very serious training into effect before the war. Their exercises were dangerous and they lost ships in them - but - they got to where they were really good at the things they were technically capable of doing. They didn't have radar but their night vision was very good and they had their doctrine down pat. The biggest problem the Japanese had - which you saw at both Pearl Harbor and Savo - was that they were afraid of losing ships - that they could not replace.
The great thing about Halsey - was that he threw his ships at the Japanese without hesitation. He lost ships - but - we could replace them. This ... mentality ... came back to bite him in the ass at Cape Engano - but - in the Solomon's - was just what was needed.
.
Compare the centimetric thimble nose-dome of a Mosquito with the up to nine external TV like antennae of a Ju 88.
You’re the greatest German military historian in world history MHV!!!!!! The GOAT!!!!!
What does “MHV” mean?
Rand Barrett military history visualized fam! He’s the best!!!!
He's Austrian unless you think its ok to assume an American is a Brit or a Canadian is an Australian
mikepette oh damn sorry! I guess he’s the greatest Austrian military historian in world history fam!!!!
@@thebigone6969 damn rights ;)