Re: Light Cruisers: Atlanta Class Anti Aircraft
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 7:32 am
No doubt handsome ships though I would point the Didos (bask lean stacks) as the most beautiful.
Apparently later production of Atlanta class took advantage of AA weapons effectiveness statistics and had 40mm quadruples mounts instead of 127mm guns.
I have seen USN after the war technical statistics which assign 50% of Japanese aircraft (KKs and classic attacks) to 40mm guns the rest shared between 20mm Oerlikons and last in line 127mm mounts.
Certainly long range 5inch guns played great role in dispersing and interfere with any form of coordinated attacks but in kill figures were not so good.
Somewhere was noticed that above about 25 knots the Atlanta class ships (or at least some of them) were vibrating making use of fire control devices problematic.
Interesting sentence I have found in a FAA pilot memories CDR "Mike" Crosley, They Gave Me A Seafire.
He remembered that being friendly fired by their own HM forces with 102mm "we just laughed on their effort " and after some maneuvers easily avoided any damages or losses.
This might support the a/m USN statistics on the usefulness of the bigger caliber AA guns.
gd
Apparently later production of Atlanta class took advantage of AA weapons effectiveness statistics and had 40mm quadruples mounts instead of 127mm guns.
I have seen USN after the war technical statistics which assign 50% of Japanese aircraft (KKs and classic attacks) to 40mm guns the rest shared between 20mm Oerlikons and last in line 127mm mounts.
Certainly long range 5inch guns played great role in dispersing and interfere with any form of coordinated attacks but in kill figures were not so good.
Somewhere was noticed that above about 25 knots the Atlanta class ships (or at least some of them) were vibrating making use of fire control devices problematic.
Interesting sentence I have found in a FAA pilot memories CDR "Mike" Crosley, They Gave Me A Seafire.
He remembered that being friendly fired by their own HM forces with 102mm "we just laughed on their effort " and after some maneuvers easily avoided any damages or losses.
This might support the a/m USN statistics on the usefulness of the bigger caliber AA guns.
gd