Torpedo Bombers and Dive Bombers - Which Worked Better?

I've had a nagging question I've been wanting to ask for a while: When used against surface vessels, do dive bombers or torpedo bombers work better in destroying it?

This question can be varied; against what kind of ship, or what kind of plane, but I'll leave the ships up to you, ranging from destroyers to aircraft carriers. Let's imagine that the two planes are the TBF/D Avenger and the SBD Dauntless (You can throw in any other bomber if you want).

Which would work better, against, say, an aircraft carrier? I would still say the torpedo bomber. What perks does the dive bomber have to help destroy ships?

 

Well, if you look at the Battle of Midway, it was an engagement where the surface ships did not see each other and 5 carriers were sunk. So I would say that dive/torpedo bombers are successful in sinking surface ships.

 

I meant that which of the two planes are more successful at damaging surface vessels. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

 

Dive bombers have usually done the most damage. During Midway, the torpedo planes were only effective as a divrsion for the dive bombers. The problem is that a torpedo planes has to fly low and slow to put the fish on target. It makes them a prime target. Whereas, a dive bomber is able to move faster, and usually is straffing as they attack. It is also a minor factor that torpedoes must be launched broadsides, while usually bombs are dropped in-line. Depending on ship design, it can significantly decrease the number of guns that can be brought to bear on a dive bomber.

 

I suppose you really need both but I guess the dive bombers were more successful. If I recall correctly in the battle of Crete they were very successful and even in Dunkirk sank several British destroyers. And that is Ju 87 (?!)

 

It all depends on when and where the aircraft are used. If you launching a surprise attack on a harbour (E.G Pearl, Taranto) then a Torpedo bomber works well. In an open battle when they know you are coming, the dive bomber works better.

 

It does depend on the aircraft used. Probably the most effective system was a radar equipped torpedo bomber like the TBF-3N. At Truk, just a dozen of these sank over a quarter million tons of shipping striking at night for no losses. Only a general lack of targets kept their overall score low.
The reason these aircraft were so effective was most navies of the WW 2 period have little or no air defense capacity at night. The US and British navies had probably the most advanced air defenses and they could only rely on their heavier AA guns (4" +) that had radar director controls for nighttime air defense. Few of the lighter AA systems had any means of sighting and accurately firing on a target at night. For other navies night air defense was completely blind having no radar control for firing whatsoever.
Thus, the radar equipped torpedo bomber could attack almost with complete impunity and surprise as the US Navy showed at Truk atoll.

 

The reason why I ask is because I have a game (Battlestations: Midway), and the rule of thumb is always send torpedo bombers against ships, never dive bombers. When a dive bomber is used, the bomb looks like it launched smoke and did nothing else when it hits a ship, and it rarely does any damage.

What I don't understand is why the U.S. Navy put all the ruggedness on the Dauntless rather than the Avenger. Personally, I think the Avenger needed all the ruggedness it could get, being a sitting duck and all. The Dauntless also has more accuracy and a reliable payload whereas torpedo bombers had faulty torpedoes until after Midway.

I would think that dive bombers did more damage, I just don't see what true damage their payload can do on surface vessels, especially battleships and carriers.

 

If you want a on hit sink, then the torpedo would be the choice. The dive bomber was expected to hit the target over and over again and the torpedo planes were icing on the cake. The bombs that were used could only sink the ship in one hit if a magazine or boiler was hit. But against a carrier bombs blow up the deck and can make it usless not to mention the lack of armor here as compared to a battleship. Special bombs were developed for the divebombers I believe.

If you want a hit and not a kill go with the dive bombers, get five or six hits and you will probably sink the ship.

 

In reality dive bombers could generally mess up a ship, any ship, pretty good. But, they rarely were directly responsible for sinking them. A dive bomber, SBD, Ju 87, Skua, what-have-you with a 1000 lb SAP or AP bomb could penetrate about 3 to 4 inches of deck armor. A near miss could dish in hull plating causing extensive flooding in outer hull compartments. Bombs also generally did alot of topside damage especially to unarmored and lightly armored areas.
One need only look at ships like the Jean Bart or some of the Japanese cruisers that took bomb hits to see that a 500 or 1000 lb bomb does substancial damage to ships. They generally will start fires, can cause flooding and in unarmored areas take out substancial sections of hull or superstructure. The British carrier Illustrious was smashed badly by dive bombing in spite of her armored flight deck. The US carrier Bunker Hill was nearly sunk by fire and progressive flooding from a single 500 lb bomb hit.

As for the TBF, it was not the Navy's first choice for a replacement for the Vindicator. Vought's TBU Seawolf was. The TBU was a better plane by far than the Avenger but Vought didn't have the capacity to build large numbers so Grumman's entry was selected for production. The Avenger was a fairly rugged aircraft. It could and often did carry bombs instead of a torpedo also.

 

Unless your facing Destroyers or Light Cruisers, then using torpedo bombers is just a waste.
I once sunk a Destroyer with a fighter squadron!

 

It also depends on the defenses. Against a well directed CAP torpedo bombers have problems. They also have more problems from AA fire than dive bombers do. On the other hand on a per hit bases they do a lot more damage. IE you sink ships by letting the water in. Torpedoes do this very well bombs don't (near misses on smaller ships can actually be better as far as sinking's go). There is also a synergy if the two types work together. At Midway the US torpedo bombers pulled the Japanese CAP out of position for instance. In other battles once a ship has been slowed by bombs and had its AA suppressed by them and strafing the torpedo bombers have a better chance of hitting.

 

I think that between tililal and T.A. Gardner, they've hit the bullseye. Bombs can certainly do a tremendous amount of damage from the resultant blast and shrapnel. Torpedoes may not look as devestating because we usually don't see the results. But as will bombs it only takes one well placed fish to finish off a ship of any kind. If that wasn't the case - why use Submarines??
In my opinion both can do the job and both are just as deadly.

 

Yep, the torps were more effective when they hit, but the planes were more vulnerable to being shot down in their attack runs.

The best method of attack with torp planes, if you have enough, was to split them with half the force attacking the beam in line abreast (splits up the AA fire) with the other half attacking the bow (ie from dead ahead of the ship) simultaneously in line abreast, with some each side of the bow. That way, if the ship turns to avoid the beam attack, it is exposing its side to the torps from dead ahead.

 

Torpedoes have the better chance of sinking the ship, but if you can coordinate the attack (wishful-thinking), get there all at once (best case scenario). Fighters engage fighters, and the bombers do their thing.
I've heard (correct me if I'm wrong) the best attack position for torpedo planes is as you say "split", from both port & starboard bow. The least anti-aircraft fire.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Avoiding (combing) one puts you broadside to the other, and staying true gets you done by both.
Dive bombers can make a mess out of top side (un-turreted positions), and near misses can cause (in some cases) severe hull damage (like mines), which may very well take the ship out of the fight.
Having all (either one) the same simplifies (to some extent) the defense.

 

By the advent of the TBF/TBM, the dive bombers had already taken their toll of the major Japanese surface ships. Until the TMF/TBM came along, the U.S. didn't have an effective torpedo bomber. The Avenger ended up dropping far more bombs and launched far more rockets in the invasion support role than in the anti-shipping role.

The sinking of the Musashi and the Yamato each took a combined force of dive and torpedo bombers, each ship taking multiple bomb and torpedo hits before succumbing. Of course, these two behemoths were pretty much unmatched in terms of sheer size.

tom

 

I believe that few, if any, WW2 battleships were sunk by bombs alone, with the exception of the Roma which was hit by the huge radio-controlled FX-1400 bombs, and of course the stationary Tirpitz, capsized by enormous "earthquake" bombs.

As has already been pointed out, to sink a ship you need to let the water in, and that means making big holes in the hull below water level. That's exactly what torpedoes are designed to do, but I don't believe that dive-bombers were capable of carrying bombs heavy enough to inflict this on a well-protected modern battleship. They could make one heck of a mess of such a ship, but were unlikely to sink it.

 

There's also the Arizona. Both Tirpitz and Arizona were stationary. We could go to extremes and mention Nagato.

 

While there is no doubt that the TBD Devastator was an obsolete airplane by 1942 (compared to its Japanese counterpart, the B5N "Kate"), its lack of success at Midway was not wholly due to its poor performance. The US torpedoes of that era (as used by submarines as well as torpedo bombers) were notoriously ineffective: running too deep, failing to run true, exploding too early, and failing to explode on contact. Apparently at least one torpedo struck a Japanese carrier at Midway without exploding - the torpedo broke apart, and surviving crewmen from the carrier even used the torp's air flask for flotation when they abandoned ship ! Even if all of the aircraft survive and return, a torpedo attack mission cannot be considered a success if the weapon doesn't explode when it strikes a ship.

 

Agreed fsbof

The Devastator could do 130, but had to fly at 100 to drop the torpedo?, not to mention how most of the weapon stuck out at an odd angle to slow air speed, and the demand that it be dropped no higher than 50 feet or it would break. Lets not even talk about how deep the torpedo went after impact with the water and how long it took to come back up (if ever). As well the crummy exploders on the Mark 13.
I've read the story about the broken torpedo, and have heard claims it was from the Nautilus, who some "cough-cough" eyewitnesses, said hit, but porpoised out of the water, broke in half, and was used for a flotation device.
All this at a time when Soryu was in its death throws, and a great explosion occurred, which then became a claim for the Nautilus as giving the "Coup de Grace" to Soryu.
A 1943 torpedo test of 105 resulted in these percentages...
36% didn't start
20% sank
20% had "poor" deflection
18% ran at wrong depth
2% ran on the surface
31% were satisfactory

Out of 1,287 launched in WW 2, 514 (40%) hit.

http://www,navweaps.com/Weapons/WTUS_WWII.htm
link is again screwy, just punch in torpedoes in WW 2