PzKpfw IV sinks destroyer?

Thanks

Thining back on what I read it was pretty clearly from the view point of the US fighter pilots. Overclaiming was certainly a possiblity. Another is that the mgs could have rendered it dead in the water but fairly easy to repair. This sounds like it would mesh fairly well with Matasukaze damage as the US pilots wouldn't be aware of any damage from near misses by the bombers at that point.

That's another distinct possibility. However if it was during Hailstone the damage to the listed smaller vessels doesn't seem to match up. Thinking back on it the source must be either in one of my books or in naval history magazine. Will have to look back through them again to see if I can find anything.

 

I think you're right. There could also be some incidence of the Italians playing their contribution up slightly in their reports. Both were undoubtedly trying to play up their combined effect on the British forces, and vice versa. tailoring for audience.

 

As far as I could discover so far:
Batteria Grasso (Milmart) was 4 x 6" guns, it opened fire late as the crew was initally involved in repulsing B force.
Batteria 105 (Army) was partially overrun by B Force and probably never fired at sea.
Batteria 76 was 3" guns, most likely Army (the Milmart batteries had names) so could be ex Russian 76 of captured British 3"AA.
Batteria Tordo (Milmart) was 76/40 AA
Batteria Bellotti (Milmart) was originally 6" guns (149/47 WW1 war booty probably ex Austrian from Tegetthoff as the ones from the German ships were labeled 149/43) but I don't know if they were sill operative in 1942, after two sieges, or had been replaced with something else.

Tribal class destroyers could be tough to sink by gunfire, I'm currently reading an in depth examination of the battle off Pantelleria and apparently HMS Beduin took 14 6" hits and one 4.7" but still required an aerial torpedo to finally sink.

 

The lie of the land

schematic v reality

 

In response to claims
the article [is] disjointed in its telling of the story, [and] times and order are often confused
here is the full version:
.













Searchlights on at 5:00.
Sikh hit by 5:30.
Sikh cannot steer but can make 10 knots.
Zulu comes beside Sikh and starts recieving hits.
6:50 Sikh cast adrift because bombers had arrived overhead.
Zulu went over the horizon and Sikh was still afloat and firing

 

m kenny,

Thanks for the full article, than

was a typo. That is more understandable, I was wondering why the reporter had the destroyers parting almost an hour later than they did.

 

The Tribals were large ships and not like 'normal' Destroyers.
I have read she took a dozen hits from the Italian Cruisers in the first engagement.
When she was attacked the second time she suffered further hits but still managed to fire back and shoot down the bomber that finaly sank her.
If only they had 88's on the Italian Cruisers-they could have easily despatched Bedouin!

 

Perhaps it would have, seeing as the Italians were having problems with their shells not exploding when they hit the HMS Bedouin.

 

Sample Italian site account.

LRDG a Tobruch

Google translation and original Italian.



Sikh and Zulu had approached the coast and, as expected, they were shooting at targets. But none of the Italian anti-ship batteries, with the exception of 105 mm in the south of the bay had been neutralized, and indeed a new battery to be located at 120/50 mm tip Tobruk, (punta Tobruk) joined his fire to that of the other.

The two destroyers were so overwhelmed by the precise focus of all of the coastal defense batteries that joined the fire of a 76 mm anti-aircraft battery of other Italian and German 88 mm.

At dawn the Sikh was repeatedly hit and immobilized, the Zulu bravely tried to take it in tow but, at 5.30 while the ship was abandoned by the crew sank.

Also at 7.00 Macchi C200 of 131 Squadron fighter intervened in the action by throwing chunks, strafing the torpedo boats still in the area and sinking a few.

Sikh e Zulu si erano avvicinati alla costa e, come previsto, stavano sparando contro gli obiettivi prefissati. Ma nessuna delle batterie antinave italiane, ad eccezione di quella da 105 mm a sud della baia era stata neutralizzata; anzi una nuova batteria da 120/50 mm ubicata a punta Tobruch, unì il proprio fuoco a quello delle altre.
I due cacciatorpediniere furono così investiti dal fuoco preciso di tutte le batterie della difesa costiera cui si unì il fuoco di una batteria antiaerea da 76 mm italiana e di altre tedesche da 88 mm.
Alle prime luci dell'alba il Sikh fu ripetutamente colpito ed immobilizzato; lo Zulu tentò coraggiosamente di prenderlo a rimorchio ma, alle 5.30 la nave fu abbandonata dall'equipaggio mentre affondava.
Alle 7.00 anche i Macchi C200 del 131° Gruppo da caccia intervennero nell'azione lanciando spezzoni, mitragliando le motosiluranti ancora in zona ed affondandone alcune.

 

chunks???? "spezzoni" is light fragmentation bombs, the Macchi had 50Kg ones, but otherwise the auto translation did a nice job.

If I get the text right the Batteria 76 Punta Tobruk caption on my map refers to two different batteries one 76 and one 120/50mm one both on the strip of land that encloses the harbour.
The Macchi were apparently the first planes on the scene and are probably the "bombers" that finally decided against continuing the towing attempts. As I understand it the German planes, that included some Ju 88 from Crete, attacked when the British ships were at sea well out of range of the shore batteries.

 

I figured you would pick up on the word "partly". When I was at the U 181 Vets reunion in Bad Camberg, Germany Sept 15-15-2000, those vets told me themselves how my Grandfathers ship was sunk. The ship itself recieved damage due to the 1st torpedo hittig it amidships but not seriously enough to sink it. They manovered around to the other side of the ship making sure or trying to make sure-that all the men had safely left the ship. I dont have time for details here but if you search and find other things I say about that event here on the site-that will fill you in. Anyway, when they thought all the crew were safely away-having not been aware that the 2nd torpedo fired killed 27 m4en and they didnt know this till I told them about it showing paper proof of the men who were kilkled in the 2nd explosion. Their looks of being glad that no American Sailors lost their lives due to their attack-went to great saddness and they held hands-held mine and said prayers. These vets were THAT sad to hear this bad news.

Anyway, Dieter Hille, and a couple of other Vets who could speak English well enough, told me they also fired several 88 rounds to make sure the ship sank. The torpedo damages COULD have been enough but they doubted it. Anyway, im NOT going to doubt the words of the men who were actually there and who actually witnessed what happened.

Best regards-C.

 

PS, I dont care what other claims are made, I do know that 88s are perfectly capable of sinking ships-based on what the German vets have told me.

 

The point is that several guns were firing at the Tribal Class Destroyer.
The Tribals were very large ships and I would think they would have allowed for the fact it might get puntured by the odd shell and took steps to make a ship did not go down just because someone left a scuttle open.
The ship sank after 3 hours of shelling by up to 100 guns. Up to 30 of those guns might have been 88's.
It is the height or arrogance for a German battery to claim it sank the Sikh when at least twice as many Italian guns , some of them 150mm, were also firing at the ships.
It is even more suspect when the same guns claim they sank the Zulu which went down 200 miles away after being torpedoed.
This was a very good performance by the Italians, very few Germans were involved.
The problem stems from an over-reliance on a single German account and a complete failure of any research being done on Italian documents to find out their side of the story.
My basic search found a wealth of Italian language accounts and even a book about the battle.

It all smacks of a 'wunder-waffen' mentality

 

Look up John Cloudsley-Thompson. His tank was hit by an '88' shell. No doubt about it being an '88' either as he was looking at the Tiger when it fired at him. Though the tank was penetrated and caught fire not one of the crew was killed or seriously wounded
That is another story from one of those 'who were actually there'.......

 

It seems that one half of this debate stems from the premise that the conjecture that a 75mm or 88mm gun is incapable of sinking a WWII era destroyer under any conditions what so ever. This somewhat reminds me of the 'Sherman can't kill a Tiger' debate.

Shermans could kill a Tiger. Yes they needed the right conditions and a bit of luck, but they could do it. By the same token I believe under the right conditions and with a bit of luck a German tank or anti-tank gun could sink a Destroyer.

Did they, hard to say for sure if for no other reason than tanks/anti-tank guns had few oppertunities to trade broadsides directly with destroyers. In certain terrain features or low light conditions I could see possibilities where they might have advantage over a ship. Certainly the Japanese guns in Mt Suribachi gave the US Navy and Marines fits until they were silenced.

 

Good said belasar!

I never had any doubt that an 88 could sink an destroyer for the reason that their AP rounds were able to penetrate steel up to 200mm. And i never had any doubt that not only the 88 sunk the HMS Sikh. Interesting is that m kenny has some good information about this case and all of the others contributed really good stuff too. Such an discussion is always interesting and i was able to learn a lot of this topic, but it would have been much nicer when it were running in an other atmosphere.


Thanks to all of you!

 

One thing I have noticed from this topic is that we have uncovered many more undisputed details rather than disputed ones from enough sources to make it fairly clear what actually happened. The disputes have been mostly about where propaganda influences historical accounts.

I don't know if everyone has looked at the wiki pages for the two destroyers for example;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Zulu_(F18)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sikh_(F82)

What is noticeable is how poor they are.

This gets me to thinking that instead of bitching about wikipedia and denigrating it's info as much as we do, perhaps we can use threads like this to combine resources and knowledge so we can examine the evidence and actually wind the thread up by updating the related wiki pages that are incomplete or incorrect. That way everyone benefits.

Any views?

 

I´m not a fan of Wiki dingsda. They often copied threats of an other forum where i´m a member of and on the other hand they say we couldn´t be a good source for them naah!

 

No. The 'debate' is how can 30 guns out of 100+ firing at a Destroyer claim the credit for sinking the Destroyer.
Note that some of the other guns were specificaly there for anti-shipping work were of greater calibre and thus better sited and suited than anything there for AA Defence.
The credibilty of this claim has to be viewed in light of the fact the same guns claimed also to have sunk Zulu.
Zulu sank 200+ miles away directly after being hit by an air launched torpedo!

A Tribal engaging a 88 battery would be well able to defend herslf with 6 x 120mm and 2 x 100mm. The large number of guns firing on Sikh (even if they never score a hit) would dilute any counter-battery fire.


It has nothing to to do with the hyperthetical ability of the 88 to penetrate 150mm at 10 miles or damage a ship mortaly with HE. This is a real example where real guns inflicted real damage on a real ship.

 

Waste of time.
Original research figures very low on Wiki's source rating. You can uncover as much data as you want from the National Archives and it will ALWAYS be trumped by a third hand account in some second rate publishers catalogue.
Published sources-even ones widely discredited-are the gold standard.
I have to say there is a constant war on the Wiki editing pages. The levels of debate rarely rises above 'you are stupid and dont know what you are talking about'. If you are prepared to devote the time to it you can effectively dominate any Wiki page and mould it to suit your outlook. Wear the opposition down and most (sensibly) walk away and leave you to it.
You spend hours putting together any amount of really good data to see it all wiped by some spotty kid who thinks 'looking cool' is all that matters in weapon design.
Frankly we all have better things to worry about!