Call me out for being dumb, but why equip bombers with torpedoes

I am just an amatour but I would guess it have something to do with Ships being quite slim and hard to hit ((If you miss a ship with a bomb it will splash into water, if you drop a torpedo in front of it the torpedo may still hit the boat)) and the fact that with torpedos you got a much, much better chance of blowing some hole below the sealevel.
Expert answers welcome!

>>1838491

Torpedoes hit below the waterline, which is usually far less armored. It doesn't do you much good to bomb if your bombs bounce off.


So consider aerial attacks on two sister ships, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz.

Bismarck was attacked twice, the first strike was from 6 Fulmar fighters and 9 Swordfish. Each of those swordfish would have carried a 760 kg torpedo. Of the nine fired, only one hit, which did some relatively serious but shortlived damage, temporarily slowing her to 16 knots.

The second attack, also with 9 swordfish, mauled the rudder to near uselessness and locked the ship in a 12 degree turn to port.

Net result, 18 760 kg torpedoes crippled the Bismarck, for a total of 13,680 kg of munitions.


The Tirpitz, on the other hand, was repeatedly attacked in port with more direct bombing efforts. In 1944, she was struck 3 times by sorties from Lancaster bombers, 28, 38, and 32 per strike respectively. How much in the way of bombs a Lancaster carried varied on their fuel load, and to be honest, I'm too lazy to look up the specific strikes, But their normal load was 6,350 kg of bombs. That makes 622,300 kg worth of bombs dropped by those combined 98 lancasters, or about 45.5 times as much explosive to yield similar results.

Torpedoes have a bigger payload and have a much better chance to damage vital systems than a bomb does.

you could drop a torpedo from a safer distance and save fuel too

>>1838565
This and also if you hit below the waterline, shit's gonna flood.

Of course, these days, air launched ASMs are preferred because of the increased standoff distance.

>>1838491
Think of trying to shoot a fly v having a guided missile that you can adjust to where the fly is going, programmed to separate the fly from its wings.

>>1838491

It is much more difficult to hit ships with bombs. Torpedoes could be aimed at the target and dropped from further away. The torpedo would drop below the ocean surface to a pre-determined depth and then activate itself, charge forward and then detonate when in proximity of a foreign object.

these >>1838500 >>1838565
>>1838631
>Torpedoes have a bigger payload
aircraft have a limited payload, also torpedos are the equivalent of a bomb with the added weight of a motor thus meaning a lower payload gram for gram
>>1838647
>save fuel
not important if you're flying miles trying to find the ship in the first place
>>1838666
satan plz, are you describing interception?

>>1838491
Bombs
>you don't have to make a long, slow, straight-line approach to the boat to hit a boat

Torpedo
>you can actually sink a big boat

There you have it.

>>1838491
Consider this:
A bomb has to be dropped right on a boat to damage it. A torpedo can be dropped in a much larger area and still hit, since it's motorized. You can drop it 100 yards away or 1000 yards away; as long as the boat is still in front, it will hit.

File: Modified-B-25-Bombers-Pioneered-Skip-Bombing-Tactic-1.jpg (53KB, 300x376px) Image search: [Google]

53KB, 300x376px

>>1838647
You actually can't. A Torpedo bomber must approach on a predictable path at a low height to launch their torpedoes without fucking up the drop and damaging them. This means that they are extremely vulnerable at this time, both to AA fire and any CAP fighters.

In contrast, dive bombers can evade or move erratically until they either drop directly on the target (ensuring maximum penetrative ability through the deck) or skip their bomb over the waves onto the target, pic related (allowing the bomber to disengage at a distance, but limiting potential penetration). This means that they can be harder for a CAP to detect and harder for AA to intercept until the last moment.

Compare the casualty and success ratings of the Dauntless dive bombers and the Devastator torp bombers at Midway (though arguably the overzealousness of the Japanese CAP in pursuing the Devastators that arrived first played a role in that).

That said, if a Torpedo bomber does pull it off it is much more likely to do damage, especially since most of the nations in World War II with any navy of note except for Germany had greatly reinforced their deck armor to defend both against dive bombs and plunging fire, and most of the torpedo systems developed in the interwar period were flawed or problematic in some way.

>>1838491

>What are the ups and downs of using a torpedo instead of a load of bombs to attack ships?

By using a torpedo, you avoid having to fly directly above the target ship. If you were trying to hit a ship that had lots of AA guns that becomes very important for your survival. However, this was also kind of dependent on what kind of AA guns you were worried about. Some types of AA guns had a limited elevation so you'd be better off coming in high and dropping a bomb above the ship. On the other hand, some AA guns had limited range and so you'd be better off dropping a torpedo from low altitude and staying away from the ship.

World War AA guns for ships fit in three basic categories:

1. Slow-firing AA guns like the 40mm Bofors which had long range.
2. Fast-firing AA guns like the Oerlikon 20mm which had limited range.
3. Large caliber 5-in dual purpose guns like the Mark 12 5"/38 caliber

>>1838854
You can sink a ship with a bomb provided it hits the deck as bombs can penetrate and do heavy damage. They carry more explosive content for the same payload.

Bombing leaves the plane less vulnerable however accuracy is very low against a moving, dodging target. Torpedo bombers are more vulnerable but they have a higher chance of hitting as they are essentially drawing a line in the sea to hit the ship rather than dropping the bomb on a point in the sea. They hit the ship below the water line so if they breach the torpedo bulges, they can cause flooding and listing of the ship.

>>1839102
>>1839102
Adding to this, it was somewhat safer to be a dive bomber than a torpedo bomber if you were a US navy pilot in the pacific because
a) Japanese large-caliber DP guns (generally the Type 3 12.7cm) couldn't operate efficiently at high elevations, needing to be loaded in lower elevations before firing, and couldn't train as fast as American DP guns, meaning that they had much easier times hitting distant torpedo bombers approaching from near sea level than Dive Bombers at high elevations
and
b) the IJN's primary small-caliber AA armament, the Type 96 25mm, had poor train rates, making it much harder for AA crews to follow bombers at close range.
There were exceptions to both, of course (the 10cm Type 89, used on cruisers, carriers and a few Destroyers, was much closer to the American standard of rate of fire and elevation), but generally things were better for the Scout/Dive bombers than the torpedo bombers if you were attacking nips.

>>1839131
What about dive bombers going in and dropping the bombs at a lower altitude? Almost ensuring a hit? The plane dives in, drops a heavy bomb which penetrates the deck. Plane is less vulnerable, bomb messes up the ship

>>1838794
Against a ship moving at at full or flank speed a torpedo attack is much more difficult to execute than dive bombing.

>>1838847
>>1838491
In modern warfare, there's also the fact that you don't need to get as close, and torpedos are harder to intercept than bombs. (The AEGIS can't aim below the horizon.)

Granted, missiles are about as good in the first respect. The Exocet missile was particularly effective in the Falkland islands war.

>>1841030
If we're talking WWI-WWII tech, this is near suicidal (not that it didn't stop some people from trying). If it's modern tech, it's absofreakinlutely suicidal, if you want your bomb anywhere near your target, given the speed you're going, and the accuracy of the anti-aircraft defenses.

So it's fine, if yer a Jap.

The modern high-tech planes are much more expensive investments than those in earlier wars, and the training is more involved, so there's that to consider. The missiles are expendable by comparison. The days of dogfights involving dozens of planes are pretty much gone, sad to say.

>>1841030
>What about dive bombers going in and dropping the bombs at a lower altitude? Almost ensuring a hit? The plane dives in, drops a heavy bomb which penetrates the deck. Plane is less vulnerable, bomb messes up the ship
The divebomber has to pull up in order to not to crash; this poses an inherent limit on the accuracy of the bombing run itself. Against a ship moving at 30kt, or 50km/h, this is not an easy task especially if the ship is turning at the same time to dodge.

>>1838491
It's easy to miss with bombs if you don't have any guidance system.

>>1838491

easier to fire a torpedo than drop a bomb onto a ship I guess? Probably worse getting damaged below the waterline too

>>1838491

it's way fucking cooler for one thing

>>1842564
>Probably worse getting damaged below the waterline too
Larger ships all have torpedo protection in the form of water filled bulges outside of the hull to prevent a torpedo from blowing a hole on the hull and cause flooding. Several torpedo hits however can compromise the torpedo protection and cause flooding.
Armor piercing bombs dropped by divebombers on the other hand can penetrate the deck which doesn't protect against heavy bombs but plunging fire. A penetration and internal explosion will cause a lot more damage to the ship than an external explosion on the waterline. Even a bomb that didn't penetrate the armor can damage exposed machinery and weapons on the deck.

Torpedo bombers are generally used because they have inherently higher accuracy provided the torpedo doesn't fail as the torpedo covers a line that can hit a target while the bomb covers a point that can hit a target.