No, it evolved into the use of sea-skimming missiles launched from aircraft instead of torpedoes that needed to be brought close, dropped from air into water at high speed, and then crudely steered by dumb gyros.
Improved with the knowledge that detonating the warhead at controlled location under the keel, rather than blowing holes in the side or dropping shells or bombs on the topside, was the optimal use of antiship explosive ordnance.
Good info, guys, but needs a little augmentation. Air-dropped torpedo attacks persisted into the early '50s, usually using Douglas Skyraiders and Martin Maulers (which were BEASTS of aircraft!–a Mauler could carry 3 torps faster and with more maneuverability than the TBF Avenger could fly empty). Surface launched torpedos did die out more quickly though they enjoyed a modest resurgence of popularity based on the DD and DE attacks off Samar.
It was sub-surface-launched torpedoes that immediately developed into effective, beneath-the-keel attackers. That attack mode had been in use even before the ware, but the wretched state of the exploders and the depth controls–thankyouverymcuh-notatall, BuOrd–kept them from being effective. Once the equipment was perfected and combined with the tech observed in the Japanese Longlance torpedo, our subs were finally equipped with world-beating weapons (and the Soviets one-upped them since we stuck with the 21" diameter bodies while they went much bigger).
Surface- and air-launched anti-ship missiles took decades to perfect, and good cruise versions took even longer, and their genesis was not the torpedo but the kamikaze. These missiles do not dive into the water and explode underneath ships. Even the sea-skimmers pop up in their terminal phase of attack and come in from above. They can be targeted to hit at the waterline or to hit the engineering spaces or against electronic emitters (radar, ECM, ECCM). Unlike torpedoes, for ASMs, sinking is a bonus: the goal is a mission-kill" knock the target out of action. That many ships so hit do, in fact, sink, is a function of either no damage control (in testing, because no crew) or the lack of suitability against such damage (in actual combat because of modern ship design priorities that place passive protection very low on the list).
But, my! We’ve gotten rather far afield, haven’t we?!
So let me post another pic.
Here is the third bird from Wasp: the SBD Dauntless.
Poised in the classic 70 degree dive, with dive brake flaps extended, this fellow is about to place a 500 semi-amor-piercing bomb right on the deck of an enemy vessel. The SBD was the most successful dive-bomber in the world, much more capable than the vaunted Stuka and much better loved than its own ungainly replacement, the SB2C Helldiver. The SBD was responsible for the USN victory at Midway, sinking four Japanese carriers in the course of one day, all of which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The latest model SBDs were able to fly nearly as far, nearly as fast, and with nearly as much payload as the SB2C, and they were more survivable. In fact, two US carrier air groups, flying from Enterprise and Lexington, held on to their SBDs as late as the Marianas campaign in mid-'44. Douglas Aircraft hit a home-run with these birds, and the design was the starting point for their Skyraider, which served well into the Vietnam era.
Remember that Argentine cruiser sunk during the Falklands War, the “Belgrano?” It was a former US Navy WW2-Era ship, the “USS Phoenix” if I remember right. We had a regular customer at the shop who was an active-duty US Navy Master Chief Petty officer who’d served on a sister ship, the “USS Helena” during WW2. The word he’d gotten through the Navy system was “Belgrano” sank because their damage control was practically non-existent. As the Chief put it “Helena took a torpedo hit during the Pearl Harbor attack (He was there!) and we kept her afloat.” I did a bit of research and found the torpedo tore a hole in the ship’s side that flooded the starboard boiler and engine rooms.
“Helena” was lost later in the war when it was hit so severely it just couldn’t be saved.
True. The Stuka was good but not great and the “Ess-bee-deuce-ee” Helldiver was a rush job with lots of bugs at first, not loved by the Navy at all.
I think I remember reading once that wars are fought with yesterday’s tactics and tomorrow’s weapons.
Sadly many times that does seem to be the case.
Not always. More and more combat is guerilla style urban with obscure combatants. Big weapons and tactics are only effective if you’re willing to wage total war regardless of your targets.
Time for another pic! Here is the OS2U Kingfisher float plane.
Slow, lightly armed, and lightly built, these unglamorous aircraft contributed to the victory far above their weight class, as it were.
*Soon after Pearl Harbor, the USN was eager to get as many aircraft afloat as possible. One solution mooted was the modification of some of the new Fletcher-class destroyers by landing Mount 53 (one of the 5" gun houses) and moving Mount 41 (the twin 40mm Bofors) to the fantail, and fitting a cruiser-style catapult to the deckhouse, adding a light crane, and shipping an OS2U. The experiment was not successful, as the plane could only be recovered in very calm seas because of the rollicking nature of a destroyer, and, during, the later years of the war, when many more cruisers and battleships were in service as well as a flood tide of carriers, the catapults were landed, and the guns rearranged and refitted. I don’t have a pic of my own to post, but you can search for pics of the USS Halford at navsource.
We now come to the last one (until I can complete More): the F6F Hellcat.
They didn’t call it “The Ace Maker” for nothing!
With respect to the Hellcat, it did have a flaw in that when airspeed exceeded Mach 0.75, the airflow over the wing became transonic and the center of lift moved back. This would cause the nose to drop with the only chance of recovery was to throttle back and hope the combination of denser and warmer air reducing Mach number below 0.75. When the P-51 was being designed, the NAA engineers were aware of the compressibility with the P-38 and they chose an airfoil with a higher critical Mach number which allowed the Mustang to dive faster than almost any other contemporary fighter.
My recollection was that carrier loadout at the end of the war was often 90% Hellcats. Had the A-1 Skyraider been available in mid 1945, that might have significantly changed the loadout.
One finding from the Zero that was captured intact during the 1942 Aleutians battle was that the controls became very heavy when airspeed exceeded 300 mph.
A contributing factor was that by the time the Hellcat came into service a large portion of the IJN’s pre Pearl Harbor pilot force had been shot down. After Pearl Harbor, the IJN did not provide the same level of training as combat requirements reduced the amount of fuel available for training.
No a/c is perfect, but, for all-around excellence, the F6F stands with the top tier.
Yes, many of the prewar Japanese best had been shot down–by the F4F and the F6F. Later pilots’ training was very much equal to the prewar training through '43 and into ‘44: that was the problem. Unlike the USN/USAAF, the IJN/IJA did not accommodate their training syllabi to the new circumstances until far too late. By then, almost all they could do was teach taking off, landing, and aiming at the carriers’ elevators.
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True. The Japanese made the same mistake the Germans and Russians did in never rotating their pilots out of combat. As far as all three were concerned pilots were no different than any other combat soldier so you flew until you were shot down and killed or shot down and so badly wounded you couldn’t carry on. Certainly you could take leave on occasion and also there were the lucky few who were rotated home to train new pilots but they were the exceptions and not the rule.
The British and the Americans realized early (The Brits by 1918) leaving aircrews out indefinately wasn’t a good idea.
Wow, there must be one hell of a dogfight going on, the pilots in the Fokker and the Sopwith shot each other’s landing gear off! 
lol good observation there just didn’t want to put them on! Very gd tho
Wasn’t the Zero just a copy of an American trainer? I mean, isn’t that why the studio got so many Army trainers for Tora, Tora, Tora?
