Why a decline in capability, WW II to today?

[Jacknola]

The capabilities of a lot of weapons systems seems to have actually fallen considerably since WWII. I just cannot figure out why. Here are two examples:

1. Modern German K130 Corvette vs WWII Fletcher class destroyer;
2. Modern Super-Tucano COIN prop aircraft vs WWII P-51 D Mustang.

The question is "why" are modern platforms less capable, and far more expensive - and I'm talking basic platform - of course the electronics, adds to cost but the difference is so profound that the upgrade in software cannot be an answer to the question.

The inability to manufacture a power plant and ship that can match the basic package 70 years ago, and the inability to build an all-purpose, high performance prop ground support, recon aircraft with at least the capability of WWII era aircraft, is REALLY confusing, wouldn't you say?

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Surface combat ship, 1,800 t – 2,000 t.

WW II - US Fletcher class destroyer:

Displacement: 2,050 tons (standard); 2,500 tons (full load)
Length: 376.5 ft (114.8 m)
Beam: 39.5 ft (12.0 m)
Draft: 12.5 ft (3.8 m)
Propulsion: 4 Babcock & Wilcox oil-fired boilers; 2 General Electric geared steam turbines; 2 screws; =60,000shp
Speed: 36.5 knots (67.6 km/h)
Range: 5,500 miles at 15 knots
(8,850 km at 28 km/h) [1]
Complement: 329 officers and men
Armament: • 5 × single 5 inch/38 caliber guns guided by a Mark 37 Gun Fire Control System with Mk25 fire control radar linked by a Mark 1A Fire Control Computer stabilized by a Mk6 8,500 rpm gyro.
• 6–10 × 40 mm Bofors AA guns (early ships carried 4 × 1.1 inch/75 caliber guns),
• 7–10 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannons,
• 10 × 21 inch torpedo tubes (2×5),
• 6 × K-guns,
• 2 × depth charge racks

2012 – German K130 corvette

Displacement: 1,840 tonnes (1,810 long tons)
Length: 89.12 m (292 ft 5 in)
Beam: 13.28 m (43 ft 7 in)
Draft: 3.4 m (11 ft 2 in)
Propulsion: MTU 20V 1163 TB 93 diesel engines producing 14.8MW, driving two controllable-pitch propellers.
Speed: 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph)
Range: 4,000 nmi (7,400 km) at 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph)[1]
Endurance: 7 days; 21 days with tender
Complement: 65 : 1 commander, 10 officers, 16 chief petty officers, 38 enlisted
Sensors and
processing systems: • TRS-3D multifunction radar
• 2 navigation radars
• MSSR 2000 i IFF system
• MIRADOR electro-optical sensors
• UL 5000 K ESM suite
• Link 11 and Link 16 communications
Electronic warfare
and decoys: • 2 × TKWA/MASS (Multi Ammunition Softkill System) decoy launcher
• UL 5000 K ECM suite
Armament: Guns;
1 x Otobreda 76 mm gun
2 x MLG 27 mm autocannons
Anti-ship;
4 x RBS-15 Mk.3 Anti-ship missiles
CIWS;
2 x 21-cell RAM CIWS missile launchers
Mine laying capability;

Aircraft carried: Helicopter pad and hangar for two Camcopter S-100

Note that the Fletcher class basic hull package is superior in speed, gun firepower, range, and just about every other category. Plus these were built in huge numbers for a fraction of the comparative cost of their modern-day equivalents.

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Propeller driven air-ground support:

WWII – P 51 Mustang

Armament:
Six .50-cal. machine guns and 10 5-in. rockets or 2,000 lbs. of bombs

Engine: Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin V-1650 of 1,695 hp

Performance:
Maximum speed: 437 mph
Cruising speed: 275 mph
Range: 1,000 miles
Service ceiling: 41,900 ft.
Span: 37 ft. 0 in.
Length: 32 ft. 3 in.
Height: 13 ft. 8 in.
Weight: 12,100 lbs. maximum

2012 – Super Tacano

Armament
■Guns: 2 × 12.7 mm FN Herstal M3P machine guns in wings and cannon pods
■Hardpoints: 5 (two under each wing and one under fuselage centreline) with a capacity of 1,500 kg (3,300 lb)
■Rockets: rocket pods
■Missiles: 2x MAA-1 Piranha, AIM-9 Sidewinder or Rafalel Python III or IV


Performance:
■Maximum speed: 558 km/h (301 knots, 346 mph)
■Range: 1,568 km (849 naut mi, 974 mi)
■Service ceiling: 10,668 m (35,000 ft)
■Rate of climb: 14.9 m/s (2,936 ft/min)


It seems that the WWII era P-51 is a superior platform in every conceivable category – speed, range, endurance, payload, armor, ceiling, etc. Plus the cost of the airframe and package had to have been a comparative fraction of the cost of the Tucano.

[JCR]

1. The K 130 loses because it german military is afraid of weapons and it is the wrong comparison.
Compare the Fletcher to Arleigh Burke or even a normal NATO country frigate and things look different.
Modern 5 inch guns can easily match a Fletcher's main armament in rate of fire.

2. The Super Tucano is as fast and long ranged as it has to be. Plus the two machine guns of the Tucano have about the same rate of fire as the six of the Mustang.
And regarding fuel economy the Tucano as a turbo-prop is light years ahead of a Mustang.
A fully fuelled P-51 was actually a very difficult airplane, it couldn't really fight until the main tank was half empty.

[Corrupt]

Plus the cost of the airframe and package had to have been a comparative fraction of the cost of the Tucano.

How can you be so sure?

[PMI]

The P-51 was the best long range air superiority aircraft in the US inventory, it's modern equivalent is the F-22.

The Super Tucano is a light attack aircraft using older technology to maintain a low cost & provide easy maintenance it's closest WWII equivalent was the Soviet Po-2 biplane.

You are comparing apples & oranges.

[LineDoggie]

As to the Fletcher, the 20 & 40mm AA fit was obsoleted by fast moving aircraft. They were manually operated and could not track fast enough nor had the ROF needed, much less the explosive weight in the projectiles. The Navy wanted to be rid of the 20mm by 1944 for all 40mm. After WWII the Navy tried radar guided twin 3"(76mm) mounts for AA before going to Missiles and Phalanx. Another problem all through WWII was Top heavyness by adding more and More AA. Having a Aegis today with the same AA fit would do nothing for AA defence.

Torpedoes were eventually ridden to save weight for AA fit and because it was a rarely effectively used system. the Torpedoes had issues until almost the end of the war and impossible to reload while in action.
K & Y guns and racks are useless with todays subs



The P-51 wasnt intended as a Fighter Bomber but a pure fighter it was adapted to ground support. The P-47 was the tankbuster "Jabo" of choice for the USAAF it wasnt as vulnerable to ground fire as the Mustang with its bottom mounted radiator. The Tucano wasnt designed for Air to Air engagements so the High speeds of the Mustang werent needed.

[ubermensche]

Pretty much what PMI said. The Super Tacano isn't the mainstay of the USAF, while the P-51 was. The P-51 was state-of-the-art for its time while the Super Tacano isn't.

[JCR]

The P-51 wasnt intended as a Fighter Bomber but a pure fighter it was adapted to ground support. The P-47 was the tankbuster "Jabo" of choice for the USAAF it wasnt as vulnerable to ground fire as the Mustang with its bottom mounted radiator. The Tucano wasnt designed for Air to Air engagements so the High speeds of the Mustang werent needed.

Ironically, the roles were originally reversed.
The Mustang (as A-36) served as a dive bomber while the P-47 was initially used as a pure air combat fighter.
The P-51 sort of stumbled into the escort fighter role, it was not purpose designed for it.
As the P-47 wasn't designed for ground attack, but as a high altitude fighter.

Re the destroyers, all US destroyers up to the Gearing Class were designed to attack surface targets with torpedoes.
At least as designed, the torpedoes were considered the main armament. The fact that this sort of attack didn't even happen much in WW1 didn't keep interwar designers from retaining the torpedo attack role for destroyers.
No reloads wasn't really the problem as destroyers were not going to get more than one opportunity to shoot anyway.
Was sort of weird that even while destroyers proved themselves in WW2 as all purpose gun platforms, designers were still merrily churing out torpedo attack platforms, only to have half (or often all) the torpedo armament removed at the front line.
The classic gun/torpedo destroyer type was discarded immidiately after WW2, but the ships of the 60s still retained the basic design with sleek steam turbine driven hulls, which were not really necessary for ASW or AAW.

[Jacknola]

I suggest people give this subject some thought instead of firing off knee jerk responses ... OK, here are some facts Tucan vs P-51... firepower, cost, and "apples and oranges" my ... er ... foot!

Firepower: Re: two Tucano 50 cals have more capability than 6 P-51. BS!- and posting junk like that negatively effects the credibility of the entire post. Each Tucaon 50-cal has max cyclic rate of 1,100 R/m = 2200 r/m, with 450 rounds per gun. It doesnt' take a math wizard do this simple equation for the P-51: (6 P-51 50 cal MG) x (700 R/m) = 4,200 r/m ... and we then discover that the P-51 could deliver twice the rate of fire as the Tucano.

Cost: During wartime, a Mustang cost about 51,000 dollars,^[2] while many hundreds were sold postwar for the nominal price of one dollar to the American countries that signed the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, ratified in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. Don't tell me that the Tucano, which costs in the neigborhood to $10 Million/plane is a better platform simply for having a turbo prop. It would be childs play to fit a turbo prop, such as the Chinook engine, into a P-51 frame.

Apples and Orange: BS - the P-51 served COIN in a great many Central and South American air forces for decades, very sucessfully. They served in EXACTLY the same role that Super Tucano is designed to fill.

Truth is, the Tucano does not measure up to the P-51.. or A-1 Skyraider for that matter, in capbilities, and is not 10 times more expensive, but 200 times as expensive as the P-51... which performed COIN roles for decades in Central and S. America.

[Jacknola]

Now lets deal with the naval issue. Of course we will not compare the Fletcher class with the Arliegh Burke class. They are NOT the same class warship, the A-Bs being four times the displacment of the Fletchers. And I'm not suggesting using WWII weapons, only WWII platforms for modern weapons.

My point was to compare performance in tonnage classes that are in the same range.

Clearly K130 has problems... but the Fletchers seem to have outperformed every current Naval ship in their general tonnage range, and they were not regarded as the best DDs in the world at the end of the war.

Frankly I don't understand the dispsarity of speed, range, cost, length of time it takes to build a ship now compared to WW II. It seems to me that if we had a bunch of Fletcher hulls/packages today, upgrading their weapons systems to include missles etc.,would give a much cheaper, more capable platform.

[Arkansas Bo]

^^^ out of my lane military specs wise, but could it be that the costs of military equipment as with everything else is higher, because of inflation?

[LineDoggie]

Ironically, the roles were originally reversed.
The Mustang (as A-36) served as a dive bomber while the P-47 was initially used as a pure air combat fighter.

.

Actually your wrong, the Mustang I was designed as a Fighter for the RAF, NAA was contacted to build the P-40 for the RAF and the Dutch Kindleberger said they could build a better fighter than the Curtiss A/C. The A-36 Invader/Apache was an Allison engined Dive Bomber for the USAAF with dive brakes in the wings and 2 nose mounted .50's and designed for a totaly different role than the Mustang I / P-51.

[Skippy_Doolittle]

I don't understand the naval question. A WWII destroyer is heavy on crew, has an obscene RADAR profile and I won't even get into the sound signature. It basically would wash out most other ships with how loud she'd be.

Modern ships are far more better given the investment in technology. With missiles which can fire over the horizon or be 'handed off' to another platform; passive SONAR for the hunting of surface AND subsurface targets; fast rate of fire guns for anti-aircraft, piracy missions; lower crew complement yet better living standards; etc, modern ships are leaps and bounds about a WII destroyer.

The power plant can only make a shaft spin so fast before it is limited by the shaft, prop and mono hull design. A 30 knot war ship today can hit harder and farther than a 40 knot DD from WWII. Plus you wanna go fast in the water you pay for it in sound propagation (which is hard to discuss in this forum due to OPSEC).

[LineDoggie]

And again the Ship gun platforms arent comparable today. K&Y guns and racks wont sink any modern submarine.

Hand trained AA will not shoot down todays fast moving aircraft (except by freakish chance) and more importantly the aircrafts over the horizon missile launch capability no matter what class of ship/boat it is. Todays aircraft can stand off out of range of guns and still kill the ship. a More important comparison would be Armor of the ship. a Cruiser of WWII era is able to withstand hits that a cruiser of today would be fatally hit. ships today are lightweight superstructures as seen in the Falklands most will not take kindly to missiles or bombs like the older generations did.

[Skippy_Doolittle]

Great points LD.

[Jacknola]

Actually your wrong, the Mustang I was designed as a Fighter for the RAF, NAA was contacted to build the P-40 for the RAF and the Dutch Kindleberger said they could build a better fighter than the Curtiss A/C. The A-36 Invader/Apache was an Allison engined Dive Bomber for the USAAF with dive brakes in the wings and 2 nose mounted .50's and designed for a totaly different role than the Mustang I / P-51.

What I suggest doing is examine the use of the P-51 in the Air Forces of 30 countries, post WWII, post Korea, all the way into the 1970s... and see how they performed in a ground support/COIN role.... regardless of "what they were originally designed for." How they were used and how they performed is what is important.