"Usefulness of WW2 recon aircraft" Topic

So. . . many of the aircraft carried by cruisers and battleships in WW2 were armed with guns, and capable of carrying bombs & depth charges.

Were these aircraft ever used effectively for combat purposes, or was their armament largely irrelevant during the war?

I don't recall too many accounts (any really) of them being used in combat, even if they could carry weapons.

A very small number were used to spot for long-range gunnery from the ships.

The time to recover the aircraft was an issue, since if in contact with the enemy, no vessel would want to stop dead in the water to recover the pilot. Of course, the pilot could ditch the aircraft, or bail out, but recovery by a ship could be rather dicey, and even smaller escort vessels wouldn't want to be stopping to pick up a pilot, or the aircrew.

About the only ones that seem to be somewhat useful, and actually used, were the catapult Hurricanes carried on some merchant vessels, which were used to ward off the FW-200's and other recon planes the Germans used to track and bomb convoys during WWII. Again, bailing out, or ditching was required, if the vessels were outside of flight range to a coastal base.

Japanese Petes and Rufes were active all through the slot, patrolling as fighters. They claimed occasional unsuspecting or careless victims, including a PT-boat. Rufes fought in the Aleutians also.

In the Japanese navy they were the main surface search aircraft. The aircraft on the carriers were not used for seach missions very often. At Midway all of the seach for the US carriers was done by aircraft from the Japanese cruisers.

Tom

For the US, the float planes were a greater fire threat than a combat asset and were, where possible, off loaded or flown off before combat.

And during the Normandy Invasion they were offloaded and stored. The US Navy then used Spitfires and Seafires instead. Robert

In the Pacific, spotter planes were used extensively to hunt targets during landings for the big guns. There was some use from German ships for finding merchant targets for the commerce raiders. The Japanese used them quite a bit as noted above.

That about covers it – the Japanese were the only country to seriously use their seaplanes for combat, as well as using them more extensively than most nations for recce. It's worth noting that a fair bit of the combat use wasn't actually from ships, though, as they also used seaplanes from bases in forward areas, which nobody else really did.

The allies looked at it, and developed the Wildcatfish (a Wildcat floatplane, obviously) but it never made it past prototype – by the time it was developed it was realised there was no real need for it – the seabees had demonstrated that they could get a forward airstrip in place in ridiculously quick time, removing the utility of seaplane bases, while any shipboard use was also superfluous as the escort carriers were starting to come off of the slips, with aircraft offering superior performance to any floatplane.

Dom.

Excellent. Thanks!

A floatplane version of the Swordfish sank a U Boat during the Narvik campaign. It also dropped bombs on the German ships.
German Arado's would shoot up the bridge of some ships if they tried to radio a warning. I dont know how they would be quite that accurate, but one source claims they shot the wireless aerials away. That would be good shooting!

Mostly the were used for their intended purpose, namely reconaissance. But where possible they some types also carried out ASW patrols. In the Pacific the recon role was pretty much taken over by the carriers, so rather than waste a lot of aircraft and pilots, the float planes of other ships were used on ASW patrol around the task force. A role that was somewhat in advance of the role helicopters play today.

Oh, one bizarre one that I should've thought to mention was that the Supermarine Walrus was used occasionally as a dive bomber in north Africa….

"The time to recover the aircraft was an issue, since if in contact with the enemy, no vessel would want to stop dead in the water to recover the pilot. Of course, the pilot could ditch the aircraft, or bail out, but recovery by a ship could be rather dicey, and even smaller escort vessels wouldn't want to be stopping to pick up a pilot, or the aircrew."

At least in the US Navy it was not necessary to stop the ship to recover aircraft. Instead they deployed a large mat (looks like cargo netting to me) next to the ship. The pilot would taxi up onto the mat while the ship was moving, the crew would drop the hook to the pilot, who would attach it to the plane and then they would be taken aboard by the crane.

I don't know if other navies had similar procedures. At the very least, one would think the pilot could taxi next to the ship at the same speed, so the crane could grab them.

Dom….the Australian Navy did the same in New Guinea!

Mserafin. Several navies practiced recovery while under way. The usual idea was for the aircraft to taxi up alongside the ship (which had reduced speed) and hook onto the crane, which then lifted it clear of the water. The ship could then increase speed while the crane brought the aircraft on board and it was stowed.

Weather could be a problem of course. I think….if I recall correctly….that an Arado from the Bismark was damaged during such a recovery.

Narvik

hunting the Bismarck – the recce planes were shore based tho

OK, so to be less of a blivet, I looked up a pertinent example. First the trivial during OPERATION TORCH: "A recently developed wrinkle in amphibious warfare was tried out on this day, with great success. That was the bombing of tank columns from the air with anti-submarine depth charges, whose fuses had been altered to detonate on impact. SAVANNAH's five SOC-3s <i.e. Seagulls> averaged over eight hours' flying time daily, dropped 14 325-lb. and 35 100-lb. depth charges on shore targets, as well as keeping anti-submarine patrol. The effect of a depth charge on a tank was devastating. It did not destroy the shell, but reduced the interior and all its contents to scrap and powder." (Operations in North African Waters, Morison, p.127)
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In the south -- around Safi -- the SANTEE pilots were so spectacularly ineffective ["…SANTEE, making fewer combat sorties than any [of] the four carriers, suffered almost half of our total plane losses. Twenty one out of thirty one that she carried were lost or missing by 11 November; only one of them, possibly, by enemy action. (p.150) and "The final exploit of the SANTEE pilots was to destroy a dozen aircraft on the Marrakech field 11 November, after the armistice had been declared." (p.152)] that, "Admiral Davidson, not impressed by the carrier plane performance, relied on the [float] planes belonging to NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA for close air support missions; and it was one of the flagship's SOCs that bombed the French submarine MEDUSE and drove her ashore near Cape Blanco." (p.151) Gotta love Morison for documenting this level of dysfunction when writing an official history!