MovieChat Forums > Flying Leathernecks (1951) Discussion > Bombing of ships

Bombing of ships

posted 17 years ago by Tim-O-T
6 replies | jump to latest

The archive footage used shows many aerial bombardments of enemy (?) ships. Most of the bombs miss the ships as evidenced by the splashes. Curious why these misses were used and not the hits.

[–] NewInMunich 17 years ago

Ships are hardly killed by direct hits. If you wanna fill a ship withsmoke, use bombs, if you want to fill it with water, use torpedoes...
And near misses create underwater pressure, that can make ships hulls crack (unarmored freighters) or stop sensitive turbines like in destroyers and make them dead in the water...

[–] bari2525 17 years ago

EXCELLENT post!!

Thanks for sharing that information! Very informative.

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. John Wayne

[–] shotgunnergauge5150 16 years ago

WoW,never knew that either.Thanx!

"Do not let thorns in your side become nails in your coffin".-Bruce Richard Bundy 10/2006

[–] dbrown172 14 years ago

It was called the "water hammer" effect. Water is not compressible, so the hydraulic pressure from the explosion of a near miss is transferred directly into the hull.

[–] Eric-1226 12 years ago

aerial bombardments of enemy (?) ships

I too had a question mark about that extended ship-bombing scene, namely, when they briefly showed an aircraft carrier burning and exploding, I'm almost positive that it was NOT a Japanese carrier, but was in fact stock footage of the USS Franklin, CV-13, which suffered severe bomb and fire damage off the coast of Kobe, Japan in March, 1945, having been hit by a single Japanese bomber with only two bombs. But those bombs, one of which exploded in the hangar deck, were enough to set off fires and explosions of many fully fueled and heavily armed planes.

[–] DeepFriedJello 7 years ago

I kept thinking how they needed a lot more aircraft to take out that convoy than the few that were on The Dukes island.