Captain Wheelgun wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:38 pm
If I had wanted to destroy the runway, would AP bombs be effective? Would it need shelling from the 12” guns on the cruisers offshore?
If you want to "destroy" a runway, I would go with a 10 Megaton ground burst.
The problem with runways as targets:
1. When talking about fighters (and when I say fighters in this rant, assume I also mean fighter/bombers and attack aircraft) , runways are usually 2-3 times as long as need for takeoff, so you need to cut it in multiple places. Often bomber and transport fields have runways longer than needed for take off and landing (especially under combat conditions). Some bomber bases have runways 5 times as long as needed for a fighter combat take off. Also, especially runways designed for bombers and heavy transports, are often twice or more as wide as needed for a fighter sized aircraft to use.
2. Other surfaces, such as taxi ways, parking aprons, even roads can be used for emergency runways. And if you have multiple runways at a base, your weapons lay down problem just effectively doubled, if not more.
3. I don't know about the capabilities of the Frog aircraft in your timeline, but you might notice that RAF Spitfires Hurricanes and Luftwaffe aircraft of the era your are writing about often operated off grass fields. During the 80's, Soviet fighters had "rough field" capability, which meant they could use the ground beside a runway if needed.
4. Under combat conditions, runways are fairly easily and quickly repaired if you are prepared for it. At least to levels suitable for combat conditions (i.e. peace time safety regulations and procedures are out the window).
5. In the early 1940s, "Precision Guided Munition" meant some sort of glide bomb, or Kamikazes. No laser or GPS guidance. And even if you postulate the German Electric Optical RF controlled weapons show up early, you are not going to have enough of them to effectively degrade a runway for any length of time. You basically have to drop enough dumb bombs so that it saturates the area to the point where random distribution works for you. Not something you are going to get from a couple of carriers. (Think the 1,000 plane four engine bomber raids of the RAF/USAAF).
6. There are no good runway denial weapons, despite the marketing hype of certain contractors.
The JP233 I mentioned earlier ended up making, what an acquittance of mine who did a ground survey of Iraqi airfields in the closing hours of DESERT STORM, "dimples" in the runway that were not effective in doing anything to Soviet designed fighters. The Bomb Damage Assessment profile of a JP233 strike was a bunch of small spots on a section of the runway, a large scorch mark where the Tornado impacted, and, if lucky, two ejection seats on the ground. Runway attack was how the RAF lost most of their Tornados in DS. And accomplished nothing of any significance.
The much vaunted Durandal is about as worthless. Make a few craters that are quickly patched, or just ignored as they used another part of the runway or other surface. The only effective use of it I am aware of is when the Iraqis used them against Iranian tankers during the Tanker War. The effect of Durandal on a runway is about the same as the AP bombs you suggested, except the dumb AP bombs are not going to be oriented to be even as minimally damaging as the Durandal.
7. The cruiser bombardment would make some nice craters that would take a while to fill in and patch, if you can put them in the right spots. Again, no precision/terminal guidance. You would have to saturate the area. Note that Henderson Field on Guadalcanal was regularly shelled by Japanese battleships and was never out of action for more than a few hours.
Bottom line, unless your objective is to degrade sortie generation for minutes to a few hours at most (i.e. keep them on the ground so they can't interfere with an operation in a specific time window) runways are lousy targets.
To put it another way, if you have enough munitions to effectively cut a runway in all the places you need, you get better results using them to hit aircraft parking areas/revetments/shelters, POL storage and pumping facilities, maintenance facilities, crew quarters, etc.
Probably way more than you wanted to read, but once you get me started...
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".