Make smoke

If your ship is buried in a cloud of smoke it is harder to see what is happening on deck. it's one of those cases of "we know that they know we are here, but at least we can prevent them from seeing that we just threw the wheel hard a starboard, or put the engines full astern for an abrupt stop"

A ship does not steer as would a car, rudder hard over a warship will move sideways through the water losing way as the screws power it forward its hair raising stuff to some. Taffy 3 the destroyers and destroyer escorts made smoke as they moved in to attack a superior Japanese force to protect their carriers, they themselves were visible if I recall. Not sure how it could be tested?

Not sure how your return servicemen/heroes would view the Battle off Samar depicted by 4 suv's?

Smoke is still used today. It prevents that you can properly aim. You can't even tell the distance properly so most of the time you simply miss. Even a tank is an awful small target when it comes to battle distances of the weapons. Also when you can see your targets, you know when you had hit or by how much you had missed and can stop shooting dead targets or correct your aim. With smoke blocking your view, you can only spray the cloud randomly and shoot at dead targets over and over which reduces the chance to hit a real target.

When it comes to radar guided smart bombs, the smoke doesn't matter but no country in the world is wealthy enough to fling million-dollar-a-piece ammo at individual soldiers, tanks and vehicles! And they can't tell the difference between dead targets and intact targets either!



That's simple. RADAR is line of sight only. It's not better than a guy with a good pair of binoculars except that you get a pretty accurate range using RADAR. Neither RADAR nor a guy with binoculars can look past the horizon!

But what you can spot behind the horizon is the smoke of the boilers which is a vast column of smoke which can be seen long before the ship it belongs to comes over the horizon to be seen. The faster the ship advances, the bigger the smoke column.
A slow moving patrolling ship (in this case the Japanese) has not much of a smoke column revealing it from great distances, the advancing ships do have one. And this even works at night since the smoke masks the stars.
This is the main reason why the US Navy went nuclear as much as possible - no smoke even running a lot faster than on classic oil boilers or diesel engines. Designing and maintaining a nuclear reactor safe costs a lot more than any oil a conventional oil boiler powered ship could consume.

I was wondering how long it would take to catch that.

the verdict was that the dust obscured vision, but advanced (infrared) sensors were not blinded.

The first 'other than light' vision systems were infrared scopes in the 1950's, which were not used because of smoke screens but so military units could continue to fight once the sun went down. These used large spotlights that emitted in the UR spectrum, but to anyone with a detector this was just as bad as using a massive spotlight as you gave your position away.

At sea smoke screens have been used at least as long as ships have been using guns - and were possibly used even earlier. By the 1600's it was well known that a ship that had the weather-gage* had a significant advantage once battle was joined**. The reason was that the thick smoke created by the guns moved from the ship that had the weather gage to the ship that didn't, which made return fire less accurate as it was harder to estimate range, speed and heading.
Smoke from smoothbore cannon was so thick it was often impossible to see more than the topgallant masts.

(*Having the Weather gage meant to be upwind)
(**The other advantage was that the ship with the weather gage had the option to accept or decline battle, and once better signalling was in use Admirals such as Nelson could direct their ships to concentrate attacks on parts of an enemy line. Which is what he did at Trafalgar.)

snip


["That's simple. RADAR is line of sight only. It's not better than a guy with a good pair of binoculars except that you get a pretty accurate range using RADAR. Neither RADAR nor a guy with binoculars can look past the horizon!

But what you can spot behind the horizon is the smoke of the boilers which is a vast column of smoke which can be seen long before the ship it belongs to comes over the horizon to be seen. The faster the ship advances, the bigger the smoke column.
A slow moving patrolling ship (in this case the Japanese) has not much of a smoke column revealing it from great distances, the advancing ships do have one. And this even works at night since the smoke masks the stars.
This is the main reason why the US Navy went nuclear as much as possible - no smoke even running a lot faster than on classic oil boilers or diesel engines. Designing and maintaining a nuclear reactor safe costs a lot more than any oil a conventional oil boiler powered ship could consume."]


I believe post coal fired ships of the WW2 era used furnace fuel oil FFO and had systems to filter the soot from the smoke. Engine room staff had to request permission from the bridge to "blow soot" which was different to "making smoke". It was not advantageous around dawn to announce your presence before the horizon had been surveyed for any threats.

Is a WW2 Royal Navy propaganda movie but the ships are real and you will note most are not making discernible smoke.
Just after the disastrous ABDA operations and the Battle of the Java sea and before the battles of the Coral Sea there was another naval battle that was inconclusive with the USN obtaining a tactical victory by denying the IJN from fulfilling its objective.
Battle of Komandorski Island: March 26, 1943
www.microworks.net/pacific/battles/kommandorski_islands.htm
by by Vincent P. O'Hara
He states
"When a lookout on Inazuma reported a mast astern off her port quarter, he assumed it would be the other element of his convoy. Once united, the entire force would make a run for Attu, and deliver much needed materials.

The sharp-eyed Japanese lookout once again got the jump on American radar. It wasn’t until a half hour later, at 0730, around an hour before dawn, when radar on McMorris’ flagship light cruiser Richmond and Coughlan independently detected ships north of the American picket line."
The superior Japanese force turned back and the badly needed supplies did not make it through.

No it would give away any advantage you had by giving your position away. As in the battle link provided the making of smoke was undertaken to protect one of the US Cruisers according to the account some how the boilers got put out due a mix up in the pipe work. Not sure about that other accounts do not mention it.

And said further

When you find a naval engagement circa 1939-1945 that fits your hypothetical criteria please provide a link as I would be interested in reading such an account. As said elsewhere I am not a naval historian but growing up naval history was a passion. So it is possible, but highly improbable in my opinion, that a fleet commander would make voluminous amounts of smoke as a subterfuge and give his position away to not only the opposing fleet but any lurking enemy submarine, other surface units or aircraft patrols.
I am modifying this post to include a Utube video of a US warship of the WW2 era