Ok: other question: which advantage has a FAC compared to a land-based fighter-bomber? The latter is much faster, a smaller target, can have a similar range, needs less crew, the quality of its offensive armament can be similar etc.

Both can be only used in coastal areas, therefore cannot replace blue water warships.

Meanwhile, all but a VERY few select navies will find their ship SAMs being outranged by SSMs. So, how does this disqualify (only) FACs?

FACs usually do not have sufficient means to defend themselves against incoming SSMs – and usually also no means to defend themselves against short range helicopter attacks. Frigate-sized warships can have the weapons and sensors to defend themselves.

Very nice photos! Thank you for sharing!

Plenty of examples – for starters, threat of torpedo attack by small craft was a decisive factor in Jutland.

Why does Jutland should show that torpedo boats (which were actually destroyers, not FAC!) are successful equalizers? How many battleships they have sunk or heavy damaged? None (except of the old battleship Pommern at night at the retreat of the German fleet). How they then influence the battle decisively?!

Such argument would make sense only if you can demonstrate that some other ship class would have made a difference

I have explicitly stated that in modern warfare usually those wins, which have a better industrial capacity. Therefore there is no option for a weak navy to win against a strong, well funded one – doesn’t matter which ships they bought. But the idea of an FAC as an equalizer is that it can help a weak navy to win – which is an illusion.

Wrong, biggest single Allied loss associated with Overlord was caused by S-boats (Exercise Tiger).

But the S-boats did not prevent the landing, they do not even endangered it.

You have stated that FACs were able to prevent strong navies to control coastal waters – obviously they were not in the case of Operation Overlord!

You appear to puzzle the use of FACs with their success :confused:

neither of those conducted any serious manouvres againgst the enemy forces but were mostly picked by the enemy air, off guard and sunked down.

Which is too be expected for FACs – does not matter how modern, well equipped or well used tactically a FAC is. It would have no chance against a stronger navy with bigger ships (and therefore much better sensors).

That is just completely absurd, it “worked out” number of times. Motor torpedo boats sank lots of ships in both World Wars, including front line warships.

They were never the kind of equalizer they were thought to be, they were never successful in a fight against first class navy. For sure, there were some singular successes, but they did not change anything. They were strategically meaningless, in most cases not even tactically relevant.

In most cases they were decimated, especially the modern missile armed FACs in fights against first class navies. Modern weapon systems can much easier target fast boats than during both World Wars.

Well, they did have some first-class patrol boats, things like Super Dvoras, and they proved quite vulnerable against swarm attacks.

This are not first-class warships, but small boats armed with small guns. They have no missiles, no sophisticated detection and fire control systems – the Super Dvoras are obviously much weaker than the average FAC. Therefore these fights between small boats are certainly not an argument for the value of small boats (FAC) against modern warships 😉

Weaker navies are often decimated, regardless of what ship types they have. Argument that “this and this event proves FACs are useless” automatically presumes that with larger, better armed warship the end result would have been different. But that is obviously absurd, so what those anecdotes are meant to prove?

That the strategy using such kind of ships is no option for weaker navies.

It is for sure correct that a significantly weaker navy has no option against a strong one anyway – in modern times usually those win, who had a stronger economy behind them.

But you also referred to the old debatte, if there are weapon systems, which could be useful for weak, not well founded navies to fight against first class navies.

The first such type was the Rendel gunboat and some small protected cruisers armed with big guns, later torpedoboats were in favour, than FACs armed with torpedoes, later with missiles. It never worked out.