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Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 27, 2017 21:35:07 GMT -6
My father was on Lunga Point and his descriptions about how dark it was, was very enlightening. really? Yes, but not in 1942. His carrier had been torpedoed after Eastern Solomons so he and his air wing were kept in the Southwest Pacific. He eventually became part of CASU 11 and worked in the bomb dump at Lunga Point.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 27, 2017 21:46:00 GMT -6
rimbecano - we could have an interesting discussion about First Guadalcanal sometime; I think serious critical discussion of it is often derailed by Admiral Callaghan's good character and death in battle. Personally I think it was a demonstration of shocking incompetence from the theater commander down to Callaghan, not exceeded by Savo Island or Pearl Harbor. I'm not a great fan of Callaghan, the treatment of first Guadalcanal that I've read that was friendliest to Callaghan is Morrison's. Everything else has been sharply critical at best, excoriating at worst. I am not certain that the mistakes made were Callaghan's entirely. Scott had much more operational experience in the region with radar and had fought a battle. He was the logical choice, not Callaghan. However, there is reason to believe that Callaghan never realized what he was facing; a battlecruiser. Would that have changed his tactics? This is a difficult question to answer. But we can say that Callaghan did not necessarily lose the battle, but succeeded in his mission to protect the island from invasion and in the process, disable for eventual destruction a battlecruiser which was probably the only type of Japanese capital ship that had the range and speed to get to Guadalcanal and get out of the area by daylight. Even the Japanese in their reports gave credit to Callaghan for stopping the invasion of Guadalcanal by reinforcements by the IJA. Success in your mission is far more important than just winning a few battles.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 28, 2017 8:47:40 GMT -6
FYI: I've started a thread on the general history discussion forum. It's subject is the Naval Battles around Guadalcanal.
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Post by director on Jul 29, 2017 0:27:11 GMT -6
I'd like to be clear that i don;t accuse Callaghan of doing less than his best. I do fault a Navy leadership that put him in over the more-experienced Scott, and that repeatedly threw scratch formations into battle. Some of that might be justified by wartime necessity, but I reserve the right to doubt it.
A comparison of US Navy performance from First Guadalcanal to Tassafaronga to Empress Augusta Bay may be of interest. At Tassafaronga, a task force had been formed and given time to develop doctrine and train under night-fighting conditions... and then the Navy replaced Admiral Thomas Kincaid with Carlton Wright the day before the battle. One can assume they had no definite knowledge that the battle was to be fought, and it is arguable that Kincaid might have fared no better than his replacement. But Wright, inexperienced in night-fighting, fatally delayed letting his DDs 'off the leash' and got four heavy cruisers torpedoed.
At some point Dr Ballard will have to dive on Siebengurgen and try to count the shot-holes. Could take a while...
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Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 29, 2017 7:28:21 GMT -6
I'd like to be clear that i don;t accuse Callaghan of doing less than his best. I do fault a Navy leadership that put him in over the more-experienced Scott, and that repeatedly threw scratch formations into battle. Some of that might be justified by wartime necessity, but I reserve the right to doubt it. A comparison of US Navy performance from First Guadalcanal to Tassafaronga to Empress Augusta Bay may be of interest. At Tassafaronga, a task force had been formed and given time to develop doctrine and train under night-fighting conditions... and then the Navy replaced Admiral Thomas Kincaid with Carlton Wright the day before the battle. One can assume they had no definite knowledge that the battle was to be fought, and it is arguable that Kincaid might have fared no better than his replacement. But Wright, inexperienced in night-fighting, fatally delayed letting his DDs 'off the leash' and got four heavy cruisers torpedoed. At some point Dr Ballard will have to dive on Siebengurgen and try to count the shot-holes. Could take a while... At both First Guadalcanal and Tassafaronga our failure to pull the trigger on torpedoes gave the enemy the first shot which was fatal. Both commanders waited too long to fire. Couple this with our lack of knowledge about the type 93 torpedo simple put us in a poor position to fight night battles. Throughout the Guadalcanal campaign, we were always behind the curve on night encounters.
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Post by Enderminion on Jul 29, 2017 7:33:35 GMT -6
... hate to be fighting a Des Moines at night
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Jul 29, 2017 8:11:47 GMT -6
I'd hate to be fighting a Washington North Carolina at night. My favorite battleship growing up had always been (due to a beautiful picture in one of my books) the "powerful and broad-beamed South Dakota", but she sure didn't help much on 11/14. Washington ended up not needing her though.
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Post by Enderminion on Jul 29, 2017 8:17:15 GMT -6
wasn't the Washington a North Carolina?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Jul 29, 2017 8:25:36 GMT -6
wasn't the Washington a North Carolina? She was second in the class behind North Carolina.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Jul 29, 2017 8:30:38 GMT -6
At some point Dr Ballard will have to dive on Siebengurgen and try to count the shot-holes. Could take a while... I actually am surprised by the number of rounds that *didn't* penetrate. 600 yards seems to be the breaking point for the Austrian armor though, at 500 yards and closer I don't think anything was deflected. I am also surprised that Lombardia took a few minutes to open up. With so many hits, I hadn't realized that San Marco was almost wholly responsible. For completeness, this is the San Marco cruiser class. Not very complicated, and I drew it fairly hastily.
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Post by cv10 on Jul 29, 2017 8:31:48 GMT -6
wasn't the Washington a North Carolina? Yes, though the South Dakotas and North Carolina were fairly similar in design (one book I read described them as being being cousins. The South Dakotas had one funnel, the North Carolinas had two). The South Dakota-Class had better underwater protection, more modern turbines, and were about 50 feet shorter (12 meters).
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Post by cv10 on Jul 29, 2017 8:39:00 GMT -6
I'd hate to be fighting a Washington North Carolina at night. My favorite battleship growing up had always been (due to a beautiful picture in one of my books) the "powerful and broad-beamed South Dakota", but she sure didn't help much on 11/14. Washington ended up not needing her though. I think it was Samuel Elliot Morrison who put her contribution in the surface action with the Kirishima the best, as he essentially stated that she absorbed hits which might have otherwise damaged the Washington. On the other hand, South Dakota was credited with shooting down 26 aircraft at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and took a bomb hit that might have otherwise been used on an aircraft carrier. She also had the youngest American serviceman of World War II aboard her during this time (12 year old Calvin Graham), and her Chaplain at the time wrote a book about his time on the ship.
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Post by director on Jul 29, 2017 11:40:05 GMT -6
The North Carolinas, South Dakotas, Iowas, Montanas (unbuilt), Alaskas and the post-Pearl Harbor-rebuilt 'standard' battleships all show a strong family resemblance, which is not accidental. It is an asset to have the enemy unsure of what he's facing. I haven't broken out the reference books but I believe the armor scheme on the South Dakotas was felt to be unsatisfactory, hence the Iowa armor scheme looks more like that of North Carolina. I do know the South Dakotas were intended to be short and have a tight tactical radius. This made for a lot of design compromises - bigger engines to push a shorter, tubbier body and reduced crew spaces to name two. My opinion is that the secondary battery of these US battleships (20x5" for North Carolinas, South Dakotas, Iowas) was just about perfect, but 16" might have been an inch too big for the main armament given the treaty restrictions on hull size. The USN always trained hard for damage control, though, which in service mattered more than armor scheme (similar bomb and torpedo damage on pre- and post-Treaty battleships did roughly the same damage and no battleships were lost to battle damage). South Dakota battle damage. It's worse than Morrison let on. Powerful ships, though - with the most accurate fire control and the heaviest shells of any navy. I've taken a North Carolina 'one-on-one' with Bismarck and 'Showboat' wins about three of four. Willis Lee's gunnery school was superb. His spotters thought Washington got (as I remember) 9 hits of 16" size on Kirishima, but examination of the wreckage shows maybe double that. South Dakota's fate at Second Guadalcanal just goes to show that warships have a lot of Achilles Heels, and even minor things can ripple' into major damage. When she lost electrical power her radar went down and then her crew lost their night vision - and lost Washington - and so wound up taking hits and not being able to reply. Both American BBs were fortunate not to be torpedoed, as all of the screening destroyers were. I strongly recommend "The US Navy in WW2" as it contains first-person accounts written during or immediately after some of the major battles, by reporters or Navy personnel. It may not give the true-and-accurate story, but it does vividly tell what the participants thought was happening.
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Post by cv10 on Jul 29, 2017 12:05:31 GMT -6
I think Morrison might have actually said "crippled the Washington". He made the comment in his book Two-Ocean War, which I had borrowed from the library, so I couldn't check. The understatement was on my part. I do own the book written by the South Dakota's Chaplain (James V Claypool) and he describes how badly the ship got knocked about. He was in the Sick Bay and a badly injured sailor asked if they had won, and he noted that when he made his reply "Yes Johnny, we did", he "didn't know if we had, or if the ship was about to founder" So here's a question: from what I've read about the battle, USN leadership was leery of sending battleships into the rather confined waters near Guadalcanal due to the high risk of submarines, destroyers, and long-lance torpedoes. Did Halsey order Lee to take the two battleships because there was nothing else left to send?
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Post by theexecuter on Jul 29, 2017 12:30:34 GMT -6
Yes, the landing needed to succeed and those battlewagons were the last ships available to prevent the bombardment of the airfield (which was allowing supplies and reinforcements to be unloaded during the day).
It's a hell of a campaign to study. Operation shoe string...
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