So we are putting a several decade old musuem piece against a top-of-the-line aircraft carrier and you complain it is biased against the Nimritz
Its like two dopers facing off against each other, except one is decades old and the other isn’t allowed any cites.
The dole queue.
Actually you are making an assumption not in the O.P.
It stipulates merely an “Iowa class” battleship, and not necessarily an actual Iowa class that was actually built. It seems to leave room that a new Iowa class could be the ship that faces off against the Nimitz.
Nor does it say when this challenge takes place–maybe it was 1961 when Iowas were under 20 years old.
if it’s today’s museum pieces, they wouldn’t even be underway, so it’s a non-starter if the Iowa class is dead in the water. If she’s not sea/battleworthy, then of course Nimitz probably wins, or at least escapes destruction and it’s a tie.
Knock it off, Dissonance, or take it to the Pit.
That would make the Nimitz a negative fourteen years old… it wouldn’t even be a gleam in the SecNav’s eye yet. 
My bad, I was thinking of Enterprise.
Ok, 1975 then.
An “Aircraft” Carrier without aircraft?
The purpose of an “Aircraft” Carrier is the air control.
That is like saying
Okay, Put the NE Patriots against the #1 run defense and lets see who wins. Oh and Brady cant pass the ball…:rolleyes:
Your point is very insightful, has never been made before, and after reading it I have decided to re-evaluate my life.
Credit here for the “serious damage” is given to the destroyers.
“Sprague now knew his small, outnumbered, and outgunned force was in dire straits, and he
knew he had to quickly decide what to do. To the east of Taffy 3 was a rain squall that could
provide Taffy 3 some temporary shelter. He also had to throw every weapon at his disposal at the
oncoming Japanese ships. Sprague was not in an optimistic mood that his force would survive as
he made some critically important decisions.
With the Japanese ships just 15 miles away, Sprague immediately ordered Taffy 3 eastward
toward the rain squall. He launched every aircraft he had to attack the Japanese with any weapon
whether it be machine guns, bombs, or just fake attacks with no armament at all. Using the wind
to their advantage, the destroyers poured smoke into the sky that blinded the Japanese lookouts
from clearly seeing Taffy 3. Realizing that time was so precariously short, he called for help in
plain English. Nevertheless, the Japanese rapidly closed the range and moved in for the kill.
The rain squall and the destroyers’ smoke hid Taffy 3 for a short while and gave Sprague
time to organize whatever defensive maneuvers he had left. With his aircraft attacking the
onrushing Japanese from every direction and increasingly causing confusion among the Japanese
senior commanders, Sprague ordered his destroyers to attack and turned Taffy 3 to the south and
then in a southwesterly direction to place itself between the Japanese and the Leyte beaches.
The destroyers Johnston, Hoel, and Heerman steamed through the carriers’ formation and
attacked the oncoming Japanese ships with gunfire and torpedoes. The destroyer escorts Samuel
B. Roberts, Raymond, Dennis, and John C. Butler joined the fray. Using tactics that could only
lead to their destruction, the small ships fired everything they had and inflicted serious damage
on the Japanese. The ferocity of their attacks made the Japanese believe they were being attacked
by cruisers instead of destroyers. Since the Japanese had never seen escort carriers before, Kurita
reasoned that the Americans would never sacrifice destroyers in such a desperate way unless the
carriers were the cream of the American navy – the fast fleet carriers of the Third Fleet.
The frantic, suicidal assaults also caused the Japanese formation to crumble. The heavy
Cruiser Chikuma turned away from the attack and headed eastward. The battleships Yamato and
Nagato turned northward away from the battle, and since Kurita was in Yamato, his flagship,
taking Kurita with them. The Japanese commander had now been removed from the battle and
lost command and control over his forces.
Confused and becoming more disoriented, Kurita ordered his fleet to retreat. Sprague could
not believe his eyes. His command had been saved. But, this was not without costs. The
destroyers Hoel and Johnston and the destroyer-escort Samuel B. Roberts gallantly sank.
Johnston’s commander, Commander Ernest Evans, went down with her and was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor. The escort carrier Gambier Bay, full of holes and pummeled by
relentless Japanese salvoes, sank.”
PDF!
“Moderate” damage caused by both destroyers and Taffy planes.
"While Nishimura steamed to defeat, Kurita pushed on to what should have been a glorious victory. Just before 7 a.m. the opposing forces sighted each other. Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Spragues’s Taffy 3 had a meager force of six slow escort carriers and seven fast destroyers to battle 24 warships grouped around battleships.
In an amazing morning-long action, Sprague’s force, assisted by the planes of Taffys 1 and 2, so bewildered and savaged Kurita that he withdrew, having inflicted moderate casualties. In the Battle off Samar, Center Force suffered five cruisers lost or severely damaged. Dazzled by the performance of the American ships, Kurita overestimated their size and feared Halsey would cut off his line of withdrawal. After steaming aimlessly off Samar for several hours, Kurita retreated. In a harrowing postlude to the surface ation the escort carriers endured the first series of kamikaze attacks."
An article written in 1954 by the very man responsible for allowing Kurita to reach the taffies by not leaving even a single destroyer to cover the northern approach to provide warning. You’ll also note that Oldendorf didn’t report he was low on ammunition, Sprague did.
Who should I believe, my lying eyes or your still unnamed OTHER BOOKS that you say you’ve read but are unable to cite?
I’ve addressed all of your cites, even pointing out to you that they contradict you, not support you.
He didn’t. He said Sprague reported it.
Because he wrote the US Navy’s History of Operations, and Oldendorf never thought he was unable to engage Kurita due to low ammunition.
Because shelling the beaches was only using up his HC rounds, not his AP rounds and you keep acting as if Surigao Straits was some major engagement. It wasn’t. The only major ships to make it past the gauntlet to be pummeled by Oldendorf were the battleship Yamashiro and the heavy cruiser Mogami which were both quickly dispatched. It was hardly a major drain on Oldendorf’s ammunition.
This is so full of straw it’s a fire hazard. Halsey was supposed to have left at least something, anything, a single destroyer to guard the northern approach. He left the impression that he had detached his fast battleships as he was supposed to have done to guard the northern approach, not taken them with him. Instead he left nothing behind to even provide early warning of Kurita’s approach.
I’ve addressed your points already, and you continue to repeat them as if they haven’t. What would you call that?
“If he had kept on going, he would have had an excellent chance of destroying a large number of our vessels – people involved in the landing, and he should certainly have no problem whatever with the little Kaiser aircraft carriers (escort carriers intended primarily for antisubmarine escort duty and for transporting planes between theaters). He could have destroyed about a dozen of those. And he could have disrupted the whole operation.”
Captain Joseph J. Rochefort, USN.
So, are you saying Sprague made it up?
Why would Sprague do so?
I note your sudden shift to ‘serious’ damage. Whatever happed to ‘some’? I don’t know what your trying to prove with this cite, care to expound? Are you trying to imply that the damage was done by destroyers and not aircraft? If so, this article falls woefully short of doing so; you’ll note it doesn’t address any of the losses of Japanese ships nor attribute the causes of damage.
Well now it’s ‘moderate’ damage and caused by both destroyers and aircraft. Again, I don’t understand the point of this cite, it doesn’t identify any of the damage Kurita sustained much less what caused it.
No, I’m saying it was erroneous information; the erroneous information that you are repeating. Oldendorf never said he was low on ammunition, Sprague did. Mind you Sprague was rather pissed off to be blindsided by both Kurita and Halsey. Halsey had left Sprague with the impression that the northern passage wasn’t being left wide open for Kurita to pass through unmolested and unreported to suddenly arrive in Sprague’s lap.
"One draw back at Leyte was the lack of training received by the escort carrier pilots. Although the CVE s carried some armor-piercing bombs and torpedoes, they were not adequately stocked nor were their pilots adequately trained in warship-attack tactics.
Although the CVE’s were designated as aircraft carriers," the term is misleading. They were hardly a match in comparison with the larger light and heavy carriers of the fleet. One-third the size of the heavy carriers, they were cramp, unarmored, thin-hulled vessels, unable to launch and recover aircraft with the ease of the larger carriers."
The point here is that the destroyers are doing the damage, not the Taffy’s planes, like you insist.
I long ago admitted slight to moderate damage, and pointed out conflicts amongst the sources. My points do not revolve around exactly how much damage was sustained by Kurita. My point does resolve around whether he would have contiued had he known for certain what his enemy was. he thought his enemy was Halsey with capital ships and he turned around because he thought could not complete his mission of destroying the landings if he first had to go through the 3rd fleet. It was not because he thought his damages were too great at that point, as you claim. He still had more than enough fire power to complete the mission.
I would use the term “serious” to mean that he had little to no combat capability left. This was not the case. Because he lost (two some sources, three in others) two or three cruisers out of 10, with four battleships remaining, his unit was still capable of doing quite serious damage. That’s why I call the loss of even three cruisers “moderate.”
Of course, I have pointed out how the many different sources vary, but of course, for some inexplicable reason, you insist only one souyrce could possibly be correct. The point is that the historians differ on how effective the Taffys’ planes were. Some say it ws mostly destroyers doing the damage and the planes were little more than a distraction; Kurita didn’t know those planes (for the most part) did not have effective ordnance. So he had to take them seriously as though they did.
I can concede it is erroneous information. The point is if it is Oldendorf’s error, the error might continue and therefore result in different commands from Oldendorf than he might have made if he thought he had sufficient information.
What is the source of Sprague’s mistake, and how can you prove Oldendorf wasn’t the origin of the error?
Counting the shells afterwards is not persuasive to me, nor is speculation on how one mistakenly misplaces thousand pound shells. War breeds confusion, and that is the lens you must view these questions through, and not the perspective of an armchair warrior who analyzes at his lesiure.
Get used to it.
The Iowa could lob 1,900 to 2,700 pound, 16" projectiles 43,000 yards or 24 miles. That’s well within your 10 mile starting point.
Turned broadside at the start of the conflict, the Iowa would have hammered the Nimitz with 9 rounds with every salvo. If the Nimitz hadn’t launched any aircraft by the time the first salvo arrived, it wasn’t going to launch anything except lifeboats.
Extend the starting point to 40 miles or more (time enough for a first alert, battle stations, launch Harpoon anti-ship missiles and aircraft) and the Nimitz wins hands down. It would be the Iowa’s hands that went down - with the ship.
It’s not something I’m insisting, it’s a fact. One I’ve cited for you, and a fact that none of your cites contradict.
Care to point out where? You continued to say ‘some’ only noting that some sources said moderate. Now you provide a cite that calls it serious.
What mission? To suicide his force against the taffies and Oldendorfs battle line? If so then yes, he could have done that. I have never said it was only the damage he had taken that made him turn, read what I have written again. He turned because he was taking heavy losses and his force had become badly disordered in the fight, something you continue to ignore. His own flagship, the Yamato, upon which you pin so much had become separated from his other ships evading torpedoes. Kurita had lost tactical control of the fight.
This is just silly; you can’t even get simple facts straight. That three of his heavy cruisers had been sunk isn’t a fact in dispute; any source you find that says two is simply wrong. You’re also wrong on Kurita’s strength; he did not have ten cruisers. There’s an Order of Battle here with Kurita’s force as it existed during the battle off Samar, not as it existed before losing ships at Sibuyan Sea and to submarine attacks. You’ll note he only had 6 heavy cruisers at the start of the fight. Let’s take a look at what kind of shape his three heavy cruisers that weren’t sunk were in after the Battle of Samar:
Look at that, how odd, Tone was driven away by air attacks. Take note that all three of his heavy cruisers still afloat had taken damage; the Kumano had even lost her bow to a torpedo. It’s not just ships sunk that are part of Kurita’s losses. Kurita’s force had taken heavy losses and was badly disordered. If he continued on, his force would have remained in disarray and continued to take losses to the taffies. His ships would have run into Oldendorf’s battle line piece meal. Had he stopped to reorganize his force he would have remained under air attack from aircraft from the escort carriers, would have had to let the surface ships of the taffies break contact with him and would have to spend a good deal of time doing so; not a very smart thing to be wasting with his force in such danger.
This is again a fire hazard it’s so full of straw. You’re inventing facts by continuing to insist that the taffies planes didn’t have effective ordnance, even now weaseling by adding ‘for the most part’. You’re entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts. It isn’t in dispute how effective the aircraft were. None of the sources you’ve given ascribe the source of damage to Kurita’s ships one way or the other.
It wasn’t Oldendorf’s error. Oldendorf never said he didn’t have the ammunition to engage Kurita. I don’t know how many different ways I can say this for you.