If you need to fill 100,000 spots and have 200,000 recruits you can fill everything and them some with no problem.
Indeed, when we look at WWI and WWII humans seemed to be an abundant and disposable commodity. In WWII Japan and Germany were feeling the pinch at the very end but the writing was on the wall by then. Russia sacrificed an astounding number of people and it didn’t seem to fuss about them too much.
tl;dr Humans in war are a cheap commodity from a strictly accounting sense.
I doubt they lacked the sailors to man the WWI-era battleships since they were still in commission at the time. I would think it would come down more to a question of where, at that stage in the war, such ships were considered to provide the greatest utility (or impose the least liability).
It seems conceivable to me that, early on in the Pacific theater at least, these slower ships would have been more of a hindrance—or at least relatively more of one than they would be in the Atlantic—given that they’d need to be escorted just like any other capital ship.
Parking some old battleships around Guadalcanal, in the approaches to the landing area might have been nice, for instance, but, without knowing or really caring to delve too much into the answer myself, it’s possible there was more that went into the decision to use cruisers and destroyers, as opposed to older battleships, to guard the approaches to Guadalcanal:
How many escorts do you provide them?
Where did those escorts come from?
How do you feel about not having those escorts available to escort the carriers instead?
For that matter, what’s the depth of water in these narrow approaches between islands, since it seems we can only fit a single column of cruisers in?
If it’s still deep enough in places for battleships, can we safely get a line, or even a couple of them in with enough room to maneuver?
Do any of these older battleships have radar installed? (not that the USN knew WTF to do with radar yet, as Savo Island and other early engagements demonstrated)
Have their AA systems been upgraded to match the air threat posed by the IJN?
With all those question in mind, then consider what you aren’t able to use those battleships for in the European theater now. Is there anything going on in the European theater that might also be fit from battleships, and where maybe the logistical concerns and the speed concerns imposed by these aging WWI-era ships won’t be quite as severe, perhaps due to shorter transits and greater proximity to allied ports? And maybe even “like” vessels that they could operate together with, those providing a certain economy of scale that may not be so available in the Pacific?
None of this is to say you’re wrong, (again, I’m not interested in doing the research one way or the other—because it would have to be extensive, though I’ll admit to having already formed an opinion in the back of my mind based off what I do knew about the circumstances globally) only that it’s a high level problem that goes far beyond just a narrow focus on Guadalcanal by itself, as if nothing else is going on and we don’t have to worry about how to distribute forces globally.
Ships didn’t hang around Iron Bottom Sound during the day. Ships on both sides were vulnerable to air attack in daylight. Old battleships didn’t have the speed to put distance between themselves and enemy airfields when the sun came up.
ASL_2.0, those are good questions.
Both sides were initially reluctant to commit battleships to those waters, but did so later. Iron bottom sound is deep and wide enough, but the geography allows destroyers to get close. Most of the combat was at less than 5 miles, partially negating a battleship’s advantages.
The USN mostly kept Guadalcanal formations in a single line for command and control purposes.
I’m not proposing that an old BB be added to the Guadalcanal invasion forces. Rather, an old BB would replace 2 or 3 cruisers. The New Mexico class BBs were hanging around Pearl Harbor for most of 1942. They had radar and AA very similar to that carried by the newer cruisers in the fleet. Imagine sending one to Guadalcanal in place of cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes. It would use the same escorts provided to the historical cruisers.
The Japanese didn’t have an airfield nearby. It took hours for bombers from Rabaul to reach Guadalcanal. Allied transports were sometimes caught by Rabaul-based bombers, in Ironbottom Sound during daylight, as they were unloading troops and supplies. Not many of them were hit. An old BB would be gone by then.
While it’s tempting to simply dismiss them as saying it shouldn’t have been a problem, they are interesting problems.
For manpower, the peacetime staffed the ships with only half the number of men, counting on building up to full strength in the event war broke out. The US traditionally didn’t have a large standing peacetime army, but a core group of officers and NCOs, and would recruit soldiers to increase the size. It wasn’t until 1940 that there was a peacetime draft. You can’t build a large navy overnight so the compromise was to staff the ships at half levels.
One author said that the Japanese did the US a favor by sinking the WWI era battleships as it freed up thousands of experienced sailors to be transferred to others ships and allowing them to operate at full capacity. By Guadalcanal though, that would not have been a problem.
Unlike modern weapons, dumb bombs and shells were easily manufactured so that shouldn’t have been a problem.
The interesting question would have been oil. There problem wasn’t the fuel itself, but the oilers. While the US had undertaken a large expansion of fighting ships, the number of axillary ships had not been increased yet.
In Guadalcanal, inadequate fuel logistics were still a major concern. Fuel and support depots had been set up in Tonga and New Caledonia to support the operation, but they were 1,300 and 500 miles away, respectively, from the action on Guadalcanal.
Combinedfleet.com (by the authors of Shattered Sword) have an interesting theory about by the Japanese didn’t use their BB to come down and put more pressure on Guadalcanal.
The linked article shows calculations for how much fuel the various ships use at different speeds and why employing their battleships more would have done more damage, they argue that the lack of oil could have been one of the considerations.
Back to the questions posed by LSLGuy. Of these three factors, the one with the greatest restraint seems to be oil. Later in the war when more oilers were available then it wouldn’t have been an issue, but the US was still short of these supply ships in 1942.
Another major consideration is that longstanding naval doctrine had been turned on its head on December 7th and it took time to define new approaches. Nimitz rightfully benched the older battleships unlit much later in the war. Adm. King kept pushing Nimitz to use the BB more, but Nimitz really wasn’t enthusiastic. That again, was later in the war, and Guadalcanal was still early.
You can’t just ‘park’ a battleship in a hostile zone in case you need it. Battleships were huge consumers of fuel oil, food, etc. Sending one across the ocean means maintaining a steady convoy of supplies. And those ships can give away positions, are subject to submarine attack, etc.
If you reqd the account of the South Dakota and the Washington, two Battleships that saw action in WWII, you start to realize just how diminished their capacity was. Hit the rudder of a battleship, and it’s dead. If a carrier spots a battleship, the battleship is in big trouble. And even though a battleship is hard to sink, the superstructure is vulnerable (guns, radar, etc). You don’t have to sink a battleship to render it ineffective - you just have to blind it and occupy the crews with fires and such. Or disable the screws or rudder and then dispatch it at your leisure.
All good points, but 3 cruisers had about 2.5 times the crew of an old battleship (I’m using a New Mexico class for comparison) and required more fuel. The USN sent 3 new-ish New Orleans class cruisers to bombard Guadalcanal and loiter offshore at night. All 3 were sunk, with heavy loss of life, on the 2nd night of the campaign. An Australian cruiser was also lost. By the end of the campaign, the USN would lose several more.
During this time, the much tougher old battleships were performing low value and low risk operations, like escorting convoys to Fiji. They were still a logistical burden.
The older battleships were really only good for two things. Pounding beachheads with relentless heavy barrages and drawing enemy fire.
As I stated above my dad served as a gunner on the battleship USS Maryland. It took two kamikaze attacks in action, was torpedoed once and was attacked numerous times by dive bombers. This along with almost being sunk at Pearl Harbor. They were the toughest things going at the time but were limited in usefulness. Not really seeing what more they could have done other than act as sacrificial targets to draw out enemy battleships. That proved unnecessary.
Nice picture. Probably at the thickest part of the armor just above the waterline.
My dad’s ship was hit from above and took out everyone in turret #1. My dad was in turret #2 and everyone there was injured. Would have sunk if both turrets had been breached.
I just read a book on WWII, and learned something I’d never known before: big-bore battleship guns have a fairly low life expectancy. The big 18-inchers on Yamato and Musashi were good for only 250 shots – and they’d already done some life-fire practice and training before their fatal voyages.
This certainly puts limits on their aggressive use.
Actually, that’s the barrel life, not gun life. Much easier to change the barrels than the whole gun, because the gun is partly inside the turret, so replacing it means partially dismantling the turret.
Yeah, 4.5 inches, far heavier than anywhere else. The turrets, for example were 1 inch.
In the nomenclature of the time “heavy cruiser” was referring to the guns, not the armor – 8-inch vs. 6. In fact, the armor was often lighter, to make up for the heavier guns.
Not quite. They were also anti-mutiny protection for the officers. Bligh’s lack of Marines was considered an important factor in why the Bounty mutiny succeeded.
The picture of the Kamikaze hit on Sussex intrigued me. The Sussex was a Kent class cruiser, which had the armor belt mounted on the outside of the hull, where it should be visible in the Sussex picture. It’s not there. So this impact is either fwd or aft of the belt (which only covered the machinery spaces amidships). So I wondered how an airplane could hit a non-armored portion of the hull, and not penetrate. I think the plane was going very slow at impact. Too slow to fly. I think the plane hit the water first, then bounced up a few feet just before impact.
Looking again, maybe the ship is riding low, and that dark line just above the waterline is the top of the armor belt. Either way, the plane didn’t hit armor.
