Uhm…no; the Battleship had not yet quite been relegated to the scrapheap of history/limited use effectiveness just yet (as of Pearl). Admiral Jesse Olendorf, in command of Task Force 77.2, fought the last major ship-to-ship gun battlel in the Battle of Surigao Strait/Battle of Leyte Gulf, in late October, 1944.
I would argue (debate) that the big-gun ships weren’t truly obsolete until the advent of reliably accurate anti-ship missiles.
Actually, since I apparently missed my true calling (Submariner; how I dearly love to torpedo surface ships!), I would argue that surface warships in general became obsolete with the advent of the nuclear submarine and accurate sound/wake homing torpedoes!
ETA: I do agree with your point, that had the BBs not been ravaged at Pearl, then the Pacific Theater’s tactics/strategy would have been considerably different.
If this is true then it shows how ill-prepared the US was considering the Brits had invented and used a shallow-running torpedo well before Pearl Harbor.
If they mean “obsolete” as a means to sink other ships then sure…the carriers and subs were far better at the job. In fact BBs were never very good at ship v ship engagements. I am not sure why but I am guessing they were so valuable that navies were reluctant to throw them into situations where they would get into duels.
That said they did excel as shore bombardment platforms and in WWII, in the Pacific, that was a much needed role making them still quite useful and welcome (they also did other things like the best floating medical facilities and machine shops up close where the action is).
In defense of the IJN planning group, damaging dry docks with the weight of bombs carried by carrier-based planes is kinda futile. Those things are huge and solid. A couple of 500 lb. bombs aren’t even going to scratch them, and you have to hit very specific places very hard to do any appreciable damage. The IJN just didn’t have the forces available to hit everything, so they went for the stuff they knew they could kill. Missing the sub pens, was their big boo-boo, IMO. Those they could have trashed.
There is also the question of getting staff on board. Wouldn’t many of the sailors be either elsewhere on the naval base or on shore leave? How would you contact them?
Petroleum reserves and machine shops on Oahu were another missed opportunity. I thought the IJN was using for some of their dive bombers, bombs that were converted 14-15 inch shells in the ~1 ton ish range? I think some of those could have done some damage to dry docks if they chose.
BBs, after retrofiting, and especially after the invention of the proximity/VT fuze, were very successful as AAA platforms. Not so much in late 1941 though. IIRC, wasn’t Prince of Wales still undergoing teething pains as a relatively new vessel? I thought that her primary AA director wasn’t working, or something like that? If that was working, perhaps that battle goes a different way.
It’s interesting to wonder how many of the early surface engagements, like, e.g., the Battle of the Java Sea, would have turned out had most of the US battleship fleet not been damaged/sunk at Pearl. As already noted, at least they could be salvaged at Pearl. Hard to do if sunk on the high seas.
This is true. Like the Japanese, the British had invented a special kind of torpedo that worked in shallow waters.
But there was a widespread belief among Americans that the Japanese were an inferior people. It was felt that they could not possibly do anything that the Americans couldn’t do.
Even when the success of the Pearl Harbor attack proved Japan was capable of dropping torpedoes in shallow water, this attitude persisted. The story developed that the Japanese had studied the Taranto attack and just imitated the British. This was not true; while Japan did study Taranto, the method they invented for their torpedoes was different than the one the British used.
Well, it was an 1800 lb. bomb that got the Arizona, so the IJN did have some heavy stuff loaded. The problem still remains: what are your priorities? Carriers and battleships were #1 and 2. Planes on the ground was #3. After that it gets muddied. Where were the machine shops on Oahu and were they discernible from the air? Do you use your heavy bombs on the ships or on the dry docks? How vulnerable were the subs? Can you damage the oil reserves at all (We’ve argued this one recently). Do you launch a third wave or get the hell gone before the US carriers find you? Decisions, decisions.
ETA: As for the Battle of the Java Sea, it would depend on who was in charge on our side. Battleships or not, we had lousy to non-existent doctrine for night battles.
Good post. In addition, I noticed how many do miss that if all anti aircraft batteries were fully manned before the attack that it would not had been easy for the Japanese to do what they did. I have seen pictures of the first wave of the attack, they are notorious for having almost no air bursts or flack being tossed to the Japanese planes.
Later images that are not seen often do show like if a swarm of angry hornets had been disturbed compare that to theimages taken at the beginning of he attack. Point being that once the surprise was gone, other waves were not going to have it easy. And IIRC that increase in anti-aircraft activity, when almost all the anti aircraft batteries were fully manned and active (by the time of the second wave of attack was going on) was one reason the Japanese commander considered when he decided not to launch a third wave of planes.
Note that all these BB’s were “standard Battleships” (or super-dreadnaughts) or of earlier design… the first “fast Battleships”, the North Carolina class, were still in shake down on the East Coast when Pearl Harbor was attacked …
I bring this up regarding hitting a moving ship with a torpedo or six … not easy to begin with and folks on the BB will see you and turn the ship into the attack, and even the slow dreadnaughts could do this reasonable well … of coarse a glancing blow isn’t good but the BB will still be able to fire her primaries and maneuver around a bit … it really takes an anvil attack to put the BB out of the battle …
Even with the BB’s tied up at dock at Pearl, only the Utah and California were badly damaged by torpedoes … the rest were by bombs penetrating the citadel, most famously the Arizona …
I won’t say these ships were obsolete … not in light of the Kongo at the Battle of Layte … they were all damn good ships and served the USA very well during WWII … just their primacy was long over by 1941 …
The torpedo planes just weren’t that accurate. At dock they were sitting targets, full movement with full AA guns and the success rate back then dropped a lot. Look at the Battle of Midway to see how few Torps hit.
Turbo-electric generators. If the ship isn’t tied into the power supply on the dock, it has to generate its own electricity or else the lights won’t work.
I mainly agree with this, really depends. In the actual case the battleships were on 12 hours steaming notice. Which does not mean it would necessarily take all of 12 hours to get underway, but that the engineers were allowed to keep the ship in a state where they didn’t have to guarantee full (at least) power for that long. Besides what’s mentioned below that would include taking stuff apart to inspect or repair that would have to be reassembled before bringing the plane on line.
In practice it meant usually all but one boiler was cold, one on line to power the ships service generators and auxiliary steam. The older Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Arizona had had 12 boilers when completed but received 6 larger ones in their interwar modernizations. The unmodernized but slightly newer California, Tennessee, West Virginia and Maryland had 8 each. Nevada happened to have two boilers lit, anticipating a switch from one to another.
Besides boilers there was as you mentioned the task of warming up the turbines (Oklahoma had reciprocating engines) by slowly turning them over under a bit of steam to prevent the rotors from bowing from too much heat on one side all at once. The arrangement of turbo-electric propulsion in the 4 relatively newer ships was AC generators and AC motors for ship’s propulsion and separate DC generators for ship’s service power (and excitation of the AC generators). Hence the main propulsion generators were not kept warm on 12 hours notice, and the ships service generators couldn’t propel the ship.
Another thing was how hot the fuel oil tanks/lines were kept to get immediate free flow of fuel oil. This of course was highly viscous at ambient temperature (though not as viscous as merchant ship heavy fuel oil of later decades or today). Those tanks/lines were heated by steam but to save fuel some would be allowed allowed to cool somewhat on 12 hours notice, as in accounts of using blowtorches on fuel oil lines to get the fuel flowing faster.
As mentioned Nevada happened to have 2 of 6 boilers lit though the second one was not online yet, and got underway with limited power around 40 minutes after the attacking planes were first sighted. From dead, dead cold on the whole ship it would be much more. To react to air attack, ships in port were kept at 2 or 1 hour steaming notice which basically just meant more stuff kept warm. ‘Raising steam’, assuming the boiler wasn’t actually cold, engines and fuel system at or near operating temperature, was much less. The boilers didn’t all have to actually be online at operating pressure to get them going a lot faster, if not completely cold.
I think there are several reasons the Japanese didn’t attack the oil tanks, repair facilities, etc.:
The US carriers weren’t there! They were someplace loose at sea, the Japanese Admiral had to worry that they might be coming up from behind to attack his fleet. Launching a 3rd strike to hit the other Pearl Harbor facilities would have left his fleet exposed for several more hours. He wouldn’t risk that.
The Japanese military, even more than Allied ones, was dominated by attack ‘hawks’. Worrying about logistics, supplies, repairs was relegated to lower-ranking officers. So the Japanese high command didn’t realize how important striking those facilities would have been.
The Japanese thought that the destruction of the fleet at Pearl Harbor would demoralize the Americans, and lead to some type of a treaty accommodation. They thought that the actual fighting with America would be mainly over within 6 months. Those unbombed Pearl Harbor facilities were mostly important in a long-term war, which the Japanese didn’t expect.
So is the story of the Japanese bombing the hell out of baseball fields because of out-of-date maps that showed underground tanks just an urban legend?
“hotel generators”?