Id imagine its main advantage would be its sensor systems in coordinating attacks in the Battle of the Atlantic to neutralise more submarine attacks on convoys or vs Japan. You could do giant convoys and be fairly confident submarines would be toast.
But other than nukes it isnt really a game changer that I can see. Copying computers or the like would probably take longer than the war lasted, once again the major advantage would be knowing all the major screwups or dead ends that occurred in WW2, rather than the ship itself.
A W80 nuclear warhead means never having to say your sorry. The TLAM-A, the version with a nuclear warhead appears to not have been updated to Block III with GPS receivers, it still uses a combination of TERCOM and INS. It makes sense, in the event they’re being tossed around in a nuclear war relying on the GPS satellites to still be there to provide guidance probably isn’t a wise assumption.
It doesn’t have to be full of nukes. As I said official US Navy policy is to never confirm or deny if any particular vessel is carrying nuclear weapons, but the odds are at least one of the 12 Tomahawks is carrying a nuclear warhead. This policy is why the US Navy can’t make port of call visits to New Zealand since New Zealand enacted the nuclear-free zone; even conventionally powered ships aren’t welcome since the US Navy won’t confirm the presence or absence of nuclear weapons.
Well, part of the problem wasn’t knowledge, but Navy politics. The admirals in charge of the Bureau of Ordnance had their careers wrapped up in the development of the Mark 14 torpedo; finding fault with it would be admitting error.
They strongly resisted multiple reports of the bad torpedoes and were overcome only by direct evidence provided when another admiral got involved, ran tests, and pressed the issue.
Good summary.
I vaguely recall reading that a big part of the issue with the contact detonators was that they used a pin that drove into a hole to detonate the warhead, and the pin itself turned out to be massive enough that impact tended to cause it to travel a bit relative to the hole, misalign, and fail to function. I think that using a lighter pin was part of the fix.
The Mark 14 had never been tested significantly pre-war, because each torpedo cost $10,000 and the depression was still in effect; also the magnetic detonator was top secret and the less said about it, the better, as far as the brass were concerned.
Something that exacerbated the whole issue was the quality of captains at the war’s start – which in turn was the at least partly a result of highly unrealistic pre-war training exercises. Subs had been expected to sneak up on surface units (which knew they were coming) in clear, still, shallow water…and being spotted was bad for a captain’s career. This trained a whole generation of captains to be super-cautious and stay far away; some even made sound-bearing attacks, using only estimates from what the sonarmen heard to set the angle of their torpedoes. Such attacks were hopelessly inaccurate.
In real-war conditions, it was found that subs could get MUCH closer to their prey; choppy water, tired lookouts, true surprise instead of knowing the subs were coming on Tuesday, changing lighting conditions, and a host of other factors rewarded bolder captains.
Fairly early in the war, the Navy realized the captains needed to be replaced almost wholesale. While that greatly improved their effectiveness, this created the unfortunate assumption on the part of naval HQ that reports by the captains that the torpedoes were missing or malfunctioning were evidence of more problems with the captains, not the precious torpedoes. So HQ ignored a lot of reports for a long time.
100% agree. It’s true that they wouldn’t be able to replicate the sub’s systems in the timeframe of the war, but just having access to those electricians, engineers, computer technicians would provide a blueprint to make 60 years’ technical progress in a decade. Heck, does that class have a doctor on-board? Imagine how much they could learn from just a 2012 doctor who keeps up with research. Imagine how many lives would be saved. And that’s just one of a dozen areas of expertise.
There’s no way they’d risk that ship and crew in actual combat, unless they could 100% guarantee its safety.
“Fairly early in the war, the Navy realized the captains needed to be replaced almost wholesale. While that greatly improved their effectiveness, this created the unfortunate assumption on the part of naval HQ that reports by the captains that the torpedoes were missing or malfunctioning were evidence of more problems with the captains, not the precious torpedoes. So HQ ignored a lot of reports for a long time.”
I’d like to know the names of these sons 'a bitchen admirals just so they won’t be forgotten by me or history. With such incompetence they should have been thrown in the brig until they were court-marshaled. :dubious:
[QUOTE=Jake]
I’d like to know the names of these sons 'a bitchen admirals just so they won’t be forgotten by me or history. With such incompetence they should have been thrown in the brig until they were court-marshaled. :dubious:
[/QUOTE]
I wouldn’t be so harsh. The Navy leadership had good reason to believe these were bad captains, or at least badly trained, and “a poor carpenter blames his tools.” If a trainee soldier who showed other signs of being a screwup blamed his rifle for his inability to hit a target during practice, how many people would take that explanation at face value?! Or more to the point, would that change if you had a whole misfit platoon of screwup trainees all blaming their rifles? :dubious:
I’d like to see something to support this. Battleships were heavily armored. I’m not so sure a single missile or torpedo (even a modern one) would necessarily sink a battleship.
Perhaps the TLAM-A has been grounded shoreside, but I’m not convinced by this. Paragraphs 4b-4d discuss the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from US Navy vessels as general policy. SUBROC and ASROC were tactical nuclear weapons or had a tactical nuclear warhead option. The TLAM-A isn’t a tactical weapon, the ground based version of the Tomahawk, the GLCM-109G Gryphon was withdrawn from service as part of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty).
Again, I could be wrong and will gladly stand corrected, but I’m not convinced by this that the TLAM-A is no longer deployed.
You said “the odds are that at least one of the 12 Tomahawks” would be carrying a nuclear weapon. Is there evidence for this statement that would contradict the CNO memorandum?
The Missouri like all in the Virginia class carries Mk48 torpedoes, guided by a wire (to prevent jamming or interception) from the boat itself; they are designed to blow up directly under the keel (as seen a torpedo splits a destroyer from the '70s in half) and can even circle back around if they miss. The crew of the Missouri could easily aim for a ship’s most vulnerable part with impunity.
The heaviest battleship ever created, the Yamato, took 11 torpedoes and 6 bombs in battle conditions and against contemporary tech as she went down - if the Missouri snuck up on her and fired one Mk48, could the Yamato hope to survive?
It doesn’t contradict the CNO memorandum. The CNO memorandum is on “RELEASE OF INFORMATION ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ON NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES OF U.S. FORCES” and says exactly what I said US Navy policy is; the US Navy will neither confirm nor deny if any ship is carrying nuclear weapons. Note that this applies to vessels that clearly are loaded to the teeth with enough nuclear warheads to wipe a moderate sized country off of the map entirely on their own: paragraph 5a(2) on releasing information on nuclear weapons on ballistic missile submarines
As I said, paragraphs 4b through 4d refer to the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from US Navy vessels as general policy. The TLAM-A is not a tactical nuclear weapon. Again, it is possible that the TLAM-A has been withdrawn from deployment and stored stateside and I will gladly stand corrected if that is the case.
In a word no. The Yamato was well equiped with torpedo armor belts. Other desisgn elements would be spaced compartments (watertight), fuel bunkers, and storage between the outer hull and vital machinery and the magazines. Good for torpedoes coming in from the side and striking the hull. None of that would be effective against a torpedo exploding beneath the keel.
Nor does it protect the propellors and rudder. If those are blown away, the Yamato becomes a floating target. At that point, it’s just a matter of how many times you have to hit her before she goes down.
While I agree that using her technology and her crews’ knowhow would be more productive in the long-run, I think the discussion of what a XX Class sub could do would be an interesting discussion, so I’ll just focus on what would happen if you did turn it loose.
The Pacific War would be completely different, but not just because there is a super sub swimming around. The US was actively preparing for an imminent war with Japan, mostly beginning in the summer of 1941 and continuing through November and early December with the goal of completion in the spring of 1942. Pearl Harbor was a shock not because the Japanese launched a surprise attack but that it came to Hawaii and not the Philippines and that they were able to carry out an attack of that scale.
By Jan. 1st, MacArthur and his men has successfully retreated to Bataan in line with the War Plan Orange 3, which was to hole up until the cavalry (USN) arrived within six months. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough supplies and the decision was made that with the devastating loss at Pearl Harbor to not resupply, which eventually lead to their surrender.
With the USS Missouri being able to protect the carriers, it would be possible for the US to send in a carrier-based task force and resupply PI, as well as to provide a trap for the IJN. Based on the overall giddiness of the Japanese military in January 1942, they would jump at the chance to sink the US carriers. Unknown to them, the Missouri would be there to sink their carriers and battleships.
If the US could regain complete control over PI, it would be game over for the Japanese. Even if they were still able to capture the Dutch East Indies they would have a hell of a time getting past it into the territories further east. And it would have proven very difficult to get the oil back up to Japan. This was the problem Japan was faced in 1944, when it started to run out of oil for its fleet.
With a large enough base in PI, the USN and USAAF would have gotten into their war of attrition with the Japanese aviators sooner.
With a base in Subic Bay and with training by the crew of the USS Missouri, the USN
submarine force would make improvements rapidly. The issues of poor leadership and issues the Mark 14s would be discovered much sooner. It would also remove the disadvantage because of the long voyage necessitated by being based out of Pearl Harbor. With many of the IJN’s capital ships out of the way, the US submarine force could concentrate on attacking supply ships to Japan.
I believe that the Japanese would never have surrendered until the bitter end, but the US could have avoided a lot of lost lives in the process while it concentrated on beating the Germans.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that submariners on patrol have basically nothing to do except their work, and studying for their next technical/promotion exams.
So I think we can take it for granted that a US Navy Submarine would have on board at least one book or file that covers in excruciating detail the most ignominious betrayal ever suffered by the US submarine service, and at least one person more than keen to ensure that Ralph Waldo Christie, NTS, BuOrd and various congressmen are appraised of their errors.
They would also be pretty much guaranteed to have prodigious documentation of the effectiveness of the submarine campaign against Japanese naval and merchant shipping, along with a detailed history of improved systems/tactics from 1940 to 2012 (torpedoes, radar, sonar, the lot).
Working torpedoes plus slightly improved tactics/technology (which everyone knows is 100% guaranteed to pay off) will lead to a much higher-priority sub campaign and BOOM - japanese shipping is done. No shipping, no Japanese empire.
