Yes, at long range the shells could conceivably hit at an ideal 90° to the turret faceplate. However, velocity at that distance is 1600 fps, far below muzzle velocity (2500 fps) so the 16” fails to penetrate.
Agreed, the 0,4 second fuse delay enabled greater damage caused by underwater hits while compromising the likelihood of detonation within lighter structures. This was a drawback for the AP shells of all navies. The shell that struck the bridge of Prince of Wales probably detonated well beyond the ship. Their example of a shell piercing the armor deck and still having sufficient velocity to exit the bottom would have to involve a big shell hitting a ship with little deck armor. In a BB vs BB or cruiser vs cruiser scenario, deck-penetrating hits will lose nearly all their velocity getting thru the armor, allowing the fuze to detonate within the target.
The Combined Fleet site is great, but much of it is years old and out of date. For example, off the top of my head I can think of 2 more times where American ships were damaged by diving shells; the one I mentioned earlier on White Plains and a hit on Denver at EAB.
Well said, TB. Have you read Jon Parshall’s new book, 1942? In the part about the Battle of Santa Cruz, he sums up the CV ops nicely; “The Americans still had a long way to go with their deck and flight operations. Indeed, they would not be able to fully replicate Japanese prowess in coordinated strikes until 1944.”
Oh, Battle of Surigao Straight ? A night action, and the battleships Yamishiro and Fuso were sunk
At Guadacanal , Hiei was crippled by the surface ship battle, IJN had attempted to tow her with another BATTLESHIP, but they failed. She was just a dead ship floating when the americans sunk her with torpedo bombers.
I think an excellent case can be made that 1930-45 Japan was the most militant nation since the founding of modern nation-states. In the 1930’s they spent a greater % of their GDP, had a higher % of their population under arms than any other nation, including Nazi Germany. In addition, their military controlled their civilian government, not the other way around. Even Mid-level officers looking to get promoted could start wars of conquest that the civilian government was actively trying to stop. ie Mukden Incident (1931), Expansion of the Manchurian Campaign (1931-32), January 28 Incident - Shanghai Fighting (1932), and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937). None of the officers were punished for exceeding civilian control in any of these.
Given your extensive posting on this, I am sure TokyoBayer knows this, but I will repeat it so others can know it. The Japanese military actually did attack the Soviet Union at Khalkhin Gol (1939) where the Japanese army was crushed. That is the primary reason they left the Soviet Union alone. They knew they couldn’t defeat the Soviet combined-arms approach to warfare.
SunUp:
So what’s your theory on why the flight to nowhere? I’ve seen two that seem to fit, but one blames Mitscher and the other, Ring.
I think Tokyo Bayer summed up the factual factors in this really well, but there are several circumstantial factors that I find compellingly point to Mitscher being at fault and then covering it up in the after-action report. Hornet’s report, unlike Enterprise’s and Yorktown’s, didn’t include the individual squadron reports. And Spruance’s endorsement specifically said that where Hornet’s report conflicted with Enterprise’s, Enterprise’s should be taken as more accurate.
Spruance was named commander of TF 16 (Enterprise and Hornet) at the very last minute because Halsey was hospitalized.
Spruance was a surface warfare specialist who had never commanded a carrier. There was also considerable… friction, let’s call it, between carrier and surface warfare commanders prewar over the best way to fight a naval battle. Not that they hated each other, but there was a lot of “my way is the best way” going on. (To be clear, Spruance commanded Halsey’s cruiser division before the battle and inherited his staff, so he wasn’t clueless.)
Mitscher was Naval Aviator #33 and a senior figure in naval aviation. He was one of the people who helped create US carrier doctrine, and he spent almost his entire career in naval aviation.
Prewar US carrier doctrine was to split carriers into separate groups so that all of the carriers couldn’t be attacked at the same time. There was also a tendency to assume that if this is our doctrine, the Japanese are likely doing the same thing (i.e., mirroring).
The initial contact reports only found 2 carriers. Due to codebreaking, we knew they had 4-5 carriers present.
Due to everything Tokyo has already laid out and the factors above, I think Mitscher basically said to himself “I know more than the commander does” and ordered Ring to fly out at 265 degrees to look for the (nonexistent) 2nd carrier group. That is why Waldron argued, both before launch and in the air, that they were on the wrong heading, and eventually disobeyed Ring’s direct order to stay with the formation and flew southwest to attack the Japanese carriers. It also explains why Ring overruled Waldron’s objections.
To be fair, all of this is circumstantial. But personally, I find it much more plausible that Mitscher and Ring deliberately searched for a carrier group they believed had not yet been located than that some pilots simply got lost.
I’d agree with this in part. In 1942 the Japanese were clearly better at launching and coordinating large multi-carrier strikes. But there’s some nuance: US carrier doctrine was ahead in several areas that mattered more over a long war. Japan was better at landing the first punch, and the US was better at absorbing punches and keeping its fleet going.
Damage control. Damage control procedures were much better in the US Navy. Using carbon dioxide to clear and inert fuel lines when expecting an attack. Damage control was taught to the entire crew and given a major emphasis instead of small specialist crews like Japan did.
Mechanics and maintenance. The popular story is that Japan lost its elite pilots at Midway, but most Japanese aircrew there actually survived. The irreplaceable loss was the hundreds of experienced mechanics, armorers, and deck crew who went down with the four carriers. You’d think mechanics would be easier to replace than pilots, but Japan had a hard time with it. By 1943, a large share of Japanese aircraft at front-line bases like Rabaul were out of service at any given time for lack of maintenance and parts.
Training scale. Japan trained a small elite of superb pilots who couldn’t be replaced. The US training pipeline was built to scale. It turned out pilots who were less polished at first, but there were far more of them.
Good point. The IJN also lost quite a few pilots in the Battle of the Coral Sea. usually called a Tactical win for the IJN but a Strategic win for the Allies.
As with Germany, by the 40s the general US population had had experience of motor vehicles for ~20 years, and consequently a large population of experienced mechanics. Japan (and Russia, of course) did not.
In Spike Milligan’s war autobiography he relates how all the new soldiers in the British army in 1940 had to be taught how to drive, which orifice petrol, oil and water went in, etc. Japan would have been in a far worse state in that regard.
You’ve got that a bit backwards. The general population of Germany’s experience with motor
vehicles was both recent and considerably less than France or Britain.
Despite the spread of car ownership, however, the motorization of German society had still not got very far by 1939, and to describe it as a powerhouse behind Germany’s economic recovery in these years is a considerable exaggeration. By 1938, to be sure, Germany’s vehicle production was growing faster than that of any other European country, but there was still only one motor vehicle there per forty-four inhabitants, compared with one for every nineteen in Britain and France. The vast majority of personal travel and the movement of bulk goods was still accounted for by Germany’s railway system, Germany’s largest employer at the time.
Both Britain and the US were able to fully motorize the supply of their armies. The German army used more horses in WWII than it did in WWI. Supply from the railhead to the front lines relied more on horse-drawn carts than on trucks. The largest force of motor vehicles ever assembled by Germany in WWII was for Barbarossa, where 500,000 had been assembled by confiscating civilian motor vehicles from all across occupied Europe. From here, as the war progressed, the German military underwent progressive demotorization: by autumn 1/3 of those vehicles were entirely lost and another 1/3 were down for lack of maintenance. Apart from creating its own logistical nightmare of having to supply spare parts for hundreds of different models of vehicles from various occupied countries, the vast majority of these vehicles had been designed for civilian use on paved motorways in Europe. They weren’t designed for dirt roads in the Soviet Union. Dust and mud caused enormous fall outs even before winter arrived.
Although true, not that many Americans knew how to drive a truck. But if you knew how to drive a car (few cars had automatic transmissions, so if you knew how to drive a car, you used a clutch) the training to drive something bigger was not that hard- and a lot of Yanks did some sort of maintenance on their cars.) But starting from no driving experience at all was not that easy.
At Tehran in 1943 and again at Yalta in 1945, the Soviet Union promised it would declare war on Japan shortly after the war in Europe ended. It kept that promise.
I highly recommend Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully (2005) for a fascinating, well-written and myth-busting account of the battle, drawing, in part, on previously-untranslated IJN records.
Right, but compared to Germany’s main ground opponent the USSR they were way ahead in that regard, I am sure.
That said, yes as you point out the vehicles they used - trucks, tanks, the lot - were very ill-suited to service in European Russia and wore out faster than the best mechanic could possible cope with. I remember reading somewhere that most of the German Armour would never have made it to Moscow even if there had been no Red Army at all …
You have a lot of great points, but IIRC, I don’t believe that Spruance gave a direct order or even explicit suggestions to Mitscher on the headings. You haven’t said that, but clarifying for others.
(For others) The Japanese fleet was sited and the range, bearing and speed was reported. However, the range and bearing were given relative to Midway and not to the US task forces.
People had to get out paper, pencils, maps, compasses and their plotting boards, etc. to figure out the interception point based on estimated launch times, estimated speeds and such.
There was a great deal of uncertainty because the report may not be accurate, may have been delayed, and the launch time for your planes would take longer than expected, etc. There was a lot of guesswork.
Squadron leaders, air group commanders and task group commanders were all doing the calculations themselves.
As I said before, I don’t think that there is any controversy that Mitscher was responsible, possibly in a discussion with Ring. From the US Naval Institute:
Mitscher knew there would be only one chance to effect surprise, and that once surprise was lost, the battle would become a toss-up. If the Enterprise planes succeeded in surprising and sinking the two enemy flattops at the known coordinates, it is entirely reasonable to assume that Mitscher may have calculated the best use of the Hornet’s air group was to find and sink the two carriers that had not yet been sighted—but which presumably were operating 80 to 100 miles behind the other Japanese ships. In consideration of those factors, Mitscher may have told his air group leader, Commander Stanhope Ring, to take the entire air group to a position 80 miles behind the leading Japanese carriers. If one calculates that bearing from the Hornet’s position that morning, it turns out to be about 265 degrees.
If that is what happened, Mitscher apparently did not share the revised objective with any of the four squadron commanders—just with group commander Ring. That would explain why the commander of Torpedo Eight, Lieutenant Commander John Waldron, was so surprised—and then angry—when he was told the course he was to fly. He knew that a course of 265 would not lead them to the coordinates he had carefully plotted in the ready room that morning based on the location of the sighted Japanese carriers.
When I first posted about the the parts of Japanese doctrine, it was still fairly early on in the thread and we were looking for areas that the IJN was ahead of the US. I think that has been answered and now the thread is starting to expand.
Lots of the advantages Japan enjoyed at first gradually went away and then the US started out performing.
YouTube channel Drachinifel by naval historian Alex Pocklington did an excellent video on US and Japanese damage control in WW2. It’s an hour long, but if you are into that sort of things, it’s quite informative and Drach’s dry wit is quite entertaining.
Of note, the idea of using carbon dioxide to clear fuel lines was thought up after the battle of Coral Sea and came from someone not in damage control. In addition, the USN was much better at learning from mistakes than the IJN in most areas.
Combinedfleet.com points out the US had 80 times the number of passenger cars at the beginning of the war. That was a period when people would repair their own cars. And as others have noted US farms were mechanized while Japanese were not. My father was a few years too young for WWII, but growing up on a farm, he was quite a competent backyard mechanic. Japan just didn’t have experienced people.
Of course. The Soviet intervention was at the invitation of the US. That still doesn’t mean it wasn’t a landgrab.
The US was afraid of the overwhelming number of expected casualties in the invasion of Japan and was willing to allow the Soviets to take over an enormous amount of territory held by the Japanese during the war.
Stalin didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart or any sense of teamwork. He wanted land and influence and got both of them. Knowing that the end was near, they speeded up their promised attack to ensure that they could obtain as much land as possible.
The US had asked Stalin to intervene, and the Soviets had moved 1.5 million + troops to the Far East to participate, but Stalin knew that the Japanese were essentially defeated so it would be a chance to gain a large reward with less risk than before.
There was a race at the end, where the US was trying to get Japan to surrender quickly before the Soviets could enter the war, and the Soviets speeded up their attack to make sure they got a slice of the pie.
In 1942? I don’t see this. IMO, If a carrier had an avgas/hangar fire, it was doomed. If it didn’t, it was about as hard to sink as I’d expect for its size.
As astounding as it may seem, when Germany launched Operation Typhoon in October 1941 aimed at taking Moscow after a two-month long operational pause on the direct route to Moscow, there was not enough fuel stockpiled at the front to actually make it to Moscow. The German army was living hand to mouth even after the luxury of such an operational pause, and its effects were immediate when the offensive was launched. Within days opportunities couldn’t be exploited for lack of fuel, and commanders were begging for the Luftwaffe to fly forward fuel in quantities that it was flatly incapable of delivering even in the best of circumstances.