And they were only fast when in tip top condition. Which was rare. The boat that evacuated MacArthur from the Philippines was actually much slower than rated.
Also a factor, IMHO, is that any dispassionate cost/benefit analysis would have been so demoralizingly terrifying to Japanese leadership it’s no wonder they chose to believe the war could be decided by more ephemeral things like “spirit” and morale. According to John Keegan, the index of war production showed American output of war materiel exceeding that of the Japanese by 20:1. Given that the US also had technological advantages (torpedo design being a notable exception, but American fleet submarines were better designed than their Japanese counterparts, and radar gave them a huge edge), increasingly so as the war progressed, that’s intimidating. When the enemy starts with more ships and weapons and resources than you do, outproduces you 20:1, and that equipment is better in most categories, irrationality may be the only way to persuade yourself to carry on.
Another example, of course, of their heroic mindset – to the mid-century Japanese, war was about meeting enemy warriors and besting your equals, not about interdicting lowly commerce, or watching charts and graphs.
lisiate’s post seems to have sunk without a trace, so to repeat:
The ships called Destroyers that we’re all familiar with were originally called “Torpedo Boat Destroyers”, because they were designed to, uh, destroy torpedo boats.
So the big reason PT boats weren’t used to attack battleships and aircraft carriers in open battle is that they would have been shot to pieces by destroyers (fighter planes would also probably be pretty effective). Without looking anything up, I wonder if by WWII battleships had enough medium-caliber guns to defend themselves against quite a few PT boats anyway.
Well, that and a battlefield victory was almost their only hope. If they could deal enough damage quickly, they might be able to force war-victory as well. They failed to understand that this was essentially impossible barring extreme fortune, and simply failed to comprehend how the American public would view the results even if they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto, of course, did understand quite well, but the top naval officers were effectively pushed into the decision by the JO’s, who had more balls and pride than sense.
If you read enough military history, eventually you see that particular error over and over and over again. Those “decadent Americans/ oppressed Soviets/ primitive Vietnamese/ (nation of [British]) shopkeepers/ peasant longbowmen/ yellow-bellied Yankees/ short Japanese/ barbarians/ what-have-you” will never stand up to OUR mighty legions, motivated by our moral cause!
That aspect of their thinking, at least, was not unique to Japan, sadly.
The torpedo boats that torpedo boat destroyers were designed initially to counter during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century were not the same thing as PT boats. The destroyer essentially evolved from the torpedo boat by the size of torpedo boats becoming larger and placing a greater emphasis on gun armament. From here, torpedo boats of the German Navy, 1885-WW1:
Bolding mine, these were ocean worthy if short legged vessels of 500 tons displacement or more and lengths up to 300 feet, not the 50 ton or so under 100 foot length PT/MTB/E-Boat type of boats. Torpedo boats were expected to operate with the main fleet, engage in fleet actions and deliver torpedo runs against capital ships, 61 torpedo boats were at the Battle of Jutland. The exact distinction of where torpedo boats end and destroyers begin is a bit blurry; the German torpedo boats that fought at Jutland are sometimes referred to as destroyers, sometimes as large torpedo boats, but the Germans themselves still referred to them as torpedo boats. Vessels falling into this category were also built during the interwar period such as the Italian Spica-class torpedo boats. With changing terminology they would also be referred to both as destroyer escorts and frigates.
Not quite. This was not a comparison of who believed their soldiers were superior; rather, the Japanese leadership utterly failed to properly judge the overall political will in America if motivated to fight. It’s common, or even quite normal, to overestimate the ability of one’s fighting men when morale is riding high. It is not normal to assume the enemy will simply give up and surrender without fighting. It is also not normal
To some degree, tyrannies (of various stripes) and republics (of various stripes) have believed this of each other, partly because they have a hard time understanding the tools each side has to motivate support. However, the Japanese fell into an even more devious trap, which they baited and set themselves. Their action would not - could not - have dealt sufficient damage as to remove the United States from the ensuing war, a war in which both sides knew the United States possessed nearly-unlimited might. Both sides knew that Japan was therefore at a tremendous disadvantage, and its major angle was that Americans were not interested in war. Simply put, most people would probably not have considered the Pacific region worth fighting for, even though they felt sympathy for the Philippines* and Chinese. While not concerned with European colonies definitely felt more kindly-disposed towards them than towards Japan.
But, by launching the all-out attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan both physically and psychologically intruded into American space. Even had the declaration of war been delivered just before the attack instead of just after, Americans would have still felt it was a dishonorable attack. (Admittedly one may argue over what in specially dishonorable in warfare, but Americans in general have always been hastier in declaring war than in attacking, and seem to feel others ought to do the same.) Beyond any question of legitimacy, Japan made itself the aggressor, forced itself into our collective consciousness as an immediate and murderous threat, and in essence made itself a gigantic target. Although war fever was hardly unanimous, both Japan and Nazi Germany demonstrated themselves (at least in the eyes of 1941’s America) as the lowest of the low, and unworthy of mercy. Japan in particular simply must be crushed and broken until it was incapable of launching another attack, although as it turned out Germany fell first with the bloody sacrifice of millions of Russian boys.
And it’s hard to see what else could have possible happened. Japan staked everything - and I do mean everything - on America knuckling under. But it’s completely implausible that we would have done so without a major economic turn in favor of Japan which simply didn’t exist. We not only beat Japan, but we did so with only a portion of our military might focused on them. Their action only made sense if you assumed that we were afraid to fight to the point where we would accept outright attack. Except the Japanese knew we weren’t that spineless and did it anyway.
Well, as they say, all politics is local. The voices in favor of war were the JO’s who saw glory and power stemming from it; the grand strategies were in the hands of the old men who resisted.
I just want to point out that for their small cost the PT boats were very effective at destroying shallow-water Japanese supply boats & troop transports. So, altho they were not really dangerous to IJN Capital Ships, they did their part in the war very effectively.
A/C could perform the sort of attacks the OP is thinking about. They were cheaper, faster and had pretty good range.
One thing A/C weren’t very good at was night flying (until the last year or so of the War0 so the niche of the PT boat was night patrols for small craft sneaking in under cover of darkness.
McHale!
PT boats were basically a danger to unarmed merchantmen needing to pass through a specific route. In the Mediterranean and English channel during ww2, some portions of the shore on either side were dotted with numerous PT boat bases because of their limited combat radius.
Against warships in the open sea, there’s hardly a chance. Around islands and inland seas like in Surigao Strait, Gudalcanal and the Med, there’s a chance but PTs have limited search and spotting capabilities. An alert look out can spot them coming in. A warship’s secondary and AA batteries will wipe them out before they come within torpedo range. And face it, the only way you can intercept a cruiser or destroyer, or battleship going 30 knots is to meet it near its vector, and either turn to cross the ‘T’ so you can use long-rqange guns, or close in and met it parallel to use torpedoes or gunfire. Either way, a PT boat doesn’t have the right weapons.
Perhaps what you are missing is that the full name of the vessels now called “destroyers” is “torpedo boat destroyers”: they were developed to defend capitol ships against exactly what you envision.
What mystifies me is the “Patrol” part of the name.
Not quite. As Dissonance pointed out, the earlyTorpedo Boats very more like very small destroyers. The very very first, were actually supposed to ram enemy warships with an explosive charge on the end of a spar. That didn;t last long. The first destroyers were made to defend against craft that weighed 100-200 tons or even more. The PT boat weighed in at less than half that.
Mind you there was some overlap. The early Torpedo boats were quickly dumped to a large extent and replaced by Destroyers, which indeed were originaly envisioned to kill what was then a “Torpedo boat”. Turns out the early TB’s were unseaworthy and more or less useless.
By the time the first TB sank a Capital ship, the TB weighed about 700 tons and the line between a Destroyers and Torpedo boat was almost non-existant.
The last hurrah of the original style of TB was in the Russo-Japanese war. After that (and even during that) the difference was small, a TB was just a small Destroyer.
Indeed, as I said the line between where torpedo boats ended and ‘torpedo boat destroyers’ or simply ‘destroyers’ begins is very blurry. At the start of WW1 German torpedo boats were mostly in the range of ~500 tons while British torpedo boat destroyers or destroyers were about twice that displacement averaging ~1,000 tons. Yet paradoxically the British destroyers (which the British called destroyers) had scarcely grown in size to ~1,100-1,500 tons in the V and W-classes at the end of the war, while the final torpedo boats built by the Germans in WW1, the Großes Torpedoboot 1916-class, which the Germans still called torpedo boats weighed in at 2,400 tons or roughly twice the displacement of the end war British destroyers.
If anyone is interested in finding out the details, the official history of PT Boats in the USN is available here and is a pretty good read. I actually have it in ebook format but I have no idea where I downloaded it from.
I think a big block quote from the beginning of part 2 may be helpful since it highlights that they tried to sneak about in the dark if possible, and that the operating environment was not kind to the equipment.
And we’ll have the boys home by Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanzaa / the Emperor’s birthday!
And Borgnine’s dead now, so it’s perfect casting.
There were 12 PTs at Pearl Harbor on 7 Dec 41. Six were moored at the sub base; the others were being loaded aboard the oiler USS Ramapo (AO 12) to be carried to the Philippines. (Four were already loaded; the other two were in cradles on the dock.) As far as I know, all the boats that crossed the Pacific were carried aboard oilers like this.