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@@clintonreisig If we talk about "supercarriers" they are very stable because they are 100,000 ton behemoths. They are larger than the battleships of old and as such you'll not notice you are even at sea because it's so big and thus stable. Even in very bad weather, you'll just get some swaying but rarely enough to make launching and landing impossible. Just perhaps dangerous enough that they decide to not do it. Of course there is always big enough storms to ground operations, nature is very powerful. But at that point, your battleships wouldn't be able to get accurate firing solutions either. Besides that, modern jets are all weather capable so, once in the air, they shouldn't have too much trouble flying or navigating. The main issue is always deck operations, where personnel are exposed to the elements, and also for pilots to land at poor visibility and a heavily pitching and rolling deck. Modern technologies do account and assist in this, but it still takes a lot of pilot skill so can be deemed a unnecessary risk. But, modern ships get pretty reliable and up to date meteorological information so can always avoid the worst of it if necessary. Also it seems silly to spend a insane amount of money on a battleship just in case you get some high sea state levels when you can get so much other stuff like more carriers, or escort ships. Which by the way, with missiles, sea state is kind of a non-issue. So if you really want, just make missile cruisers.
Considering what happened the last few times Japan was about to be invaded by a foreign power, Halsey handled it pretty well. Better than what happened to the Mongols at least.
Spruance was doing what he needed to do, protect the infantry landings. He wasn't a glory seeker, he was about being effective, about getting the job done. Plus, Spruance didn't want to risk exactly what happened to Halsey, have a force he was unaware of, get behind him and reek havoc. Halsey's situation is actually more complex than "he screwed up," even though he did screw up. U.S. Navy naval doctrine in WW2 can be stated this way, "Keep your force concentrated to deliver maximum damage to the enemy. Do not divide your force because it might be defeated in detail." The Japanese had a different doctrine and usually did divide their forces, scattering them all over the place; with the exception of their main force of battleships which they wanted to save for what they mistakenly believed would be the Kantai Kessen or "decisive battle" of the war. The one battle that would settle everything. By dividing their forces the Imperial Japanese Navy could accomplish more tasks and keep their enemy off balance and unsure of Japanese intentions. It worked in the first few months of the war when the IJN had air supremacy and only faced a mish-mash of ships hastily thrown together from multiple navies. The Java Sea Campaign. After that, this policy of dividing their forces bit them in the ass: sometimes a little at a time, the loss of a ship here and there, and sometimes it bit them big time, like at Midway. Halsey following U.S. Navy doctrine seems to makes sense, but more was going on than Halsey following doctrine. Halsey's flagship was the U.S.S. New Jersey, which was part of Task Force 34. Think of this from Halsey's point of view. If Halsey leaves Task Force 34 at the San Bernardino Strait, he has to stay behind and miss what he thinks is going to be the decisive battle of defeating Japan's last aircraft carriers. He didn't know they were a hollow force with no real strength. Halsey and his staff might have changed flagships, but that was going to take time and you never know when even a few minutes lost here or there might make a huge difference, just look at The Battle of Midway. Halsey makes a huge mistake in his unquestioned belief in the pilots and aircrew reports that they had done far more damage to many more Japanese ships in the Sibuyan Sea than actually occurred. Halsey's staff; which usually had served Halsey well, turn into a bunch of "Yes men" who fall in line with Halsey's thinking; with the exception of one officer who unfortunately was quite spoken and couldn't get anyone to listen to him. Halsey was exhausted and hadn't gotten much sleep in the days before the battle had begun, so when he finally went to sleep no one wanted to wake him up and give him any new information. Ironically; on the other side, Admiral Kurita also hadn't slept in over two days and would make critical mistakes the next day that might at least partially have been based on his lack of sleep. Admiral Marc Mitscher; and I believe also Admiral Lee, decide not to query Admiral Halsey about Task Force 34, even though they appear to realize that maybe Halsey was making a mistake. We can't really be certain what Mitscher or Lee were thinking; and generally, it isn't accepted in any branch of any country's military to question your commander's orders. So for Halsey to make the correct decision, he needed to break with normal U.S. Navy doctrine; which would have been a daring decision to make. And to make that kind of decision Halsey probably needed to have gotten more rest so he could have thought more critically about the reports he received from his flyers and about what Kurita's force might do after they turned away from the air attack they had received. And most of Halsey's staff also have to have done the same thing. Those are a lot of factors that have to fall in place for Halsey to make what we think today would have been the right decision. One more critical issue to consider. In the history of recorded naval warfare going back over two thousand five hundred years, there have only been a tiny handful of battles that have been truly decisive. Battles which fundamentally changed the course of a war. Most naval battles don't end in crushing victories like Midway, Tsushima, Trafalgar, Actium or Salamis. In most naval campaigns, the victorious force didn't need to curb stomp their opponents to win. They needed to accomplish critical goals; like escorting an army to a landing location and protecting them or blockading an enemy to keep them bottled up. The British Royal Navy didn't crush the Spanish Armada. They delayed the Armada until the outgoing tide prevented the Spanish from taking a safe anchorage on the British coast, forcing the Spanish to cross to the other side of the Channel and anchor there. A handful of fire ships then caused the Spanish to cut their anchors and flee, then wind and weather did the rest. The British did what they needed to do to win and that did not include annihilating the Spanish in battle. During the American Revolution the French and British fought numerous naval battles. In the Battle of the Saintes the British won a pretty big victory, capturing or destroying five French ships of the line, including their flagship. However, the decisive naval battle of the American Revolution; the one that really matters in the long-run of history; the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, was fought to a draw with no ships being captured by either side. I think one British ship of the line; one out of nineteen, sunk after the battle due to the damage it had received. Getting a draw was all the French Navy needed to accomplish in order to keep British General Cornwallis and his army bottled up in Yorktown, where Cornwallis was forced to surrender to American and French forces two days later. That was a decisive victory, even though the battle itself is tactically boring and resulted in minimal damage to both sides. On the other side of the coin, the Imperial Japanese Navy did not bring their full forces to bare in the Solomon's campaign around Guadalcanal; where they might have made a real difference, because the Japanese were holding them back for the ever desired Kantai Kessen. Unfortunately for the IJN, the decisive battle only occurred after the IJN was so worn down, they had to come up with a crazy plan that only included winning as a fever dream possibility. The Sho Plan was more about giving the Imperial Japanese Navy a chance to die with honor, than achieving a real victory. Seeking a decisive, crushing victory became a false holly grail for naval officers in Britain, Japan and the United States to chase after. It is a goal that is really cool for the winning side when it occurs, but is a fundamental misunderstanding of what naval power is supposed to achieve. It is the cherry on top of a cake, not the cake itself. Chasing that false grail over achieving actual, needed results is what caused the Japanese to pass up the opportunity to win at Guadalcanal and caused Admiral Halsey to forgo his duty to block the San Bernardino Strait to protect the Leyte landings.
Outstanding post! One further issue for Halsey was he had receive "oblique" orders from Nimitz to be more aggressive than Spruance had been in the Philippine Sea and "not let the Jap carriers get away this time." That "suggestion" really effected all of Halsey's decisions in the battle. He didn't really know it yet, but the battle was already won by 3rd fleet's destruction of Japanese airpower on Formosa and the Ryukus earlier that month that was slated to re-enforce the Philippines. The rest of the battle, albeit bloody and tragic, was without point.
Arguably Midway didn't even change the course of the war, as impressive of a victory as it was. Even Trafalgar increased an existing British advantage and made easier a long campaign of continually pressing Napolean's unformed navy to stop it from getting anywhere rather than simply creating British dominance.
@@Fronzel41 I would disagree. Some naval historians argue about how US "would have won anyways" because producing X amount of carriers bla bla bla. But they ignore two things. 1) Losing midway would mean Japan preserving its elite experience carrier force and US possibly losing theirs which has many butterfly effects that might lead to future US losses 2) Even discounting the strategic/tactical effects of the loss, at a minimum US pacific counteroffensive would be delayed 6 months (minimum time to replace losses at midway). This means the war would not end in 1945, US ability to carry on the war beyond 1946 was questionable, so it's possible Japan could successfully achieve a conditional peace if they won Midway.
One bone to pick, Halsey could easily transfer his flag and go with TF 38 onboard a cruiser. He would not have to stay with TF 34, which would not even make sense since Lee was to be in command of TF 34.
@@pax6833Agreed. Midway did matter very much! It may not have been the turning point, naval battles around Guadalcanal were. Midway was still necessary to blunt Japanese offensives and allow the US Navy to go on the offensive in the Solomons.
Since the host, Ryan, is playing a battleship captain, it makes sense that he does not want to use his vessel as a glorified anti-aircraft platform. However, as he points out at the beginning, battleships without air cover will be sunk. Battleships are expensive and take a long time to build. Therefore, if lost, they will not be replaced anytime soon. The Navy was in no position for a large surface engagement between battleships at any time in 1942. The Japanese threat in June 1942 was the occupation of island chains protected by land-based aircraft. The Navy needed to project force through aircraft carriers to counter this. The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was a desperate, ad-hoc affair by the Navy. However, after that the Navy could afford to be more cautious. Once the Japanese were stopped time was on the Navy's side. US industry would produce, on average, one destroyer per week and one aircraft carrier per month and enough planes to have air supremacy by October 1944. No matter how the battleships were used, the timeline for the Philipines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa invasions still would not have changed. So, no, I don't think the battleships were misused.
@@perrya.3580 Sorry for the awkward sentence. On re-reading it, it confused even me lol. I actually re-edited my edit and deleted an earlier response to you. Instead of using "averse", my new edit uses "cautious". In 1942 the USN has to take chances from the hopeless Java Sea to daring Doolittle Raid to the perilously risky Midway to the heavy losses in the Solomons. Once the US took the initiative in the Pacific, the Navy could fight the war on its terms. The Japanese were forced on the defensive and would be reactive (mostly).
There’s a lot to be said for having a “fleet in being.” If your fleet is still above water, it makes a good threat and keeps the enemy from acting freely. Actually fighting is not always as valuable. This is what kept Germany’s fleet bottled up after Jutland.
It seems that this us the general idea of the USN these days. A Carrier Strike Force (CSF) cannot in good health be ignored. So, if you're an international troublemaker and a CSF shows up overnight its gonna make an effect without firing a shot.
HMS Glorious learned that the hard way. Seriously, though, in the Atlantic & in the Med getting snuck up on by surface ships was frequently a risk. The Pacific was a little different.
If you are an American aircraft carrier in WW2 and Japanese aircraft catch you without all the anti aircraft guns of the battleships you just sent somewhere else, you just screwed up and aren't coming back from that mistake.
@@dayaautum6983Fortunately, the Japs didn't have carrier-based aircraft by the time the opportunity arose to catch the flattops without the battleships. Meanwhile, when Center Force came on Taffy 3, a few tin cans and the limited aircraft of the escort carriers, some even sporting actual ammunition and ordnance, drove the mightiest fleet the IJN had ever assembled away. Beware the anger of the Fletcher class!!! (And a wee lad named the Sammy B)
The other issue at the Philippine Sea battle was to not be drawn off the landing forces. Spruance was cold blooded enough that he passed up the chance for a heavy surface ship battle, remembering that if the Navy succeeded in the landings, the Japanese were in a very bad situation as far as logistics. Spruance was sort of the polar opposite of Halsey.
Spruance understood strategy. He may not have know that the B29 was nearly ready and certainly didn't know about the Manhattan project yet, but he understood that the USAAF wanted the Marianas for bomber bases and knew what that meant for the war.
Halsey was a glory hound. Even after the war he said that it would have been better if Spruance was in charge at Leyte and he in charge at the Philippine Sea. No, by 1944 the IJN was hollowed out with few good pilots. The USN just had to take the win in front of them, that they planned for. They didn't need another Midway, they just needed to keep advancing to Japan and avoid risking big losses for empty wins.
@@recoil53 Spruance always seemed to remember what the mission was. If it meant retreating after Midway, he had already done much better than expected, and the Japanese had nothing on the table worth the risk.
@@tomhalla426 It's telling that while Halsey was given a 5th star after the war, Spruance was given full pay for life after retiring (admirals retire at half pay).
@@recoil53 And the way to do that was to keep the IJN from the beaches and protect the grunts going ashore. Given how the Japanese at Marianas didn't try anything too fancy other than shuttle bombing, Halsey might have come out ok at that battle. Spruance probably would have annihilated the northern and central force task groups at San Bernadino, which would have allowed Kincaid and Olendorf to pursue the remnants of the southern force.
As Wayne Hughes says in his classic book “Fleet Tactics,” by the end of 1943, the Americans had mastered the use of radar for anti-aircraft defense, both to detect enemy planes and to direct their own fighters and massive AA fire on their ships, and developed appropriate tactics to the point of becoming an effective defense of the fleet. Plus, of course, the throughout technological superiority like in the new aircraft like the Hellcat and Avenger and superb training made the Americans a much better force. The Japanese never matched these capabilities, and ultimately they resorted to the desperate measure of kamikaze attacks. The Americans were so confident on the ability of the new aircraft and crews and of the fleet to defend itself that in November 1943 Halsey ordered Saratoga and Princeton to attack Rabaul! Two carriers attacking one of the strongest Japanese landbases! The point here is that by late 1943, USS battleships were an efficient force capable of destroying incoming Japanese air attacks. So it was possible to use them in a more aggressive manner than just to give AA cover to the carriers. I would say this is correct, although I guess the USN would have said something like, Yes, but why to risk them? We can stop Japanese air attacks, but they cannot stop “our” air attacks. So it's a less risky proposition to keep on using carriers as the main offensive weapon. I think it makes sense. I think it was none other than risk-prone Beatty who said, when critizized as too pasive when commanding the Grand Fleet, that you do not do anything risky when you are winning.
I'm wrapping up my US Battleships of WWII series on my channel soon, and while I was writing the content of each episode, I had the "did we misuse our BBs?" in the back of my mind the whole time. Great video Ryan!
I watched your banned nose art video. The UA-cam algorithm is strange in its recommendations, but it’s was a good video. I wonder why the other ones haven’t gotten as much attention.
Fascinating. My inner child definitely loves the idea of battleships being wrongfully dismissed as obsolete, and you make a strong case for how fear of losing battleships contributed in part to the perceived lack of utility. However, I find it hard to fault the brass for its decisive swing towards carrier actions. By 1944, multiple major naval battles had been fought entirely out of direct visual contact, including Midway, and the chaotic melee off Guadacanal was not the sort of fight most admirals wanted to plan around. I'm not too knowledgeable about the topic, though.
I think Lee was right not to seek a night engagement. It could have went disastrously wrong, as some of the night actions off Guadalcanal had. Washingtons escorting destroyers were massacred. Lee himself could have came off in a mutual kill situation had a spread of torpedoes found him. San Bernardino straight is entirely different. Daylight, with air support on tap, in service of the larger strategic goal.
Alot of the losses at Guadalcanal had to do with commanders either not understanding or not trusting radar. They would often not utilize ships with modern radar by putting them at the front of battle lines. They'd stick a destroyer with a new advanced radar set at the back of the line with 5 destroyers with no radar in front of it. Then, by the time the rear ship picked up the enemy on radar, the lead ships would be almost on top of the enemy. Some really amateur hour stuff. This happened at the battle where Juneau and Atlanta were lost. Terrible misuse of resources.
@@HoldenOversoulSavo Island. I own The Pacific. One episode dealt with the Where's the Navy thing. O.K., where's the Navy? I know the Canal was a land battle, and I ain't about to crap on the USMC. Well, except for the cry baby. But, Guadalcanal was won at sea. By the Navy. Now, there are those who say differently, because the Navy didn't stop the Japanese from evacuating the island. The troops left there were combat ineffective by that point. Even Twining and Puller said that going after them would just get a few more Marines killed. So, good bye and good riddance. As for The Pacific, we could've done with more Navy and less Leckie. Nice fireworks show though.
Up until mid-1943, there would have been a real risk involved in a night action with the main body of the IJN's surface forces. By mid-1944, the US fast battle line and its supporting elements would have gone through them like shit through a goose. The IJN's successes in the Solomons campaign largely boiled down to aggressive, well-handled destroyer forces and the inability of many USN admirals to make the best use of the advantage their radar provided. By mid-1944, the US fleet had the use of radar down to a science (and much better equipment to boot), and the IJN light forces that had proven so effective in the fighting around Guadalcanal had mostly been destroyed. By that point, the US Pacific Fleet had a massive quantitative and qualitative advantage in cruisers and destroyers, and for all of Ching Lee's misgivings about the state of training in his force, a battle line that was technologically superior and much better trained than their Japanese counterparts (the IJN's battleships essentially hadn't done ANY training for years due to fuel shortages). It's definitely worth noting that the IJN's battleships gave a piss poor performance in pretty much every surface engagement they took part in over the course of the war.
Yeah the Long Lance still was deadly. Drachinifel talks about it in his Philippine Sea alternate history where Lee gets into a night battle with the IJN surface fleet. Japanese cruisers and destroyers could have launched a massive salvo of Long Lances (like 100 at least) down the entire American battle line and either scatter them by forcing them to take evasive action or damage (and possibly sink) them.
I've been watching you fairly frequently for the past 3-4 years and I think this is the most scholarly of any others. Your insights are valuable. I like it.
Not sure the US Navy misused their battleships, they just underutilized them. Since the battle of Tsushima Straights in 1905, Japanese naval doctrine was to seek decisive massive capital ship battles. Early in the war, American admirals respected and feared the ability of the IJN in fleet actions; later in the war they saw no need to fight on the terms the Japanese wanted. They used aircraft carriers and submarines to sink and starve the IJN piecemeal.
This video could just as easily be titled the US picked a winning strategy and refused to change it. Id have to track down my source but I read once about US wargames before ww2 showed the US Navy getting smashed if its response to a Japanese attack was to rush into engagements. Nimitz even said The war with Japan had been re-enacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways,” he said, “that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise-absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the end of the war; we had not visualized those."
I am as much of a fan of big-gun battleships as anyone. My favorite Drachinifel video is the hypothetical battle he did where my favorite battleship, USS Alabama, along with USS New Jersey, Iowa, Washington and the rest of Task Force 34, defeats Yamato and the rest of Center Force at the "what if?" version of the Battle off Samar. However, I can't disagree with how the US Navy made them secondary/ support ships for the carriers. In the cases of the hunt for Bismarck or Washington/ South Dakota at Guadalcanal, those were instances where battleships were really all the RN or USN had available at the time to deal with a threat. If they had a task force of multiple strike carriers available, each with 90-100 planes that could launch at their target from more than 10x farther than big guns can shoot, it just wouldn't have made sense not to use them first. Bismarck isn't even really a good example because without the damage inflicted by just two torpedo hits from carrier-based aircraft, no RN battleship would've laid eyes on him once he sailed away from Prince of Wales. Just look at Operation Ten Go where Yamato was sunk. Yamato, along with a cruiser and 6 or 8 destroyers, all recently retrofitted with as many AA weapons as could fit on their decks, get attacked by carrier aircraft with all but one or two of the destroyers being sunk. The cost to the USN for that massacre was something like 10 planes with 12 airmen killed. Several of those planes weren't even lost to AA defense but instead were (literally) blown out of the sky by unfortunately being too close to Yamato when her magazine detonated. Had the USN opted to intercept Yamato with battleships, the ultimate result would most likely have been the same but there almost certainly would have been significant damage inflicted on US ships with many times the number of Americans wounded or killed. Our battleships were good, but a fleet carrier, with its squadrons of Avengers, Dauntless, and Helldivers, was just a better choice in pretty much every situation and correctly became the Navy's go-to instrument of destruction.
I totally agree with everything you wrote! I too enjoyed Drach's video on TF34. However, I was highly skeptical that this would result in a better outcome for the USA, than having the historical situation where Taffy Air Force takes on Kurita. The narrative is generally that the Taffies were toast if Kurita had pressed on. Sure, many cheap Jeep carriers would have been lost with associated lives, but the Taffy Air Force was no joke when it came to ship killing power. An entertaining what if from Drach, would be to have Halsey make the correct decision, where he keeps 3rd Fleet in the neighborhood and directs Lee to do as much damage while he had the advantage of night and the confines of the straight to aid him. When the IJN guns get shots on target, Lee is directed to flee and let the air force finish the job.
One of the biggest deficits that the BBs suffered from in most of the major engagements was their inability to operate in narrow waterways. Especially because we often had trouble locating the IJN it posed an unacceptable risk to just steam our capital ships through the narrow straights between the islands in the island chains that the Japanese were defending. Not only does it drastically reduce your ability to operate in any sort of defensible formation and often requires you to cut speed to maintain the ability to maneuver without risking a grounding when you traverse a narrows, we didn't have reliable charts of many of the Philippine Islands for example and operating close to the islands put the fleet at tremendous risk of being sighted far off by Japanese coast-watchers, submarines, and land-base reconnaissance planes. Plus, the island channels were a haven for mines and enemy submarines. The obvious tactic that was employed when we did sail through contested channels was to run all your destroyers and escorts through first (that's one of the primary reasons you bring them along) but that often leads to a situation in which the Big Boys are way late to the party. Plus: all those ships in between you and the enemy causes so much radar clutter that we couldn't use our early generation radars to much effect and, if any of the lead ships take hits, the smoke from the damage or from Japanese laid smoke-screens. So, throughout the war in the Pacific, you saw the capital ships get relegated to the open-ocean while the IJN hugged the islands and carrier planes often got the first 4, 5, 6 bites at the apple.
And let's say you decide to split off your fast BBs to let them go hunting away from the carriers: if you steam them straight at the enemy - assuming the IJN decides they do NOT wish to risk their fleet by going toe-to-toe with them (after all - they were primarily concerned with sinking our carriers, not our battleships), our Iowas could only maintain about 3-5 kts of closing speed on most of the enemy ships if everyone was making full-steam in similar sailing conditions and going approximately the same direction. Even if we weren't detected until we were within 100 miles of the enemy (which is VERY unlikely) you are looking at having to chase your enemy down for more than a day just to get to the absolute MAXIMUM range to start engaging. And to do that, you have to sail at constant speed and constant course (which obviously makes you the definition of a perfect target for submarines or aerial attack). If you have to dodge some torpedoes and enemy dive-bombers (which would undoubtedly be dispatched to intercept you) along the way, it's going to take significantly longer than that to chase down an enemy force. It's real difficult to put together a set of circumstances whereby you can get a bunch of battleships in a position to have a decisive sea-battle unless BOTH sides wish to do it. And, for the latter half of the war, WE did not seem inclined and the IJN saw our BBs as second-tier targets when compared to the carriers - so, with NEITHER side really wanting a full-blown line vs line battle, I don't know that it's really a case that we misused our battleships. They just never really proved to be the right tool for the job.
Using narrow straits to sneak PT boats and destroyers in on heavy cruisers and battleships was also a tactic the USN used against the Japanese, for example at Surigao Strait. So it wasn't just an academic worry - the USN knew this could work, because they'd used it themselves.
Battleships are perfectly capable of fighting even in the narrowest and shallowest of fjords, even with a broken rudder, against enemy destroyers, submarines, and mines.
BS. warships are meant to be risked. That is what they are built for. SHow me a ship heavier than a destroyer that got badly damaged or sunk by a mine; so that so called concern is a joke. Frankly most of your post is a joke. How many US ships were sunk by Jap subs around Guadalcanal; in the slot or nearby? another joke.
I've been thinking a lot about this episode. I don't think there is any doubt that battleships became secondary elements in World War II and never were used for their intended purpose -- to fight consequential ship-to-ship battles that would bring victory to the US side. Even before Pearl Harbor, the submarine and the torpedo began to make large battleships and cruisers very vulnerable to attack and sinking. Dive bombers that were able to penetrate lightly armored parts of ships were another death nell. Yes, the Japanese navy had teeth throughout the war, but US carrier task forces were the main weapon used to attack the Japanese fleet. Battleships supported these task forces and occasionally were used in ship-to-ship battles, but their heyday had completely passed as the new Essex-class carriers came online in 1943. Dive bombers and torpedo bombers were a much more formidable weapon against Japanese ships than battleships. At the end of the day, battleships were gun platforms. They provided significant antiaircraft capability in their role as carrier task force screens and they were massive gun platforms to support amphibious landings. It is a mistake to say that battleships were "misused" in the sense of ship-to-ship fighting. They were repurposed as part of the switch to aircraft carrier task forces and ground support.
Clearly with 20/20 hindsight it was a serious mistake by Halsey to leave San Bernadino strait unguarded - not even one Destroyer to sound the alarm if the Japanese decided to come through. It was reported by Coast Watchers in the area that the Navigation lights at the strait were turned on which was a dead giveaway that important ship traffic was coming through. Had Admiral Spruance been in command at Leyte Gulf I believe he would have covered the Strait with enough fast battleships and screen to get the job done.
I mean it's not fair to given the benefit of hindsight when you rightly put that Spruance would have at least left a scouting force in the unlikely chance the IJN doubled back but more likely had a bigger force. He definitely wouldn't drop everything and go chasing after the carriers, when he had no idea if there were any other IJN forces at Philippine Sea he didn't so it's really weird to think he would had he been in command.
Or Admiral Kincaid could have stationed a DD lookout at the mouth of the San Bernardino Strait. Since close-in defense of the landing force was, you know, _his entire job._
I've always thought the action of Samar would have been completely different if Adm. Spruance had been in command. With his calculated, cautious nature I believe he definitely would have kept some part of TF 34 to cover the landing area.
@@Philistine47 why would he when halsey was supposed to do it and told him tf 34 would be there and stay there. no one is to blame for that but halsey. he was one of the best ever but he like no one is above mistakes and here his aggression got the better of him
@@j.landismartin5397 Leaving _part_ of TF 34 behind in case Kurita turned around would not have been a good idea. If you try that and Kurita does come back, you've got 2 BBs against 4; if he doesn't, you've significantly reduced the AA screen of TF 38 for nothing.
The argument that the record of BBs vs air power is skewed by lack of concentrated force/tanking is new to me, and I suppose could be valid. It is hard to shrug off the idea of accepting /sinkings/ of capital ships with crews in the thousands in exchange for non-capital ships with smaller crews, but maybe a fleet could have just eaten the CVs' magazines without being mission-killed. It's also hard for me to say that the USN was wrong to back down from a night engagement with IJN destroyers and cruisers - and their torpedoes - even with radar giving them gunnery supremacy at night. You just don't have the fire rate on BB main batteries to hit enough of the fast-moving, more maneuverable targets without your own cruisers helping out like they can in the day. It's a sized-up version of the torpedo boat nightmare that led to the invention of the "torpedo boat destroyer." The Japanese had long since recognized that they needed asymmetric advantage and moved their superb torpedoes to the center of their anti-capital-ship strategies; this is one of the facts which makes the completion of Yamato and Musashi a pretty dumb sunk-cost fallacy. In Kaigun, Evans and Peattie run through the IJN's Kantai Kessen plan and go out of their way to note that it has the cruisers sacrificing themselves to let the destroyers get in position and launch, an insane inversion relative to any other navy's doctrine. As far as I recall, they don't actually call much attention to the fact that the superbattleships' role is relegated to "mop up the smashed USN fleet after the battle's practically over" - but it is. The most convincing argument I've seen for the black-shoe fleet - and it does convince me that BB advocates weren't just stubborn or behind the times - is the "fleet games" various nations including the USN held before the war to establish doctrine for the new technology of aircraft carriers. Naturally, carriers being powerful but easily sunk or MKed "glass cannons", the opposing carriers were always number one on any carrier's target list. And because carrier strikes took multiple hours to go out and return, carriers could very easily end up trading fatal blows while their planes were in transit. It was common, in the best simulations pros could think up, for all the carriers in a battle to end up sinking each other at the start. In practice, Midway could well have turned out this way with a couple small twists in history. If Carrier MAD does happen and the skies are clear, do you want some ships left to actually go take the objective or not?
I think I'm remembering this detail correctly. At the Phillipine Sea the fast battleships were formed into their own task force. They were still supporting the carrier task forces as anti-aircraft escort, but it was flexible that at a moments notice their task force could depart and form into a battle line. At Leyte they were dispersed among the different carrier task forces. Guadalcanal and the raid on Truk were the only actions that the fast battleships got to participate in a surface action.
Had a friend that was supported by NJ in Vietnam...said it was unbelievable... round on the way, a little while later a sound like a freight train coming in and then a hole about the size of a city block...and that was just one round.
I am going to say I am not expert enough in naval warfare to comment, but I am going to anyway. ;) The fact that battleships were superlative carrier escorts probably dominated the thinking of the admirals. Battleships could win the naval battles, but aircraft carriers were needed to win the war. However awe-inspiring a battleship land bombardment was, carrier aircraft could carry out land attacks with far more precision, sometimes pinpoint precision. A bombardment range of 27 miles was pretty cool, and on many islands nothing more was needed, but when they start invading the Philippines a 27 mile limit would have been... well, limiting. The American battleship line could absolutely have beat the Imperial Navy sooner, but also with a higher casualty rate. Ultimately the carriers were the more essential tool in winning the war in total, not just on the seas but in the air and on the land, and I think this was foremost on their minds. Basically, "so what if we don't totally wipe out the IJN now, we'll get them later and on more favorable terms." ;) The Japanese were after all running out of oil. Soon they wouldn't be able to move their behemoths around the map at all.
Excellent video clips of the South Dakota's on the attack, presumably off Japan proper near the end of the war when they were tasked with Shore bombardment of Japanese industrial targets. Thanks for the video.
It's unlikely that battleships at sea would have been sunk by air power (as much as they were) had they also had at least some minor air cover. In those cases, Prince of Wales and others etc, there wasn't even the slightest air cover. Can you imagine what might have been if even a squadron or two of fighters providing semi adequate air cover might have prevented?
If memory serves, not a single battleship was sunk by air attack while also having air cover. Hell, in the grand scheme of things, very few battleships at sea were sunk by air attack at all. Just Force Z, Roma, Yamato and Musashi. I might be forgetting one or two, but it's a surprisingly small number.
True, but you can say that about anything. No land was successfully invaded when the attacker did not have air supremacy. That fact does not make battleships a cost effective weapon system in WWII.
@@spoddie The USN risked a few millions of dollars of airplanes, and maybe 100 lives to kill 3000 lives and sink 1/4 billion dollars of investment by the Japanese. The fact that Yamato took tremendous punishment is missing the point. The risk vs reward at that time made the battleship obsolete. At Leyte, Halsey had no excuse to allow IJN naval guns within range of any USN dingy.
As always, very well stated. I’m not only old enough to have seen the standards come in after the war, this topic was still being discussed in War college during my career. Louis Johnson , as Secretary of Defense had declared war on the Navy, canceling thecarrier, the United States, which looked like a mistake to me to begin with. The attack was on the entire surface fleet, including the carriers, and so the information that was put forward of carrier protection, as the Navy was struggling to find an aircraft capable of a nuclear weapon. It’s a long time ago, but I remember the salient argument rested around South Dakota and the other heavies moving out in front on the day of the Marianas Turkey shoot. The argument was well presented.
The "dark greyhounds" starting at 13:26 are cool. All those destroyers painted the totally awesome dark blue measure 21 camouflage and on patrol. This looks like the Solomons Campaign. They're out hunting. Speaking of the battlewagons at Philippine Sea just imagine if the Japanese force had seen _Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Washington,_ and a bunch of cruisers and destroyers bearing down on their carrier force. Wow.
I do like Ryan's 1:1 scale model that allows him to eat Magic Spoon while easily sitting inside the model which is way more difficult even at 1:30 scale.
Ryan brings up some really good points. Looking at the overall Battle of Leyte Gulf, Kurita's Center Force was very strong with 5 BB's, 10 CA's, 2 CL's and 10 DD's. Persistent attacks from submarines USS Darter and Dave in the Palawan Passage on 10/23/1944 and by 3 Carrier Air Groups (approx 60% of the 3rd Fleet's air strength after McCain was sent to Ulithi to re-arm and refuel) in the battle of Sibuyan Sea on 10/24/1944 managed to only sink or cripple about 1 BB and 3 CA, (maybe a few others?) Kurita still came on toward the San Bernardino Strait which resulted in the heroic battle against the DD's/DDE's and CVE's of Taffy 3 we all know about. The fact is that sustained submarine and air attacks to the center force though fatiguing and harassing didn't significantly impact it's critical fighting force (much to my chagrin as a former sub officer-though we all know the airdates always inflate their scores!). The world will always wonder what would have happened if Halsey would have left Lee's battle line of 4 modern Iowa class BB's and their escorts guarding the San Bernardino Strait (in hindsight, that is the prudent action, of course, but that's hindsight). I'd like to think the US would have prevailed; the Iowa's had formidable armament and fire control, but they were relatively lightly armored and the Japanese had a lot more heavy cruisers; and never forget the Japanese superb use of torpedos. But I wander. Ryan's basic argument was that a massed, well coordinated fleet of surface combatants in open ocean with all their combine AA could shoot down enough attacking aircraft to survive and we missed several opportunities to significantly reduce the powerful Japanese CA/BB/DD threat earlier via surface action by our own BB's/CA's/CL's. 8" and 16" shells are cheap and you can shoot hundreds of them! I think he is right. But we will never know. I hear BB-62 recently finished a shipyard rehab and wish congrats. Really enjoy your videos and next time I'm in the area I hope to stop by (from Wilm DE originally)
Regarding Halsey leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded... one needs to remember the propensity for aviators to drastically exaggerate the results of their air attacks. Halsey was left with the impression that Kurita's force was mostly at the bottom of the Sibyuan Sea, when in fact only the Musashi had been sunk. When Ozawa's carriers were spotted he regarded them the greater threat as they were an undamaged air attack force. Little did he know that Ozawa had next to no planes on his ships and Kurita's force was still mostly intact. Still bad decision-making, but it must be remembered he made it on the basis of bad information.
Halsey served through 1941 and 1942. He still remembered how powerful and destructive the Japanese carriers were through the end of Guadalcanal, and he still feared them. There memories made him think the Japanese carriers were still the most powerful opponent he would come up against and was blinded by his desire to destroy them. That said, there was no excuse…none…to not detach a covering force for the beachhead, including a couple of frontline carriers and battleships. His trauma from Guadalcanal and desire for revenge sentenced Taffy 3 to a horrible death.
Halsey did not act on new information found after he went to bed. That is a failing of him not picking better staff who when the situation changed would wake him up to make sure he knew that Kurita's Center Force had turned south again and was steaming towards Leyte Gulf. Captain Moore would rather have faced a disgruntled Spruance than a Spruance caught with his pants down.
Unknown to the Japanese High Command during World War Two, US code breakers were after the Battle of Midway able to read word for word what they were transmitting, so Halsey should had known after the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the IJN lacked the number of naval aviators after the bulk of them went to their deaths and those left were committed to either defense of the home islands because US Colonel Doolittle’s Raid or the
@@nx014 Your timeline doesn't make much sense. Doolittle's raid was before Midway, 2 and a quarter years before the battle of Philippine Sea. The IJN did change their codes at least once in that time. In the lead up to the invasion of the Philippines, Halsey had been running the Fifth fleet ragged by raiding far and wide including raids on Formosa. Based on his intelligence, he recommended that the invasion start on Leyte Island instead of further south. Which makes his decision to chase after the empty carriers even more foolish.
South Dakota had a ship wide electrical failure at Guadalcanal. She was never in the fight. Lee made the correct decision when he declined a night fleet action at Philippine Sea. He would have exposed his fleet to torpedo attack.
Well, South Dakota did get pummeled, even if she didn't shoot back. It was ironically fortunate, since Washington went completely unnoticed as everyone focused on South Dakota, but South Dakota's armour held.
5th fleet had a crushing advantage in cruisers and destroyers at the Philippine Sea, and the fight would have occurred in open water with room to maneuver and nowhere to hide from radar. The IJN light forces didn't have a zero chance of getting into effective torpedo range, but the odds weren't much better than that.
@@claireclark5209 Most of the American cruisers and destroyers were with the carriers. Lee only had 4 cruisers and 9 destroyers if I remember correctly. So pretty much even with the IJN.
@@RémiWarin 1. The initial dispositions at the Philippine Sea had Lee in direct command of 7 fast BBs (2 NC-class, 3 SoDaks, 2 Iowas), 14 DDs and 3 CAs. 2. 5th fleet had the initiative, and there was no meaningful impediment to reallocating other forces to Lee if a night surface engagement was sought, and this almost certainly would have happened if that decision had been made. 3. Reinforcing Lee with a single DesRon (or equivalent) and a cruiser division would have left the carrier forces screened by 15 cruisers and 45-46 destroyers. Lee at that point would be bringing 22-23 DDs, 6 cruisers, and 7 modern BBs against a Japanese surface van force of 4 BB (2 of which were thoroughly outclassed Kongos), 9 cruisers, and 8 DDs-a crushing margin of superiority. For that matter, detaching a second CruDiv to Lee could have easily been done without excessively weakening the carrier screen. 4. The conditions that allowed the IJN light forces to be as successful as they were in the Solomons-constricted waters with minimal opportunity for maneuver, Allied flag officers who didn't trust or understand how to make use of radar, and the as yet incomplete deployment of radar to all USN surface units-were not operative at the Philippine Sea. 5. None of this really mattered because by 1944, US strategic and operational objectives no longer required the destruction of the main body of IJN fleet to accomplish. The IJN didn't have the logistical capacity to support continuous operations at sea, so all the "Big Blue Blanket" really needed to do was avoid any catastrophic setbacks. Spruance and Lee absolutely made the right decision. A decisive surface engagement could almost certainly have been effected with minimal risk of serious losses in return, but any risk at all was fundamentally unnecessary.
@@claireclark5209 Lee was also rightly concerned about the gunnery on the new battleships and feared losing track of ships in the dark. Friendly fire at night was much more likely. And torpedoes in the water makes night fighting even more deadly.
I disagree with your initial point about carriers. Carriers didn't render battleships obsolete. Carriers made amassed fleet action obsolete like marching in ranks to exchange volleys of fire with a ww1 machine gun nest. If you have an amassed fleet of destroyers cruisers and battleships like the IJN had vs 3 US CTFs with late war communications standards and tactics. No fleet ever made will survive that attrition. It's the exact strategy the Japanese wanted to use against the US. You dont have to dive in on the most heavily defended ships in this fleet. You pick off escorts. If they send out a detatchment you amass against them if they amass their own escorting carrier fighters against you you fall back into your own aa range. After all a battle line that big won't be able to fully rearm and refuel. Whereas when a single CTF needs to refit they fall back with their better speed and the others will keep up the pressure until the screen is sufficiently thin and you impose sufficient cost until the commanding admiral cannot justify his losses which based on historical accounts isn't particularly hard. You won't destroy the fleet without the big gun to close with and engage and destroy the enemy. But you can do more than enough to make the battle line a terrifying prospect. And if BBs can't get in line whats the point of having BBs
Hey Ryan - you've really become quite the naval history professor. I really like that you're taking care of the NJ, but I'm hoping that you can train a few successors and then move onto a much larger educational role - maybe even as a guest teacher at Annapolis. Modern cadets need this type of military history in their curriculum.
I've never served in the Navy or any other military service, but I am a lifelong student of naval history, particularly the Second World War. From all I have read, I believe the place for the fast battleships clearly was with the carriers. They had antiaircraft capability unmatched by any other warship, and they could keep up with the carriers. Each of the task groups that made up TF38/58 usually had one fast battleship attached to it, providing an awesome gauntlet of fire the Japanese planes had to try to get through, and many didn't. If a surface threat had ever emerged, they could be brought together, along with cruisers and destroyers, to defend the entire task force from it. As much as battleship enthusiasts might have wished otherwise, naval aviation, along with our submarines, was the decisive weapon in the Pacific naval war, and protecting the carriers was the mission for which the fast battleships were supreme. Now, if the Montanas had been built and deployed against the Japanese surface force off Samar...
Agreed. The US was the only country in WWII that possessed a large number of fast battleships and carriers. They operated very effectively together. The UK never had that many carriers and the only heavies Japan had that could keep up with its carriers were the Kongos, Yamato & Musashi. And latter two units were 1) only barely there speed-wise & 2) massive fuel hogs. This was an increasingly large problem for Japan as the war progressed and its fuel oil sources were choked off.
BBs are unnecessarily expensive to act as a AAA screen for carriers. Cruisers offered similar AAA but far cheaper and numerous. Only reason BBs were used this way is because they had already existed. When the navy could choose more cruisers or battleships, well they chose cruisers.
I agree. The original purpose of the Iowas was to escort carriers and to catch and destroy the Kongos. By the time that the latter objective was realized to be unlikely, the fleet carrier had already replaced the battleship as the center of a task force- primarily due to the superior range and striking power of aircraft. Moreover, the vast majority of the modern battleships received practically no individual main battery gunnery practice after their arrival in the Pacific because of their use as carrier escorts- and the Battle Line didn't conduct exercises or gunnery practice as a tactical formation until September of 1944. This is the primary reason for Lee's decision to decline an offer of a night engagement with the Japanese in the run- up to the battle of the Philippine Sea. This lack of training and gunnery practice resulted in the navy's failure to realize the tactical potential offered by remote power control in both range and bearing in a surface engagement. Just how much impact this might have had in an era dominated by naval aviation is difficult to say, but the ability of a battle line to both fire and maneuver simultaneously- as opposed to either firing 'or' maneuvering- may well have proved decisive in a gunnery engagement.
I've read this in several places myself. The fast battleships, the Iowas in particular, were simply too valuable as escorts for the carriers to divert them to training for a scenario that had already become more and more unlikely when they entered service, As much as warship enthusiasts might wish there had been another Jutland in the Pacific, the war was so rapidly changing the realities of naval combat that by 1944 the whole prospect of a big-gun fleet engagement between fast battleships had simply become ever more unlikely. The decision to keep the American battleships with the carriers was the right one for both the carriers and the battleships. @@manilajohn0182
This is at least the second video where you confuse Task Force and Task Group. The larger formation was the Task FORCE i.e. Task Force 38/58. The Task Groups were the smaller formations that made up the Task Force. At Philippine Sea, TF 58 had 5 task groups. 58.1 58.2 58.3 and 58.4 which were carrier formations and TG 58.7 which was the battleline.
Great work! I do not believe the BBs were misused. As exciting a historic remembrance such a battle would be, luckily, Lee remembered what was at stake - American lives and positive results of a much larger strategic plan. The US knew the Japanese were starved of resources, had very limited ability to maneuver their battleships to any real strategic advantage, and was unlikely to commit the entirety of their fleet to potential annihilation. In the event of annihilation, all supply, deployment, and retreat of the thousands of forward based soldiers would be eliminated. This, combined with your noted comments on the US lack of training in BB line tactics, suggests a greater foolishness in the Japanese naval attack at Leyte. The US BBs (and AA training) proved such a powerful platform in AA power, that any dismissal of them from carrier cover would be foolhardy in light of the attritional success proven in the carrier strike strategy, then employed and mastered. Finally, it must be remembered the entrance of Japanese kamikaze about this time, which were not without some affect.
I would not use the term "misused". There were various options as to how they could be used. The USN made the choice to use them as anti-aircraft escorts and this worked well enough. It was a good use of those BBs. It may not have been the optimal choice but I think it was far from "misuse".
At 7:15, the point about the British in the Atlantic isn't particular analogous to what we had going on in the Pacific just because they had such a dominant position in terms of surface forces, and they didn't have to contend with any threat of enemy carriers or even land-based aircraft after the Luftwaffe was destroyed over Britain. Just look at Tirpitz - the enemy couldn't even put their ships to sea because they had no ability to protect them or to keep them fueled or supplied for a long-enough voyage to put them within range of any sort of useful targets - assuming they had good enough intelligence to even plan an operation to send their surface fleet on a cruise for.
They got benefit out of Tirpitz regardless as a fleet-in-being. The British put a lot of effort into sinking her, even after the Germans had decided she was never going to sail again.
The British were just flat-out more aggressive. Their operations around Malta, Crete, and Norway were often in range of land-based aircraft, and they paid a heavy price. The casualty rates for destroyers and cruisers in particular are staggering, and they were using battleships to escort convoys at the height of the U-boat threat. Not to mention sailing them up fiords. It's no criticism of the USN to say that for sheer willingness to take valuable assets repeatedly into harm's way the RN is hard to top. Consider also that Britain was far less capable of replacing the losses and you start to get a picture of just how aggressive the RN commanders were.
@@jaimemetcher388 To an extent that would be because of numerical superiority relative to the Germans. Pretty much any class of ship was far more valuable to the Germans, so even a 1:1 trade would work in the RN's favour.
I must lead off with the fact I am not an expert on naval history, just know enougth to be dangerous. I wonder if some assumptions taken from the battle between Washingtion and Kirishima may be misleading. The Kongo Class, though up armored before the war, were more battle cruisers than battleships. (refer to Drachinifel) So it could not stand up to the knife fight the battle became. And the USS Washington could have suffered serious damage during the fight. There was a good chance it could have taken at least one Japanese Type 93 torpedo in the stern. (the Washington made a hard turn that made a 'knuckle' in the water that caused the incorreclty set up exploder in the torpedo to prematurely explode.) The situation in the war may have made for 'risk vs reward' decisions. The loss/damage of battleships at Pearl Harbor, the loss of the Prince of Wales and critical damage to the Bismark, made everyone very aware of the vulnerability of Battleships to aircraft, not to mention submarines. The protection the BBs gave carriers was a known quality, how things would go if the US battleships went out looking of the Japanese fleet, even if the Japanese were interested in a BB vs BB fight was probably thought to be a bit too much of a roll of the dice. Even the battle group's mopping up of escapees at Operation 'Hailstone' was criticised, as grandstanding. And not unnecessarily putting your ships, and men, at risk of death and injury was a feature of the whole 'island hopping' campaign?* Could a US battleship group gone hunting the IJN fleet? Sure. Did they need to, is another question. The British Royal Navy against the Germans was a vastly different situation. IMHO (North Cape, a 14" battleship, with escorts, against an 11" lone 'battleship'????) * was there not some criticism of the Gernerals after the ' Battle of the Bulge' for not cutting off the German army from retreat rather than just pushing them back?
Watching this video has shown me some of the reason my interests are what they are. I lean towards WWII and I lean towards battleships (though my favourite ship category is actually LSTs). I've noticed that with the Royal Navy I know more about battles, and with the US Navy I know more about ships. And what I think I've just realised is that I think the US Navy had better battleships, and the Royal Navy put their battleships to better use, and I paid attention accordingly.
In WW2, nighttime is the right time for surface ships. Seriously, the fleet gets turned upside down come nightfall, with carriers and their planes scouting and ASW while the surface ships regain their primary status.
What wasn't mentioned in the second night Battle of Guadalcanal was that the S. Dak had a power outage right at the onset of the battle, which removed it from service and was consequently helpless as it was battered by the Japanese ships. Turns out it was an inexperienced crew electrician who through the wrong switch. Was the the fault of Lee? Could be, but shutting off the electricity was not part of the American battleship line doctrine. At the Philippine Sea, I could understand Lee's hesitation due to the reasons mentioned. He wanted an advantage that he would be conceding if he were to close with the Japanese fleet in daylight. The main question in the history books is if Spruence should have started after the Japanese the day before, thereby bringing his carriers in range of the entire Japanese fleet. Of course he thought he could be outflanked should the Japanese decide to divide their fleet, which they didn't. Overall not sure how Lee would have fared against the Japanese battleship line. It may have been best he didn't go after them in that the US had no idea of what the super battleships Yamato and Musashi were capable of. That could truly have resulted in a battleship death match with everything getting sunk on both sides. Some writer made the astute observation that the cautious Spruence would have been better off had he been the fleet commander at Leyte Gulf when stopping the possible turn of the Japanese fleet would have ended in a better result and Halsey should have been at the Philippine Sea when his boldness would have pushed him to send the entire fleet after the Japanese. In the end, it may have been just plain 50/50 chances turning against the US. Easy to critique their actions after all the question marks have been removed compared to the cloud they were operating in. Both commanders had legitimate reasons for doing what they did and in the case of Leyte Gulf, an extraordinary series of bad events kept anyone from notifying Halsey of the turning of the Japanese fleet. So were the US battleships misused or was it just a series of bad events? Not sure how the potential failures at either the Philippine Sea or Leyte Gulf would have led to a change in US battleship doctrine. Other than when the Japanese are looking to trick you, put Spruence in charge, when they're not, put Halsey in charge. Not sure how that would look to future sailors when reading it in the official US battleship doctrine handbook.
By far the. Major US failures of WW2 were to not realize the Japanese torpedo range and power despite many ships being hit and our continued denial the were many problems with our torpedoes! I believe if our torpedoes worked simular to Japan's early in the war the ship numbers would have greatly changed.
In war, it was more advantegous to lose 20 - 50 planes then to have capital ship beaten to edge of destruction. Planes could have been replaced within week or two, docking took much longer. Now, post war brought two huge changes: planes become jet power and much larger and heavier, meaning carriers had to be replaced. And soon after, rocket artillery replaced big guns as main battery. Finally, carrier is far more versatile tool in gunship diplomacy then battleship. All of that, and lack of foe with comparable blue water navy contributed to abandonment of battleships. Cruisers with powerful rocket batteries do exist, but nobody puts heavy armour on them.
My dad was on the battleship USS California during WWII and during the battle of the Philippine sea. The US navy damn near loss the battleship USS South Dakota in the sinking of the Japanese battleship Kirishima. I have to disagree with you on this one. The US navy learned it was better in losing a few aircraft with 1-3 men onboard than any battleship with up to 2,000+ men onboard. In the battle of the Philippine sea our navy would have been facing down both Yamato class battleships. Eventually the largest battleships ever built Yamato & Musashi were sunk solely by US navy carrier aircraft. I believe US navy aircraft losses in both of these battles together were less than 50 with less than 100 airmen lost. Between the loss of Yamato & Musashi Japan lost 4,500+ men. Great Britain lost 5 BB & BC in WW 2 with a great loss of seamen. They did not learn a good lesson with that kind of loss. The US navy did. The battleships roll that they were great in was air defense, defense against other warships trying to get to the carriers and shore bombardment. Exactly what the US navy used them for. Shalom
The Royal Navy had fewer options than USN did as the enemy was closer so BB & BC were viable and critical assets. Your view on USN in Pacific I agree is sound.
Hi Ryan I am not sure that the total destruction of the heavy ships of the IJN at the Philippines Sea would have ended the war any earlier. The Japanese were very set on attrition in the outer rings of defences and then whole of population defence of the home islands. They became very good at attrition - Pelilieu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. What eventually caused them to give up on this Gotterdamerung ending (similar to Hitler’s view) were the atom bombs - and in particular the second. The first did not change them but the Emperor did after the second - with still some resistance to that idea. Those bombs were used almost as soon as they were available, and knocking out the IJN BBs early would not have sped that up. Being able to implement Operation Starvation earlier might have done so, but the cost in lost Japanese lives from starvation would have been high and it would still have required an invasion, with loss of US lives.
The carrier aircraft failed to wreck the IJN batfleet in the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea because they screwed up. The instructions were to put torps into most or all the batships and batcruisers to sink or disable them. Instead they took the easy course of ganging up on the damaged Musashi while not putting a single torp into anything else (I recently realized this was the result of foolish communications between the first wave returning to the carriers with the second heading towards the Japanese). The Kongos could be sunk with just 1-3 torps each, the Nagato with 2-4. A few torps could leave the Yamatos too waterlogged and slow to continue, and probably beyond practical repair even if they made in back to ports with large enough dry-docks. And Kurita being a smart and decent fellow realized the whole operation was a sad joke. Mass American carrier plane attacks could take out a batfleet, the Avenger pilots just had to go after all the enemy main ships, not the easy target that is barely moving and has much of its AA knocked out. At Surigao Strait only the 3 fully modernized standard batships WV, TN, CA could shoot at long range at night because they had the same fire control system with precession accounting gryos to establish an artificial horizon and the precision radars and computers as those on the NJ. The other 3 old batships fired zero to just a few salvoes because they could not hit anything at night over 5 miles, same for the Japanese. In any case it was destroyers than sunk the Fuso and Yamashiro. The Melvin put 2 torps into the first and it immediately lost motive power and went down in like 40 minutes. The Y absorbed 4-7 torps and sunk because of those, not from the hits by the USN batship and cruiser main batteries which were redundant at that point. Surigao Strait was really a destroyer versus battleship engagement.
True, but regardless, the center force had to pass the SB Straight. I do not know if this was possible given the location of the different task forces Halsey had, but maybe there could have been a lethal destroyer force waiting in the Straight, and a battle line capping the T shooting at night, followed up by air strikes in the morning. I'm just saying Halsey failed to take advantage of that huge handicap that the IJN had with respect to the Straight.
@@john_taves Kurita emerged from SBS at about 3AM. If Halsey had not over trusted the reports of the aviators who failed to torpedo a single capital ship in the Sibuyan Sea aside from Musashi, then Lee with 4 or 5 batships (incl both Iowas in the Pacific at the time) and a modest number of cruisers and destroyers would have capped Kurita's T at the max range of 20+ miles achieving straddles on the first or second salvoes. Lacking the ability to even open fire at over 5 miles K very likely would have turned around back into SBS and gotten the hell out of there, as he would do later in the day - he was a smart dude. K may have had some of his ships launch Type-93 super torpedoess at the Americans, doubt we would have gotten close enough to send fish. The problem was not really that TF-34 was not formed. It was that Sprague was not informed about that. Had he known, he could have moved his Taffy's well to the east of Samar before dawn. From there his 250+ Avengers would have had a fine time putting torpedoes into K's ships, very likely sinking all the batships and batcruisers unless K turned around real quick -- the Mk 13 torps had oversized Torpex filled warheads and could be dropped from a couple of thousand feet high at standoff ranges, and the pathetic IJN AA was pretty much useless. And there were the 6 standard batships ready to defend the gulf if needed, the 4 Japanese vessels of which only 1 was modern and 2 were WW 1 built batcruisers would have been outmatched. At both the Sibuyan Sea and off Samar the USN carrier aircraft could have readily liquidated (pun intended) the IJN battle fleet had the USN forces had their acts more together.
@@gregp6210 I agree. However, I think Drach's TF34 video stated that it was not possible for TF34 to get there in full force to be capping the T at night, which is why I hedged and said "maybe". I'll review it to check.
Given that USS Essex (CV-9) did not get into action until May 1943, the Pacific battles of 1942 should be seen as the U.S. Navy trying to "hold on" to the ocean. Between Pearl Harbor and the appearance of Essex, the USN lost Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp, and even Langley, among many other ships. Plus the RN and the HNLMS (Dutch Navy) lost most of their ships in the Pacific by March 1942. Many ships damaged at Pearl Harbor would not return to service until 1944. Every Allied battleship still functioning in the Pacific in 1942 was vital for keeping Australia from being isolated and lost. So lack of aggressiveness by Allied commanders in 1942 and 1943 was a prudent decision.
The problem is perhaps not that US battleships were misused as that they were the wrong kind of ships for modern warfare. As they were mainly used for shore bombardment (calling for big guns and not a whole lot else) or AA protection for carriers (calling for lots of small guns and a least some armor), the "line of battle" formula of large ships carrying guns big enough to punch holes in somebody else's battleships while also armored sufficiently to prevent the same from happening to them really didn't come up in WW2. Washington vs Kirishima was obviously not a typical battleship engagement; nor was Oldendorf's huge line of battle vs. the lone Yamashiro. America's battleships had been laid down years before the full capabilities of carrier aircraft had been demonstrated. In a very real sense the world's navies were trying to fight WW2 with basically WW1 weapons. It's rather surprising that any navy had decent fleet carriers at the start of the war; before Coral Sea their effectiveness was almost entirely speculative. Should American commanders have looked for opportunities to force classic Jutland-style battles, where its battleships could really shine doing their intended work? The goal of the war was defeat of enemies, not trading shots with them. The path to victory was really not going to be blazed by battleships, cool though they are.
Ryan, you have either read "Battleship Victory" by Robert Lundgren or should as his premise largely align with your perspective. That said, it is understandable that naval doctrine would be transformed by the early perception that naval air power was supplanting battleships as the apex offensive power relegating the rest of the fleet to supporting roles. In retrospect, however, the shift in philosophy was clearly an overreaction in terms of the perceived dominance of air power. Battleships formation could have been used more effectively in the Pacific War but this view is only clear looking back. It is totally understandable that, at the time, naval doctrine on both sides would view carriers as the emerging offensive power.
For one of the carrier duels of Guadalcanal, Battleship North Carolina was putting out so much AA gunfire defending Enterprise. There was so much gunfire that the Battleship was shrouded in smoke that Big-E asked if she was alright. All the smoke made it look like NC got hit. She wasn't, she's just shooting everything she had. American night battle doctrine was really ad-hoc for most of the navy and through the war. The Imperial Japanese Navy was, like the Royal Navy, very well versed in night fighting. They showed their competency in night battle in 1941-1943. You had numerous USN fiascos like Savo Island, Tassafaronga. But in the time after Savo Island, the US Navy got better in night fighting... With their Destroyers and Cruisers, especially the former. USN Destroyers and Cruisers eventually got their act together, used their technological advantage (radar), improve command and control that they wrested night battle supremacy away from the Japanese. That transition of night battle proficiency, despite Washington's performance at Guadalcanal defending Henderson Field, meant that most of the USN BBs were never part of these changes and battle experience. It would be more than 2 years after Washington's big showing in Guadalcanal in 1942 that USN BBs would finally have a large, good engagement. It was at Surigao Strait in late 1944. But it wasn't the Fast Battleships that would get that honor. It was the old Standard BBs, to include several that were "sunk" at Pearl Harbor. Washington is the only Fast Battleship of the US Navy that had the honor of engaging an enemy Battleship in combat. All the others never had that. I don't count Massachusetts shooting at an incomplete, immobile Jean Bart. Jean Bart wasn't even underway and was stuck in port, half working. The other US Fast BBs never got their chance. Halsey had all his Fast BBs with him on an incredibly stupid move at Leyte Gulf in 1944 when they could have crushed Center Force. They had a chance to meet Yamato in April 1945, Operation Ten-Go. But the Fast Carriers launched all out strikes before the battle line was even formed, sinking Yamato from the air.
I agree with Adm Lee in the Philippine sea. He was one of the best battleship commanders this country has ever produced, and he had first hand experience in night actions. While he did have a chance to have the decisive battle, the IJN also got a vote on who would win.
Surface action in the Pacific got a black eye early on between Pearl and ABDA. Fixing those issues requires intensive training and coordination with a specifically built force. Air power is more generically effective and allows you to focus your training efforts and orders on AA, ASW, and damage control. Why risk surface combatants needed for other roles in a needless action? Why split and dilute your forces and weaken your escort? Why spend time honing orders and efforts to support coordinated movement at night when you can spend that time becoming more impactful and effective in other areas? Just a shame the Navy has totally abandoned its responsibility to project presence in favor of projecting power. I think they are feeling that lack off Yemen, where Big J and her sisters would be able to sail off the coast and tempt fate with reckless abandon.
Reckless abandon? You’re projecting the misconception that a BB is somehow invulnerable to missiles. That’s not remotely true. Best to realize the superstructure is essentially unarmored, and then you begin to understand how incorrect that “reckless abandon” would be.
If BB’s were still in commission they would have been upgraded with better air and missile defense. RAM mounts and more CWIS. I am not sure if they would have gun range to hit the sights that are attacking the shipping lanes though.
@@vietta6424 The targeting height of a sea-skimming missile is easily adjustable; I doubt the Russians or Chinese would have any trouble adapting. Besides, if we're talking about power projection against non-peer adversaries, the real threat is drone swarms. We should not assume the enemy is so dumb as to target the armored belt.
@@vietta6424 modern anti ship missiles can actually easily go through battleship armor. Just not Nato ones people forget that soviets/russian anti ship missiles are on the way bigger end, and weren't the smaller nato ASMs like the harpoon. the soviets were using the Kh-22 missiles that are 6000kg heavy and their warhead was a 1000kg shaped charge. One thing to note is that the kh-22 is still in operational service for Russia. That isn't to mention the anti ship missiles that could have a nuclear warhead.
So, what you are saying is that several carriers, 200 miles away from a fleet of battleships could not maneuver well enough to send several waves of aircraft at the battleships and sink all of the battleships? You're letting your current job influence your objectivity.
7:20 I don't think this comparison of how the USN and the RN used battleships was very good. The examples you cited for the Royal Navy were all early in the war, prior to airpower becoming the force that it would become. Even in the Med, by the time the United States entered the war, airpower became the determining factor (see Operation Pedestal). Also, the Royal Navy never inflicted "greater proportional losses" on the Japanese Navy.
ching lee was a bad ass though he drilled the hell out of his crew to be extremely efficient and accurate with their guns. Was a dam sniper battleship.
The Washington was a sniper long before Lee set foot on her. Harvey Walsh was already known as the best gunnery officer in the fleet. Lee was icing on an already baked cake.
A large gulf existed between "Big Gun" and "Carrier" admirals greatly affected these mistakes. Nimitz wanted to use Battleships, not carriers, to sink Yamato as it approached Okinawa. Marc Mitscher ignored his orders out of spite. It's in the "gray book", V6, page 594, Aprol 07 0832...
I love the big battleships. I toured the North Carolina as a boy and it made an impression upon me which is difficult to overstate. They are massive industrial achievements of which the people and the nation who built them should be proud. However, the goal of these big boys is to win the war, and they probably could not have done that. The carriers were the right tool at that time. Halsey didn’t misuse his battleships, his misused his whole fleet. This was a command and control failure, not a doctrine failure.
At the time the Iowa class (and subsequent Montana class) had been proposed and designed, the role of the battleship had changed from Queens Of The Sea to Escorts To The New Queens Of The Sea- aircraft carriers. If I remember right, the Iowas were designed to be able to counter the Japanese fast battleships (Kongo class, known to be capable of 30+ knots). As it happened, those were the only Japanese battleships with enough speed to act as escorts for their carriers- and so the Iowas were capable of doing the same with our carriers. The Iowas (and the Alaska-class "very large cruisers") had absolutely massive anti-aircraft capability and that was what we needed especially once the Japanese adopted the kamikaze tactics.
My understanding is that for a good stretch of the Pacific war, keeping all the ships flush with fuel was an issue. The fast bastleships could go through 8-10,000 gallons of oil...per hour. All that oil had to be shipped by slow, vulnerable oilers from the US mainland. Logistics trump tactics.
Interesting video. Just a quick note about the film of the Arizona explosion: The black and white version you showed is reversed. For some strange reason, a backwards version of the explosion has been available and shown over and over in different venues. The original film was shot from Ford Island, with the bow of the ship facing to the right, and believe it or not, the original was in color. I've always wondered why this backwards black and white version is seen so much more often than the original. When you visit the Arizona memorial, they show the original color version, so I wonder if maybe they own the rights to the original?
battleships in the atlantic vs pacific are totally different. Carriers were at risk in the atlantic and med from unsinkable carriers, land based aircraft. look how many were sunk or damaged. Battleships are a better fit in that case.
The question is more about risk and reward. Off of Guadalcanal, we had to take the risk and Halsey was the man to do it. In the Philippine Sea, we did not have to take the risk and protected the invasion fleet while destroying the the IJN Air Arm. Spruance did. his job and took appropriate risk. At Leyte Gulf, Halsey took too much risk and the bait and left the San Bernadino Strait unguarded. If the fast battleship line had been left guarding San Bernadino, there would have been another re surface battle like Oldendorf’s Surigao Strait victory. Halsey did not need to have the accelerator pedal on the floor at that time and took too much risk in leaving the invasion fleet unguarded.
Probably an American battle line would have worked by Leyte, crossing K's T does not need extensive practice and preparation. Halsey should have kept his battleships in the vicinity, but he should also have kept his fleet carriers well within range. (He needed to keep air patrols to the north.) A very high priority should have been keeping track of the enemy over-night. Kurita did not have night air capability sufficient to find and destroy lurkers. It should have been possible to keep K under continuous air assault from dawn, or a bit earlier if the USN was as good at night as the RN, until he arrived, he would not have arrived intact. A gun-line battle before Leyte was winnable, but it was not needed, but there were risks and there might have been losses
In my opinion, had Admiral Halsey decided to leave Task Force 34 near the bottle neck of San Bernardino or with Taffey 1, Taffey 2, and Taffey 3 off Samar - then US battleships would not been missed used.
I think there were errors made, that prevented the BBs from being used effectively at Leyte. There's the famous story of Halsey's staff incorrectly decoding a routine status message from Nimitz, causing Halsey to turn the fleet around and miss an opportunity to intercept and sink the Japanese carriers. Messages back then were sent in morse code, and were encrypted with additional filler text to obfuscate the length and meaning of the actual message. The filler text should be obvious for the recipient. In this case, the radio operators encrypting the message used text from "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Tennyson. If the recipient knew the poem, then it should be easy to remove the extra filler text. But when the message was decoded, the staff left in the words from the poem, "all the world wondered". Halsey took a routine message asking for his current status, to be a rebuke from Nimitz, and ordered his fleet to break off pursuit.
I have watched many of your videos and have also been systematically indoctrinated about WWII through my grandfather who served on a destroyer during the given time period but I feel the U.S. probably would have been better served by, instead of building fast dreadnoughts, building super carriers that could have, not only been the same tonnage, (given the treaty they were started under) carried much more effective armament due to the fact that that treaty could have never taken that into account. I can only hope to get a response and I would be glad to be shown to be wrong. I just hope Ryan, or others less named, takes notice of this post and can make an interesting video from it, regardless of its final conclusion. I love your content and hope to visit not just the Battleship New Jersey but her sister ships as well, not to mention the plethora of other historical ships that sit as monuments. I guess that is on my bucket list.😅
I look at the Aircraft carrier as the Queen The Battleship as King piece once you lose your your ability to attack( invasion take a island) or defense ( protect carrier task) force) is over getting to far a way from castle and you may be took out by submarine ( knight)
"know when to win a battle and know when to lose a battle" ~ art of war, sun tzu...... US ensuring that their offense and defense will always have a positive outcome if possible while the japanese never matter if the attack is futile or not, which made them loses more force as fast as possible
2 months late to the party but it seems part of the issue is that the US took too long in putting to sea a "heavy" dedicated AA ship, something along the lines of either the Worchester or the Des Moines class. And it's not completely obvious how useful the 8in DP turrets would have been and the 6in ones ended up having some teething issues. And even then you've got new ships like the Alaska class or Sumner/Gearing class which are still far from being optimized for AA duty (empty space in the middle for the aviation facility on the Alaska and torpedo tubes on the Sumners). Had the US Navy been able to escort its carriers with true dedicated AA platforms, it would have been in a much better position to train and fight aggressively with the BBs.
An amusing theory if it wasn’t for the submarine. The ‘Gun Club’ was in ascendancy when the US was authorizing the fleet prewar but it was obsolete from the beginning
Franklin Roosevelt used the battleships in a unique way, putting the Pacific fleet battleships all in range of the Japanese aircraft carriers made sure they couldn't be used to prevent the Batan death march, they couldn't be used to fully supply a 100,000 man USA army on mainland China to prevent the 1949 communist chinese victory. FDR had been the secretary of the Navy before becoming president so he knew exactly what he was doing.
That's a really interesting point how battleships really became obsolete because there was just no need for them and no nation was in a position to try to challenge the combined fleets of the western powers, never thought about it like that.
Battleship obsolescence reminds me of the many other times we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater, like missiles and rockets making guns on airplanes "obsolete" in the 50s and 60s, or helicopters replacing tanks, replacing helicopters, replacing tanks once again. We just can't seem to settle for a middle ground.
I think to say they were misused is applied with full hindsight and is a little harsh. At the times in question there was no need to destroy the Japanese navy en masse and the way it was done piecemeal was just fine and it cost a lot less sailors lives.
My understanding is also the value of fleet in being. Everyone is concerned about using capital ships. Even the Japanse pull thier warships out quickly. There were other issues but I understand the Japanese could have blasted through taffy-3 even with the disproportionate damage it took. As well as oil the Italians became scared to risk thier ships after cape Matapan. The fleet in being and unwillingness to risk battle line is valuable logic but I can imagine a ww2 in which battleships see alot more decisive action...if screened well against torpedos. Idk.
What was the effective attack range of the main guns on the US BB's? What was the effective attack range of a US Aircraft Carrier's air squadrons? Whichever is greater, then that element is the most effective tool to use because it helps to keep the majority of the force out of harms way. Yes, while BB's were more effective at sinking ships than the US air squadrons, those air squadrons were able to damage, cripple and sink ships effectively enough. Also, one must remember that a ship that damaged enough to have to return to port for repairs is removed from the combat equation for that period of time and also takes up dock space and materials for either upgrading other ships or producing new ships.
I do not think the battleships were misused. In fact, they were used in the most efficient and productive manner available. The range of aircraft is so great, that the CV dominates on offense, but the carriers are vulnerable to enemy battleships. By keeping the US Battleships with the carriers, the battleship AA was able to effectively protect the carriers, and were in a position to fight any Japanese Battleships that may try and attack the carrier task force. The speed advantage of the US fleet was huge. Japan had no chance to concentrate all its battleships to fight in one engagement against the US, because the US would spot them at a distance and be able to literally keep that distance while pummeling the Japanese. The only effective way the Japanese could use their BBs to attack a carrier group, would be 2 BBs trying to sneak though, but the way the US used its battleships, the Japanese would have been fighting against both American Battleships and carriers, and the carriers were faster and would be able to sail beyond BB engagement range, while the American BBs held the line and pummeled the Japanese BBs. The way the US used its battleships limited the ability of the Japanese to respond, and the naval war became one of attrition. Which even the Japanese knew they could not win. The entire Japanese strategy was to force that one decisive engagement, because Japan knew it stood no chance at a war of attrition. The Americans forced the Japanese into that war of attrition. Trying to use the American battleships in a decisive engagement, just plays into the type of war that would have given the Japanese a chance, even if slim, to win the war.
I agree, but I see no point to having battleships defend against battleships. The airplanes are much more cost effective in terms of lives and money risked. A battleship has no chance of affecting a carrier. They cannot find them and cannot catch them.
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Battleships were still needed in bad weather and rough seas when aircraft could not be recovered by aircraft carriers
@@clintonreisig If we talk about "supercarriers" they are very stable because they are 100,000 ton behemoths. They are larger than the battleships of old and as such you'll not notice you are even at sea because it's so big and thus stable. Even in very bad weather, you'll just get some swaying but rarely enough to make launching and landing impossible. Just perhaps dangerous enough that they decide to not do it. Of course there is always big enough storms to ground operations, nature is very powerful. But at that point, your battleships wouldn't be able to get accurate firing solutions either.
Besides that, modern jets are all weather capable so, once in the air, they shouldn't have too much trouble flying or navigating. The main issue is always deck operations, where personnel are exposed to the elements, and also for pilots to land at poor visibility and a heavily pitching and rolling deck. Modern technologies do account and assist in this, but it still takes a lot of pilot skill so can be deemed a unnecessary risk.
But, modern ships get pretty reliable and up to date meteorological information so can always avoid the worst of it if necessary.
Also it seems silly to spend a insane amount of money on a battleship just in case you get some high sea state levels when you can get so much other stuff like more carriers, or escort ships. Which by the way, with missiles, sea state is kind of a non-issue. So if you really want, just make missile cruisers.
I don't know why but I like the idea of Ryan eating cereal before work. (He eats cereal? I eat cereal!)
THEY WON
Lee took the Washington to a sharpshooting event and Spruance took the Iowa to a seal clubbing. Halsey took everyone to a couple of typhoons. 😜
Typhons 2 : Halsey 0. Even with all of that firepower, he still couldn't beat Mother Nature! 😁
@@michaelhollman9470 But didn't get fired either.
Serves to remember that it was Halsey who ordered Lee (with Washington and South Dakota) into Second Battle of Guadalcanal.
Considering what happened the last few times Japan was about to be invaded by a foreign power, Halsey handled it pretty well.
Better than what happened to the Mongols at least.
This is hilarious, thank you
Spruance was doing what he needed to do, protect the infantry landings. He wasn't a glory seeker, he was about being effective, about getting the job done. Plus, Spruance didn't want to risk exactly what happened to Halsey, have a force he was unaware of, get behind him and reek havoc.
Halsey's situation is actually more complex than "he screwed up," even though he did screw up. U.S. Navy naval doctrine in WW2 can be stated this way, "Keep your force concentrated to deliver maximum damage to the enemy. Do not divide your force because it might be defeated in detail." The Japanese had a different doctrine and usually did divide their forces, scattering them all over the place; with the exception of their main force of battleships which they wanted to save for what they mistakenly believed would be the Kantai Kessen or "decisive battle" of the war. The one battle that would settle everything.
By dividing their forces the Imperial Japanese Navy could accomplish more tasks and keep their enemy off balance and unsure of Japanese intentions. It worked in the first few months of the war when the IJN had air supremacy and only faced a mish-mash of ships hastily thrown together from multiple navies. The Java Sea Campaign. After that, this policy of dividing their forces bit them in the ass: sometimes a little at a time, the loss of a ship here and there, and sometimes it bit them big time, like at Midway. Halsey following U.S. Navy doctrine seems to makes sense, but more was going on than Halsey following doctrine.
Halsey's flagship was the U.S.S. New Jersey, which was part of Task Force 34. Think of this from Halsey's point of view. If Halsey leaves Task Force 34 at the San Bernardino Strait, he has to stay behind and miss what he thinks is going to be the decisive battle of defeating Japan's last aircraft carriers. He didn't know they were a hollow force with no real strength. Halsey and his staff might have changed flagships, but that was going to take time and you never know when even a few minutes lost here or there might make a huge difference, just look at The Battle of Midway. Halsey makes a huge mistake in his unquestioned belief in the pilots and aircrew reports that they had done far more damage to many more Japanese ships in the Sibuyan Sea than actually occurred. Halsey's staff; which usually had served Halsey well, turn into a bunch of "Yes men" who fall in line with Halsey's thinking; with the exception of one officer who unfortunately was quite spoken and couldn't get anyone to listen to him. Halsey was exhausted and hadn't gotten much sleep in the days before the battle had begun, so when he finally went to sleep no one wanted to wake him up and give him any new information. Ironically; on the other side, Admiral Kurita also hadn't slept in over two days and would make critical mistakes the next day that might at least partially have been based on his lack of sleep. Admiral Marc Mitscher; and I believe also Admiral Lee, decide not to query Admiral Halsey about Task Force 34, even though they appear to realize that maybe Halsey was making a mistake. We can't really be certain what Mitscher or Lee were thinking; and generally, it isn't accepted in any branch of any country's military to question your commander's orders.
So for Halsey to make the correct decision, he needed to break with normal U.S. Navy doctrine; which would have been a daring decision to make. And to make that kind of decision Halsey probably needed to have gotten more rest so he could have thought more critically about the reports he received from his flyers and about what Kurita's force might do after they turned away from the air attack they had received. And most of Halsey's staff also have to have done the same thing. Those are a lot of factors that have to fall in place for Halsey to make what we think today would have been the right decision.
One more critical issue to consider. In the history of recorded naval warfare going back over two thousand five hundred years, there have only been a tiny handful of battles that have been truly decisive. Battles which fundamentally changed the course of a war. Most naval battles don't end in crushing victories like Midway, Tsushima, Trafalgar, Actium or Salamis. In most naval campaigns, the victorious force didn't need to curb stomp their opponents to win. They needed to accomplish critical goals; like escorting an army to a landing location and protecting them or blockading an enemy to keep them bottled up.
The British Royal Navy didn't crush the Spanish Armada. They delayed the Armada until the outgoing tide prevented the Spanish from taking a safe anchorage on the British coast, forcing the Spanish to cross to the other side of the Channel and anchor there. A handful of fire ships then caused the Spanish to cut their anchors and flee, then wind and weather did the rest. The British did what they needed to do to win and that did not include annihilating the Spanish in battle. During the American Revolution the French and British fought numerous naval battles. In the Battle of the Saintes the British won a pretty big victory, capturing or destroying five French ships of the line, including their flagship. However, the decisive naval battle of the American Revolution; the one that really matters in the long-run of history; the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, was fought to a draw with no ships being captured by either side. I think one British ship of the line; one out of nineteen, sunk after the battle due to the damage it had received. Getting a draw was all the French Navy needed to accomplish in order to keep British General Cornwallis and his army bottled up in Yorktown, where Cornwallis was forced to surrender to American and French forces two days later. That was a decisive victory, even though the battle itself is tactically boring and resulted in minimal damage to both sides.
On the other side of the coin, the Imperial Japanese Navy did not bring their full forces to bare in the Solomon's campaign around Guadalcanal; where they might have made a real difference, because the Japanese were holding them back for the ever desired Kantai Kessen. Unfortunately for the IJN, the decisive battle only occurred after the IJN was so worn down, they had to come up with a crazy plan that only included winning as a fever dream possibility. The Sho Plan was more about giving the Imperial Japanese Navy a chance to die with honor, than achieving a real victory.
Seeking a decisive, crushing victory became a false holly grail for naval officers in Britain, Japan and the United States to chase after. It is a goal that is really cool for the winning side when it occurs, but is a fundamental misunderstanding of what naval power is supposed to achieve. It is the cherry on top of a cake, not the cake itself. Chasing that false grail over achieving actual, needed results is what caused the Japanese to pass up the opportunity to win at Guadalcanal and caused Admiral Halsey to forgo his duty to block the San Bernardino Strait to protect the Leyte landings.
Outstanding post!
One further issue for Halsey was he had receive "oblique" orders from Nimitz to be more aggressive than Spruance had been in the Philippine Sea and "not let the Jap carriers get away this time." That "suggestion" really effected all of Halsey's decisions in the battle. He didn't really know it yet, but the battle was already won by 3rd fleet's destruction of Japanese airpower on Formosa and the Ryukus earlier that month that was slated to re-enforce the Philippines. The rest of the battle, albeit bloody and tragic, was without point.
Arguably Midway didn't even change the course of the war, as impressive of a victory as it was. Even Trafalgar increased an existing British advantage and made easier a long campaign of continually pressing Napolean's unformed navy to stop it from getting anywhere rather than simply creating British dominance.
@@Fronzel41 I would disagree. Some naval historians argue about how US "would have won anyways" because producing X amount of carriers bla bla bla. But they ignore two things. 1) Losing midway would mean Japan preserving its elite experience carrier force and US possibly losing theirs which has many butterfly effects that might lead to future US losses 2) Even discounting the strategic/tactical effects of the loss, at a minimum US pacific counteroffensive would be delayed 6 months (minimum time to replace losses at midway). This means the war would not end in 1945, US ability to carry on the war beyond 1946 was questionable, so it's possible Japan could successfully achieve a conditional peace if they won Midway.
One bone to pick, Halsey could easily transfer his flag and go with TF 38 onboard a cruiser. He would not have to stay with TF 34, which would not even make sense since Lee was to be in command of TF 34.
@@pax6833Agreed. Midway did matter very much! It may not have been the turning point, naval battles around Guadalcanal were. Midway was still necessary to blunt Japanese offensives and allow the US Navy to go on the offensive in the Solomons.
Since the host, Ryan, is playing a battleship captain, it makes sense that he does not want to use his vessel as a glorified anti-aircraft platform. However, as he points out at the beginning, battleships without air cover will be sunk. Battleships are expensive and take a long time to build. Therefore, if lost, they will not be replaced anytime soon. The Navy was in no position for a large surface engagement between battleships at any time in 1942. The Japanese threat in June 1942 was the occupation of island chains protected by land-based aircraft. The Navy needed to project force through aircraft carriers to counter this. The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was a desperate, ad-hoc affair by the Navy. However, after that the Navy could afford to be more cautious. Once the Japanese were stopped time was on the Navy's side. US industry would produce, on average, one destroyer per week and one aircraft carrier per month and enough planes to have air supremacy by October 1944. No matter how the battleships were used, the timeline for the Philipines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa invasions still would not have changed. So, no, I don't think the battleships were misused.
you mean that the Navy could afford to be *less* risk-averse after Guadalcanal, right?
@@perrya.3580 Sorry for the awkward sentence. On re-reading it, it confused even me lol. I actually re-edited my edit and deleted an earlier response to you. Instead of using "averse", my new edit uses "cautious". In 1942 the USN has to take chances from the hopeless Java Sea to daring Doolittle Raid to the perilously risky Midway to the heavy losses in the Solomons. Once the US took the initiative in the Pacific, the Navy could fight the war on its terms. The Japanese were forced on the defensive and would be reactive (mostly).
Good analysis.
Plus the Japanese were way better at night fighting
@@misterstaple or so they claimed, but with how bad they were at using radar, such as not having any to begin with, night battles were anyone's game.
There’s a lot to be said for having a “fleet in being.” If your fleet is still above water, it makes a good threat and keeps the enemy from acting freely. Actually fighting is not always as valuable. This is what kept Germany’s fleet bottled up after Jutland.
@@SkylerinAmarillo
And kept much of the British fleet tied down against the German Battleships in WW2!
Excellent point!
It seems that this us the general idea of the USN these days. A Carrier Strike Force (CSF) cannot in good health be ignored. So, if you're an international troublemaker and a CSF shows up overnight its gonna make an effect without firing a shot.
If your an aircraft carrier and your in range of a battleships guns, you've already screwed up. 🤔
HMS Glorious learned that the hard way. Seriously, though, in the Atlantic & in the Med getting snuck up on by surface ships was frequently a risk. The Pacific was a little different.
A German battleship sunk a British carrier.
Or Halsey did.
If you are an American aircraft carrier in WW2 and Japanese aircraft catch you without all the anti aircraft guns of the battleships you just sent somewhere else, you just screwed up and aren't coming back from that mistake.
@@dayaautum6983Fortunately, the Japs didn't have carrier-based aircraft by the time the opportunity arose to catch the flattops without the battleships.
Meanwhile, when Center Force came on Taffy 3, a few tin cans and the limited aircraft of the escort carriers, some even sporting actual ammunition and ordnance, drove the mightiest fleet the IJN had ever assembled away. Beware the anger of the Fletcher class!!! (And a wee lad named the Sammy B)
The other issue at the Philippine Sea battle was to not be drawn off the landing forces. Spruance was cold blooded enough that he passed up the chance for a heavy surface ship battle, remembering that if the Navy succeeded in the landings, the Japanese were in a very bad situation as far as logistics. Spruance was sort of the polar opposite of Halsey.
Spruance understood strategy. He may not have know that the B29 was nearly ready and certainly didn't know about the Manhattan project yet, but he understood that the USAAF wanted the Marianas for bomber bases and knew what that meant for the war.
Halsey was a glory hound. Even after the war he said that it would have been better if Spruance was in charge at Leyte and he in charge at the Philippine Sea.
No, by 1944 the IJN was hollowed out with few good pilots. The USN just had to take the win in front of them, that they planned for. They didn't need another Midway, they just needed to keep advancing to Japan and avoid risking big losses for empty wins.
@@recoil53 Spruance always seemed to remember what the mission was. If it meant retreating after Midway, he had already done much better than expected, and the Japanese had nothing on the table worth the risk.
@@tomhalla426 It's telling that while Halsey was given a 5th star after the war, Spruance was given full pay for life after retiring (admirals retire at half pay).
@@recoil53 And the way to do that was to keep the IJN from the beaches and protect the grunts going ashore.
Given how the Japanese at Marianas didn't try anything too fancy other than shuttle bombing, Halsey might have come out ok at that battle. Spruance probably would have annihilated the northern and central force task groups at San Bernadino, which would have allowed Kincaid and Olendorf to pursue the remnants of the southern force.
As Wayne Hughes says in his classic book “Fleet Tactics,” by the end of 1943, the Americans had mastered the use of radar for anti-aircraft defense, both to detect enemy planes and to direct their own fighters and massive AA fire on their ships, and developed appropriate tactics to the point of becoming an effective defense of the fleet. Plus, of course, the throughout technological superiority like in the new aircraft like the Hellcat and Avenger and superb training made the Americans a much better force. The Japanese never matched these capabilities, and ultimately they resorted to the desperate measure of kamikaze attacks.
The Americans were so confident on the ability of the new aircraft and crews and of the fleet to defend itself that in November 1943 Halsey ordered Saratoga and Princeton to attack Rabaul! Two carriers attacking one of the strongest Japanese landbases!
The point here is that by late 1943, USS battleships were an efficient force capable of destroying incoming Japanese air attacks. So it was possible to use them in a more aggressive manner than just to give AA cover to the carriers. I would say this is correct, although I guess the USN would have said something like, Yes, but why to risk them? We can stop Japanese air attacks, but they cannot stop “our” air attacks. So it's a less risky proposition to keep on using carriers as the main offensive weapon. I think it makes sense. I think it was none other than risk-prone Beatty who said, when critizized as too pasive when commanding the Grand Fleet, that you do not do anything risky when you are winning.
Bingo. 👍
I'm wrapping up my US Battleships of WWII series on my channel soon, and while I was writing the content of each episode, I had the "did we misuse our BBs?" in the back of my mind the whole time. Great video Ryan!
I watched your banned nose art video. The UA-cam algorithm is strange in its recommendations, but it’s was a good video. I wonder why the other ones haven’t gotten as much attention.
@@mrcat5508 thank you! beats me lol still not sure how it works!
Fascinating. My inner child definitely loves the idea of battleships being wrongfully dismissed as obsolete, and you make a strong case for how fear of losing battleships contributed in part to the perceived lack of utility. However, I find it hard to fault the brass for its decisive swing towards carrier actions. By 1944, multiple major naval battles had been fought entirely out of direct visual contact, including Midway, and the chaotic melee off Guadacanal was not the sort of fight most admirals wanted to plan around. I'm not too knowledgeable about the topic, though.
You seem more knowledgeable than most, or at least you’re a fellow drach enjoyer.
I think Lee was right not to seek a night engagement. It could have went disastrously wrong, as some of the night actions off Guadalcanal had. Washingtons escorting destroyers were massacred. Lee himself could have came off in a mutual kill situation had a spread of torpedoes found him.
San Bernardino straight is entirely different. Daylight, with air support on tap, in service of the larger strategic goal.
Alot of the losses at Guadalcanal had to do with commanders either not understanding or not trusting radar. They would often not utilize ships with modern radar by putting them at the front of battle lines. They'd stick a destroyer with a new advanced radar set at the back of the line with 5 destroyers with no radar in front of it. Then, by the time the rear ship picked up the enemy on radar, the lead ships would be almost on top of the enemy. Some really amateur hour stuff. This happened at the battle where Juneau and Atlanta were lost. Terrible misuse of resources.
@@HoldenOversoul
The advantage the Long Lance torpedoes gave the Japanese was a nasty surprise unrecognized until later in the war!
@@HoldenOversoulSavo Island. I own The Pacific. One episode dealt with the Where's the Navy thing. O.K., where's the Navy? I know the Canal was a land battle, and I ain't about to crap on the USMC. Well, except for the cry baby. But, Guadalcanal was won at sea. By the Navy. Now, there are those who say differently, because the Navy didn't stop the Japanese from evacuating the island. The troops left there were combat ineffective by that point. Even Twining and Puller said that going after them would just get a few more Marines killed. So, good bye and good riddance. As for The Pacific, we could've done with more Navy and less Leckie. Nice fireworks show though.
Up until mid-1943, there would have been a real risk involved in a night action with the main body of the IJN's surface forces. By mid-1944, the US fast battle line and its supporting elements would have gone through them like shit through a goose. The IJN's successes in the Solomons campaign largely boiled down to aggressive, well-handled destroyer forces and the inability of many USN admirals to make the best use of the advantage their radar provided. By mid-1944, the US fleet had the use of radar down to a science (and much better equipment to boot), and the IJN light forces that had proven so effective in the fighting around Guadalcanal had mostly been destroyed. By that point, the US Pacific Fleet had a massive quantitative and qualitative advantage in cruisers and destroyers, and for all of Ching Lee's misgivings about the state of training in his force, a battle line that was technologically superior and much better trained than their Japanese counterparts (the IJN's battleships essentially hadn't done ANY training for years due to fuel shortages). It's definitely worth noting that the IJN's battleships gave a piss poor performance in pretty much every surface engagement they took part in over the course of the war.
Yeah the Long Lance still was deadly. Drachinifel talks about it in his Philippine Sea alternate history where Lee gets into a night battle with the IJN surface fleet. Japanese cruisers and destroyers could have launched a massive salvo of Long Lances (like 100 at least) down the entire American battle line and either scatter them by forcing them to take evasive action or damage (and possibly sink) them.
I've been watching you fairly frequently for the past 3-4 years and I think this is the most scholarly of any others. Your insights are valuable. I like it.
Excellent discussion on the topic on WW2 naval warfare
Not sure the US Navy misused their battleships, they just underutilized them. Since the battle of Tsushima Straights in 1905, Japanese naval doctrine was to seek decisive massive capital ship battles. Early in the war, American admirals respected and feared the ability of the IJN in fleet actions; later in the war they saw no need to fight on the terms the Japanese wanted. They used aircraft carriers and submarines to sink and starve the IJN piecemeal.
This video could just as easily be titled the US picked a winning strategy and refused to change it. Id have to track down my source but I read once about US wargames before ww2 showed the US Navy getting smashed if its response to a Japanese attack was to rush into engagements. Nimitz even said The war with Japan had been re-enacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways,” he said, “that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise-absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the end of the war; we had not visualized those."
Underutilized or cautious (once the Navy re-floated the ships from 7 December and added a few more)?
I am as much of a fan of big-gun battleships as anyone. My favorite Drachinifel video is the hypothetical battle he did where my favorite battleship, USS Alabama, along with USS New Jersey, Iowa, Washington and the rest of Task Force 34, defeats Yamato and the rest of Center Force at the "what if?" version of the Battle off Samar. However, I can't disagree with how the US Navy made them secondary/ support ships for the carriers. In the cases of the hunt for Bismarck or Washington/ South Dakota at Guadalcanal, those were instances where battleships were really all the RN or USN had available at the time to deal with a threat. If they had a task force of multiple strike carriers available, each with 90-100 planes that could launch at their target from more than 10x farther than big guns can shoot, it just wouldn't have made sense not to use them first. Bismarck isn't even really a good example because without the damage inflicted by just two torpedo hits from carrier-based aircraft, no RN battleship would've laid eyes on him once he sailed away from Prince of Wales. Just look at Operation Ten Go where Yamato was sunk. Yamato, along with a cruiser and 6 or 8 destroyers, all recently retrofitted with as many AA weapons as could fit on their decks, get attacked by carrier aircraft with all but one or two of the destroyers being sunk. The cost to the USN for that massacre was something like 10 planes with 12 airmen killed. Several of those planes weren't even lost to AA defense but instead were (literally) blown out of the sky by unfortunately being too close to Yamato when her magazine detonated. Had the USN opted to intercept Yamato with battleships, the ultimate result would most likely have been the same but there almost certainly would have been significant damage inflicted on US ships with many times the number of Americans wounded or killed. Our battleships were good, but a fleet carrier, with its squadrons of Avengers, Dauntless, and Helldivers, was just a better choice in pretty much every situation and correctly became the Navy's go-to instrument of destruction.
I totally agree with everything you wrote!
I too enjoyed Drach's video on TF34. However, I was highly skeptical that this would result in a better outcome for the USA, than having the historical situation where Taffy Air Force takes on Kurita. The narrative is generally that the Taffies were toast if Kurita had pressed on. Sure, many cheap Jeep carriers would have been lost with associated lives, but the Taffy Air Force was no joke when it came to ship killing power.
An entertaining what if from Drach, would be to have Halsey make the correct decision, where he keeps 3rd Fleet in the neighborhood and directs Lee to do as much damage while he had the advantage of night and the confines of the straight to aid him. When the IJN guns get shots on target, Lee is directed to flee and let the air force finish the job.
One of the biggest deficits that the BBs suffered from in most of the major engagements was their inability to operate in narrow waterways. Especially because we often had trouble locating the IJN it posed an unacceptable risk to just steam our capital ships through the narrow straights between the islands in the island chains that the Japanese were defending. Not only does it drastically reduce your ability to operate in any sort of defensible formation and often requires you to cut speed to maintain the ability to maneuver without risking a grounding when you traverse a narrows, we didn't have reliable charts of many of the Philippine Islands for example and operating close to the islands put the fleet at tremendous risk of being sighted far off by Japanese coast-watchers, submarines, and land-base reconnaissance planes. Plus, the island channels were a haven for mines and enemy submarines. The obvious tactic that was employed when we did sail through contested channels was to run all your destroyers and escorts through first (that's one of the primary reasons you bring them along) but that often leads to a situation in which the Big Boys are way late to the party. Plus: all those ships in between you and the enemy causes so much radar clutter that we couldn't use our early generation radars to much effect and, if any of the lead ships take hits, the smoke from the damage or from Japanese laid smoke-screens. So, throughout the war in the Pacific, you saw the capital ships get relegated to the open-ocean while the IJN hugged the islands and carrier planes often got the first 4, 5, 6 bites at the apple.
And let's say you decide to split off your fast BBs to let them go hunting away from the carriers: if you steam them straight at the enemy - assuming the IJN decides they do NOT wish to risk their fleet by going toe-to-toe with them (after all - they were primarily concerned with sinking our carriers, not our battleships), our Iowas could only maintain about 3-5 kts of closing speed on most of the enemy ships if everyone was making full-steam in similar sailing conditions and going approximately the same direction. Even if we weren't detected until we were within 100 miles of the enemy (which is VERY unlikely) you are looking at having to chase your enemy down for more than a day just to get to the absolute MAXIMUM range to start engaging. And to do that, you have to sail at constant speed and constant course (which obviously makes you the definition of a perfect target for submarines or aerial attack). If you have to dodge some torpedoes and enemy dive-bombers (which would undoubtedly be dispatched to intercept you) along the way, it's going to take significantly longer than that to chase down an enemy force. It's real difficult to put together a set of circumstances whereby you can get a bunch of battleships in a position to have a decisive sea-battle unless BOTH sides wish to do it. And, for the latter half of the war, WE did not seem inclined and the IJN saw our BBs as second-tier targets when compared to the carriers - so, with NEITHER side really wanting a full-blown line vs line battle, I don't know that it's really a case that we misused our battleships. They just never really proved to be the right tool for the job.
Using narrow straits to sneak PT boats and destroyers in on heavy cruisers and battleships was also a tactic the USN used against the Japanese, for example at Surigao Strait. So it wasn't just an academic worry - the USN knew this could work, because they'd used it themselves.
Battleships are perfectly capable of fighting even in the narrowest and shallowest of fjords, even with a broken rudder, against enemy destroyers, submarines, and mines.
BS. warships are meant to be risked. That is what they are built for. SHow me a ship heavier than a destroyer that got badly damaged or sunk by a mine; so that so called concern is a joke. Frankly most of your post is a joke. How many US ships were sunk by Jap subs around Guadalcanal; in the slot or nearby? another joke.
@@SennaAugustus It helps if those BBs have the plot armour of HMS Warspite and being under Lee's command like USS Washington
I've been thinking a lot about this episode. I don't think there is any doubt that battleships became secondary elements in World War II and never were used for their intended purpose -- to fight consequential ship-to-ship battles that would bring victory to the US side.
Even before Pearl Harbor, the submarine and the torpedo began to make large battleships and cruisers very vulnerable to attack and sinking. Dive bombers that were able to penetrate lightly armored parts of ships were another death nell. Yes, the Japanese navy had teeth throughout the war, but US carrier task forces were the main weapon used to attack the Japanese fleet.
Battleships supported these task forces and occasionally were used in ship-to-ship battles, but their heyday had completely passed as the new Essex-class carriers came online in 1943. Dive bombers and torpedo bombers were a much more formidable weapon against Japanese ships than battleships. At the end of the day, battleships were gun platforms. They provided significant antiaircraft capability in their role as carrier task force screens and they were massive gun platforms to support amphibious landings.
It is a mistake to say that battleships were "misused" in the sense of ship-to-ship fighting. They were repurposed as part of the switch to aircraft carrier task forces and ground support.
Clearly with 20/20 hindsight it was a serious mistake by Halsey to leave San Bernadino strait unguarded - not even one Destroyer to sound the alarm if the Japanese decided to come through. It was reported by Coast Watchers in the area that the Navigation lights at the strait were turned on which was a dead giveaway that important ship traffic was coming through. Had Admiral Spruance been in command at Leyte Gulf I believe he would have covered the Strait with enough fast battleships and screen to get the job done.
I mean it's not fair to given the benefit of hindsight when you rightly put that Spruance would have at least left a scouting force in the unlikely chance the IJN doubled back but more likely had a bigger force. He definitely wouldn't drop everything and go chasing after the carriers, when he had no idea if there were any other IJN forces at Philippine Sea he didn't so it's really weird to think he would had he been in command.
Or Admiral Kincaid could have stationed a DD lookout at the mouth of the San Bernardino Strait. Since close-in defense of the landing force was, you know, _his entire job._
I've always thought the action of Samar would have been completely different if Adm. Spruance had been in command. With his calculated, cautious nature I believe he definitely would have kept some part of TF 34 to cover the landing area.
@@Philistine47 why would he when halsey was supposed to do it and told him tf 34 would be there and stay there. no one is to blame for that but halsey. he was one of the best ever but he like no one is above mistakes and here his aggression got the better of him
@@j.landismartin5397 Leaving _part_ of TF 34 behind in case Kurita turned around would not have been a good idea. If you try that and Kurita does come back, you've got 2 BBs against 4; if he doesn't, you've significantly reduced the AA screen of TF 38 for nothing.
The argument that the record of BBs vs air power is skewed by lack of concentrated force/tanking is new to me, and I suppose could be valid. It is hard to shrug off the idea of accepting /sinkings/ of capital ships with crews in the thousands in exchange for non-capital ships with smaller crews, but maybe a fleet could have just eaten the CVs' magazines without being mission-killed.
It's also hard for me to say that the USN was wrong to back down from a night engagement with IJN destroyers and cruisers - and their torpedoes - even with radar giving them gunnery supremacy at night. You just don't have the fire rate on BB main batteries to hit enough of the fast-moving, more maneuverable targets without your own cruisers helping out like they can in the day. It's a sized-up version of the torpedo boat nightmare that led to the invention of the "torpedo boat destroyer." The Japanese had long since recognized that they needed asymmetric advantage and moved their superb torpedoes to the center of their anti-capital-ship strategies; this is one of the facts which makes the completion of Yamato and Musashi a pretty dumb sunk-cost fallacy. In Kaigun, Evans and Peattie run through the IJN's Kantai Kessen plan and go out of their way to note that it has the cruisers sacrificing themselves to let the destroyers get in position and launch, an insane inversion relative to any other navy's doctrine. As far as I recall, they don't actually call much attention to the fact that the superbattleships' role is relegated to "mop up the smashed USN fleet after the battle's practically over" - but it is.
The most convincing argument I've seen for the black-shoe fleet - and it does convince me that BB advocates weren't just stubborn or behind the times - is the "fleet games" various nations including the USN held before the war to establish doctrine for the new technology of aircraft carriers. Naturally, carriers being powerful but easily sunk or MKed "glass cannons", the opposing carriers were always number one on any carrier's target list. And because carrier strikes took multiple hours to go out and return, carriers could very easily end up trading fatal blows while their planes were in transit. It was common, in the best simulations pros could think up, for all the carriers in a battle to end up sinking each other at the start. In practice, Midway could well have turned out this way with a couple small twists in history. If Carrier MAD does happen and the skies are clear, do you want some ships left to actually go take the objective or not?
I think I'm remembering this detail correctly. At the Phillipine Sea the fast battleships were formed into their own task force. They were still supporting the carrier task forces as anti-aircraft escort, but it was flexible that at a moments notice their task force could depart and form into a battle line. At Leyte they were dispersed among the different carrier task forces. Guadalcanal and the raid on Truk were the only actions that the fast battleships got to participate in a surface action.
The subject for this presentation is interesting. I am looking forward to viewing the contents later tonight.
Right . . . everybody's an expert after the fact . . . .
Had a friend that was supported by NJ in Vietnam...said it was unbelievable... round on the way, a little while later a sound like a freight train coming in and then a hole about the size of a city block...and that was just one round.
I am going to say I am not expert enough in naval warfare to comment, but I am going to anyway. ;) The fact that battleships were superlative carrier escorts probably dominated the thinking of the admirals. Battleships could win the naval battles, but aircraft carriers were needed to win the war. However awe-inspiring a battleship land bombardment was, carrier aircraft could carry out land attacks with far more precision, sometimes pinpoint precision. A bombardment range of 27 miles was pretty cool, and on many islands nothing more was needed, but when they start invading the Philippines a 27 mile limit would have been... well, limiting. The American battleship line could absolutely have beat the Imperial Navy sooner, but also with a higher casualty rate. Ultimately the carriers were the more essential tool in winning the war in total, not just on the seas but in the air and on the land, and I think this was foremost on their minds.
Basically, "so what if we don't totally wipe out the IJN now, we'll get them later and on more favorable terms." ;) The Japanese were after all running out of oil. Soon they wouldn't be able to move their behemoths around the map at all.
Pretty much, yeah.
Excellent video clips of the South Dakota's on the attack, presumably off Japan proper near the end of the war when they were tasked with Shore bombardment of Japanese industrial targets. Thanks for the video.
It's unlikely that battleships at sea would have been sunk by air power (as much as they were) had they also had at least some minor air cover. In those cases, Prince of Wales and others etc, there wasn't even the slightest air cover. Can you imagine what might have been if even a squadron or two of fighters providing semi adequate air cover might have prevented?
If memory serves, not a single battleship was sunk by air attack while also having air cover. Hell, in the grand scheme of things, very few battleships at sea were sunk by air attack at all. Just Force Z, Roma, Yamato and Musashi. I might be forgetting one or two, but it's a surprisingly small number.
@@Cailus3542 I think Yamato sunk from sheer exhaustion ....
True, but you can say that about anything. No land was successfully invaded when the attacker did not have air supremacy. That fact does not make battleships a cost effective weapon system in WWII.
@@spoddie The USN risked a few millions of dollars of airplanes, and maybe 100 lives to kill 3000 lives and sink 1/4 billion dollars of investment by the Japanese. The fact that Yamato took tremendous punishment is missing the point. The risk vs reward at that time made the battleship obsolete. At Leyte, Halsey had no excuse to allow IJN naval guns within range of any USN dingy.
@@john_taves Got that out of your system? Feel better? I'm pretty sure launching into unnecessary lectures is a common occurrence with you.
As always, very well stated. I’m not only old enough to have seen the standards come in after the war, this topic was still being discussed in War college during my career.
Louis Johnson , as Secretary of Defense had declared war on the Navy, canceling thecarrier, the United States, which looked like a mistake to me to begin with.
The attack was on the entire surface fleet, including the carriers, and so the information that was put forward of carrier protection, as the Navy was struggling to find an aircraft capable of a nuclear weapon.
It’s a long time ago, but I remember the salient argument rested around South Dakota and the other heavies moving out in front on the day of the Marianas Turkey shoot. The argument was well presented.
Ive heard it said Spruance knew he could beat the Japanese so rather than be aggressive he just leaned on them until they folded.
Looking forward to your review Ryan on the comments for your next video and an in depth discussion on the misuse of battleships.
The "dark greyhounds" starting at 13:26 are cool. All those destroyers painted the totally awesome dark blue measure 21 camouflage and on patrol. This looks like the Solomons Campaign. They're out hunting.
Speaking of the battlewagons at Philippine Sea just imagine if the Japanese force had seen _Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Washington,_ and a bunch of cruisers and destroyers bearing down on their carrier force.
Wow.
I do like Ryan's 1:1 scale model that allows him to eat Magic Spoon while easily sitting inside the model which is way more difficult even at 1:30 scale.
Ryan brings up some really good points. Looking at the overall Battle of Leyte Gulf, Kurita's Center Force was very strong with 5 BB's, 10 CA's, 2 CL's and 10 DD's. Persistent attacks from submarines USS Darter and Dave in the Palawan Passage on 10/23/1944 and by 3 Carrier Air Groups (approx 60% of the 3rd Fleet's air strength after McCain was sent to Ulithi to re-arm and refuel) in the battle of Sibuyan Sea on 10/24/1944 managed to only sink or cripple about 1 BB and 3 CA, (maybe a few others?) Kurita still came on toward the San Bernardino Strait which resulted in the heroic battle against the DD's/DDE's and CVE's of Taffy 3 we all know about. The fact is that sustained submarine and air attacks to the center force though fatiguing and harassing didn't significantly impact it's critical fighting force (much to my chagrin as a former sub officer-though we all know the airdates always inflate their scores!). The world will always wonder what would have happened if Halsey would have left Lee's battle line of 4 modern Iowa class BB's and their escorts guarding the San Bernardino Strait (in hindsight, that is the prudent action, of course, but that's hindsight). I'd like to think the US would have prevailed; the Iowa's had formidable armament and fire control, but they were relatively lightly armored and the Japanese had a lot more heavy cruisers; and never forget the Japanese superb use of torpedos. But I wander. Ryan's basic argument was that a massed, well coordinated fleet of surface combatants in open ocean with all their combine AA could shoot down enough attacking aircraft to survive and we missed several opportunities to significantly reduce the powerful Japanese CA/BB/DD threat earlier via surface action by our own BB's/CA's/CL's. 8" and 16" shells are cheap and you can shoot hundreds of them! I think he is right. But we will never know.
I hear BB-62 recently finished a shipyard rehab and wish congrats. Really enjoy your videos and next time I'm in the area I hope to stop by (from Wilm DE originally)
Regarding Halsey leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded... one needs to remember the propensity for aviators to drastically exaggerate the results of their air attacks. Halsey was left with the impression that Kurita's force was mostly at the bottom of the Sibyuan Sea, when in fact only the Musashi had been sunk. When Ozawa's carriers were spotted he regarded them the greater threat as they were an undamaged air attack force. Little did he know that Ozawa had next to no planes on his ships and Kurita's force was still mostly intact. Still bad decision-making, but it must be remembered he made it on the basis of bad information.
Halsey served through 1941 and 1942. He still remembered how powerful and destructive the Japanese carriers were through the end of Guadalcanal, and he still feared them. There memories made him think the Japanese carriers were still the most powerful opponent he would come up against and was blinded by his desire to destroy them. That said, there was no excuse…none…to not detach a covering force for the beachhead, including a couple of frontline carriers and battleships. His trauma from Guadalcanal and desire for revenge sentenced Taffy 3 to a horrible death.
Halsey did not act on new information found after he went to bed. That is a failing of him not picking better staff who when the situation changed would wake him up to make sure he knew that Kurita's Center Force had turned south again and was steaming towards Leyte Gulf. Captain Moore would rather have faced a disgruntled Spruance than a Spruance caught with his pants down.
Unknown to the Japanese High Command during World War Two, US code breakers were after the Battle of Midway able to read word for word what they were transmitting, so Halsey should had known after the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the IJN lacked the number of naval aviators after the bulk of them went to their deaths and those left were committed to either defense of the home islands because US Colonel Doolittle’s Raid or the
@@nx014 Your timeline doesn't make much sense. Doolittle's raid was before Midway, 2 and a quarter years before the battle of Philippine Sea. The IJN did change their codes at least once in that time. In the lead up to the invasion of the Philippines, Halsey had been running the Fifth fleet ragged by raiding far and wide including raids on Formosa. Based on his intelligence, he recommended that the invasion start on Leyte Island instead of further south. Which makes his decision to chase after the empty carriers even more foolish.
Kurita didnt know Ozawa successfully lured the 3rd Fleet out of action….
South Dakota had a ship wide electrical failure at Guadalcanal. She was never in the fight.
Lee made the correct decision when he declined a night fleet action at Philippine Sea. He would have exposed his fleet to torpedo attack.
Well, South Dakota did get pummeled, even if she didn't shoot back. It was ironically fortunate, since Washington went completely unnoticed as everyone focused on South Dakota, but South Dakota's armour held.
5th fleet had a crushing advantage in cruisers and destroyers at the Philippine Sea, and the fight would have occurred in open water with room to maneuver and nowhere to hide from radar. The IJN light forces didn't have a zero chance of getting into effective torpedo range, but the odds weren't much better than that.
@@claireclark5209 Most of the American cruisers and destroyers were with the carriers. Lee only had 4 cruisers and 9 destroyers if I remember correctly. So pretty much even with the IJN.
@@RémiWarin
1. The initial dispositions at the Philippine Sea had Lee in direct command of 7 fast BBs (2 NC-class, 3 SoDaks, 2 Iowas), 14 DDs and 3 CAs.
2. 5th fleet had the initiative, and there was no meaningful impediment to reallocating other forces to Lee if a night surface engagement was sought, and this almost certainly would have happened if that decision had been made.
3. Reinforcing Lee with a single DesRon (or equivalent) and a cruiser division would have left the carrier forces screened by 15 cruisers and 45-46 destroyers. Lee at that point would be bringing 22-23 DDs, 6 cruisers, and 7 modern BBs against a Japanese surface van force of 4 BB (2 of which were thoroughly outclassed Kongos), 9 cruisers, and 8 DDs-a crushing margin of superiority. For that matter, detaching a second CruDiv to Lee could have easily been done without excessively weakening the carrier screen.
4. The conditions that allowed the IJN light forces to be as successful as they were in the Solomons-constricted waters with minimal opportunity for maneuver, Allied flag officers who didn't trust or understand how to make use of radar, and the as yet incomplete deployment of radar to all USN surface units-were not operative at the Philippine Sea.
5. None of this really mattered because by 1944, US strategic and operational objectives no longer required the destruction of the main body of IJN fleet to accomplish. The IJN didn't have the logistical capacity to support continuous operations at sea, so all the "Big Blue Blanket" really needed to do was avoid any catastrophic setbacks. Spruance and Lee absolutely made the right decision. A decisive surface engagement could almost certainly have been effected with minimal risk of serious losses in return, but any risk at all was fundamentally unnecessary.
@@claireclark5209 Lee was also rightly concerned about the gunnery on the new battleships and feared losing track of ships in the dark. Friendly fire at night was much more likely. And torpedoes in the water makes night fighting even more deadly.
So Wise , Thank You. Now to Learn and Remember
I disagree with your initial point about carriers. Carriers didn't render battleships obsolete. Carriers made amassed fleet action obsolete like marching in ranks to exchange volleys of fire with a ww1 machine gun nest. If you have an amassed fleet of destroyers cruisers and battleships like the IJN had vs 3 US CTFs with late war communications standards and tactics. No fleet ever made will survive that attrition. It's the exact strategy the Japanese wanted to use against the US. You dont have to dive in on the most heavily defended ships in this fleet. You pick off escorts. If they send out a detatchment you amass against them if they amass their own escorting carrier fighters against you you fall back into your own aa range. After all a battle line that big won't be able to fully rearm and refuel. Whereas when a single CTF needs to refit they fall back with their better speed and the others will keep up the pressure until the screen is sufficiently thin and you impose sufficient cost until the commanding admiral cannot justify his losses which based on historical accounts isn't particularly hard. You won't destroy the fleet without the big gun to close with and engage and destroy the enemy. But you can do more than enough to make the battle line a terrifying prospect. And if BBs can't get in line whats the point of having BBs
Hey Ryan - you've really become quite the naval history professor. I really like that you're taking care of the NJ, but I'm hoping that you can train a few successors and then move onto a much larger educational role - maybe even as a guest teacher at Annapolis. Modern cadets need this type of military history in their curriculum.
How about a Tag Team of Ryan Szymanski and Drachinfel? That would be superb.
Very good points. Love your information.
I've never served in the Navy or any other military service, but I am a lifelong student of naval history, particularly the Second World War. From all I have read, I believe the place for the fast battleships clearly was with the carriers. They had antiaircraft capability unmatched by any other warship, and they could keep up with the carriers. Each of the task groups that made up TF38/58 usually had one fast battleship attached to it, providing an awesome gauntlet of fire the Japanese planes had to try to get through, and many didn't. If a surface threat had ever emerged, they could be brought together, along with cruisers and destroyers, to defend the entire task force from it. As much as battleship enthusiasts might have wished otherwise, naval aviation, along with our submarines, was the decisive weapon in the Pacific naval war, and protecting the carriers was the mission for which the fast battleships were supreme. Now, if the Montanas had been built and deployed against the Japanese surface force off Samar...
Agreed. The US was the only country in WWII that possessed a large number of fast battleships and carriers. They operated very effectively together. The UK never had that many carriers and the only heavies Japan had that could keep up with its carriers were the Kongos, Yamato & Musashi. And latter two units were 1) only barely there speed-wise & 2) massive fuel hogs. This was an increasingly large problem for Japan as the war progressed and its fuel oil sources were choked off.
BBs are unnecessarily expensive to act as a AAA screen for carriers. Cruisers offered similar AAA but far cheaper and numerous. Only reason BBs were used this way is because they had already existed. When the navy could choose more cruisers or battleships, well they chose cruisers.
I agree. The original purpose of the Iowas was to escort carriers and to catch and destroy the Kongos. By the time that the latter objective was realized to be unlikely, the fleet carrier had already replaced the battleship as the center of a task force- primarily due to the superior range and striking power of aircraft.
Moreover, the vast majority of the modern battleships received practically no individual main battery gunnery practice after their arrival in the Pacific because of their use as carrier escorts- and the Battle Line didn't conduct exercises or gunnery practice as a tactical formation until September of 1944. This is the primary reason for Lee's decision to decline an offer of a night engagement with the Japanese in the run- up to the battle of the Philippine Sea.
This lack of training and gunnery practice resulted in the navy's failure to realize the tactical potential offered by remote power control in both range and bearing in a surface engagement. Just how much impact this might have had in an era dominated by naval aviation is difficult to say, but the ability of a battle line to both fire and maneuver simultaneously- as opposed to either firing 'or' maneuvering- may well have proved decisive in a gunnery engagement.
I've read this in several places myself. The fast battleships, the Iowas in particular, were simply too valuable as escorts for the carriers to divert them to training for a scenario that had already become more and more unlikely when they entered service, As much as warship enthusiasts might wish there had been another Jutland in the Pacific, the war was so rapidly changing the realities of naval combat that by 1944 the whole prospect of a big-gun fleet engagement between fast battleships had simply become ever more unlikely. The decision to keep the American battleships with the carriers was the right one for both the carriers and the battleships. @@manilajohn0182
This is at least the second video where you confuse Task Force and Task Group. The larger formation was the Task FORCE i.e. Task Force 38/58. The Task Groups were the smaller formations that made up the Task Force. At Philippine Sea, TF 58 had 5 task groups. 58.1 58.2 58.3 and 58.4 which were carrier formations and TG 58.7 which was the battleline.
Great content! Thank you.
Great work! I do not believe the BBs were misused. As exciting a historic remembrance such a battle would be, luckily, Lee remembered what was at stake - American lives and positive results of a much larger strategic plan. The US knew the Japanese were starved of resources, had very limited ability to maneuver their battleships to any real strategic advantage, and was unlikely to commit the entirety of their fleet to potential annihilation. In the event of annihilation, all supply, deployment, and retreat of the thousands of forward based soldiers would be eliminated. This, combined with your noted comments on the US lack of training in BB line tactics, suggests a greater foolishness in the Japanese naval attack at Leyte. The US BBs (and AA training) proved such a powerful platform in AA power, that any dismissal of them from carrier cover would be foolhardy in light of the attritional success proven in the carrier strike strategy, then employed and mastered. Finally, it must be remembered the entrance of Japanese kamikaze about this time, which were not without some affect.
I would not use the term "misused". There were various options as to how they could be used. The USN made the choice to use them as anti-aircraft escorts and this worked well enough. It was a good use of those BBs. It may not have been the optimal choice but I think it was far from "misuse".
And as a armored fuel depot
At 7:15, the point about the British in the Atlantic isn't particular analogous to what we had going on in the Pacific just because they had such a dominant position in terms of surface forces, and they didn't have to contend with any threat of enemy carriers or even land-based aircraft after the Luftwaffe was destroyed over Britain. Just look at Tirpitz - the enemy couldn't even put their ships to sea because they had no ability to protect them or to keep them fueled or supplied for a long-enough voyage to put them within range of any sort of useful targets - assuming they had good enough intelligence to even plan an operation to send their surface fleet on a cruise for.
They got benefit out of Tirpitz regardless as a fleet-in-being. The British put a lot of effort into sinking her, even after the Germans had decided she was never going to sail again.
The British were just flat-out more aggressive. Their operations around Malta, Crete, and Norway were often in range of land-based aircraft, and they paid a heavy price. The casualty rates for destroyers and cruisers in particular are staggering, and they were using battleships to escort convoys at the height of the U-boat threat. Not to mention sailing them up fiords.
It's no criticism of the USN to say that for sheer willingness to take valuable assets repeatedly into harm's way the RN is hard to top. Consider also that Britain was far less capable of replacing the losses and you start to get a picture of just how aggressive the RN commanders were.
@@jaimemetcher388 To an extent that would be because of numerical superiority relative to the Germans. Pretty much any class of ship was far more valuable to the Germans, so even a 1:1 trade would work in the RN's favour.
Thanks!
Very good video and analysis
I must lead off with the fact I am not an expert on naval history, just know enougth to be dangerous.
I wonder if some assumptions taken from the battle between Washingtion and Kirishima may be misleading. The Kongo Class, though up armored before the war, were more battle cruisers than battleships. (refer to Drachinifel) So it could not stand up to the knife fight the battle became. And the USS Washington could have suffered serious damage during the fight. There was a good chance it could have taken at least one Japanese Type 93 torpedo in the stern. (the Washington made a hard turn that made a 'knuckle' in the water that caused the incorreclty set up exploder in the torpedo to prematurely explode.)
The situation in the war may have made for 'risk vs reward' decisions. The loss/damage of battleships at Pearl Harbor, the loss of the Prince of Wales and critical damage to the Bismark, made everyone very aware of the vulnerability of Battleships to aircraft, not to mention submarines. The protection the BBs gave carriers was a known quality, how things would go if the US battleships went out looking of the Japanese fleet, even if the Japanese were interested in a BB vs BB fight was probably thought to be a bit too much of a roll of the dice.
Even the battle group's mopping up of escapees at Operation 'Hailstone' was criticised, as grandstanding. And not unnecessarily putting your ships, and men, at risk of death and injury was a feature of the whole 'island hopping' campaign?* Could a US battleship group gone hunting the IJN fleet? Sure. Did they need to, is another question.
The British Royal Navy against the Germans was a vastly different situation. IMHO (North Cape, a 14" battleship, with escorts, against an 11" lone 'battleship'????)
* was there not some criticism of the Gernerals after the ' Battle of the Bulge' for not cutting off the German army from retreat rather than just pushing them back?
Watching this video has shown me some of the reason my interests are what they are. I lean towards WWII and I lean towards battleships (though my favourite ship category is actually LSTs). I've noticed that with the Royal Navy I know more about battles, and with the US Navy I know more about ships. And what I think I've just realised is that I think the US Navy had better battleships, and the Royal Navy put their battleships to better use, and I paid attention accordingly.
In WW2, nighttime is the right time for surface ships. Seriously, the fleet gets turned upside down come nightfall, with carriers and their planes scouting and ASW while the surface ships regain their primary status.
What wasn't mentioned in the second night Battle of Guadalcanal was that the S. Dak had a power outage right at the onset of the battle, which removed it from service and was consequently helpless as it was battered by the Japanese ships. Turns out it was an inexperienced crew electrician who through the wrong switch. Was the the fault of Lee? Could be, but shutting off the electricity was not part of the American battleship line doctrine.
At the Philippine Sea, I could understand Lee's hesitation due to the reasons mentioned. He wanted an advantage that he would be conceding if he were to close with the Japanese fleet in daylight. The main question in the history books is if Spruence should have started after the Japanese the day before, thereby bringing his carriers in range of the entire Japanese fleet. Of course he thought he could be outflanked should the Japanese decide to divide their fleet, which they didn't. Overall not sure how Lee would have fared against the Japanese battleship line. It may have been best he didn't go after them in that the US had no idea of what the super battleships Yamato and Musashi were capable of. That could truly have resulted in a battleship death match with everything getting sunk on both sides.
Some writer made the astute observation that the cautious Spruence would have been better off had he been the fleet commander at Leyte Gulf when stopping the possible turn of the Japanese fleet would have ended in a better result and Halsey should have been at the Philippine Sea when his boldness would have pushed him to send the entire fleet after the Japanese. In the end, it may have been just plain 50/50 chances turning against the US. Easy to critique their actions after all the question marks have been removed compared to the cloud they were operating in. Both commanders had legitimate reasons for doing what they did and in the case of Leyte Gulf, an extraordinary series of bad events kept anyone from notifying Halsey of the turning of the Japanese fleet.
So were the US battleships misused or was it just a series of bad events? Not sure how the potential failures at either the Philippine Sea or Leyte Gulf would have led to a change in US battleship doctrine. Other than when the Japanese are looking to trick you, put Spruence in charge, when they're not, put Halsey in charge. Not sure how that would look to future sailors when reading it in the official US battleship doctrine handbook.
By far the. Major US failures of WW2 were to not realize the Japanese torpedo range and power despite many ships being hit and our continued denial the were many problems with our torpedoes! I believe if our torpedoes worked simular to Japan's early in the war the ship numbers would have greatly changed.
In war, it was more advantegous to lose 20 - 50 planes then to have capital ship beaten to edge of destruction. Planes could have been replaced within week or two, docking took much longer.
Now, post war brought two huge changes: planes become jet power and much larger and heavier, meaning carriers had to be replaced. And soon after, rocket artillery replaced big guns as main battery. Finally, carrier is far more versatile tool in gunship diplomacy then battleship. All of that, and lack of foe with comparable blue water navy contributed to abandonment of battleships. Cruisers with powerful rocket batteries do exist, but nobody puts heavy armour on them.
My dad was on the battleship USS California during WWII and during the battle of the Philippine sea. The US navy damn near loss the battleship USS South Dakota in the sinking of the Japanese battleship Kirishima. I have to disagree with you on this one. The US navy learned it was better in losing a few aircraft with 1-3 men onboard than any battleship with up to 2,000+ men onboard. In the battle of the Philippine sea our navy would have been facing down both Yamato class battleships. Eventually the largest battleships ever built Yamato & Musashi were sunk solely by US navy carrier aircraft. I believe US navy aircraft losses in both of these battles together were less than 50 with less than 100 airmen lost. Between the loss of Yamato & Musashi Japan lost 4,500+ men. Great Britain lost 5 BB & BC in WW 2 with a great loss of seamen. They did not learn a good lesson with that kind of loss. The US navy did. The battleships roll that they were great in was air defense, defense against other warships trying to get to the carriers and shore bombardment. Exactly what the US navy used them for. Shalom
The Royal Navy had fewer options than USN did as the enemy was closer so BB & BC were viable and critical assets. Your view on USN in Pacific I agree is sound.
Pretty sure Musashi was finished off by a submarine.
Hi Ryan
I am not sure that the total destruction of the heavy ships of the IJN at the Philippines Sea would have ended the war any earlier.
The Japanese were very set on attrition in the outer rings of defences and then whole of population defence of the home islands.
They became very good at attrition - Pelilieu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.
What eventually caused them to give up on this Gotterdamerung ending (similar to Hitler’s view) were the atom bombs - and in particular the second. The first did not change them but the Emperor did after the second - with still some resistance to that idea. Those bombs were used almost as soon as they were available, and knocking out the IJN BBs early would not have sped that up.
Being able to implement Operation Starvation earlier might have done so, but the cost in lost Japanese lives from starvation would have been high and it would still have required an invasion, with loss of US lives.
I agree with your assessment.
Ryan, would you like to do a video,
about the McCain family? (And that ship.)
steve
The carrier aircraft failed to wreck the IJN batfleet in the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea because they screwed up. The instructions were to put torps into most or all the batships and batcruisers to sink or disable them. Instead they took the easy course of ganging up on the damaged Musashi while not putting a single torp into anything else (I recently realized this was the result of foolish communications between the first wave returning to the carriers with the second heading towards the Japanese). The Kongos could be sunk with just 1-3 torps each, the Nagato with 2-4. A few torps could leave the Yamatos too waterlogged and slow to continue, and probably beyond practical repair even if they made in back to ports with large enough dry-docks. And Kurita being a smart and decent fellow realized the whole operation was a sad joke. Mass American carrier plane attacks could take out a batfleet, the Avenger pilots just had to go after all the enemy main ships, not the easy target that is barely moving and has much of its AA knocked out.
At Surigao Strait only the 3 fully modernized standard batships WV, TN, CA could shoot at long range at night because they had the same fire control system with precession accounting gryos to establish an artificial horizon and the precision radars and computers as those on the NJ. The other 3 old batships fired zero to just a few salvoes because they could not hit anything at night over 5 miles, same for the Japanese. In any case it was destroyers than sunk the Fuso and Yamashiro. The Melvin put 2 torps into the first and it immediately lost motive power and went down in like 40 minutes. The Y absorbed 4-7 torps and sunk because of those, not from the hits by the USN batship and cruiser main batteries which were redundant at that point. Surigao Strait was really a destroyer versus battleship engagement.
True, but regardless, the center force had to pass the SB Straight. I do not know if this was possible given the location of the different task forces Halsey had, but maybe there could have been a lethal destroyer force waiting in the Straight, and a battle line capping the T shooting at night, followed up by air strikes in the morning. I'm just saying Halsey failed to take advantage of that huge handicap that the IJN had with respect to the Straight.
@@john_taves Kurita emerged from SBS at about 3AM. If Halsey had not over trusted the reports of the aviators who failed to torpedo a single capital ship in the Sibuyan Sea aside from Musashi, then Lee with 4 or 5 batships (incl both Iowas in the Pacific at the time) and a modest number of cruisers and destroyers would have capped Kurita's T at the max range of 20+ miles achieving straddles on the first or second salvoes. Lacking the ability to even open fire at over 5 miles K very likely would have turned around back into SBS and gotten the hell out of there, as he would do later in the day - he was a smart dude. K may have had some of his ships launch Type-93 super torpedoess at the Americans, doubt we would have gotten close enough to send fish.
The problem was not really that TF-34 was not formed. It was that Sprague was not informed about that. Had he known, he could have moved his Taffy's well to the east of Samar before dawn. From there his 250+ Avengers would have had a fine time putting torpedoes into K's ships, very likely sinking all the batships and batcruisers unless K turned around real quick -- the Mk 13 torps had oversized Torpex filled warheads and could be dropped from a couple of thousand feet high at standoff ranges, and the pathetic IJN AA was pretty much useless. And there were the 6 standard batships ready to defend the gulf if needed, the 4 Japanese vessels of which only 1 was modern and 2 were WW 1 built batcruisers would have been outmatched.
At both the Sibuyan Sea and off Samar the USN carrier aircraft could have readily liquidated (pun intended) the IJN battle fleet had the USN forces had their acts more together.
@@gregp6210 I agree.
However, I think Drach's TF34 video stated that it was not possible for TF34 to get there in full force to be capping the T at night, which is why I hedged and said "maybe". I'll review it to check.
In light iof the Kamikaze threat after Leyte Gulf the fast BBs were best utilized as carrier protection.
Given that USS Essex (CV-9) did not get into action until May 1943, the Pacific battles of 1942 should be seen as the U.S. Navy trying to "hold on" to the ocean. Between Pearl Harbor and the appearance of Essex, the USN lost Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp, and even Langley, among many other ships. Plus the RN and the HNLMS (Dutch Navy) lost most of their ships in the Pacific by March 1942. Many ships damaged at Pearl Harbor would not return to service until 1944. Every Allied battleship still functioning in the Pacific in 1942 was vital for keeping Australia from being isolated and lost. So lack of aggressiveness by Allied commanders in 1942 and 1943 was a prudent decision.
The problem is perhaps not that US battleships were misused as that they were the wrong kind of ships for modern warfare. As they were mainly used for shore bombardment (calling for big guns and not a whole lot else) or AA protection for carriers (calling for lots of small guns and a least some armor), the "line of battle" formula of large ships carrying guns big enough to punch holes in somebody else's battleships while also armored sufficiently to prevent the same from happening to them really didn't come up in WW2. Washington vs Kirishima was obviously not a typical battleship engagement; nor was Oldendorf's huge line of battle vs. the lone Yamashiro. America's battleships had been laid down years before the full capabilities of carrier aircraft had been demonstrated. In a very real sense the world's navies were trying to fight WW2 with basically WW1 weapons. It's rather surprising that any navy had decent fleet carriers at the start of the war; before Coral Sea their effectiveness was almost entirely speculative. Should American commanders have looked for opportunities to force classic Jutland-style battles, where its battleships could really shine doing their intended work? The goal of the war was defeat of enemies, not trading shots with them. The path to victory was really not going to be blazed by battleships, cool though they are.
Ryan, you have either read "Battleship Victory" by Robert Lundgren or should as his premise largely align with your perspective. That said, it is understandable that naval doctrine would be transformed by the early perception that naval air power was supplanting battleships as the apex offensive power relegating the rest of the fleet to supporting roles. In retrospect, however, the shift in philosophy was clearly an overreaction in terms of the perceived dominance of air power. Battleships formation could have been used more effectively in the Pacific War but this view is only clear looking back. It is totally understandable that, at the time, naval doctrine on both sides would view carriers as the emerging offensive power.
For one of the carrier duels of Guadalcanal, Battleship North Carolina was putting out so much AA gunfire defending Enterprise. There was so much gunfire that the Battleship was shrouded in smoke that Big-E asked if she was alright. All the smoke made it look like NC got hit. She wasn't, she's just shooting everything she had.
American night battle doctrine was really ad-hoc for most of the navy and through the war. The Imperial Japanese Navy was, like the Royal Navy, very well versed in night fighting. They showed their competency in night battle in 1941-1943. You had numerous USN fiascos like Savo Island, Tassafaronga. But in the time after Savo Island, the US Navy got better in night fighting... With their Destroyers and Cruisers, especially the former. USN Destroyers and Cruisers eventually got their act together, used their technological advantage (radar), improve command and control that they wrested night battle supremacy away from the Japanese.
That transition of night battle proficiency, despite Washington's performance at Guadalcanal defending Henderson Field, meant that most of the USN BBs were never part of these changes and battle experience. It would be more than 2 years after Washington's big showing in Guadalcanal in 1942 that USN BBs would finally have a large, good engagement. It was at Surigao Strait in late 1944. But it wasn't the Fast Battleships that would get that honor. It was the old Standard BBs, to include several that were "sunk" at Pearl Harbor.
Washington is the only Fast Battleship of the US Navy that had the honor of engaging an enemy Battleship in combat. All the others never had that. I don't count Massachusetts shooting at an incomplete, immobile Jean Bart. Jean Bart wasn't even underway and was stuck in port, half working.
The other US Fast BBs never got their chance. Halsey had all his Fast BBs with him on an incredibly stupid move at Leyte Gulf in 1944 when they could have crushed Center Force. They had a chance to meet Yamato in April 1945, Operation Ten-Go. But the Fast Carriers launched all out strikes before the battle line was even formed, sinking Yamato from the air.
I agree with Adm Lee in the Philippine sea. He was one of the best battleship commanders this country has ever produced, and he had first hand experience in night actions. While he did have a chance to have the decisive battle, the IJN also got a vote on who would win.
Designed to,against other BBs, BCs and heavy cursiers with some shore bombarment
Used as AA platforms and shore bombarments
Surface action in the Pacific got a black eye early on between Pearl and ABDA. Fixing those issues requires intensive training and coordination with a specifically built force. Air power is more generically effective and allows you to focus your training efforts and orders on AA, ASW, and damage control.
Why risk surface combatants needed for other roles in a needless action? Why split and dilute your forces and weaken your escort? Why spend time honing orders and efforts to support coordinated movement at night when you can spend that time becoming more impactful and effective in other areas?
Just a shame the Navy has totally abandoned its responsibility to project presence in favor of projecting power. I think they are feeling that lack off Yemen, where Big J and her sisters would be able to sail off the coast and tempt fate with reckless abandon.
Reckless abandon? You’re projecting the misconception that a BB is somehow invulnerable to missiles. That’s not remotely true. Best to realize the superstructure is essentially unarmored, and then you begin to understand how incorrect that “reckless abandon” would be.
If BB’s were still in commission they would have been upgraded with better air and missile defense. RAM mounts and more CWIS.
I am not sure if they would have gun range to hit the sights that are attacking the shipping lanes though.
@@jacksons1010 To be fair, modern missiles usually go for waterline hits where a battleship's armour would help tremendously.
@@vietta6424 The targeting height of a sea-skimming missile is easily adjustable; I doubt the Russians or Chinese would have any trouble adapting. Besides, if we're talking about power projection against non-peer adversaries, the real threat is drone swarms. We should not assume the enemy is so dumb as to target the armored belt.
@@vietta6424
modern anti ship missiles can actually easily go through battleship armor. Just not Nato ones
people forget that soviets/russian anti ship missiles are on the way bigger end, and weren't the smaller nato ASMs like the harpoon.
the soviets were using the Kh-22 missiles that are 6000kg heavy and their warhead was a 1000kg shaped charge. One thing to note is that the kh-22 is still in operational service for Russia.
That isn't to mention the anti ship missiles that could have a nuclear warhead.
So, what you are saying is that several carriers, 200 miles away from a fleet of battleships could not maneuver well enough to send several waves of aircraft at the battleships and sink all of the battleships?
You're letting your current job influence your objectivity.
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
7:20 I don't think this comparison of how the USN and the RN used battleships was very good. The examples you cited for the Royal Navy were all early in the war, prior to airpower becoming the force that it would become. Even in the Med, by the time the United States entered the war, airpower became the determining factor (see Operation Pedestal). Also, the Royal Navy never inflicted "greater proportional losses" on the Japanese Navy.
The British navy was well-designed for the Atlantic and Mediterranean but it was poorly equipped for the Pacific.
ching lee was a bad ass though he drilled the hell out of his crew to be extremely efficient and accurate with their guns. Was a dam sniper battleship.
The Washington was a sniper long before Lee set foot on her. Harvey Walsh was already known as the best gunnery officer in the fleet. Lee was icing on an already baked cake.
A large gulf existed between "Big Gun" and "Carrier" admirals greatly affected these mistakes. Nimitz wanted to use Battleships, not carriers, to sink Yamato as it approached Okinawa. Marc Mitscher ignored his orders out of spite. It's in the "gray book", V6, page 594, Aprol 07 0832...
I love the big battleships. I toured the North Carolina as a boy and it made an impression upon me which is difficult to overstate. They are massive industrial achievements of which the people and the nation who built them should be proud.
However, the goal of these big boys is to win the war, and they probably could not have done that. The carriers were the right tool at that time.
Halsey didn’t misuse his battleships, his misused his whole fleet. This was a command and control failure, not a doctrine failure.
I agree.
I think Lee was correct to resist night battles without unit cohesion
At the time the Iowa class (and subsequent Montana class) had been proposed and designed, the role of the battleship had changed from Queens Of The Sea to Escorts To The New Queens Of The Sea- aircraft carriers. If I remember right, the Iowas were designed to be able to counter the Japanese fast battleships (Kongo class, known to be capable of 30+ knots). As it happened, those were the only Japanese battleships with enough speed to act as escorts for their carriers- and so the Iowas were capable of doing the same with our carriers. The Iowas (and the Alaska-class "very large cruisers") had absolutely massive anti-aircraft capability and that was what we needed especially once the Japanese adopted the kamikaze tactics.
My understanding is that for a good stretch of the Pacific war, keeping all the ships flush with fuel was an issue. The fast bastleships could go through 8-10,000 gallons of oil...per hour. All that oil had to be shipped by slow, vulnerable oilers from the US mainland. Logistics trump tactics.
Interesting video. Just a quick note about the film of the Arizona explosion: The black and white version you showed is reversed. For some strange reason, a backwards version of the explosion has been available and shown over and over in different venues. The original film was shot from Ford Island, with the bow of the ship facing to the right, and believe it or not, the original was in color. I've always wondered why this backwards black and white version is seen so much more often than the original. When you visit the Arizona memorial, they show the original color version, so I wonder if maybe they own the rights to the original?
battleships in the atlantic vs pacific are totally different. Carriers were at risk in the atlantic and med from unsinkable carriers, land based aircraft. look how many were sunk or damaged.
Battleships are a better fit in that case.
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
Do a collab with the Grim Reapers channel.
They do hypothetical carriers vs scenarios.
The question is more about risk and reward. Off of Guadalcanal, we had to take the risk and Halsey was the man to do it. In the Philippine Sea, we did not have to take the risk and protected the invasion fleet while destroying the the IJN Air Arm. Spruance did. his job and took appropriate risk. At Leyte Gulf, Halsey took too much risk and the bait and left the San Bernadino Strait unguarded. If the fast battleship line had been left guarding San Bernadino, there would have been another re surface battle like Oldendorf’s Surigao Strait victory. Halsey did not need to have the accelerator pedal on the floor at that time and took too much risk in leaving the invasion fleet unguarded.
Probably an American battle line would have worked by Leyte, crossing K's T does not need extensive practice and preparation. Halsey should have kept his battleships in the vicinity, but he should also have kept his fleet carriers well within range. (He needed to keep air patrols to the north.) A very high priority should have been keeping track of the enemy over-night. Kurita did not have night air capability sufficient to find and destroy lurkers. It should have been possible to keep K under continuous air assault from dawn, or a bit earlier if the USN was as good at night as the RN, until he arrived, he would not have arrived intact.
A gun-line battle before Leyte was winnable, but it was not needed, but there were risks and there might have been losses
In my opinion, had Admiral Halsey decided to leave Task Force 34 near the bottle neck of San Bernardino or with Taffey 1, Taffey 2, and Taffey 3 off Samar - then US battleships would not been missed used.
"Your conclusions were all wrong Ryan; Halsey acted stupidly."
- Captain Marco Ramius
The hawk didn’t understand why the ground squirrels didn’t want to be his friend.
I think there were errors made, that prevented the BBs from being used effectively at Leyte. There's the famous story of Halsey's staff incorrectly decoding a routine status message from Nimitz, causing Halsey to turn the fleet around and miss an opportunity to intercept and sink the Japanese carriers. Messages back then were sent in morse code, and were encrypted with additional filler text to obfuscate the length and meaning of the actual message. The filler text should be obvious for the recipient. In this case, the radio operators encrypting the message used text from "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Tennyson. If the recipient knew the poem, then it should be easy to remove the extra filler text. But when the message was decoded, the staff left in the words from the poem, "all the world wondered". Halsey took a routine message asking for his current status, to be a rebuke from Nimitz, and ordered his fleet to break off pursuit.
I have watched many of your videos and have also been systematically indoctrinated about WWII through my grandfather who served on a destroyer during the given time period but I feel the U.S. probably would have been better served by, instead of building fast dreadnoughts, building super carriers that could have, not only been the same tonnage, (given the treaty they were started under) carried much more effective armament due to the fact that that treaty could have never taken that into account.
I can only hope to get a response and I would be glad to be shown to be wrong. I just hope Ryan, or others less named, takes notice of this post and can make an interesting video from it, regardless of its final conclusion.
I love your content and hope to visit not just the Battleship New Jersey but her sister ships as well, not to mention the plethora of other historical ships that sit as monuments. I guess that is on my bucket list.😅
I look at the Aircraft carrier as the Queen The Battleship as King piece once you lose your your ability to attack( invasion take a island) or defense ( protect carrier task) force) is over getting to far a way from castle and you may be took out by submarine ( knight)
"know when to win a battle and know when to lose a battle" ~ art of war, sun tzu...... US ensuring that their offense and defense will always have a positive outcome if possible while the japanese never matter if the attack is futile or not, which made them loses more force as fast as possible
2 months late to the party but it seems part of the issue is that the US took too long in putting to sea a "heavy" dedicated AA ship, something along the lines of either the Worchester or the Des Moines class. And it's not completely obvious how useful the 8in DP turrets would have been and the 6in ones ended up having some teething issues. And even then you've got new ships like the Alaska class or Sumner/Gearing class which are still far from being optimized for AA duty (empty space in the middle for the aviation facility on the Alaska and torpedo tubes on the Sumners).
Had the US Navy been able to escort its carriers with true dedicated AA platforms, it would have been in a much better position to train and fight aggressively with the BBs.
An amusing theory if it wasn’t for the submarine. The ‘Gun Club’ was in ascendancy when the US was authorizing the fleet prewar but it was obsolete from the beginning
Franklin Roosevelt used the battleships in a unique way, putting the Pacific fleet battleships all in range of the Japanese aircraft carriers made sure they couldn't be used to prevent the Batan death march, they couldn't be used to fully supply a 100,000 man USA army on mainland China to prevent the 1949 communist chinese victory. FDR had been the secretary of the Navy before becoming president so he knew exactly what he was doing.
That's a really interesting point how battleships really became obsolete because there was just no need for them and no nation was in a position to try to challenge the combined fleets of the western powers, never thought about it like that.
Battleship obsolescence reminds me of the many other times we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater, like missiles and rockets making guns on airplanes "obsolete" in the 50s and 60s, or helicopters replacing tanks, replacing helicopters, replacing tanks once again. We just can't seem to settle for a middle ground.
Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
Lee made the RIGHT decision to avoid the night fight, turns out.
I think to say they were misused is applied with full hindsight and is a little harsh. At the times in question there was no need to destroy the Japanese navy en masse and the way it was done piecemeal was just fine and it cost a lot less sailors lives.
My understanding is also the value of fleet in being. Everyone is concerned about using capital ships. Even the Japanse pull thier warships out quickly. There were other issues but I understand the Japanese could have blasted through taffy-3 even with the disproportionate damage it took.
As well as oil the Italians became scared to risk thier ships after cape Matapan.
The fleet in being and unwillingness to risk battle line is valuable logic but I can imagine a ww2 in which battleships see alot more decisive action...if screened well against torpedos. Idk.
What was the effective attack range of the main guns on the US BB's? What was the effective attack range of a US Aircraft Carrier's air squadrons? Whichever is greater, then that element is the most effective tool to use because it helps to keep the majority of the force out of harms way.
Yes, while BB's were more effective at sinking ships than the US air squadrons, those air squadrons were able to damage, cripple and sink ships effectively enough. Also, one must remember that a ship that damaged enough to have to return to port for repairs is removed from the combat equation for that period of time and also takes up dock space and materials for either upgrading other ships or producing new ships.
I do not think the battleships were misused. In fact, they were used in the most efficient and productive manner available. The range of aircraft is so great, that the CV dominates on offense, but the carriers are vulnerable to enemy battleships. By keeping the US Battleships with the carriers, the battleship AA was able to effectively protect the carriers, and were in a position to fight any Japanese Battleships that may try and attack the carrier task force.
The speed advantage of the US fleet was huge. Japan had no chance to concentrate all its battleships to fight in one engagement against the US, because the US would spot them at a distance and be able to literally keep that distance while pummeling the Japanese. The only effective way the Japanese could use their BBs to attack a carrier group, would be 2 BBs trying to sneak though, but the way the US used its battleships, the Japanese would have been fighting against both American Battleships and carriers, and the carriers were faster and would be able to sail beyond BB engagement range, while the American BBs held the line and pummeled the Japanese BBs.
The way the US used its battleships limited the ability of the Japanese to respond, and the naval war became one of attrition. Which even the Japanese knew they could not win. The entire Japanese strategy was to force that one decisive engagement, because Japan knew it stood no chance at a war of attrition. The Americans forced the Japanese into that war of attrition.
Trying to use the American battleships in a decisive engagement, just plays into the type of war that would have given the Japanese a chance, even if slim, to win the war.
I agree, but I see no point to having battleships defend against battleships. The airplanes are much more cost effective in terms of lives and money risked. A battleship has no chance of affecting a carrier. They cannot find them and cannot catch them.
The US also used the battleships effectively for bombarding the Japanese held islands before the Marines were sent in.
The tortoise jumped into the lake with dreams of becoming a sea turtle.
Yes, but how many bowls of Magic Spoon will you need to eat to equal one bowl of Colonblow?
14:45 the results were already a foregone conclusion regardless
but I get what you're saying.