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miletus12
Squadron vice admiral

To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.

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Ironbottom Sound. Feb 7, 2023 16:22:53 GMT lordroel likes this

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Post by miletus12 on Feb 7, 2023 16:22:53 GMT

This is where the USN re-learned its trade in surface warfare.

The British fought 10 major surface actions. 4 against the Italians with a record of 2,0,2 and 3 against the Germans for a record of 1,1 and 1; 3 against the Japanese and LOST all of those. The Americans fought 23 major surface actions and our record was also decidely mixed. We lost 10, won 9 and 4 were draws, all against the Japanese.

This was one of the "wins". It was a mess.

miletus12
Squadron vice admiral

To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.

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Ironbottom Sound. Feb 7, 2023 21:03:55 GMT

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Post by miletus12 on Feb 7, 2023 21:03:55 GMT

Savo Island.

Battle of Savo Island - Loss of HMAS Canberra (I)
by
JH Straczek
On the morning of the 9 August 1942 the Royal Australian Navy’s heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra (I) was sunk after being severely damaged during a naval battle off Savo Island in the Solomon Islands group. HMAS Canberra (I) had been forming part of the force screening the American invasion force which had started landing on Guadalcanal on 7 August.

The object of the landing was to capture the almost completed Japanese airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal and thus ensure that the vital USA-Australia supply lines could not be threatened. However, in the end, it was this campaign which was to see the strength of the Imperial Japanese Navy sapped away and eventually open the road to Tokyo.

The initial landings and capture of the airfield at Lunga Point, renamed Henderson Field, met with only light resistance ashore. However air attacks on the assault force commenced at about midday on the 7 August and were to continue during the period of the campaign. Fortunately for the Allied commanders Royal Australian Navy Coastwatchers were providing invaluable warnings of Japanese raids heading towards Guadalcanal.

Within two hours of the initial landings the commander of the 8th Fleet at Rabaul, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, sailed with a cruiser force for Guadalcanal. The force under his command consisted of: the heavy cruisers Chokai, Aoba, Furataka, Kinugasa, and Kako; the light cruisers Tenryu and Tatsuta and the destroyer Yunangi. As this force headed south they were spotted and their position and course reported to the Allied commander, Rear Admiral Turner USN. However, when they were spotted the Japanese were sailing in an east south east direction and then altered course back to Rabaul. Thus the Americans concluded that the Japanese were not heading for Guadalcanal.

In order to protect the transports against any Japanese attack a screening force of cruisers and destroyers was deployed to patrol the approaches to Guadalcanal. This force was commanded by Rear Admiral VAC Crutchley VC, DSC RN and was deployed as follows:

The American destroyers Ralph Talbot and Blue patrolling to the seaward of Savo Island.

The Australian cruisers Australia (II) and Canberra (I) with the American cruiser Chicago and destroyers Bagley and Patterson patrolled an area to the south of Savo Island.

The American cruisers Vincennes, Astoria and Quincy with the destroyers Helm and Wilson patrolled an area to the east of Savo Island.

The Australian cruiser Hobart (I) with the American cruiser San Juan and the destroyers Monssen and Buchanan patrolled the area between Florida Island and Guadalcanal.

Unaware of the approach of the Japanese force Admiral Turner convened a staff meeting onboard the attack transport McCawley. Admiral Crutchley departed the patrol area with Australia (II) and proceeded to the meeting in the Transport Anchorage. As the meeting was in progress Admiral Mikawa and his force were making their approach to Savo Island.

At 01:30 on 9 August the Japanese force sighted the destroyer Blue and reduced speed. As they approached almost all of the enemy's guns were aimed at the unsuspecting ship. However, they were not sighted and proceeded to pass Savo Island. Shortly after passing Savo Island the Japanese sighted the Southern Screening Force with Canberra (I) the lead ship. At about the same time the Japanese were sighted by the destroyer Patterson and Japanese aircraft, launched from the cruisers some two hours earlier dropped flares over Lunga Point and the transport area.

These flares immediately silhouetted the cruisers Canberra (I) and Chicago and the Japanese opened fire with all weapons. Canberra (I) being the lead ship received almost the full force of the Japanese barrage and was immediately put out of action. Chicago was also badly damaged but still operational.

After rendering the Southern Screening Force ineffective the Japanese continued their sweep around Savo Island splitting into two columns and approached the Northern Screening Force at high speed.

Again complete surprise was achieved with just as devastating results. The Japanese ships opened fire on the American ships at very close range and in a short space of time the cruisers Quincy and Vincennes were sunk with Astoria being badly damaged. During this part of the action the Japanese flagship Chokai received hits which damaged her operations room and killed a number of personnel. Being unaware as to the location and strength of the remaining Allied naval forces the Japanese did not press home their advantage and commenced to withdraw. On their way passed the outer screening destroyers the Japanese engaged and damaged the Ralph Talbot.

Dawn was to reveal to the Allies the full extend of the battle. The Japanese had sunk the cruisers Quincy and Vincennes; and the cruisers Canberra (I) and Astoria, and destroyers Ralph Talbot and Patterson were badly damaged.

Admiral Turner ordered that Canberra (I) be abandoned and sunk if she could not raise steam. Once all survivors had been evacuated, Selfridge fired 263 5-inch shells and four torpedoes into Canberra (I) in an attempt to sink her. Eventually a torpedo fired by the destroyer Ellet administered the final blow.

The transports were now only protected by two Australian cruisers Australia (II) and Hobart (I), the anti-aircraft cruiser San Juan and destroyers. Despite this naval weakness the landing operations continued and the toe hold achieved on Guadalcanal became the launching pad for the American ‘island hopping’ campaign.

As a result of the Battle of Savo Island just over 1000 Allied sailors lost their lives and another 700 were wounded. Casualties in Canberra (I) were 84 dead and 109 wounded.

While I blame ADM Turner for mishandling the command arrangements overall, I BLAME that RN officer for grossly, stupidly and incompetently not massing west in front of Savo Island to avoid the radar and optical clutter of Florida Island and Savo Island, for splitting his command 3 ways and for not understanding the avenues of approach and naval geography of New Georgia Channel. HIS was the local deployment responsibility and tactical plan of operation, not Turner's as the OTC.

See battle chart.

How stupid can you possibly get?

And I blame him for not clearly delineating the chain of responsibility for how to handle battle emergencies; when he foolishly answered ADM Turner's officer call. He left no deputy in charge to handle the fleet. If you think Admiral Sampson, at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba should have swung for it, abandoning his post when he knew "battle was possible and imminent"; leaving a confused Schley, by default, holding the sack of manure Sampson created, what do you think that I think about one ADM Crutchley, RN, the HMS Warspite hero of NARVIK, who screwed up here even more than he did there when it was sheer luck the Germans did not put a flock of fish into that foolishly committed blundering blind British battleship? This time, Crutchley's dumb luck, did not hold and WE paid the price for his imbecility.

Last Edit: Feb 8, 2023 2:58:58 GMT by miletus12

oscssw
Senior chief petty officer

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Ironbottom Sound. Feb 7, 2023 23:41:43 GMT miletus12 likes this

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Post by oscssw on Feb 7, 2023 23:41:43 GMT

I have been fascinated with the surface actions around Guadalcanal. I have read much about and have even talked to old sailors who actually had been there and done that. IMO, FWIW, having been trained as an "analog" Radarman in the late 60'and having served aboard a Gearing FRAM 1. Some of the gear we had was definitely still close to late WW II standards. "The Commodore" by P.T. Deutermann and especially his passages in Iron Bottom Sound are right on the money.

Before Miletus12 takes my head off I admit a lot of the senior and many of the mid grade officers in command positions had no idea how to use radar. I also admit the pre SG surface search radars were orders of magnitude less reliable and less capable, especially in restricted waters. However, in the hands of sailors who had the spare parts, training and experience to maintain and operators with the experience to really get the best out of them, they would go a long way to making up for the fact the IJN was about the best night fighting navy of all times. The USN had superior gunners, especially with the integration of fire control radars. Our torpedoes sucked but our guns and gunners were as good as they get.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temple of his God?

miletus12
Squadron vice admiral

To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.

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Ironbottom Sound. Feb 8, 2023 3:12:25 GMT oscssw likes this

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Post by miletus12 on Feb 8, 2023 3:12:25 GMT

Feb 7, 2023 23:41:43 GMT oscssw said:

Before Miletus12 takes my head off I admit a lot of the senior and many of the mid grade officers in command positions had no idea how to use radar. I also admit the pre SG surface search radars were orders of magnitude less reliable and less capable, especially in restricted waters. However, in the hands of sailors who had the spare parts, training and experience to maintain and operators with the experience to really get the best out of them, they would go a long way to making up for the fact the IJN was about the best night fighting navy of all times. The USN had superior gunners, especially with the integration of fire control radars. Our torpedoes sucked but our guns and gunners were as good as they get.

I blame Stark and Leahy for the torpedoes in the 1930s as well as the expletive deleteds of Goat Island, who made the defective fish.

Radar still is weather, clutter return, spoof and maintenance vulnerable. As RFS Moskva recently proved, you can have it, but if you misuse it, never maintain it, and do not train on it, you might as well open the valves and sink yourself.

And then there is a bit of blind arrogance involved here in that era. The Anglo-American attitude was that the Japanese copied us, learned from us, imitated us. They were but pale shadows of us. We were their natural superiors. How did THAT work out for us? NOT TOO GOOD.

My main lesson about Savo Island was that the dispositions were BRITISH in style, the tactics BRITISH influenced and the results were to be expected when one ignored both Japanese and American battle experience as recent as JAVA SEA.

Our tactics worked. British tactics (over complicated) did not. Turner, listened to Crutchley and did things the British way and together they killed a lot of good sailors.

How do I know this?

(^^^) British style tactics.

Norman Scott, the man who should have commanded at First Guadalcanal instead of the inept Callaghan, kept it simple Susan. Some historians maintain Scott should have done better, but he had all of three weeks time to cram 5 years of peacetime battle practice into a flock of ships which had never worked together, nor had any previous night fighting training at all. I think Goto helped out by being an idiot, but his ships had the experience and training and optics edge on Scott. They should have creamed old Norm. They did not. I maintain they did not, because Scott actually did the things Crutchley should have:
a. he had a workable simple plan based on the naval geography.
b. he assigned a chain of responsibility.
c. he anticpated the threat axis.
d. he kept a tight line of battle.

I think Scott was a bit too conservative with his destroyers, who should had to be cut loose to attack with torpedoes while his cruiser line supported them with gunfire, but I think he thought he had to keep positive control to not lose track of the battle which literally means know where your ships are, so you do not blue on blue which happened anyway.

He won. That was what mattered.

Last Edit: Feb 8, 2023 3:46:35 GMT by miletus12

oscssw
Senior chief petty officer

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Ironbottom Sound. Feb 8, 2023 14:45:41 GMT

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Post by oscssw on Feb 8, 2023 14:45:41 GMT

Feb 8, 2023 3:12:25 GMT miletus12 said:

Feb 7, 2023 23:41:43 GMT oscssw said:

Before Miletus12 takes my head off I admit a lot of the senior and many of the mid grade officers in command positions had no idea how to use radar. I also admit the pre SG surface search radars were orders of magnitude less reliable and less capable, especially in restricted waters. However, in the hands of sailors who had the spare parts, training and experience to maintain and operators with the experience to really get the best out of them, they would go a long way to making up for the fact the IJN was about the best night fighting navy of all times. The USN had superior gunners, especially with the integration of fire control radars. Our torpedoes sucked but our guns and gunners were as good as they get.

I blame Stark and Leahy for the torpedoes in the 1930s as well as the expletive deleteds of Goat Island, who made the defective fish.

Radar still is weather, clutter return, spoof and maintenance vulnerable. As RFS Moskva recently proved, you can have it, but if you misuse it, never maintain it, and do not train on it, you might as well open the valves and sink yourself.

And then there is a bit of blind arrogance involved here in that era. The Anglo-American attitude was that the Japanese copied us, learned from us, imitated us. They were but pale shadows of us. We were their natural superiors. How did THAT work out for us? NOT TOO GOOD.

My main lesson about Savo Island was that the dispositions were BRITISH in style, the tactics BRITISH influenced and the results were to be expected when one ignored both Japanese and American battle experience as recent as JAVA SEA.

Our tactics worked. British tactics (over complicated) did not. Turner, listened to Crutchley and did things the British way and together they killed a lot of good sailors.

How do I know this?

(^^^) British style tactics.

Norman Scott, the man who should have commanded at First Guadalcanal instead of the inept Callaghan, kept it simple Susan. Some historians maintain Scott should have done better, but he had all of three weeks time to cram 5 years of peacetime battle practice into a flock of ships which had never worked together, nor had any previous night fighting training at all. I think Goto helped out by being an idiot, but his ships had the experience and training and optics edge on Scott. They should have creamed old Norm. They did not. I maintain they did not, because Scott actually did the things Crutchley should have:
a. he had a workable simple plan based on the naval geography.
b. he assigned a chain of responsibility.
c. he anticpated the threat axis.
d. he kept a tight line of battle.

I think Scott was a bit too conservative with his destroyers, who should had to be cut loose to attack with torpedoes while his cruiser line supported them with gunfire, but I think he thought he had to keep positive control to not lose track of the battle which literally means know where your ships are, so you do not blue on blue which happened anyway.

He won. That was what mattered.

Those are great charts and diagrams miletus12.

I'd like to point out Dueterman's Commodore came to the same conclusions. I think you would like the book.

It has great reread value to me. I put it on my yearly fiction reading list along with "The Caine Mutiny", "Ice brothers", Emperial Governor, Lonesome Dove, True Grit, Star ship Troopers, Life on the Mississippi, Captain's Courageous, The Killer Angels and The Shadowline.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temple of his God?

miletus12
Squadron vice admiral

To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.

Posts: 7,470

Likes: 4,285

Ironbottom Sound. Feb 8, 2023 15:12:57 GMT

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Post by miletus12 on Feb 8, 2023 15:12:57 GMT

Drachinifel gets so much of this treatment WRONG.

a. This ignores the Daihatsu war.
b. HIJMS Nisshin was misused repeatedly.
c. Scott was already there with the cruisers. He was posted to the east guard position when Savo Island happened. His patrol box was assigned the Sealark Channel. See MAP.

d. Offset shooting was not an original British practice or even invented by them. Sims invented it. They adopted it after they saw us use it. The only reason Scott used it, was he had neither time, materials, nor means to construct tow sleds as "target tails". The "target tails" method was safer and allowed live fire on track with measurable hits observed and scored instead of splashes and guesses as to probability of hits.
e. Norm picked the USS San Francisco because she had the best radios and best OPTICS as well as the largest plot and chart rooms of the fleet.
e. Drachinifel muffs the rapid fire gun drill used by the USN.

^Gunnery exercises by USS Savannah (CL-42) and USS Honolulu (CL-48) as described in "U.S. Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History:"

As for the 6-in battery, it fulfilled expectations: Very high volumes of fire (ten rounds or better per gun per minute in some ships) were achieved in experimental firings off Guantanamo Bay in March 1939. The Savannah’s captain reported that the target was "simply smothered." The Honolulu’s wrote that "those who saw this practice said [that] it looked almost like a stream of bullets playing on the targets, which were almost continuously obscured and drenched by water." The rate of fire was reduced only at ranges so great that guns had to be depressed to load. As for the salvo issue, typically a ship fired a "ladder" to find the range, then shifted to rapid fire. The Savannah, for example, fired an opening-up ladder with a 600-yard spread: fourteen shells well short, fourteen (fired within a two-second interval) well over, then full rapid fire by individual guns, 138 shots being fired in one minute.

The reason for not using rapid fire at long range was mechanical. The guns barrels had to be aligned at 20 degrees minimum for the semi-auto rammers to work. Once the range dropped to where the elevation required was less than 40 degrees, the shell hose was turned on and the target was walked along the track to death.
f. Radioed contact reports and plotting of them by a tracking party was a thing that plagued all navies in WWII. That Drachinifel implies this was an unique USN shortcoming is typical of the SLOPPY biased scholarship a Briton brings to the Pacific war. We invented the combat information center after the hard lessons of Iron Bottom Sound. The Japanese and the British were still commanding thedir ships from the bridge and doing things the wrong way into 1945.
g. US signals were numbered out of a message book. Simultaneous turn to 230 was mishandled by the radio room as turn to 230. NO-ONE knows why the wrong format was used. But admiral's intent was simultaneous reverse your bearing 180 which should have been the message sent. It was not.
10. The destroyer fould up and USS Boise was acting within USN tradition. Trust the captains to sort their ships out. This was not Spartivento, where British ships milled around in confusion while the italians used them for a shoot-ex and then hared off because Somerville lost the plot and the British captains waited on him to make up his mind. Given another 10 minutes before the merge, Scott's line would be back in hand and all would be well. But (bad) timing is usual when the enemy shows up in the middle of your evolution and you have to go with what you have.
11. USS San Francisco's captain had not trained the tracking party. This was also a mistake on Scott's part in his training program. He should have tabletopped some of these exercises he ran to simulate battle confusion and independent variables which would result in melee conditioons. (Eager captains going off on their own, which is a USN command characteristic.). I have no idea why Scott would not have learned this tendency from the Naval War College or from the Naval Academy. It inevitably resulted in a gun-torpedo or in this day and age MISSILE brawl that favors the more aggressive side.
12. There is no way to sugarcoat the comms failures. As at Savo Island, contacts were not passed forward to be plotted and hesitance to shoot proved costly.
13. Much has been made of Scott's "Cease fire.", order, but as it happened, nobody *(See 11.) I mean nobody even bothered to notice it, when they had positive ID on the Japanese.
14. HIJMS Aoba was so close and bows on that she was topsided. Here is when those two errant US destroyers on Goto's port flank, should have torpedoed her, but for some reason did not. That was a HUGE mistake.
15. HIJMS Furutaka did get the works, including the obligatory torpedo from the USS Buchanan, whose captain seems to have figured out that was what she needed as the US cruisers rearranged her innards to suit USN interests.
16. The HIJMS Fubuki, whose captain must have been stupified, got the same treatment. So far, in spite of Scott's errors, missed comms and general American confusion, things for the USN were shaping into a reverse Savo Island. So what went wrong NOW?
17. HIJMS Kinugasa and HIJMS Hatsuyuki counterturned away to port as the Aoba, Fubuki and Furutaka got theirs to starboard.
18. USS Fahrenholt and USS Duncan steamed into the USS Boise's shell hose as she was tearing Furutaka some new manholes and portholes to let in sea water to put out the American caused fires near the torpedo flat on the Japanese ship. This did neither US destroyer any good.
19. Scott presciently turned about this late stage to avoid the torpedoes from Kinugasa. This was not so much an accident as to turn it into a parallel order fight.
20. Despite pre-battle instructions not to do so, the USS Boise lit herself up and the HIJMS Kinugasa hit her in the number 2 powder room with disastrous effects.
22. HIJMS Kinugasa then worked over USS Salt Lake City which was illuminated by USS Boise's fires. Lesson here, is never sail in company with a ship dumb enough to use her searchlights in a night battle. And when that ship is set afire, scurry away from her as fast as possible.

Post battle tactical results: next day;

a. USS Duncan was scuttled as too damaged to tow in.
b. HIJMS Furutaka sank as a result of damage.
c. Admiral Ujima, the idiot assigned the transport mission that Goto's bombardment force inadvertently covered, sent four destroyers to help Goto. Two of the four destroyers sent were sunk by the Cactus Air Force and we should tack this further debacle onto Scott's efforts to protect henderson Field.

Post battle strategic results.

Drachinifel tries to minimize Cape Esperance. He argues that the Japanese successfully damaged Henderson Field 3 days later and that the Japanese seaplane tenders, fast transports gave the Japanese parity in the supply battle. In this assessment he is wrong. He thinks he has a point about the Japanese raising the stakes and making Guadalcanal a prolonged campaign minimizing Esperance's effects. Yet that is what the Americans wanted. The IJN had to escalate with capital ship commitments because they now knew cruisers were not enough. It may seem odd that after the later USN disaster of Tassafaronga, that Esperance made First and Second Guadalcanal necessary, but it so happens that Esperance convinced the Japanese they had to neutralize Henderson Field and it would take battleships (battle cruisers) to do it.

The loss of Hiei and Kirishima was the result and now the Americans would be able to fight a destroyer war in the Solomons (Ran out of cruisers for the moment after Tassafaronga.), as the Japanese were not about to risk more battleships after First and Second Guadalcanal.

Last Edit: Feb 8, 2023 17:43:06 GMT by miletus12