Battleships Hunting Aircraft Carriers 

Agreed!

I thought that was Capt. Ramius.

Yup, in the book: “No Ryan, Halsey acted stupidly”

Yesh. The Russian submarine captain speaking in a Scottish accent. 😂

Kurita was just as bad, if not worse.

ya but sb paid the price

I think it was Napoleon who said he would rather have lucky generals than skillful generals.

@@jameslackiejr5913 Hard to disagree with Napoleon on military matters, but everyone’s luck runs out eventually.

Waterloo

@@baronpen Ney at Quatre Bras and Waterloo

Where is, where is, task 34, the world wonders?

There was absolutely zero need to have battleships in a carrier fight. The cruisers and destroyers would have been plenty enough to protect the carriers. Halsey was in a d*** measuring contest and on an ego trip. He leaves one battleship and Taffy 3 has at least some backbone to help them.

That could be said about many actions in the Pacific. There were several engagements where, if the Japanese had just pressed on, they would have annihilated the allied forces. Various reason for it though. Sometimes, such as Kurita's case here, it was a matter of poor intel. Other times, it was a matter of concern about resources (is fuel mostly), other times it was simply the political within the Japanese navy at the time bad how taking the initiative beyond their basic orders was frown upon and considered a disgraceful act...especially if that initiative failed. The Japan's navy missed many opportunities from 1941 to 1943. By '44, The situation was beyond the point that they could have done anything to make difference.

@@snagletoothscott3729 yeah don't disagree

That battle was comically one-sided. The Japanese lost about 400 aircraft while the US lost less than 100. It was clear after Midway and Guadalcanal were over which Navy was the superior force.

@@thedishonoredamerican129 Correct, without looking it up, it was very few US aircraft loss yes. Most of those lost had to ditch from running out of fuel and many of those pilots were saved.

Halsey didn't leave the San Bernardino Strait undefended, he left Kincaid to defend it with all of 7th Fleet. Close support of the landing force was, after all, _Kincaid's_ job - Halsey had no way of knowing Kincaid was going to fail in that duty so spectacularly, just as he had no way of knowing that the IJN air forces had been unable to recover from their losses four months earlier at the Philippine Sea.

@@Philistine47 Wrong. Kincaid's job WAS support of the landing force, but guarding the strait fell into the gap between the two fleets. Another one of Halsey's mistakes during the battle was not informing Kincaid that he was leaving the strait unguarded. If he had so informed Kincaid, then ideally Taffy 3 would not have been surprised like it was.

@@davidbriggs7365 Halsey had no reason to tell Kincaid he wasn't guarding San Bernardino Strait, though, because he'd never told Kincaid that he _was_ - Kincaid _assumed_ that based on intercepted message traffic, which he never confirmed. But Halsey had no way to know, and no reason to assume, that Kincaid had (very improperly) read that message and made plans based on it, so Halsey (quite properly) assumed that Kincaid would secure his own flanks.

Agreed. I worked in Intelligence during my career and have a very good understanding of what is referred to as "The Fog of Battle." Often commanders were and are going to have to make critical decisions based on incomplete or flawed intelligence. Third Fleet was faced by a force that included several carriers but our Navy had NO WAY TO KNOW that those ships were all but unarmed, with only a bare handful of aircraft between them and aircrews with almost no experience. Lacking that information Halsey HAD to take Northern Force's 4 carriers (1 Fleet and 3 Light) at face value and assume that they were loaded out with fully equipped and trained air groups. With 5 Fleet and 5 Light carriers, Halsey didn't really need to keep the fast battleships with Task Force 38 except to use their very heavy anti-aircraft batteries, placed as a screen ahead of his carriers much as Spruance had successfully done earlier at the beginning of the sea fight remembered as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot."

A leader is judged off what his team, or fleet in this case, does or fails to do. That's what leadership is. So leaders will always be judged, after the fact, for their decisions. His whole job was to take the glory or the shame. That message just having to be sent killed him in history.

That's so cool

These were small ESCORT carriers built on merchant ship hulls; not even somewhat larger LIGHT carriers built on cruiser hulls and capable of much more speed. They were certainly NOT the massive "gold plated" (as Ryan might say) Essex class FLEET carriers that were of much more major importance.

If Halsey had known Kincaid had read the message to Lee about forming TF34, and was basing plans on it, he might well have sent a message saying, _"Hey, that's just a contingency we're considering. Don't get too fixated on it."_ But since the original message was never supposed to go to Kincaid, and Kincaid didn't ask Halsey about it (not until after Kurita steamed over the horizon, anyway), Halsey didn't know such a message was needed. As far as Halsey knew, Kincaid was covering the San Bernardino Strait - because that was his job. Instead Kincaid made a bad assumption based on an unverified radio intercept, but then (mostly) succeeded in deflecting the blame when his own mistake bit him on the butt.

@@Philistine47 No Halsey got lucky that Kurita flinched. Kincad did not have forces to defend the strait if Kurita had used his battle wagons properly.

@@wierdalien1 Kurita had 1 modern battleship, 1 old battleship, and 2 very old battlecruisers. Oldendorf had 6 old battleships, 3 of them heavily rebuilt including the latest and greatest in radar fire control. They absolutely had enough firepower to stop Center Force, especially if they'd moved north aggressively to start the engagement before dawn (instead of hanging off the mouth of Surigao Strait to overkill the remnant of Nishimura's Southern Force). Even _Yamato_ would have had a bad day once the fight went from 2-3 vs. 1 to 4, then 5, then 6 vs. 1. Kurita never would have had a chance if Kincaid had deployed his own forces properly.

@@Philistine47. . . Right, cos a standard type battleship would have had any hope against the Yamato. Ok then. And you really expect a standard to stand up to the Nagato. Interesting? Your opinions are interestingly dodgy as fuck. But you carry on.

From what I have read, Kincaid's BBs were low on armor piercing shells. Their ability to take on Kurita would have been hampered in that regard.

Or the sinking of the USS Gambier Bay to the IJN Yamato.

Well the Captain of the HMS Glorious should take some blame there as it was my understanding he was in a rush to get back to port for a court martial hearing and made crucial mistakes.

@@highlanderknight which is a totally absurd reason for movements of a carrier

Y'all done said it right!

Yamato goes down though in his wargaming

The gun range and broadside weights of the two ships are about the same. There are any number of unknowns about what might have happened; trying to predict it is a mug's game IMO.

I don’t believe for a second he would have performed worse at Midway than Fletcher or Spruance did.

Explain

@@tomhenry897 1. How would the Japanese hide 2 Kongo-Class Battlecruisers serving as carrier escorts in broad daylight? 2. Halsey was commander of all the Pacific Fleet Aircraft Carriers. 3. Halsey had 7 years experience with Carrier ops. 4 of which in command of carrier divisions. Also between the Doolittle Raid and Midway. He was the only admiral at that time 4. Nimitz would have shared the same intelligence and principle of minimum risk to Halsey as he did to Fletcher and Spruance. 5. Closer eye on Mitscher and Hornet’s air ops. Especially as Mitscher was an aviator like Halsey (albeit from the start of his career). Rather than a cruiser or “black shoe” officer like Fletcher or Spruance.

That's what movies never get right .. they just show guns staying in the same position firing salvo after salvo, not realising that the breach has to lower to reload and never show the effects of recoil.. Just turn on the smoke generators and run away, don't worry the wind isn't blowing 😂

Analog electronics/ controllers that are tuned for a balance between positional accuracy and response time. It’s not a fully damped system if it’s working the way I’m thinking it is

@@shoominati23 Yep, that's true that most guns need to return to nearly level in order to load. I think after posting my OP I heard Ryan say 5° of elevation is what the 16" guns of the fast battleships returned to for loading. The 8" autoloading guns of the Des Moines class however, could load at any elevation and so could the twin 5"/38 dual purpose mounts on many ships in the Navy. 😎 That really contributes to their high rate of fire! As long as the magazine sailors were shoving shells and powder into the hoists and/or breech tray, the guns would stay on target launching steel until they shot their barrels smooth. 😺

as soon as she was commissioned halsey always used new jersey for his flagship he was from new jersey

The Yamato’s broadside was heavier than the Iowas but not THAT much heavier. The super-heavy shells used by the Iowas weighed 2700 lbs each. The Yamato’s weighed 3200 pounds. The big American advantages were their numbers, speed, radar-guided gunnery & of course, aircraft support.

Had Drach answer this question in a drydock ages ago. Had TF34 been detached, it’s almost certain that Halsey and his staff would need to jump ship (don’t say it’s impossible, that’s what cables and destroyers are for). First choice would have been for South Dakota or Massachusetts. But if they were to join TF 34 or form another battle line to deal with Ise and Hyuga. Then he would need to go to a carrier. Turns out the only one in Task Force 38 that had the available space was his old flagship Enterprise.

That was not the fighting capability of the various ships in the battle, but completely down to the qualities of the Commanding Officers involved. Kurita saw ships ahead of him and rather then methodically sending his ships after the American ships, he basically ordered that every ship fight it's own battle, meaning that he took away from his FLEET the synergy that a group of ships has over an equal sized group of disorganized ships, which is basically what happened.

Or transferred himself and select staff to a carrier.

@@gregorywright4918 Not really an available option out at sea. That's a procedure which would be best done while in port, such as Pearl Harbor.

@@davidbriggs7365 I thought there was a clip in the video of someone being transferred via high-line at sea.

@@gregorywright4918 That could have been, and was done during World War Two, BUT, that was one individual usually returning back to his assigned ship where all of his things were. However, Third Fleet Headquarters contained dozens of people and tons of supplies and equipment, not something casually done during World War Two, and not lightly done even today with helicopters.

@@davidbriggs7365 Agreed the whole show could not have been moved, but 4-6 men could have been high-lined over so that NJ could join the BBs at the strait. Did not have to be for more than a day or two.

They plant them all over.

But how much effort is it to transfer the flag? I suspect it's significant as there's lots of staff involved.

Another issue-If he did that he'd lose a sizable portion of his AAA defense.

The only carrier available to take him and his staff would have been Enterprise. Not to say that many of the Big E’s crews would have been delighted to have Halsey back aboard her again. But with the larger staff. There would not have been much room for them.

Additionally, all carriers already needed extra communications equipment and personnel just to manage their air groups. They didn't really have the technical capacity to handle the extra load required to run an entire Fleet, even if sufficient extra space could have been found for the required staff to come aboard. Nobody tried to command a numbered Fleet from a CV during WW2, it just wasn't feasible.

Actually, his mistake in that regard was his choice of Flagship. If he had chosen the Indianapolis, or the Portland, or one of the Carriers, then he could have had his cake (gone after the Japanese carriers), and eat it too (left Lee behind with the Battleships to guard the strait).

Tough one to answer. I'd like to say the US battleships had superior fire control but a few lucky hits either way make it a tough call.

Well the Iowas were built in part to counter Kongo and her sister ships. Would have been interesting.

I think the superiority of U.S. radar, and, fire direction by that point in the war would have ended up coming out on top. Also, the Mk 7 16"/50 guns had a slight advantage over Yamato's 18" guns in armor penetration, and, ballistic capability.

It would have been Admiral Lees task force with the Iowas, South Dakota’s and North Carolina’s the US battleships would have taken damage but the Japanese fleet would have been dead! Air power thrown in the Japanese would have been overwhelmed. In my opinion

well, Drach did a video about what if TF 34 was present at Samar and how/if they'd changed sth a while ago

I believe it was Captain Ramius who said, “Your conclusions were wrong. Halsey acted stupidly.”

Can be fired forward, it isnt really done. But it can be done.

Someone took it home when they heard it was being scrapped! They called the museum one day and gave it to us after it sat in their house for many years.

@@BattleshipNewJersey Cool. Who took it home? A shipyard worker, a navy sailor?

Bought this up with Drachinifel earlier in the year. If he needed to shift his flag, then it would be South Dakota or Massachusetts (SoDAk being the first choice as she had the dedicated flag space). But if those two were sent to Task Force 34 or formed a skirmish line for the carriers (likely considering the presence of the Hybrid Battleships Ise and Hyuga). Then Halsey would need to shift to a carrier, and the only one present that wasn't a flagship or an Independence-Class Light Carrier was his old flagship Enterprise.

Ceylon and Alexandria.

At the time of Midway, RADM Fletcher was the senior officer in command of the US carriers, RADM Spruance did not take overall command until Fletcher was forced off the Yorktown. VADM Halsey WOULD have been in command from Enterprise had he not been hospitalized. The initial battleplan was Fletcher's, not Spruance's.

One thing: at Midway, Mitscher might not have defied Halsey's orders (as he did Spruance's) to send Hornet's air group on the infamous "Flight to Nowhere." And if Ring's 2 squadrons of SBDs with F4F escort had shown up over the Kido Butai at the same time as Waldron's TBDs, there was a very real chance that McCluskey's and Leslie's SBD forces would have finished off the last of Nagumo's carriers before Yamaguchi ever had a chance to launch a counterstrike.

If Halsey had chosen a Cruiser or Carrier as his Flagship, then that would have meant that he could leave much of his battleships behind to guard the strait, and still gone north after the Japanese aircraft carriers. Also, the Japanese Naval Air Force handicapped itself multiple times during World War Two. During the Battle of Coral Sea, the American's badly damaged one Japanese Carrier, but while leaving it's air group basically intact, and heavily attrited the Air Group of another group, though without inflicting much damage to the ship itself, meaning that neither ship participated in the Battle of Midway, where their presence might have been vitally important. At the same time though, the American Yorktown's Air Group had been attrited at Coral Sea, though the Yorktown itself was in fair shape, but at the same time, the Saratoga had to head back to the U.S. for repairs, while it's Air Group was in pretty good shape. As a result, when the Yorktown reached Pearl Harbor, what remained of the Yorktown Air Group was replaced by the Saratoga's Air Group, meaning that the Yorktown participated in the Battle of Midway.

@@davidbriggs7365 The flattops didn't have the equipment or personnel to handle the additional communications load over and above what they already needed to control their own air groups, nor did they have room for the additional personnel of a Fleet command staff. By contrast it was _possible_ to exercise Fleet command from a heavy cruiser, but the greater size of the battleships - especially the _Iowas_ - made them the better choice 99 times out of 100. IIRC even Spruance acknowledged that, after flying his flag in USS _Indianapolis_ for several months. So trying to criticize Halsey for flying his flag in the wrong ship is pretty weird, especially since Halsey himself was an aviator and beyond doubt would rather have made a CV his flagship.

@@Philistine47 American task force commanders almost chose heavy cruisers over battleships as fleet flagships.

@@grahamstrouse1165 Relatively few US TFs included BBs to make the choice possible, though. In any case, Fleet command was a big step up from TF command in terms of staff and communications requirements. It's telling that even Spruance eventually shifted to fly his flag from a BB, despite showing a clear preference for cruisers into 1945.

@@Philistine47 That may be true, BUT, by choosing New Jersey, he was given the choice of being subordinate to Admiral Lee (Commander of Task Force 34) onboard New Jersey, OR going north after the Japanese Carriers. And if he had done that with just the New Jersey, and had left Lee behind, then he would have left Lee at a disadvantage. On the other hand, if he had used a Cruiser, then he could have easily operated independently of the various task forces assigned to Third Fleet.

TF-34 would have had at least four modern 16" armed battleships (Iowa, New Jersey, Washington and Alabama,) five modern cruisers and 14 destroyers versus 18.1" armed Yamato, 16" armed Nagato, 14" armed Kongo and 14" armed Haruna, 6 heavy and 2 light cruisers plus 11 destroyers. I suspect that while the Japanese Kongo and Haruna would have been knocked out or even sunk early on, Yamato and Nagato (to a lesser extent) would have crippled at least one US battleship or maybe sunk (one of the Iowa class, maybe both.) Battleship Washington had the lightest armor among the US ships (armored against 14") with Alabama marginally better protected than even the Iowa class (smaller in size but with comparable armor to them.) I think Lee would have placed the two Iowa class in the front of his battleline, then Washington (his flagship) with Alabama in the "sweep up" position. Any US battleship taking part in this seafight and surviving would probably have had major battle damage, both from heavy guns but also Japanese "Long Lance" torpedoes the cruisers and destroyers mounted. One hit could ruin the day of any US battleship or END the day of most US cruisers and destroyers. I think that survivors with the amount of damage Yamato could hand out would be out of the war for months, maybe even a year or more.

@@robertf3479 Japanese fire control was significantly was than American fire control. Nagato could do about 25-26 knots at this point & Yamato could manage 27. The Iowas could all do 33 & the Treaty-era battleships were good for 28. Also, even if they had engaged in a gun duel the US would have had aerial support. I doubt very much that Lee would have close to brawling range given the conditions. More likely he would have saturated the Japanese with plunging fire at range while the US strike aircraft went to work. The advantage the fast American BBs gained with their radar-directed gunnery systems & superior speed really can’t be overstated. two light Japanese battleships could have closed the distance on the North Carolinas & South Dakotas but they would have gotten mauled. The four Kongos were the most active & in many ways the most useful Japanese BBs during the war but much like Admiral Akbar’s cruisers at the Battle of Endor, they could not repel firepower of that magnitude. Nagato had a lot of guns but her 10 410 mm guns were much less accurate than the American 16”/45s & 50s & her low speed & rather archaic armor scheme left her vulnerable. Yamato, of course, could both dish it out & take it & her speed was comparable to the slower American battleships but all she had was surface search radar. She could identify the the US ships but couldn’t use her radar for anything save for getting a rough range. Yamato DID have a lot of armor, of course & both she & her sister ship proved they could take a a lot of punches. It seems unlikely to me that a battleship captain as gifted as Lee would indulge the Japanese by fighting at close range during a daylight action. Also keep in mind that Lee would almost certainly still have had access to carrier & land-based strike aircraft in this scenario. Kurita’s force would have been left dodging American dive bombers while the battleships worked them over at a distance with super-heavy 16” plunging fire.

But if the carriers had airplanes (which Halsey couldn't know), wouldn't they be a serious threat to the landing?

@@russellhltn1396 And that's what the American aircraft carriers were for. They should have gone after the Japanese carriers. We knew about the Japanese Center Force.

I remember reading in both his memoirs and biography. That when he assumed command of 3rd fleet. He initially wanted an aircraft carrier for his flagship. Given the timing, he could have gotten his old flagship Enterprise as she was back in Pearl Harbour for yard work and a new air group. But given their vulnerability to damage. Plus encouraged from his Chief of Staff Robert Carney to take a more active role in commanding the fleet. Which meant more staff. He had to shift to New Jersey for the above reason.