A five minute sea battle at Guadalcanal is being reinterpreted based on recent discoveries, according to Richard Fernandez:
The accepted story is that the Kirishima which entered the scene in company with destroyers, fired on and disabled the shorted-out USS South Dakota. In the meantime, the USS Washington fired a series of accurate salvos which inflicted 9 16 inch and 40 5 inch hits on the battlecruiser, causing it to lose control and eventually scuttle itself.
The real story, according to Lundgren is that Kirishima took 20 x 16″ and 17 x 5″ in the five minute battle. At the 8,400 range of the engagement, Washington’s 16″ battery was firing with only a 7 degree elevation and the shell dispersions were so narrow at these ranges that the splashes literally merged.
Twenty 16″ shells would have been hard to survive in any case, but the new theory is that the Japanese officers followed their training and counter-flooded to reduce list on the engaged side and essentially placed the ship’s center of gravity above its center of buoyancy.
Fernandez attributes the ship’s rapid loss in part to out-dated systems thinking on the part of the Kirishima‘s officers. I’d have to say it was at least in part to a very fine state of gunnery training aboard Washington.
Artillery, the King of Battle.
Yeah, 20 hits with a 16 inch rifle will pretty much ruin anyones day.
When the CG is above the center of Buoyancy, the righting moment becomes a “turn turtle” moment. Not a good thing if you want to stay in the fight, or, in this case, retire. Alas, for the IJN, she retired to the ocean floor.
These days it is much more fashionable to say that the Kirishima sank because the Japanese mis-managed their damage control, than anything that the US Navy might have done.
Training, training, training, and the right way, based on the best outcome.
At one point, there was a certain system that was the only effective defense in a STARK like scenario….but it had to be in Automagic mode.
I had the “pleasure” of “visiting” every East Coast unit with said system. Trust me, more than a few COs looked me in the eye and said: “I’ll never pout a system in full automatic!”
My response: “Well, millions of dollars say you better train to it, because any other method will get your crew killed.”
The ones who “got it” could have their crews move in and out of that mode seamlessly (maybe 2 minutes each way, with all the comms and permissions)…because they practiced. The ones who had not, usually put on a CF for my team and I, while not achieving practiced greatness. I couldn’t check the block without making them do it. The 4 Star was funny like that.
In other news: A cool slide show of rare US planes! Even with all my reading some of those are new to me.
The Curtiss Model 24B looks like a Long EZ.
Neat stuff. Were a couple in there I had never seen either. Notice the B-15? Had the largest wing (sq footage ) of any US Bomber. (Look at chord thickness) I’ve always loved the look of the Moonbat (I wonder why…)
Think of how fast it would have been over, if the SOUTH DAKOTA’s CHENG had not had the circut breakers tied down on the Main Switchboard, so that when S DAK took a few hits, and the breakers wanted to blow, they could have, and her fuses would not have blown, leaving her without electrical power for 3 minutes. ( See Ivan Musicant’s A Battleship at War ). KIRISHIMA was really an upgraded Battle Cruiser, rather than a true Fast BB, so her fate, once WASHINGTON had the range, was sealed. All Praise to Willis Lee, though, the Nihon Kaigun was the world’s best navy in 1942, and the PACFLT was learning fast enough to take that title away by mid-’43, but they were still the best in November ’42, and Lee still beat them. Well Done, Sir.
Shorter version, ’cause I don’t know how to read, over eight sentences at a time, but what was the reasoning behind the decision to tie down the circuit-breakers in the 1st place? Seems like it sort of defeats their basic intended purpose to this old zoomie liberal arts major. (Although I DO know how to SPELL electricity
)
Doesn’t make sense to this Squid either. So, you aren’t alone.
Musicant’s Battleship at War is a classic, one of the books I most enjoyed reading. Too bad it’s so hard to get a copy of nowadays, apparently it’s no longer in print. Truly a shame.
The writing about the engagement of South Dakota and Washington vs. Hiei and Kirishima off Guadalcanal is literally white knuckle. Later you are also left salivating at the thought of what would have happened had Halsey actually detached TF 34 under Lee to secure the approaches to Samar and capped the T of Kurita’s center force like Oldendorf’s battle line did to the the southern force under Nishimura in the Surigao Strait. The radar fire control of the US battleships was literally two orders of magnitude better than what the Japanese, or the British for that matter, had. Washington vs. Yamato would’ve been an amazing fight. For better or worse it is one that can only take place in our imaginations.
WASHINGTON would probably have been the BB of choice to send against the YAMATO. The 16″/45 MK 6 actually had better plunging fire fire performance than the 16″/50 MK 7. The MK 7 is a very flat shooting rifle. It is also very accurate, IOWA once dropped a full salvo into an area the size of a football field, at 22 miles, at Roosevelt Roads. The MK 7 had better side penetration performance than the MK 6, and post war examination of the armor of battleship 111, the 4th YAMATO class BB, which was cancelled at 30% complete, indicated that the side armor of the Yamatos was very hard, but brittle, so an IOWA would have punched holes quite readily in the sides of a YAMATO, but the plunging fire of a NORTH CAROLINA, or a SOUTH DAKOTA would actually have done a better job, the shells detonating deep within the target, and opening below water line holes, and letting in the water. So, while, as a good Wisconsinite, I would have loved to have YAMATO meet her end at the guns of BB64, the Big Badger Boat, off of Okinawa, ( Gadzooks, but it hurts to write this ), WASHINGTON would have done a better job of it. Oh, well, since she is the only one being kept at a 60 day readiness staus, should she ever need to be recalled from Nauticus, the Big Badger Boat is gonna be around as The Last Battleship for a long time.
Wow, you definitely know your battleships. Thanks for the info on the North Carolina class vs. Iowa class gunnery. I always thought it was interesting that the Yamatos were built to be US battleship killers with their larger guns, and that they could have the larger guns because they didn’t have to fit through the Panama Canal and could thus be wider to offset the rolling moment a full 9 barrel salvo would produce. But even at that I agree the US fire accuracy would’ve made the difference in any engagement.
It hurts that the Washington, with such a storied service career during WWII, is now razor blades and paper clips. It hurts even more when you realize it wasn’t struck until 1960!
Also gotta wonder how the planned Montana class would’ve done in combat. Alas, the carrier was a better platform, but the battleships had a certain undeniable majesty to them.
I imagine the ENG was improvising a “Battleshort” mode. He was less concerned about rapid isolation of an electrical fault than he was with continuity of electrical power. I imagine I would be too if someone was lobbing 14″ and 16″ shells around and at me.
Of course, he ran the risk that an electrical fault would destroy his whole distribution system.
‘course, iff’n he hadn’t, might could be that power might have been lost for a few minutes. Causing afore mentioned 14 or 16 inch shells to “destroy his whole distribution system.” Catastrophically, I might add.
Joe, power WAS lost on S DAK. This scared the hell out of WASHINGTON, as her main and 5″ battery directors were locked on KIRISHIMA, so when the power went out, and her TBS died, S DAK vanished. Washington could not locate her on radar, because the SG was mounted on the front face of her Fire Control tower, and had a dead spot from about 130 to 250 degrees. ( This is the reason large ships wound up with 2 SGs, on a stub foremast and atop the main mast, so 360 surface coverage was assured ). You can see where this could complicate things, with WASHINGTON engaged with a Japanese BB, and the only other USN ship in the area suddenlt not there anymore. Subguy is correct, he wanted to set up a battle short system, but managed to bring the entire electrical ring main down.
Ah! Thanks, Scott. From context I took it that she hadn’t lost her electricity in spite of that “inovative modification.”
http://www.navweaps.com/index_lundgren/Kirishima_Damage_Analysis.pdf
Here is a link to Lundgren’s new report