Was It Autism?

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Hind sight is 20/20 in 1932 Military Aviation and Submarine services were just starting to get going. Naval planners pored over the events of WWI and earlier to determine where to go and what to do. It was not clear to most senior staff and idealistic lower ranked officers had just ideas.

>Did BBs EVER do anything that couldn't have been done more efficiently by a heavy cruiser?

Well, they were used to smash beach defenses on a couple islands in the Pacific...I think that's about it.

Jutland. The ~super~ heavy cruisers there got fucking annhialated in conditons that both Brit and German BBs survived. Warspite was tanking a good chunk of the german battle line for ages in conditions that saw the battlecruisers go up like magnesium flares

>never send them into combat

>At an average range of 14,500yds, Iowa closed with Katori and fired 46 16-inch (406 mm) high capacity (non-armor-piercing) rounds and 124 5-inch (127 mm), straddling the cruiser with eight salvos. CAG 17/A16-3 reported Iowa hit Katori with her second salvo. Just after Iowa's fourth salvo, Katori quickly listed to port exposing seven large shell holes about 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter in her starboard side, one under the bridge about five feet below the waterline, another amidships about at the waterline, plus about nine smaller holes The damage on the port side was much worse. After being under attack by Iowa for about 5 minutes, Katori sank stern first, with a port side list at 07°45N 151°20E about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Truk.

That's his point though, cruisers were perfectly capable of doing that too. In fact a BB's guns seem overkill for the vast majority of coastal defenses while cruisers have the advantage of staying closer to the shore.

>In fact a BB's guns seem overkill for the vast majority of coastal defenses

Nah, even the BB guns weren't capable of doing that much to coastal defenses. I watched a film the USN put out in the 50's about what they accomplished in the 40's vis a vis coastal bombardment and the results were pretty underwhelming. They only managed to damage or destroy something like 10% of the targets they aimed at.

Hiei certainly pulled her weight - she tanked the basically the entire American fleet and took out or badly damaged several of her adversaries.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal#First_Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal,_13_November

Guadalcanal was a weird exception though where neither the Americans nor the Japanese were willing to risk their carriers, and they both wanted to resupply their troops, so they had to continually risk bumping into each other in the night. Surface forces therefore ended up being oddly important.

Ironically, Hiei was sunk by aircraft the next morning.

American destroyers had excellent guns and the best fire control in the war, but their torpedoes were disgracefully awful for a very long time.

That particular incident was pants-on-head retarded of the Americans. Their air power could have sunk those ships easily, and Iowa was almost hit by Japanese torpedoes.

murickan battleships were unironically great AA assets for protecting fleets from japanese planes. Advances in aircraft technology postwar, plus the sheer fucking expense of the things meant that was not a viable role postwar, but they served decently throughout WW2.

>Reminder that the japs didn't sink a single US battleship after Pearl Harbor.

You were wrong, deal with it.

True. American anti-aircraft fire was generally pretty effective.

I wasn't .

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So, how would Pacific WWII have played out differently if Japan reallocated resources away from the Yamato and Musashi in favor of more aircraft and carriers?

Were the Japs just completely fucked from the start, or did they have a chance to overcome the US carrier fleet if they hadn't been such battleship autists?

They were made from the start to act as carrier escorts. That's why they got the LONGBOY design, effectively getting the exact same weapon and armor as the North Dakota class and a 12" belt that nobody thought, to be totally honest, was enough if they did ever get into a brawl with the Japanese super-battleships.

What they got for the damn near 10k extra tonnes was enough speed to keep up with fleet carriers.

>Battle record

Wasn't awful. They did their part.

>never send into combat
>clearly sent into combat multiple times

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Their whole doctrine was flawed. Even if they burned pearl to the ground and destroyed every american ship in the pacific, the US & UK wwre never going to just 'let them have' the south pacific, east indies, australia etc. It might have taken longer but there was no possible peace after what Japan did to the Allies.

They needed oil, but they didn't need to be constantly deepening their conquest of china. Their only way out was to read global diplomatic opinion and start laying off China in return for weakened sanctions. Then they could have started building up against the Soviets more like they were planning to do from the start.

I'd say it would have had minimal changes. The limitation by the end of the war wasn't carriers or aircraft, it was pilots. The Japanese would have had to, rather then keep veterans in the field, put their experienced pilots on cadre duty and training and devote more resources to this.

But.. this would not have been enough. The simple truth is America could train and equip far more pilots then Japan could because it was a much larger nation with much greater resources. Identifying how important and effective carriers were early and going all-in on them would have helped, but wouldn't have changed things in the end. Simple attrition would have won out, even if they'd taken the resources used to build post-1930 battleships and built fleet carriers instead.

If they had dumped everything into subs, DDs, and carriers, they could have held out longer. But the end was all but inevitable as soon as it began. The only question was when. Yamamoto's strategy of an overwhelming debilitating strike at Pearl Harbor was the only one that had any chance of inflicting enough damage to bring the Americans to the negotiating table, but the fact that it was a "sneak attack" meant that the Americans would be completely unwilling to negotiate. Period. They would do whatever it took to beat Japan.

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,775742,00.html
>The men who are fighting the Pacific war cut their slogans to fit their hopes. The most optimistic have clung to "Home alive by '45." A few have made it; more will make it before this year's end, but for most it is only a mirage. Those who stay may take their choice from among the following: "Out of the sticks in '46"; "From hell to heaven in '47" and the old standby, "Golden Gate by '48."

America was willing to slog it out until the bitter end, and there's really not anything Japan could have done to win after December 7, 1941.

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Critically more aircraft, aircraft carriers, escorts and transports. They were choked to death by lack of supplies once the US submarine forces got going. Also the US figured out a good fleet sub design and made bunches. The IJN would make a few, revise the design, make a few more, revise and try something new. This was typical for them even for smaller and medium surface ships. So yards never really got expertise to build build them faster or more efficiently. They made no allowance for commerce protection as well.

At the time aircraft were not handy and the guns on the ships were, combat is risk and it was reasonable and practical. What do you think? That they could instantly put aircraft everywhere?

Japanese pilot training pre-war was absurdly selective to the point that they rejected a bunch of very good pilots who they should have kept, at least according to this book.

Again, I'm not the guy who claimed they never got sent into combat. I'm just saying that particular use of them was fucking stupid and Spruance (otherwise an excellent admiral) should have known better. As Spruance himself said, "That would have been embarrassing.":

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Really good diplomacy could have won out. If they settled for some tasty parts of China and told everyone else it was all about fighting communist they might have been able to keep their puppet government in China and settle the Pacific on decent if not great terms.

That would require the people in charge in Japan realistically examining their resources and capabilities however, and accepting the limits of their territorial expansion.

>At the time aircraft were not handy
lolwut? The Americans had 9 carriers there. Mitscher actually called off his planes so Spruance's group could have a go at the little group of escapees.

as

Several sources talk about this

>>Had the navy created a significant reserve of personnel, particularly in aviation, by emphasizing competence rather than excellence, the Japanese might have better addressed their manpower shortages.

They washed out perfectly good pilots and ship crew that they could of used later on.

Yes but the ships were actually at engagement range, so they used them. Task Group 50.9 literally went "Oh hey look at the IJN task force at gun engagement range. Light cruiser, two DDs and support ship" Boom! Running away would of been stupid since they just found them and outclassed them terribly. I would assume if they had survived aircraft would of cleaned up the light cruiser.

the cruiser you are discussing had already been hit multiple times by aircraft before the surface ships engaged it

so yeah, aircraft were in fact "handy"

>12" belt that nobody thought, to be totally honest, was enough if they did ever get into a brawl with the Japanese super-battleships
Nobody knew how big the Yamatos were until late in the war. Iowa was designed and building before Pearl Harbor.

>at engagement range
They charged in from 30 miles away. Needlessly.

500,000 tons.

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the 5-inch gun was the best DP gun of the war
while the 40mm cannon was the best dedicated AA gun in naval service
the 20mm was OK for the light role, but didnt take up much space and they shoved as many of them as they could in the remaining space not taken by the above 2

combined with great radar and fire control, they werw extremely deadly in the AA role
the north carolina had a flak curtain so intensive, the escorting ships thought she was on fire

>USS Kowloon

Battlecruisers were not heavy cruisers, and were used fucking awfully. Let's build ships whose job is to catch up to cruiser raider groups and blow them up to protect trade routes into line grand battle where they will face fire they never should have, what a fine idea.

German battlecruisers stood up fine. It was British cordite, shitty AP shells, and poor ammo handling.

Underrated