That is thinking on your feet for the crew of the USS New Orleans (CA-32) after Battle of Tassafaronga.
In the Battle of Tassafaronga, off Guadalcanal at the end of November, New Orleans was severely damaged by a Japanese destroyer torpedo that sliced away her bow between the two forward gun turrets.Read more here. A good lesson in that if you are not prepared to win, even a victory can be a loss.
Encore FbF from JAN07.
9 comments:
Hiding
when one builds cruisers to hide, one has lost the fight.
it's easy to shout that we will fight another day, just as whossname said that he would return. In the meantime the PI fell under the boot of an horrific regime. As did much of WESTPAC.
I take and agree to your point but this was all wrong. We never yielded an inch in the Gulf after the loss of Stark or Roberts. We basically gave up our allies in WWII WestPac after seriously crappy ships and weapon systems failed to prevail against the IJN.
and yeah, they weren't lost, just destroyed as combatants.
DDG-1000 by most measures is really the size of a cruiser. But the radar signature of a bumblebee. But what's the point in building only a handfull of "stealthy" ships ? Even if USN constructed 40 of these "stealthy" DDG-1000's , so what ? How many would be deployed overseas at any one time ? Maybe 10 ? Potential enemies can easily track 10 stealthy DDG-1000's if not with a dedicated satellite onto each one, then at least with some AGI trawler type cheap vessel tagging along behind them 24/7. In these modern days, you cannot really "hide" a surface warship like DDG-1000.
I think the primary reason to build "stealthy" warships is to make it harder for enemy vessel to shoot anti-ship missiles at them. Presumably the enemy would have to get quite close to our warships to find and identify them and launch missiles at them. And finally, by being "stealthy", our new DDG-1000's might survive because the incoming anti-ship cruise missiles just may not be able to locate, acquire, and home on these "bumblebee" sized warships. Maybe. Sure would be a better plan to build and deploy 200 smaller , cheaper Frigates than a handful of cruiser sized destroyers.
Stealth is an EXPENSIVE "sick joke". Like you said, if our warships "emitters" start transmitting, they immediately give away WHO they are, and WHERE they are (at least what bearing they are on). So, if the USN built many, low cost, but capable (much more capable than LCS joke), then US Navy could actually achieve so many objectives better. Having many FF / FFG actually deployed overseas 24.7 is a better idea than having 1 DDG-1000 deployed overseas. A Fleet Admiral commander could actually "risk" losing a frigate much more than losing a $4 billion dollar DD-1000. I know that we still need some capital surf CG/DDG for TBMD/AAW area defense and frigates can never accomplish these missions. However, if US Navy had many, mass-produced, frigates, we could accomplish sea control, VBSS, ASUW, ASW, MIW, etc. as well as law enforcement, SAR, pirate killing, etc. etc. Surface warfare is so "diverse", that our deployed warships need to carry more sonars, radars, torpedoes, fuel and people than the toy LCS boats carry.
Frigates can be built as cheaply as LCS, especially if we get certain expensive contractors out of the shipbuilding loop.
Oh, forget this post. It's all common sense. Everyone knows this already. The USN solution for surface warships is obvious. Time to go mow the grass.
Curtis, didn't little things like McArthur doing dumb stuff like lining all the B-17's on the tarmac nice and neat have something to do with it? Or the fact that a penny pinching Congress who was isolationist that waited too long for us to have a serious fleet in the Pacific have an impact? Or (back to Mac) surrendering over a hundred thousand troops, American and Philipino that could have tied the IJA in knots for years? Wendel Fertig had a lot less than that and controlled most of the southern P.I.
You paint a broad brush, sir.
just dont make me imagine LCS hit by long lance...
The fact that most of the BB force in the PH was "involuntarily submerged" might had a something to do with losing the Phillipines... and the Japanese really surprised USN with naval aviation, long lances and night fighting techniques. And add to that the burden of the battle of Atlantic going on (with the Paukenschlag and all...), trying to get resources for the North Africa campaign in place, and you get the picture. USN was lucky to win at Midway, and Japanese were only a little bit from invading Australia and India. As for the forces in the Phillipines, they were cut off from all resupply, and doomed, though in hindsight maybe going down fighting would be preferable to Japanese captivity...
8 Battleships and 4 carriers was a serious fleet. We had it and lost it in an instant. The cruisers were trash and the poor bastards with ABDA kind of showed it. The Japanese had entertained our naval observers at Tushima and we entertained theirs. We each had a chance to gain the measure of each other. Nothing at all was any sort of 'surprise'.
Getting Wainwright to surrender the entirity of the PI was sickening. 100,000 men sold down the river.
Curtis-The situation in April 42 simply would not have allowed the resupply or evacuation of the forces in the PI. We could not maintain sea control long enough with sufficient lift to either reinforce or evacuate. OPERATION WATCHTOWER in August 42 was close to being lost due to an inablility to maintain sea control, despite the gutting of the Japanese carrier forces at Midway and having shorter LOC to Australia. Possibly US and PI forces could have fallen back and established defense lines closer to Manilia earlier, but that would have simply delayed, not prevented the surrender until early summer.
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