Prinz Eugen

There were multiple other smaller battles as well. The US Navy did not cover itself in glory. The US won the campaign because the location of it was beyond what Japanese logistics could support, and so American forces could keep entering the battle, where Japanese forces could not. But that was despite a poor showing at sea by American forces. Not to mention the destruction of the cream of the Australian navy.
Japanese logistics were strained, but they had the capacity to sustain large naval forces there longer than they actually did. The IJN's bigger problem was a repeated failure by leadership to concentrate tactically and exploit victories. During the fall of 1942, a combination of Japanese naval air forces and submarines reduced the number of American carriers in the Pacific to one not once, but twice. Neither opportunity yielded a decisive result because fleet commanders were insufficiently aggressive, focused on the wrong objective, and committed their forces piecemeal.
 
This isn't a good or accurate description of the naval campaign of the Guadalcanal campaign. The First Battle of Savo Island was considered possibly the worse defeat the US Navy ever suffered in a gun battle. It was a night battle, like the other naval battles of the Guadalcanal campaign. A force of American and Australian cruisers and destroyers got their asses kicked. The place is now called Iron Bottom Sound for all the American iron that's on the bottom of it.

Because it's not a description of the naval campaign off Guadalcanal. He's describing the battle of Surigao Strait during the Leyte campaign. The Pearl Harbor BBs confirm it, but even his first description fits Surigao to a T (Japanese capital ships getting mauled by PTs, before encountering American battleships ; a second Japanese group behind them retreating and going home).

The First and Second Naval Battles of Guadalcanal came in November of 1942. This is where the first battleships became involved, with the arrival of 2 Japanese battleships. While one of those battleships was sunk, it was still a Japanese tactical victory. You ever heard of the 5 Sullivan Brothers? This is where they died. This is where the US Navy learned to not put 5 brothers on the same ship.

Ooooof. Describing First Naval Guadalcanal as a Japanese win is a large stretch. Strategically it was a clear-cut USN win (the IJN withdrew without bombarding Henderson, and delayed the landings, which was the result the USN sought to achieve). Tactically, too, the conclusion is unsound: both sides withdrew with heavy damage, and at the end of the day, the USN may have suffered a 2:1 ratio in ship losses (6-3, 4 destroyers and 2 light cruisers to 2 destroyers and 1 light cruiser), but the IJN suffered something close to a 2:1 ratio in ship tonnage (Japan lost two destroyers at 2000 and 1600 tons respectively, plus the Hiei at 36 600 ; America lost one 1500 ton destroyer and three 1600 ton ones, as well as two 7 400 tons light cruisers), and their losses had a much bigger impact in the second round two nights later (two light cruisers and four destroyers wouldn't have made much difference on the US side. Hiei on the Japanese side would have made a world of difference...)

And one of those American ships left the battle almost as mauled as the Japanese ship.

Teething trouble, not poor American warfighting. The ship was brand new: it had been declared ready for service a month earlier. Early in the battle, a crew mistake with breakers led to massive short circuits, which left her radar, radio and most of her guns dead. Rather easy to get mauled in those conditions. She should have disengaged at that point, but chose to stay in the battle, which allowed the Japanese to maul her - but served as a very effective decoy for Washington to get up close to Kirishima undetected.

There were multiple other smaller battles as well. The US Navy did not cover itself in glory. The US won the campaign because the location of it was beyond what Japanese logistics could support, and so American forces could keep entering the battle, where Japanese forces could not. But that was despite a poor showing at sea by American forces. Not to mention the destruction of the cream of the Australian navy.

To what Dachs said, I'd add that Japan was fighting roughly 500 nautical miles from their major base at Rabaul, and 1000 nautical miles from their fleet headquarters at Truk - much closer than America was to major allies base .

That isn't the link I read a few days ago but the 39 PT boats in 13 groups of 3 was in the story I read. And the Shigure is the ship that escaped, albeit it doesn't mention the fate of the commander who lost his job for retreating.

Oh god. Shigure. The Banshee of the Japanese navy - on three separate occasions it was the sole survivor of a full Japanese naval squadron it sailed with.
 
thats strange, there were no mentions of the Yamato/Musashi or Yamamoto in the story I read. Fuso sounds familiar but it was sunk at Leyte too. If the Shigure escaped 3 times maybe I read about it at Guadalcanal and the story proceeded to the 1944 battle without my noticing it. :( But the battle I did read about was a big win for the USA so it couldn't have been a naval battle at Guadalcanal.

eh, nevermind...
 
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Shigure's three doom rides were all after Guadacanal - Vella Gulf in 43, Surigao in 44, and escorting the Unryu (along with two other destroyers) on a ferry mission two months later.
 
Berzerker - that's Leyte you're describing (specifically, Surigao Strait), in Fall 44, not summer 42. The battleships lost at Pearl by and large didn't return to action until 1944.

Guadalcanal did see the other significant battleship vs battleship engagement of the Pacific war when Washington butchered Kirishima in the second part of the naval battle of Guadalcanal. But she was a much more recent North Carolina class, which had only actually been completed after Pearl Harbor. (South Dakota was there too, but ran in slight mechanical issues that largely kept her out of the fight).

(Incidentally, the USN did not perform *that* poorly at Guadalcanal - they lost Savo horrendously, and Tassafaronga was bad too, but they did well at Cape Esperance, and Naval Guadalcanal was a pretty solid performance)
That's the thing about Leyte--it had EVERYTHING. My favorite was the encounter between the escort carriers and the heavy cruiser division. The Japanese thought their targeting was off, because their 20 cm AP shells were going completely through the American's unarmored hulls without detonating.

J
 
Teething trouble, not poor American warfighting. The ship was brand new: it had been declared ready for service a month earlier. Early in the battle, a crew mistake with breakers led to massive short circuits, which left her radar, radio and most of her guns dead. Rather easy to get mauled in those conditions. She should have disengaged at that point, but chose to stay in the battle, which allowed the Japanese to maul her - but served as a very effective decoy for Washington to get up close to Kirishima undetected.
Pretty much. The SD's teething problems merely delayed the inevitable for the Kirishima. Moreover, the Kirishima and the other Kongos were battlecruisers, and as such would have been chew toys even for the dreadnoughts at Pearl Harbor.
 
What, exactly, the Kongos were post-refit is a messy question. Official Japanese POV as far as I know is that they were battleships by then. But their upgraded post-refit armor, while much better, wasn't up to what a modern battleship had.
 
A glance at their respective wiki pages says that the refit Kongo only had a inch more deck armor as sunk in 1944 (101mm) than HMS Hood did as sunk in 1941 (76mm). I suspect an encounter between a Kongo and one of the Colorados (the last dreadnoughts built by the US before the naval treaties, two of which were at Pearl) would have been a reenactment of The Denmark Straight. Moreso since the Hood and Bismarck were evenly matched in terms of artillery calibre (both had 8 x 15in, though the Bismarck had proper armor and a faster fire rate) while a Colorado would be bringing in 8 x 16in against Kongo's 8 x 14in. And like the Bismarck, the Colorado would be newer (albeit not quite the age gap as between Bismarck and Hood). In the end, no amount of modification could disguise the fact that Hood and the Kongos were simply the tragic conclusion of that miserable Great War experiment that was the battlecruiser. Jutland rendered the Kongos irrelevant when they were just three years old and the same to the Hood before she was even laid down.
 
..Zeroes manhandled F4Fs at Midway. During the Solomon campaign, the reverse was true. Midway cost the Japanese the cream of the naval air corp, so the replacements were much less experience. Also important was the American strategy of flying in pairs. One on one a Zero was more than a match for a Wildcat, but two F4Fs, flying buddy, had a chance against four zeroes. At Leyte Gulf, the difference resulted in a Turkey Shoot.

thach Weave , of which the USN is wildly proud , is one of the rare cases where Intel reports on the Japanese were taken seriously . Invented on the guy's kitchen table with boxes of matches standing for planes and involving quite a few of Squadron members , it's most useful to chime in when discussing how the USN would later invent Top Gun . But the thing to consider is that the Japanese stuck on one on one for far too long to discover that they could divide their 8 into to attack the 2 by 2 of the 4 Wildcats and the like . And even then , for a very long time , they were held down by their weapons . 7.7 would practically do nothing and the 20mm were too slow and the like in the rate of fire . Thach Weave involves frontal gunnery passes , but the German 151/20 on Zeros would make it far harder . Still in use on South African helicopters in early 1980s .
 
I've seen the same, but the question with the Kongo is how much the diagonal bulkheads also added at the same tiem would have contributed to the armor, since they were apparently considered (by the Japanese) a significant part of the armor upgrade.

Still, yeah, there's a good argument to be made that they were still battlecruisers.
 
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