This was the Navy that beat the first team, when it was
outnumbered, outgunned and out technologied in the RTL, so let me provide some reasons and counterpoints.
I am a bit of a Hart ran, but his patrol decisions were strange . Imo he should have aggressively pushed his S boats to the probable invasion points and Ports on Taiwan . The fleet boats should have gone to the choke points to the North and East. I believe Hart's decisions were colored by the massive losses of torpedos and materiel at Cavite and the need to move almost all his train, especially his Sub tenders South sooner then desired.
Let's look at Hart's problem. (Map.)
1. There is a strong north south current in the Formosa Strait.
2. The older a pre-WW II sub gets the more brittle and subject to stress cracking. This means safe operating depth decreases with age of the boat. Sometimes as much as 1/3 of commissioned rating, especially in a riveted hull.
3. Predicted concentration of initial Japanese landings based on two factors; Philippines weather and nice gentle sloping sandy beaches and a protected three sided enclosure from current and wind would be where? Lingayan Gulf. And what makes a good bottle with a stopper to sink all the invasion shipping concentrated there? Lingayan Gulf.
4. S-boats have half the cruise and patrol endurance of a GATO.
This captures it pretty well. I'd add the senior officers (English, Withers, Doyle, Christie) failed to understand the doctrine was faulty, so the Force started the war with standing orders to remain submerged within (IIRC) 600nm of a Japanese base, to avoid detection by aircraft.
Umpire conditioning: during the fleet problems and NWC paper exercises, the "scouting" sub's main mission was to survive to report. As radio was the reporting method as no-one had thought of recorder transmitter buoys for the purpose (although a prototype sono-buoy is in use, figure that one out.), the sub had to practice day-hide/night rove operations to "scout" for the Japanese fleet. It was not just "remain submerged within 600 NM of a Japanese air base"; it was remain submerged near Japanese naval units, listen and look, and radio when it is safe. It was a pogo act.
They also showed a drastic unwillingness to "dig deep" for qualified COs; the typical skipper was Class of '30 or '31, & IIRC, the youngest of the war was Class of '35. (You can look at the patrol results tables in Blair & find his name; I can't recall it.) Even when XOs had more combat experience, more senior men were given the boat... This, IMO, bred more caution in operations than the war situation warranted.
Never fought a submarine war. Did not know how to fight a submarine war. This has to color how PCOs and PXO's (prospective captains and execs) are selected. In a surface navy, seasoned men of maturity and with experience as watch officers and deck watchers climb to command. These men over decades have learned how to fight the sea and its weather, so that their ships do not succumb and their men function as a team. This is a centuries proven method for successful ship command. It does not work with aircraft and I suspect submarines. There, the environment is less measured judgement tempered by experience and more snap decisions compressed by time and reinforced by arcane technical knowledge of what machines can do. A certain cocky arrogance will exhibit itself.
Fighter pilots and sub captains should be very much alike.
There was also a really bad CO/PCO & XO/PXO selection process (some of which could only be resolved with war experience): too many were simply unsuited for command in battle. Some lacked nerve, others merely the specific kind of nerve needed for sub warfare. (IMO, allowing engineers & others to fleet up, rather than selecting for command, was a mistake.)
Actually letting "engineers" to fleet up is a "symptom" of trying to do things the right way. Submarines are machines of enormous complexity. Knowing how that machine behaves under pressure (pun) is 3/4 of the knowledge base a sub skipper needs.
Lockwood did the best in getting rid of the dead wood, but even he wouldn't given more-junior officers commands. And he was far, far too enamored with the "guerrilla" missions to P.I.
He seemed to forget the goal was sinking merchantmen, not making MacArthur look good.
In Lockwood's defense, he DID what Doenitz could not do. He adapted, improvised and overcame to the extent that his force improved and successfully fought a U-boat campaign with correct strategy and tools available. If he had been in Doenitz's shoes with Doenitz's tech base and those kinds of resources thrown at him, the British would be speaking with a Midwest accent now.
Some (most?) of the Force's problems could only be uncovered by experience. Cutting down the conning towers, f[o]rex, should have been a design feature before the war ever started--except subs were meant for fleet scouting, not commerce raiding... So, too, the TBTs should have been fitted athwartships at the conning tower, not fore & aft, & the deck gun should've been a 4"/50 (pirated from an S-boat, as needed). Pumps should've been much quieter. And the topsides paint scheme should have been grey or blue (or a shade of blue-green), not black: black silhouetted too well.
1. I am in favor of reduced silhouette, but faster dive and better seakeeping awash condition would have been more helpful.
2. TBTs should have had improved night optics as well. Did anyone bother to think about an IR heat detector? The US HAS THEM.
3. What is wrong with the 5/25?
4. Mufflers all around and silencing in general. Diesels put a lot of noise into a surface duct.
5. Test for camouflage from surface and air in peace. WAR is too late.
JoCUS.
So you've got room to improve the outcomes beyond just fixing the Mark XIVs.
That is a good summary of the United States Navy, December 6, 1941. I will comment later on some of the results as the Word of God drops from on high, but I think a very tough year is still in store for the USN if we keep this ATL realistic. One magic bullet does not fix a system of systems.
If you can push a certain San Fran customs officer under a trolley before Nov '41, even better.
(Much, much worse for
Japan, however...
)
Which one? There were several who needed the trolley treatment.
I think a reasonable way to assess the improved results of this TL's fixed torpedoes would be to examine the OTL record of attacks and consider the same events but with having almost no duds right from the start of the Pacific War. This is a simplistic way but it avoids the difficulty of predicting the changes in tactics and attitude though of course those will change and maybe earlier.
Lingayan Gulf. Three Japanese carriers would have had "premature accidents" if a certain US sub had good fish. Yorktown might be a museum ship if Nautilus had any luck. Kongo's career would have been much shorter and a tough hard Solomon Islands campaign would have been easier if a few tankers had met their makers sooner than later.
One other factor with having working torpedoes is the effect the greatly increased hit rate may have on extending the time on patrol. Sub captains with confidence in their torps won't be expending 4 shots on a single freighter to try to achieve one detonation. They won't burn through their loadout as rapidly.
Not sure of that. Nose wander is still a problem, so spreads are the only viable solution.
Would it be possible in the late 1930's or even after the war was declared in 1939 (Roosevelt could ask Churchill personally then as 1st lord of the Admiralty) for one or two of the more promising submarine officers to attend the RN 'Perisher' course either as observers or as candidates. This might have create a butterfly or two later down the line for the USN.
Not in the cards. King really HATED the RN. I mean in the Andrew Jackson kind of way.
Good summarization of the troubles of OTL submarine commanders and what they had to deal with from misguided and nearsighted superiors. The stubbornness and stupidity of some career admirals and captains in all services hurt the US. The lean years of the interwar period with limited budgets and wanting to cover their sacrosanct tactics and commands screwed several countries. Not learning enough of the previous war and being unwilling to adapt to new tactics needed to changes in technology just to protect their power bases. I agree that the first year of the War for the US Navy, Submarine and Surface, will be the source of hard lessons.
I suggest that the difference between victory and defeat was the willingness to learn humility and adapt to reality. For some reason the Germans (Doenitz and Raeder) and the Japanese (Yamamoto, Abe, Toyoda, et al.) seemed to have trouble at the top of the food chain to figure it out, while the allies either fired their duds (Pound) or found a way to work around them, (MacArthur, King, Halsey and Arnold). It seems, though, that as you went into the mid ranks, that everyone down there at the op-art level knew what was going on and did their best, (except for the Russians, whose leadership between Stalin and the field grades was unusually good, while individuals like Kulik and Kruschev outlived their justified oxygen user consumption rates. They seem to be the WW II oddballs, hanging on to their worst and eliminating their top talent. Someone should have killed Stalin early. No replacement could possibly be worse as a warleader from the RTL successor pool available.)
Keep up the good work and I appreciate the time you put in to keep this believable and educational.
Agreed.
I didn't know this about the USN, and its odd that the IJN's problems were almost the same but magnified. Their naval exercises were even more scripted than the USN's ones to emphasise how their plans WOULD work. This also happened in the IJN's submarine force who's entire focus became 'Kill hostile warships' and support the battle line, and during exercises, their performance in them was always perfect due to the IJN not daring to break with how its expectations were shaped and formed. The only area of innovation outside of this stifling control from the commanders of the navy was the Carriers.
That is actually a good way of saying in op-art, "plan for what can happen and not what one expects to happen." I would go even further and suggest that the USN for all of its follies and underestimations, actually went into the Pacific War with a reasonable war plan that was probably the best thought out and gamed of any war plan implemented by the WW II combatants. It needed little modification, most of the war games based on it, proved prescient and accurate (the Philippine Islands turned out exactly as predicted at the start and at the finish of the war. The USN KNEW the American army's weaknesses.), and the few modifications, the submarine campaign being one, actually improved the outcome. Although it should be noted, "Unrestricted submarine and air warfare" , became parts of the plan almost as soon as the USN could see that happening from 1936 on.
Considering King's antipathy/hostility towards the RN and his refusal to learn even the obvious lessons of Asw from them between 1939 and 1941 chances of this happening are slim to sod all.
Agreed. (^^^^)