Yeah, we know it was unpopular with a lot of officers in the fleet. Fitch had to leave his own bridge to avoid having to charge his own officers.
Pye,as one is well aware was demoted operationally and assigned PADCFLT Task Force 1 which essentially paraded off California as a show the flag with operational Standards during the first six months of 1942. Pye actually trained it up around May of 1942.
You might want to read this information.
In actual fact, FDR hated Pye's guts for the chickenshit way he, Pye, acted at Wake Island when he lost his reason. Layton, who was PACFLT's intelligence officer at the time, had given Pye sufficient radio traffic analysis for Pye to make a Nimitz type decision to engage. What the outcome of 3 American flattops against 2 Japanese (Fletcher against Yamaguchi) is difficult to speculate at that stage of the war, but a Coral Sea type outcome is very likely. Yamaguchi displayed Tanaka, Takeo like tendencies. And this assessment of Pye and Yamaguchi is taken from Lundstrom's account of USN actions off Wake Island and back at Pearl Harbor. Surprisingly, Nimitz was forgiving later, and wanted Pye for Watchtower, but King, in turn, said no and BEACHED Pye.
But the U.S. Navy's own account - privy to a lot of information that Brown's and Fitch's staffs did not possess - is considerably more favorable to Pye:
https://www.history.navy.mil/about-...ctors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-002/h-002-2b.html
See previous remarks. When no-one trusts your battle judgement anymore, you get sent to a training command or beached.
I've never read that there was any characterization of Pye's state as being a mental collapse. While a more aggressive decision could have been defensible, the same seems to be true of what Pye actually did decide. I think this is an unwarranted characterization, honestly. (Really, if there's someone I am tempted to apply the term to, it might be Douglas MacArthur on Dec. 8.)
MacArthur suffered a similar funk. He should have been relieved immediately. Inexplicable. Maybe Marshal saved the man?
Sorry, but...facts not in evidence. Drach doesn't say that; in any event, I remain unpersuaded that any effort could have got those ships out any sooner. Even if you do blow up part of the Oklahoma. And again, there's just not the rush to get them out of the harbor and back in service at that point.
Time is precious. Saltwater eats away rapidly at a ship's internal systems, and as I mentioned, those men were dead anyway. USS Oklahoma was a tough ship to cut open.
Anyhow, what we are really talking about when we discuss trapped battleships here is
Tennessee and
Maryland, right?
These are the ships most affected by
Oklahoma's position. But both of 'em were back in operational use (off the West Coast) by February 1942 *anyway*.
Friedman, Norman (1985).
U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press pp443
DANFS.
Temporary repairs were quickly made. From Turret III to the stern on both sides of the ship, Tennessee's hull gave mute evidence of the inferno that she had survived. Every piece of hull plating above the water-line was buckled and warped by heat; seams had been opened and rivets loosened. These seams had to be rewelded and rivets reset, and a considerable amount of recaulking was needed to make hull and weather decks watertight. The damaged top of Turret III re-received a temporary armor patch.
In the case of USS Tennessee, she was taken in hand TWICE. First time, she was made "operational" so she could defend against a possible Japanese attack on the US west coast. Her AAA and her artillery was upgraded to the latest marks available, her incomplete radar suite was fixed, the pass through leak points and topside damage repaired and her superstructure cut down (cage masts removed for example). She was not battle worthy as of March 1942, but could be "fightable" if needed. It was necessary to take that de-annealed rear hull of the old ship and replate it completely.
Working around the clock during the first two months of 1942, shipyard craftsmen repaired Tennessee's after hull plating and replaced electrical wiring ruined by heat. To allow her antiaircraft guns a freer field of fire, her tall cage mainmast was replaced by a tower similar to that later installed in Colorado (BB-45) and Maryland. An air-search radar was installed; firecontrol radars were fitted to Tennessee's main-battery and 5-inch antiaircraft gun directors. Her three-inch and .50-caliber antiaircraft guns were replaced by 1.1-inch and 20-millimeter automatic shell guns, and her 5-inch antiaircraft guns were protected by splinter shields. Fourteen-inch Mark-4 turret guns were replaced by improved Mark-11 models. Other modifications improved the battleship's habitability.
Second phase. Note the underlined.
California, Tennessee's sister ship, had been sunk in shallow water during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Refloated, and her hull temporarily patched, she returned to Puget Sound in June for permanent repairs which included a thorough modernization. It was decided to include Tennessee in this program as well.
By the time Tennessee emerged from the navy yard on 7 May 1943, she bore virtually no resemblance to her former self. Deep new blisters increased the depth of her side protection against torpedoes by eight feet-three inches on each side, gradually tapering toward bow and stern. Internal compartmentation was rearranged and improved. The most striking innovation was made in the battleship's superstructure. The heavy armored conning tower, from which Tennessee would have been controlled in a surface gunnery action, was removed, as were masts, stacks, and other superstructure. A new, compact, superstructure was designed to provide essential ship and gunnery control facilities while offering as little interference as possible to the fields of fire of the ship's increasingly essential antiaircraft guns. A low tower foremast supported a main-battery director and bridge spaces; boiler uptakes were trunked into a single fat funnel which was faired into the after side of the foremast. Just abaft the stack, a lower structure accommodated the after turret-gun director. Tennessee's old 5-inch battery, and combination of 5"/25 antiaircraft guns and 5"/51 single-purpose "anti-destroyer" guns, was replaced by eight 5"/38 twin mounts. Four new directors, arranged around the superstructure, could control these guns against air or surface targets. All of these directors were equipped with fire-control radars; antennas for surface- and air-search radars were mounted at the mastheads. Close-in antiaircraft defense was the function of 10 quadruple 40-millimeter gun mounts, each with its own optical director, and of 43 20-millimeter guns.
In other words, USS Tennessee was "South Dakotaed" into a "monitor" akin to the British coastal bombardment monitors being used by the RN for shore bombardment purposes.
By the way the reason as I understand it why California ultimately sank was because she was scheduled for a major inspection by the brass within a few hours of when Pearl Harbor was hit and thus everything had been made extra clean and shiny even at the expense of watertight integrity. At least that's what I recall.
Idiocy.
Mind you how in God's name this was allowed to occur after a war warning had been issued is a whole other question.
Peacetime thinking or rather more specifically "Victorian Era Navy thinking". Look good is more important than shoot good.
Also quick question were there any torpedo nets deployed to protect the capital ship mooring areas on December 7th,1941? I know there wasn't any barrage balloons but I don't know the answer for this one. Of course why barrage balloons hadn't been deployed following a war warning is a whole other question since if they had been in place and thus made the Japanese's level bombers lives more difficult Arizona might not have been lost due to the bomb that killed her might have missed or hit someone less vital.
No. Stark and the NGS knew about Taranto and the British work on shallow diving fish. That (erroneous) information was passed on to PACFLT. So we cannot blame Stark for not telling Kimmel, though I would like to note that he did not order Kimmel to act accordingly. The nets and booms would have been messy and troublesome to mount and dismount every time one wanted to move a ship from its moorings, so Kimmel decided not to have the nets made and the booms deployed as being too cumbersome and expensive, goddamn him for his stupidity.
Even many of the porthole windows were open for the inspection!
Alas: There were no torpedo nets.
And if you want to know why: The Navy had concluded - not entirely unreasonably - that the harbor was too shallow for effective operation of torpedoes.
See this memo from the CNO, Adm. Harold Stark, in February, 1941:
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Pacific/PearlHarbor/Feb_15_1941TorpedoMemo.html
Note from the memo.
As a matter of interest the successful attacks at Taranto were made at very low launching heights at reported ranges by the individual aviators of 400 to 1300 yards from the battleships, but the depths of water in which the torpedoes were launched were between 14 and 15 fathoms. The attacks were made in the face of intensive and apparently erratic anti-aircraft fire. The eastern shore line of the anchorage and moorings were protected by numerous balloon barrages, but there was no trawler borne balloon barrage to the west. The torpedoes were apparently dropped inside of the nets, probably A/T nets.
Correct information. British torps were dropped at the 30 meter line, so goddamn Stark, too, because he KNEW it and did not order Kimmel to deploy the nets as he should have.
Here.
When an aerial torpedo weighing almost two tons slams into the water at 200 mph, it barely slows down. In the open sea, Japan’s aerial torpedoes plunged 150 feet before climbing back to attack depth.[1] Pearl Harbor was only about 40 feet deep,[2] so Japan needed to modify its tactics and torpedoes to attack successfully. This was not impossible. A year earlier, the British had attacked Italian ships in Taranto Harbor, which was 60 to 75 feet deep where the British torpedoes launched.[3] On June 13, 1941, Adm. Royal E. Ingersoll sent a report to Adm. Husband E. Kimmel warning that, contrary to previously sent information, successful attacks could take place in harbors less than 75 feet deep.[4] However, what this meant for Pearl Harbor, which was much shallower, was not clear.
And. (Note Royal Ingersoll, of later LANTFLT fame, warned Kimmel?)
With no evidence or aerodynamic analysis, the Navy guessed that the big tail fins had been the key to the Japanese torpedo attack. Again with no evidence or aerodynamic analysis, they guessed that the big tail fins had pulled the torpedo’s nose up so that it would not dive so deeply. In Congressional hearings on Pearl Harbor, Adm. Kimmel called the big fins “a device which all the brains in our own Navy Department, who had been seeking such a solution, had been unable to arrive at.”[5] Neither these guesses nor Kimmel was correct.
The actual mechanism was a water entry nose control solution to control torpedo roll entry.
The Japanese took a different approach to roll control. They created active roll control by adding small metal side fins that acted like ailerons on an airplane’s wing. These fins (rudders) flipped in opposite directions to rotate the torpedo clockwise or counterclockwise. To control these rudders, the torpedo had a gyroscope dedicated to their use. The control mechanism was highly sensitive, sensing angular rotation speed. As the torpedo neared the upright position, the rudders flipped in opposite directions, stopping the torpedo precisely upright.
[47]
That and PID mechanisms did the rest and that is why USS Oklahoma was hit.
By the summer of 1941, the Japanese knew that their torpedo attack plan was in trouble. At Kagoshima Bay, the Type 97 Carrier Attack Bombers, which Americans code-named “Kate,” practiced endless at radically low speeds and altitudes. Kagoshima Bay was much deeper than Pearl Harbor,
[52] so torpedoes had to be caught in nets to determine how deeply they were plunging. Lt. Cmdr. Shigeharu Murata, who was in charge of the torpedo attack, devised many combinations of launch conditions. This included making drops at 100 kt (115 mph/185 km/h) and an altitude of 10 meters (33 ft).
[53] To fly this slowly, the Type 97 had to have its wheels down to add drag and its flaps down to provide enough lift not to stall.
[54] However, the torpedoes continued to dive to about 20 meters (66 feet),
[55] which was twice the depth needed for success at Pearl Harbor. Speed and altitude control had helped, but they would not be enough.
This was not a new problem for the Japanese. In 1939, they had experimented with harbor attacks using aerial torpedoes. When mock attacks were made on warships in Saeki Bay in Kyushu as part of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 1939 exercises, the Japanese discovered that the torpedoes pushed themselves into the bottom mud.
[56] Lt. Cmdr. Fumio Aiko noted that Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore, Pearl Harbor, and Vladivostok all had an average depth of 50 to 80 feet (15 to 25 meters).
[57] To succeed with aircraft in the kind of ships-in-harbor attack that had worked so brilliantly with torpedo boats in the Russo–Japanese War, a shallow-water attack technology and strategy would be needed.
Please read the rest of the article to see why even then the IJN had to experiment to be able to make 12 meter torpedo drops.
A memo from Stark in June reiterated this stance:
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Pacific/PearlHarbor/June_13_1941TorpedoMemo.html
The IJN, of course, had figured out a way around this supposedly insurmountable problem, albeit only at the last minute . . .
Again, refer to the cited article. It was not last minute. The Japanese had worked on the problem for years.
For a base given a war warning Pearl Harbor sure was operating a peacetime posture.
Also one would have thought the USN would have learned from Toranto that shallow harbors were no defense against air dropped torpedoes. If they had.....well the only permanent loss from Pearl would have been the Arizona(and assuming say a few dozen balloons had been in position to make the Japanese level bombers lives more difficult that's not entirely guaranteed especially if the rest of Pearl was on alert like it should have been)and the West Virginia and California would have been a hell of a lot easier to fix. As for why the Utah probably would have survived well it's quite simple due to being docked where the carriers usually where the requisite torpedo nets to save her would have already been emplaced.
Well, yes and no. Each nation's navy; Italy, Japan, the UK and finally the US had a different torpedo water entry problem, with each MISSILE having different aerodynamic and hydrodynamic characteristics. In Italy's and Japan's and the UK's cases where the bomber delivery system was twin engined, a retarded cable fall scheme that ensured proper mechanically aided entry angle was the solution. The Japanese added roll control around 1938 to avoid nose wander, and that made their RIKKO attacks exceptionally deadly. For the Japanese single engined torpedo delivery systems I refer you again to the article cited and their hydrodynamic roll control solution. The British used retarded cable control for their own single engine carrier borne torpedo planes without roll control. Only the United States developed an all aerodynamic control entry system based on nose shock absorber ring and 100% tail control.
I do have to ask something of my curiosity though.
Would a more prepared USN at Pearl Harbor have led to less domestic support for the war as a whole? Would it have empowered isolationists to charge that Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the attack and had baited the Japanese to attack (i.e. sabotaged diplomacy and prepared militarily) and thus drum up war fervor? Or is it the case that the attack itself, no matter how much damage was mitigated, would have been enough for the US to pursue the total war effort with as much motivation as it did IRL?
Speculation, but a surprise attack, even a staged managed one post facto the event for desired political effect; (Gulf of Tonkin, anybody?), would have resulted in a war to the knife the way things were in the Pacific Ocean in December 1941. BTW, I do not believe in conspiracy nutjob theories, either at Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin or the events that led up to the first and second Gulf Wars. In each case, American intelligence agencies screwed up and I ascribe to stupidity the results that followed. Occam's razor. The Japanese attacked in response to economic strangulation as expected. The North Vietnamese defended themselves when the Americans showed up off their coasts as should have been expected. And Saddam Hussein ran a bluff and was taken at his word AS EXPECTED. The "surprise" was actually predictable and not a surprise post facto.
Refer to Pye as the example for why these things happened:
Yeah. Idiots who do not learn from history (Russo Japanese War), will get to experience it in the most negative fashion possible.
It may be more ironic.
Prange recounts an exchange in At Dawn We Slept during Kimmel's testimony in Congress's 1945-46 Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Kimmel at one point was actually asked this question. Kimmel snapped, "Well, if anyone will define for me what a war warning message is I would be better able to tell you whether I construed it as such." Prange's snarky comment that immediately follows is, "The obvious answer was that 'a war warning message' might be defined as a message containing the words 'This dispatch is to be considered a war warning.'" LOL!
Perhaps, one should not saber dance with a lawyer.
https://visitpearlharbor.org/leaders-us-navy-pearl-harbor/
I think it was a failure of imagination. For years, the Pacific Fleet had been training and planning for war with Japan. They widely expected a surprise Japanese attack. They had even trained for an attack on Pearl Harbor. But deep down, hardly anyone actually thought it would really happen. Because they underestimated the Japanese, both in intentions, and capabilities. The torpedo depth issue was just one manifestation of that.
Refer to Pye as an example of someone who was so arrogant that he could not believe the Japanese would attack.
Yea, Taranto raises all kinds of questions. The Japanese sure as hell studied it - that was no surprise! And given the close relations between the U.S. and Britain, they worried greatly that the Americans were doing the same - and also drawing lessons. They fretted that, learning from Taranto, the Pacific Fleet would put up torpedo nets at Pearl Harbor.
Hence the real reason why the Japanese vice consul at Pearl kept snapping photos of the harbor right up to the moment of attack. Idiots.
In fact, the USN even had an officer embedded on HMS Illustrious at the time of the Taranto attack: Lieutenant Commander John N. Opie III. Opie wrote up a report and had it sent to Washington afterward. It spurred Admiral Stark into asking Admiral Richardson, then CINCPAC, about the danger of torpedo attack at Pearl. Richardson pooh-poohed the idea. Eventually, his dismissive attitude won over Stark, which resulted in that first memo I linked.
This was because the Bu-Ord tech experts were correct. The British drop method probably would not have worked at Pearl Harbor due to different JAPANESE torpedo characteristics of water entry. But the Italian method which killed HMS Kent, observed by a USN observer at the time would have and it was so reported. Also I refer one to Ingersoll's warning. Also
@Athelstane remarks further and I will comment following.
But out in the Pacific, Richardson's commanders were not so convinced.
While the “thinking Navy”—the staff officers in their Washington offices—was downplaying aerial torpedo attacks, the “fighting Navy” out on duty with the fleets had a different response. In February Rear Admiral John S. McCain and in March Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. wrote letters to the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance concerning aerial torpedoes. Both letters began by citing “recent developments” in the European war, and both requested that the bureau develop new and improved aerial torpedoes for the fleet. Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch made 55 copies of Opie’s report and on 3 March sent them to almost every senior officer in naval aviation. All three officers showed an awareness of the success of torpedo attacks in the European fighting that was lacking among the staff officers back in Washington.
Of course, as we all know in following this thread, the chances of any of these admirals getting BuOrd to even twitch a muscle on torpedo design was basically nil; but in any event, typically, they were concerned anyway with how to learn from Taranto in planning attacks, not defense. Even so, there was one last chance to draw the lesson about torpedo depths, but a bizarre mistake destroyed any chance of it:
On 13 June, the Navy Department had produced a remarkable report [See my link above] sent to all naval districts, with a copy also going to the three fleet commanders—Kimmel, King, and Admiral Thomas C. Hart (Asiatic). This memo was significant because it revoked the advice given in February that a minimum water depth of 75 feet was necessary for a successful torpedo attack. Now, the word was that “recent developments” had shown that drops could be made from 300 feet and make “initial dives of considerably less than 75 feet.”15 This clear warning was somewhat muddied by remarks that “sufficient distance” would be needed for the aircraft to get into attack position, depth of water was only one factor of many for an attacker to consider, and attacks in deeper harbors would be “much more likely.”
The War Plans staff at the 11th Naval District in San Diego must have read the new memo because it began talking to torpedo-squadron pilots at the naval air station about depth of water for a successful attack. The pilots told staffers that 10 to 12 fathoms (60 to 72 feet) was necessary. Somehow, this matter was referred to U.S. Navy Lieutenant Albert K. Morehouse, who was then on board the British carrier Ark Royal, as Opie had been on board the Illustrious. Morehouse laid it on the line: “Records of the RN Mk. XII indicate that this torpedo can be dropped in water as shallow as 4 fathoms.”
The ONI receive Morehouse’s report on 22 July, and Kimmel was sent a copy. But nothing seems to have happened, and no one may have read Morehouse’s remarks until this author found them at the National Archives. The reason is typographical. Page one of the three-page report lists a “table of contents” that includes four topics. But on page three, Morehouse’s two paragraphs appear as item five. If the original report already had been typed, with four subjects listed, and Morehouse’s brief report arrived at the last minute, the typist may have rolled the original page three into his typewriter and tacked it on. Had this been done, item five would appear only on the original, not the carbon-paper copies.
Morehouse’s information should have made it out to the fleet. Opie should have made that trip to Hawaii. The Morehouse report would have destroyed the idea that shallow water was protection against aerial torpedo attack. Admiral Kimmel testified under oath that he did not believe torpedoes would run at Pearl Harbor. Had Opie gone to Hawaii, he would have found a U.S. Naval Academy classmate there, Fleet Intelligence Officer Captain Edwin T. Layton, who talked to Kimmel every morning. There is no evidence that Opie and Layton were close, but classmates would certainly talk to one another. Opie’s high opinion of radar, his very low opinion of antiaircraft fire, and his sense that ships were safer out at sea than anchored in a harbor might have provoked changes in Kimmel’s handling of his fleet.
"Opie should have made that trip to to Hawaii..." Yes, even THAT would have overcome the typist error. But again, I think this comes down to a failure of imagination among the USN leadership. They really did not think it was possible, deep down, and that drove the lack of urgency.
Too many what-ifs to be anything credible. The actual facts present, show that after Taranto and HMS Kent, it was well understood that shallow torpedo attacks were possible by TWO navies engaged in combat; and it was USN known and widely known (Witness the evidence presented from inside the USNAS from the above.) that this possibility for the USN should be investigated as a means of American attack, too. If it can be done, it will be done. Even Stark's bungled memo to Kimmel was enough to be an alarm. So why no balloons and nets?
Battleship men. The warnings were there. So was the arrogance and stupidity.
@Viper91
Already covered this request made above. (^^^) Right down to the repairs necessary for the hull plating de-annealed by fire, the added torpedo blisters to resist the surprisingly powerful IJN torpedoes and the needed AAA refits.
McP.
