Battle of San Bernardino Strait?

SsgtC

Banned
It does when you're looking at two very different battles. IOTL, one BB received the concentrated fire of 5 battleships. That made it nearly impossible to accurately range on them. ITTL, that fire is going to be spread out. Plus, knowing you're not the only ship there for Kurita would be huge, knowing he's got 3 other BBs to back him up. They would have scored on the American line

More BBs doesn't mean a thing when the US has superior fire control systems.
 
... The Japanese also only had 2 battleships with them in the Southern Force (only one by the time Oldendorf engaged) verses the 4 that the Center Force had. It's not unreasonable to assume a stronger, more effective response from Kurita's battle line.

Kuritas group did score a fair number of hits on the ships they found. I'd think that means they get more than token hits on the repositioned US battleline.
 
I'm asking myself two things. One, what happens to the sub sighting report? Two, what happens to the "stooging about" that left Halsey thinking the Japanese TF had turned back, when it was just killing time? Or do these two things combine to give Nishimura his opportunity? It seems he got by two USN subs, Darter (David McClintock) & Dace (Bladen Claggett; yes, that's his name), off the southwestern end of Palawan. (The rest were further north, all in the South China Sea; there were none in the Sulu Sea.)

Essentially, everything is the in the Battle of Leyte Gulf until Kincaid orders Odendorf to head north. The POD here is Kincaid is never informed about the Southern Force sighting report (possible as the Center Force was spotted headed back towards the San Bernardino Strait, but the report was never given to Halsey) and sends Oldendorf in the wrong direction due to a massive miscommunication error and/or a series of assumptions/guesses that the his most immediate threat was still from the north. (which assumptions like these led Kincaid to believe his northern flank was fine in OTL, leading towards an unpleasant surprise later that morning).

In terms of the battle damages, I perhaps overestimated the Japanese Center Force a bit. I based my guess on what I've seen in regards to a TF34 vs Center Force. A lot of what I've read usually sees an American fast battleship or two eating a few heavy shells/torpedoes, a few cruisers getting beat up, and some destroyers sunk/crippled during and after their torpedo run in exchange for moderate/heavy losses for Kurita. Furthermore, I factored in the fact that A) there are more Japanese ships with still lethal torpedoes and guns, so the chances of something American or Australian getting hit and sunk is stil far greater than Surigao, B) some of Oldenorfs ships had limited radar fire control systems (Pennsylvania never fired during the battle of Surigao Strait, and Maryland and Mississippi both struggled to obtain firing solutions, but did eventually find targets. For a while, Oldendorf may be only able to use 3/6 battleships until the other three can acquire targets), C) Kurita's ship are combined, not split up into two separate forces (while more Japanese ships will get torpedoed or hit by shells, the Japanese still have more concentrated fire power to hit back with than Nishimura did), and D) Oldendorf's WWI-era battleships don't exactly have full magazines, so depending on the length of engagement, AP ammo could become a real concern.

Since many seem to disagree with my assessment on the outcome of this battle, I'm interested in seeing what others believe is a realistic assessment of this battle (in terms of ships sunk on both sides).
 
... B) some of Oldenorfs ships had limited radar fire control systems (Pennsylvania never fired during the battle of Surigao Strait, and Maryland and Mississippi both struggled to obtain firing solutions, but did eventually find targets. For a while, ...

The difficulty was the concentration of fire interfered with both radar and visual accquizition by the more distant ships. Not a problem where there are several targets & USN doctrine had clarity in how the BB should divide up their fires.
 
The POD here is Kincaid is never informed about the Southern Force sighting report (possible as the Center Force was spotted headed back towards the San Bernardino Strait, but the report was never given to Halsey) and sends Oldendorf in the wrong direction due to a massive miscommunication error
Gotcha. (I'd have sworn that was based on McClintock's report, but I looked in Blair, & I'm damned if I can find it, now.:confused: I'll probably go looking for something completely unrelated next week & find it then.:rolleyes:) Thx for clearing it up, anyhow.
 
Do not matter how good the gunnery of the bbs are. When daybreak occur halsey orders his carriers to launch. The we will see if the center force have any ships left
 
Halsey & his carriers were out of range. Other wise center force would not have got away. If Halsey turns his carriers around the previous evening then he still has a enemy carrier force of unknown capability to his north.
 
Halsey can easily get some of his carriers into range well before night approaches if he truly wanted to. Its possible, but very unlikely, that Halsey makes any noticeable contribution. Any strikes he makes would be well after the main battle is over and against the cripples. He is closer to the Center Force ITL than in OTL after all.

Instead, Halsey will probably decide to take ships carrier hunting instead as in OTL (After all, carriers are much more appealing and "more dangerous" than crippled surface ships). If I recall correctly, Halsey wanted to bring the Decoy Force under the guns of his six battleships to mop up after the air strikes. It would be kind of ironic that the last battleship vs battleship action is not the Battle of San Bernardino Strait, but battleships Alabama, Iowa, Washington, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South Dakota vs. those carrier-battleship monstrosities Ise and Hyuga.
 
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CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
wasn't the beaches defended by like 100 destroyers IIRC that would be more than enough to smash the southern force
Oldenrorf had 27 DD with him (including a couple RAN ships)

The "Taffy" groups had a total of 9 DD and 14 DDE

The "Northern" attack group has 24 DD

The "Southern" attack group had 28 DD assigned.

The "Close Cover group", flagged by USS Nashville added 7 DD (2 RAN).

It is, however, very important to note that the assigned number does not necessarily match the "present" figure at any specific point in time. A number of transports had already unloaded and cleared the anchorage as early as sunset on D-Day (Oct. 20, 1944), in some cases a destroyer or two was detached to escort them out of the area (as an example TG 78.3, consisting of 16 APA and 3 AP departed before sunset on the 20th with two DD as escort). Adding to the difficulty is that often one of the two escorting DD would be detached and ordered back to the anchorage once the area of highest threat was cleared.

There are two important issues that need to be remembered:

1) the DD force was extremely large, however the units assigned to the Surface Bombardment Group had expended most, if not all, of their torpedoes during the engagement in the Strait, so their combat power, especially against capital ships, was much decreased

2) By the time the IJN forces arrived more than half the transport/amphibious shipping had already cleared the area (TF 78 had entirely cleared the area save one cargo ship by sunset on the 20th) but follow-up "reinforcement" shipping was also arriving on a round the clock basis, but with the goal of clearing the anchorage by sunset each day. The potential "haul", even if the Yamato and her sisters had reached the anchorages would have been much smaller, and much less crippling, than is sometimes imagined.
 
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