[QUOTE="James Ricker, post: 17034104, member: 98381] their destroyers are seriously outnumbered by their American counterparts
Not with Halsey's original planned TF34 .. the one that he planned to leave behind at San Bernadino while he charged forward against Ozawa
That had only 14 DD to 13 with the Center force
The Japanese DDs alone had more and better torps that the USN force
and the Japanese cruisers many more.
It is the USN battle line that is more at risk[/QUOTE]
The Japanese actually have only 11 DDs, which means the Japanese DDs have considerably fewer torpedoes than their American counterparts (142 to 95) unless you count the reloads, which you shouldn’t, given that it was both tricky to reload torpedoes in battle and many Japanese destroyers had landed their torpedo reloads to free up weight and space for AA.
Worse for the Japanese, the Americans have three Cleveland-class cruisers backing them up, which were practically designed for this kind of fight.
The Japanese heavy cruisers tip the scales somewhat, but even they will get punished if they try to steam into the teeth of a few Cleveland’s, as the battles in the Solomons demonstrated. Honestly, I don’t think anyone’s battleships are likely to get torpedoed here, the screens will be busy dealing with each other.