More aggressive deployment of USN (particularly battle-line) post Pearl Harbor

Despite raid on Pearl Harbor and the loss of Force Z, when I look at the order of battle it looks like a lot of Allied naval power was still available. USS Pennsylvania and USS Tennessee were ready for action days after Pearl Harbor, but they spent the next year patrolling off California. USS Colorado was absent from the attack entirely. The New Mexico class was rushed from the Atlantic to the Pacific...where they spent the next year patrolling off California. The North Carolina class had been commissioned months before Pearl Harbor but didn’t see action in the Pacific until post Midway. Most accounts I’ve read indicate the battleline was “training”, but these are mostly ships that have been in commission for years in a war unfolding roughly as had been anticipated for decades, so I’m curious how much more training was needed.


Famously the carriers escaped, but even they didn’t engage major elements of the Japanese fleet for the first 6 months of the war. They conducted some hit and run raids and the Doolittle raid, which is tempting to dismiss as a wasteful propaganda stunt.

The Japanese seized a huge territory in a series of stripped-down budget campaigns that were very vulnerable to disruption. Their early victories set them up to drag out a painful bloody war.

What if they had been more aggressively opposed early on? What if USS Washington and USS Lexington had been present at the Battle of the Java Sea? What if USS Yorktown, USS Idaho, HMS Warspite, and HMS Indomitable rushed a relief convoy to Singapore in January? What if the Standards were exposed to combat risk any time in early 1942?
 
USs Tennessee and Pennsylvania were overhauled and received training before being put back into action. Understandable considering the circumstances. They needed repair anyway and with that they upgraded mutliple systems(mostly AA and amror upgrades) and the crew received training in working with the new guns and radar system that was installed as well as new tactics.

North Carolina classes had propulsion problems i think.

Caution after Pearl is not strange at all seeing that the Japanese fleet was already more powerful than the US fleet, but after Pearl they most definitely were. If they had engaged the Japanese fleet early on they would have risked their carriers and without carriers the Japanese rule the pacific without opposition. in that time they could do a lot more than what they already did OTL.
 
Might be interesting if the USN committed battleships to Operation Watchtower (i.e. Operation Shoestring)...
 
Might be interesting if the USN committed battleships to Operation Watchtower (i.e. Operation Shoestring)...

The U.S. did send a battleship to Watchtower: North Carolina. She escorted the carriers and got hit by a torpedo from the same salvo that sank Wasp. She went back to Pearl Harbor for repairs, and was replaced by her sister Washington and South Dakota, both of whom saw combat in the Guadacanal campaign.

As for the older battleships, they were too slow to operate with the fleet carriers, so they had to operate separately. And the USN didn't have enough tankers to simultaneously support them and the carriers, so they stayed on the West Coast or at Pearl Harbor.
 
Might be interesting if the USN committed battleships to Operation Watchtower (i.e. Operation Shoestring)...

IIRC there were only enough fleet tankers to support the number of ships which were deployed IOTL. But Singapore was prepared to support an expeditionary fleet and I imagine that oil (if not battleship repair facilities) would be plentiful in the DEI. Kurita’s Center Force sortied from there to the battle of Leyte gulf exactly because it was the source of Japanese oil.
 

nbcman

Donor
IIRC there were only enough fleet tankers to support the number of ships which were deployed IOTL. But Singapore was prepared to support an expeditionary fleet and I imagine that oil (if not battleship repair facilities) would be plentiful in the DEI. Kurita’s Center Force sortied from there to the battle of Leyte gulf exactly because it was the source of Japanese oil.
The IJN was using raw crude in 1944 that fouled their engines not by choice but by necessity. And the US isn’t going to send 2-3 old and poorly protected BBs on a death ride across the South Pacific into the CF that was the Malaya/NEI campaign. It would be a criminal waste of trained sailors when the USN needed every one of them.
 
I thought the poor quality of oil the Japanese battleships used also had to do with the fact the Dutch had blown up the refineries, a circumstance probably not relevant if they’re supplying the Allies. Anyway, of all the material reasons I’ve heard cited for Japanese performance at Leyte gulf, I’ve never heard of the fuel quality making a difference.
 
Despite raid on Pearl Harbor and the loss of Force Z, when I look at the order of battle it looks like a lot of Allied naval power was still available. USS Pennsylvania and USS Tennessee were ready for action days after Pearl Harbor, but they spent the next year patrolling off California. USS Colorado was absent from the attack entirely. The New Mexico class was rushed from the Atlantic to the Pacific...where they spent the next year patrolling off California. The North Carolina class had been commissioned months before Pearl Harbor but didn’t see action in the Pacific until post Midway. Most accounts I’ve read indicate the battleline was “training”, but these are mostly ships that have been in commission for years in a war unfolding roughly as had been anticipated for decades, so I’m curious how much more training was needed.

The building programs initiated by the Two Ocean Navy Act, & then ramped up with the emergency budgets passed with the Emergency War Powers Acts, & yet larger emergency naval construction budgets meant that roughly triple the number of 1939 ships crews would be needed by the end of 1942, and more after that. So, as fast a any ship came up to requirements in crew training personnel were transfered off. Either to crew a new ship working up, or to become a instructor in the shoreside schools. The only time in 1942 a ship retained a combat ready crew was when it was sent into battle. Otherwise everytime a ship went into port there was a exchange of 5, 10, 15, or 25 % of the crew, experienced men for those just out of a basic or a advanced school for their rating.

Famously the carriers escaped, but even they didn’t engage major elements of the Japanese fleet for the first 6 months of the war. They conducted some hit and run raids and the Doolittle raid, which is tempting to dismiss as a wasteful propaganda stunt.

The raids had some deep running effects on Japanese Navy and Army thinking. They also gave the participants some very useful operating experience. The aborted Rabaul raid, which inflicted 94% losses on the Japanese bombers attacking the Task Force. & the Lae raid that aborted a critical supply convoy to the Japanese 17th Army elements on New Guinea were a nasty shock to Japans leaders all the way to the top. The failure of the Japanese Army supply convoy in the face of the carrier raid slowed or stalled the forces ashore on New Guinea for the better part of two months.

The Japanese seized a huge territory in a series of stripped-down budget campaigns that were very vulnerable to disruption. Their early victories set them up to drag out a painful bloody war.

What if they had been more aggressively opposed early on? What if USS Washington and USS Lexington had been present at the Battle of the Java Sea? What if USS Yorktown, USS Idaho, HMS Warspite, and HMS Indomitable rushed a relief convoy to Singapore in January? What if the Standards were exposed to combat risk any time in early 1942?

First off this would have been contrary to 20+ years of USN testing and analysis of their own capabilities in a Pacific war. War Plan ORANGE, its final iteration in the RAINBOW plans, and Kimmels WPP-46 for the Pacific fleet all recognized the BB could not be operated effectively beyond Hawaii without extensive base support, which did not exist December 1941. By midsummer of 1942 Wellington was established as a South Pacific base with forward facilities in the Fiji Samoa region. That took six plus months & drew heavily on New Zealands industry to establish.

To put it another way the standards could not have made it to Singapore that fast. Its not even clear the Yorktown could have made it there by late January.

The U.S. did send a battleship to Watchtower: North Carolina. She escorted the carriers and got hit by a torpedo from the same salvo that sank Wasp. She went back to Pearl Harbor for repairs, and was replaced by her sister Washington and South Dakota, both of whom saw combat in the Guadacanal campaign.
That pair missed taking torpedoes by a whisker in their battle off Guadalcanal. The IJN put 60+ torpedoes in the water during the gunfight, sank all four US destroyers, but managed to miss the two big targets with the tin fish.

As for the older battleships, they were too slow to operate with the fleet carriers, so they had to operate separately. And the USN didn't have enough tankers to simultaneously support them and the carriers, so they stayed on the West Coast or at Pearl Harbor.

what he said...

Two were escorting convoys in SPac during the latter Guadalcanal campaign. The New Mexico was one of them. Their speed was not a problem escorting cargo ships & they would have been a nasty surprise had the IJN gotten squirrlly & sent cruisers on raiding missions. That was against IJN doctrine but the US naval leaders did not properly understand that.
 
What if they had been more aggressively opposed early on? What if USS Washington and USS Lexington had been present at the Battle of the Java Sea? What if USS Yorktown, USS Idaho, HMS Warspite, and HMS Indomitable rushed a relief convoy to Singapore in January? What if the Standards were exposed to combat risk any time in early 1942?
Two of the First Air Fleet's three carrier divisions were supporting landings in the New Britain area for most of January. If the Allies try to run more capital ships into the DEI, then the Japanese will likely pull those carriers away from Rabaul and bushwhack the ships involved. Or withdraw two carriers to link up with Soryu and Hiryu, which were on the way south, and bushwhack the Allied ships. Or the Allied ships get bushwacked by all the land-based torpedo bombers hanging around the area like what happened to Force Z.

The Japanese logistics might have been shoestring, but they had naval airpower to spare in the combat theater, and lots of cruisers and destroyers. Neither the Americans nor the British wanted to actually run ships into that warren of islands and closed seas and frankly I don't blame them.
 
The battles in the DEI show the results of aggressive opposition to the attacker in early 1942.


The Balikpan action managed to sideline two US cruisers without any Japanese action. One suffered a powerplant casualty from heavier use than the crew was ready for . The other grounded & damaged the hull.

The Houston lost its after turret to a air strike while simply escorting convoys to Java, the Langley was sunk ferrying aircraft.

The battle of the Java Sea went badly with the Allied fleet out manuvered & losing several cruisers sunk. Efforts of the remainingcruisers to escape resulted in the Exter, Houston, & Perth sunk.



The carrier raids went well because the USN leaders calculated and minimized risk.
 
I've been toying with this idea for a while, but it isn't practical because of the lack of oil tankers. However, of the USN BBs, Colorado, 3 New Mexicos, 2 NYs, and Arkansas weren't present at PH, while Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Maryland weren't badly damaged. Before Yamato's commissioning, the USN still had 3 of the Big 5, 4 other standards, and 3 pre-standards totaling 10 BBs. If the IJN doesn't include the Kongos in its battleline (though they will be overmatched with their light armor), the USN still has superiority in BBs. Once Yamato commissions, I wouldn't want the USN battleline trying an engagement, though.
 
Despite raid on Pearl Harbor and the loss of Force Z, when I look at the order of battle it looks like a lot of Allied naval power was still available. USS Pennsylvania and USS Tennessee were ready for action days after Pearl Harbor, but they spent the next year patrolling off California. USS Colorado was absent from the attack entirely. The New Mexico class was rushed from the Atlantic to the Pacific...where they spent the next year patrolling off California. The North Carolina class had been commissioned months before Pearl Harbor but didn’t see action in the Pacific until post Midway. Most accounts I’ve read indicate the battleline was “training”, but these are mostly ships that have been in commission for years in a war unfolding roughly as had been anticipated for decades, so I’m curious how much more training was needed.

1. Despite the USN manpower ramp-up for war in 1940-1941, the cream of the drafted and volunteer cohorts went to LANTFLT. The PACFLT was shorted in manning and training to buff up FDR's expected conflict with Germany.
2. Tanker shortage. Atlantic needs trumped Pacific needs.
3. Germany first. Wasp was risked in the Mediterranean when she was desperately needed by PACFLT (who wasted her, but that is another story of bungling. See 5.)
4. Battleships were too slow and crews despite the "paper stats" were untrained in surface gunnery and air defense.
5. Ditto aircraft carriers.

Famously the carriers escaped, but even they didn’t engage major elements of the Japanese fleet for the first 6 months of the war. They conducted some hit and run raids and the Doolittle raid, which is tempting to dismiss as a wasteful propaganda stunt.

What was Lae and Salamauna? What was Coral Sea? Tea Parties? Hard fighting going on in ABDA area, too.

The Japanese seized a huge territory in a series of stripped-down budget campaigns that were very vulnerable to disruption. Their early victories set them up to drag out a painful bloody war.

He who has the initiative and operates fast enough to force his enemy to react to him, wins most of the time.

What if they had been more aggressively opposed early on? What if USS Washington and USS Lexington had been present at the Battle of the Java Sea? What if USS Yorktown, USS Idaho, HMS Warspite, and HMS Indomitable rushed a relief convoy to Singapore in January? What if the Standards were exposed to combat risk any time in early 1942?

Sunk. Not ready yet. TRAINING, and logistics.
 
I think that the caution was due to the other pieces of the military that weren't prepared at the that time. The Army, Marines, Army Air Corps were not prepared to invade, take and hold islands for quite some time. The current fighter planes were no match for the Zero in one on one dogfights.

Therefore massing an attack or 'muscling up' would have served no real tactical or strategic purpose.

When you look at the numbers the US was equal to Japan in carrier strike force by fleet carriers.

Lexington-80, Saratoga-80, Yorktown-90, Enterprise-90, Wasp-90, Hornet-90 came out to 520 strike aircraft for the US.

Akagi-90, Kaga-90, Hiryu-73, Soryu-72, Shokaku-84, Zuikaku-84 came out to 493 strike aircraft for Japan.

The numbers were fairly even, the advantage was the Zero which could give the Japanese air superiority over the battle.

The US knew they could out produce and eventually out quality the Japanese, so why push a bad hand when you know you'll get a better hand latter?
 
There might be a way to get a task force of battleships to Australia or other SW Pacific location as a "fleet in being" to complicate Japanese plans (and show of support to Australia and NZ), but otherwise I don't see the old battleships having much in the way of options.

On carriers, the US needed to work out the doctrine and tactics for a large combined carrier task force, unfortunately that wasn't really sorted until 43 or even 44.

Planes were OK enough, the TB were useless from an outdated (though better than the Swordfish the British were successfully using) plane with really badly flawed torps, but the Wildcat and SBD could get the job done. The problem again was the training, doctrine, tactics part wasn't up to the level of the IJN. Wildcats in the right hands can best Zeros, but the pilots in the USN were using outdated tactics and while good weren't generally quite as good as the IJN.

If the USN had been given wartime level budgets for personnel training, fleet exercises, training flights, fuel expenditure, etc (not a massive expansion, just better readiness with what they had or were getting) in 1939 the might have been ready, but Pac Flt was being forced to ration fuel, ammunition, and spare parts to meet peace time budget requirements as late as the weeks leading up to Pearl. Adm. Kimmel had PBY doing defensive scouting/patrol and was made to stop by Washington to save fuel and money at the same time Washington was warning to be on alert for IJN activity.

So, yeah, extra training was needed.
 
The building programs initiated by the Two Ocean Navy Act, & then ramped up with the emergency budgets passed with the Emergency War Powers Acts, & yet larger emergency naval construction budgets meant that roughly triple the number of 1939 ships crews would be needed by the end of 1942, and more after that. So, as fast a any ship came up to requirements in crew training personnel were transfered off. Either to crew a new ship working up, or to become a instructor in the shoreside schools. The only time in 1942 a ship retained a combat ready crew was when it was sent into battle. Otherwise everytime a ship went into port there was a exchange of 5, 10, 15, or 25 % of the crew, experienced men for those just out of a basic or a advanced school for their rating.

This is often underestimated, the US simply didn't have the experienced crew it could risk. It needed 1942 to train crews to man the new ships. If you send off half trained crews on a modern warship you are likely to break down before you get to wherever you are sent and you certainly can't fight very well.
 
At least many folks are aware of the change in the Pacific war when the Essex class carriers were available in sufficient numbers in latter 1943. Far feet understand the essential role the fleet train played in taking the war to Japan. Even at their best the new BB & new carriers still could not operate much beyond bases like Hawaii, or New Zealand. The mass of stores repair shops, fuel, hospitals, afloat with the fleet train comprised a mobile base that could be moved location to location in a week or two. It took some six months to establish basic fleet services at Wellington. Doing that incrementally from one island group to another drags out operations into forever as complete shore side bases are built up.
 
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