...Those Marvelous Tin Fish: The Great Torpedo Scandal Avoided

McPherson

Banned
Your redesigned ELCO PT boats are well suited for the barge war. I'd like to suggest a couple of further improvements. The torpedos and depth charges should be removed to reduce weight and reduce vulnerability to enemy fire. The torpedos are no use against shallow draft barges and the depth charges have almost no value in that shallow water.

The same CX-clamp launchers that can drop the Mark 13s can be used for extra jettisonable fuel tanks. The depth charges were used to kill Japanese subs.
This reduction of weight is helpful considering the weight added by 2 Bofors and 2 twin 20mm and their ammo. Perhaps a little bit of armour plate on the forward facing frame of the guns to protect the gunners would be possible too. Now we got an almost perfected motor gun boat version of the PT boat.

I traded 5 knots for that firepower. We can use the subchasers for MGBs or have the Aussies build Fairmiles. I've as much implied this role, Bathhursts notwithstanding.

I wonder if it would be worth the trouble, weight and slight range reduction to install self sealing rubber liners inside those big 1000 gallon avgas tanks.

They did RTL.
 
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McPherson

Banned
Let’s Throw A Round Robin And Invite The Japanese To A Mowdown

When the five surviving members of the Japanese torpedo boat that PT-188 killed, are fished out of the water, LT (s.g.) Burke “Bunt” Smith directs the men to an open area on the foredeck, in front of the still smoking muzzles of the forward forty-sixty. He assigns two of his own men, armed with Johnson auto- carbines, to watch the Japanese prisoners for any sign of treachery.

Imperial Japanese Navy CDR Yamada, Mitsui-the actual commander of the Japanese MTB squadron that PTORPron 23 had just destroyed in Indispensable Strait this night of 25 Aug 1942, his adjutant LT (s.g.) Hara, Aioki went forward meekly enough. The other three Japanese sailors, who appeared to be rates to Burke’s not too welled trained rank recognition eye, posted themselves protectively between their own officers and the two alien American tars who menaced the Japanese party with long arms. The three protectives were dangerously close to the PT-188’s cockpit, which causes Smith’s own exec, LT (j.g.) Paul “Shorty” Glaser to react. Glaser orders, SM1st Tim “Moose” Watkins and RM3rd Bob “Robbie” Tall Bear to give the three Japanese a pointed reminder of who was in charge aboard PT-188

Shorty, a non-nonsense Rhode Islander, and a champion short stop in college, hence the nickname, joined his own two men, climbing over the cockpit windscreen with practiced athletic ease. The three Japanese rates were apparently body guards for the two Japanese officers, which in Shorty’s mind did not speak well of the quality of a Japanese officer corps who needed bodyguards to protect them from their own crews. Shorty put down in the PT-188 journal later;
“The three goons, I confronted, were apparently petty officer muscle boys, 海軍暴力団 (Kai-gun-oi- yo-ku-san or IJN bully boys, McP.). They handled their officers like weasels handle duck, taking half steps, and stopping at certain points looking for any opportunity to turn the tables on us. I was not about to put up with it, so I yelled at them; "ねえ!弓の上にあなたの体を取得したり、我々はあなたを撃つと船外にあなたをダンプ!" ("Hey! Get your bodies on the bow or we shoot you and dump you overboard! "). The funny thing to me was that the bluff worked. I thought the Japanese were all about giving their lives for their emperor, but apparently these three must have not gotten the word. Anyway they figured I meant business. Maybe Moose poking the fat one with a bayonet was the clincher. They moved forward to join the two officers. We kept an eye on them just the same, but from that moment the five of them squatted down on their heels and gave us no more trouble."

PT-188s fishing of these men out of the water off of Tanatau Point was just the last act in a night long filled with confusion, terror, comedy and tragedy for the USN and the IJN as for the first time, the fast attack craft of both navies come to blows. At best; the action can be called fairly “conclusive” for the Americans as the Japanese, for once, neither demonstrate much in the way of anything that can be called proficiency or tactics or common sense in a night surface battle. Perhaps the saving grace for the outnumbered Americans in the Indispensable Strait during the bright as the inside of a lighted bowling alley brawl (It is a brilliant gibbous moon this night and for once the sea is as smooth as glass and not a cloud in the sky, so the Americans can see their adversaries for kilometers as the Japanese boats put out flame exhausts from their lousy muffled engines. McP.), is the painfully learned discovery that their IJN clumsy MTB counterparts are slower, much larger, cannot turn as tightly and for once come to the game with much worse weapons than their American PT boat counterparts. The Type 96 25/70 mm auto-cannon leaves a great deal to be desired as a gun armament when compared to the Bofors 40/60 mounted on the US boats. Similarly the 13.2 mm Type 93 heavy machine gun (What is with all the Type 93s? Sort of confusing is it not? McP.), seems markedly inferior to the Browning 20 mm auto-cannons that equip US boats.

Japanese-motor-torpedo-boats.png


As for the Type 91 torpedoes the Americans encounter and which the Japanese surprisingly try to use against the ELCO “wooden wonders”, the fish seem markedly faster than the Mark XIIIs the Americans bring to the fight, but then an ELCO at her 20 m/s can just outturn and outrun a Type 91 Japanese fish with ridiculous ease. The Mark XIIIs may only run at 15 m/s; but then the American fish seem to have much longer runs; 300 seconds as opposed to 100 seconds. The 45 cm Japanese fish packs a wallop when it explodes, though as PT-172 discovers as the Japanese fish that misses it explodes into the rock outcropping labeled Nggela Pile on the charts, chips the size of bowling balls rain down around the American PT boat. Fortunately none hit her. Then it comes down to the guns and a turning fight after the Japanese botch their head on firing pass. The Japanese fight in three trios and a pair, as if by divisions. The Americans fight in pairs and always scissor across each other in turns as they run circles around their Japanese opponents in mid channel. The fight drifts to the southeast starting near Ngella Sule and finally finishes when Baker Section of Apple Division makes a gun pass at the last surviving Japanese boat and rips its superstructure to bits with 40 mm fire, leader and buddy line ahead fashion parabolizing past the hapless Japanese victim at less than 500 meters range. The seven Japanese survivors burn like merry bonfires marking the battle’s trajectory from start to finish for the Australian coast-watchers and indigenous peoples who watch all the shooting from Siota and Kembe. One of the Australians, Mr. Hubert Klein, about 0500 26 August 1942 and quite drunk on fermented coconut milk, and located at Siota, gets on the radio and reports the fireworks. He ends his little chat with; “What the bloody hell are you Yanks doing out there? You’ve scared off the natives from putting out to fish. How the bleeding hell can I find out anything, if my fellas can’t canoe the channel?”

It seems this drunken missive is the first indication to anybody at Lunga Point or at Tulaghi that there is a fight in progress inside the Indispensible Strait or that the Japanese just might have been up to funny no-good business at the eastern end of the anchorage. OOPs.

Battle-of-Indispensible-Strait.png


So how did PT-188 and her 7 sisters wind up in the middle of a night battle with eleven No 10 and No. 11 IJN motor torpedo boats? Just how did the 25-year-old Rhode Island native, LT (s.g.) Burke “Bunt” Smith , end up off the coast of Florida Island, skipper of an 24.4 meter wooden boat loaded with 11,500 liters of 100-octane aviation gasoline and that bristles with weapons?

======================================================

Half Baked Naval Officer In The Making

“I always loved the idea of going to sea—just loved the notion ,”
one reads in :”Bunt” Smith’s diary.
“At one time, my parents, my sisters, and I lived in a little furnished apartment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While we were there, the harbor was dredged so ocean-going vessels could come all the way up to where we lived.”

With big ships coming and going in his hometown, just how powerful is the pull of the sea on young Hank’s impressionable mind?
“I was just a kid,”
one reads further,
“and my mother wanted to be sure I received proper religious training. So she would give me a nickel for spending money and send me away, push me out the door, to go to a Methodist church that was across from where we lived.”

“But I’d take that nickel, go down to the waterfront, and buy a bag of peanuts. I’d feed the peanuts to the birds so I could be around the water! I just loved the water … and I wanted to be in the Navy.”

Burke is bitten by the sea bug, and when the United States enters World War II there is no doubt regarding which branch of the service he will be joining. Three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he decides to skip graduation and enlist.

“Leaving college early meant I was going to miss the graduation ceremony,”
Bunt writes,
“but I had enough credit hours to get my physical education degree, and I graduated cum laude. Following my induction and basic training in March 1942, I was assigned to the midshipman’s school at Philly University. My bachelor’s degree was in health and physical education, so I was assigned to instruct drill, basic boat handling of which I knew nothing, overall physical training, and swimming. Instructing swimming was a great feature for me due to my love of the water.”

("Bunt" is apparently a physical fitness nut as well as not too right in the head in other respects. McP.)

Bunt’s skill in the water is apparent to the officer in charge of the 90 day wonder ensign program, and he gives Burke a free rein to develop the swimming course.
“They asked me to take this one platoon on a recreational swim. I think I had 36 guys in there, and 30 percent of them couldn’t swim the length of a swimming pool, yet these guys were going to be naval officers!”

“So I right away got busy and hustled up some other swimming pools in the Philadelphia area and enlisted the help of other fellas with swimming skills equal to mine. We taught not just recreational swimming, but also what to do during evacuation and rescue in the water. There are a lot of things you can do to stay afloat using life preserving equipment once you are thrown into the water.”

(Like drown. The USN life preservers of the era were outrageously awful. McP.)

Smith’s swimming program for the midshipmen demonstrates his initiative and organizational skills, vital wartime capabilities that do not go unnoticed by the commanding officer. Bunt continues,
“So on the basis of the quality of the swimming program, the CO—I don’t remember his name, but he was a commander in rank—said, ‘You have officer quality. Are you interested in a commission?’ Well, I was happy with my situation at that point: I was married and had one child. But the more I thought about it….”

(First indicer, that Burke Smith is not qualified to lead a chewing gum detail. McP.)

So Bunt somewhat casually considers the offer to become an officer in the United States Naval Reserve. Never mind that he lacks the mathematical background or any practical on the water sailing experience of any kind to make up for his lack of acumen. He writes;
“The commander had prepared a letter of recommendation for me, and when he handed it to me he said, ‘The day you want to become an officer, you turn this letter in and you’ll have gold braid hanging from you!’ And that moved me out of the physical fitness program and on into officers training.”

So instead of training 90 day ensigns in how to dogpaddle, a war useful skill Burke Smith shows he can do well, that actually contributes to the Republic’s effort to turn out decent leaders of men, this new father decides he wants to become one of those 90 day ensigns?

Service On A PT-Boat

The thought of becoming a naval officer is an exciting and interesting prospect for Bunt, but the initial coursework is anything but easy.
“I was then going to classes that I had previously omitted in college,”
explains Hank, “so it was rather hard, especially the higher mathematics and especially trigonometry! But anyway, I eventually finished with officer training school. That’s when I put in a request for PT-boat service. You don’t need much math for that!”[/quote]

Why did he choose the PTs, which patently does need a good working knowledge of how to navigate by dead reckoning as well as how to solve trig in your head (Launching torpedoes without an aim assist device is largely a matter of angle solutions on the fly and done by eye and worked out through trig. It is a ___ ___ed TORPEDO BOAT. McP.).
“Oh, just the excitement of it,”
. Burke writes;
“In school I had been active in athletics, football, and wrestling. I liked the excitement. I liked to fight. From college I also knew a lot of All-American football players who joined the PTs. I knew I didn’t want to get on some tub that goes out and changes the buoy markers in a harbor or something like that! I wanted to get into the action, so I applied for PT duty and that’s what I got.”

Somebody must have helped Burke Smith cheat his way past the quals?

If Bunt’s explanation for why he chooses the PTs seems a bit gung-ho (insane), it is because he is. It is just this type of aggressive, can-do spirit that the U.S. Navy looks for when choosing candidates for motor torpedo boat command. But the mathematics sure would help.

On the plus side for Burke Smith; life on a PT boat during wartime is perilous and it is leadership by example without fear. With a small crew of 14 to 17 men under one’s command, leading by such bold example and being willing to take the war to the enemy, even if one does not have a clue, it done without hesitation or doubt, are critical attributes for a successful PT boat captain.

Learning To Handle PT-Boats

Once Burke Smith receives notification of his acceptance into the Navy’s Motor Torpedo Boat program, it is time to travel to Melville, Rhode Island, where the MTB School is located. As with many cities and towns with a prominent military presence nearby, available housing is in short supply as in nonexistent.
“I moved my family up to Newport where we lived in a one-room apartment. I mean everyone was crowded! We had one of the second-floor rooms in the building,”
he writes;
“Melville was just up the river from Newport, but with my training I was only able to get home every third night.”

Burke is busy with the numerous classes taught at the school—courses on navigation, gunnery, engine mechanics, torpedo maintenance, and boat handling among others. He does well in some of his courses, but his performance in one area really stood out as a bolo. It was that darned mathematics. That is where he meets his soon to be best friend, Paul “Shorty” Glaser, who is the fellow who coaches him through those courses. Glaser is a good teacher, but Burke is about as dumb as Plymouth Rock when it comes to numbers. Somehow Burke manages to clear that hurdle. But he is smart enough to latch onto Glaser and keep him close, even if Glaser is the class behind Burke Smith. "Shorty" is actually Burke's metaphorical life preserver in a sense and Bunt realizes it.
“Once our training was over, a lot of my classmates were immediately assigned to overseas boats,”
Burke writes.
"I made sure Shorty and I stuck together, which kind of kyboshed his chance to go overseas right away."

“We were assigned back into Squadron 4, which was the training squadron based at Melville. I was 24 years old at the time and did some teaching of various courses involving boat handling. Shorty taught some courses, too, including some experimental work with radar tracking. Soon I showed what I could do with boat handling. I was exceptional at it, had a real knack for it. Boat handling came naturally to me. So I put up with that for a while. Shorty, meanwhile, was a whiz at radars and torpedoes. Man, he was some kind of magician!”

Overnight trips out to sea is one reason "Bunt" rarely makes it home to his family’s one-room apartment each night.
“Thorough training of new recruits included a trip from Melville to Bayonne, New Jersey, where Elco was building the boats,”
Burke records;

“The purpose of these trips was to acquaint the rookie guys with long-distance navigation and nighttime travel with the PT. Along the way we encountered all kinds of lights, buoys, and signals of all sorts, and traveling at night was an educational experience for me and the recruits. Once we reached Bayonne, they got to observe the construction of new boats. Normally the navigation would have flummoxed me, but I made that trip so many times, I could do it with my eyes closed and know where I was.”

Inexplicably (To me, McP.) Burke continues as a boat handling instructor until he is assigned as second officer on a boat at Newport. A lot of the time his skipper is absent, so he becomes basically a second officer who handles the majority of the boat work.
“After a given time, I was assigned to overseas duty and given notice to go from Newport to San Francisco for shipping out. I took my family home and on 29 June 1942, I received change-of-duty orders from Squadron 4 to Squadron 23.”

Joining Squadron 23 in the Pacific

Hank left on 1 July 1942 for the SWPOA. He shipped out on a converted cruise ship that had a lot of soldiers but few sailors. "Shorty and I went past some of the larger islands on our way across the Pacific, to arrive at Efate, and then on to Guadalcanal where we joined Squadron 23. We never saw Australia. Someone was in a hustle to get us out to the middle of nowhere in a hurry!”

At the time of Burke’s arrival, PTORPRon 23 was under the command of LCDR. Howard “Silly” Tyler, a veteran of the early PT boat actions in the Philippine Islands. Ron 23 (The PT crews referred to a Patrol Torpedo Boat squadron as a “Ron”. McP.), had arrived at Lunga Point in mid August 1942, when the boats idled into the motor torpedo boat base on Tere Bay off of the coast of "that ___ ___ed island" near Kali Point just east of the mouth of the Tenaru river. One could still see the wrecked transports left over from the misnamed Battle of Savo Island sitting half sunken and half beached at aforesaid Lunga Point from the PT boat base.

Over the next two months, Ron 23 will engage the Japanese in the waters around the islands of Guadalcanal, Florida and Malaita in what will be the opening phase of the "Barge War". On 20 August 1942, the squadron moves to Gavutu Harbor located on the south coast of Florida Island in one of those eerie precognitive hunches that seems to afflict RADM Norman Scott, currently running the naval side of things for WATCHTOWER locally, then in early September 1942 it receives orders for the move to the new forward base at Langa Langa Lagoon. Another Scott "hunch" as it turns out. The move winds up as a massacre of a Japanese slow convoy near Bualla on Santa Isabella Island. Three transports do not escape the ambush on 17 September 1942.

Ron 23 overall comprises PT-186, PT-187, PT-188, PT-189, PT-160, PT-161, PT-172, PT-173, PT-174, PT-175, PT-176, and PT-178. It will see action all around Guadalcanal, Florida, Malaita and as far up the Slot as Choiseul, where the American boats engage numerous enemy vessels and shore targets. This is the Barge War in earnest. Casualties in boats and men will be severe.

“At one time there had been a small Royal Navy coaling site at Choiseul,”
Burke writes;
“In the past, when the Royal Navy had steamships rather than oil-fired ships, they had to have locations all over the world where the ships could fuel up with coal. Rob Roy off southeast Choiseul was one of their protected anchorages where they would tie up and transfer coal out of a collier that came up from Brisbane for that purpose. That is where we intercepted our first Japanese barge train trying to move troops down to wipe out our Marines on Guadalcanal.”

Ron' 23's stay at Guadalcanal was punctuated by an event that was occurring less and less frequently over the island. Even though CACTUS had won air superiority in the skies over Iron Bottom Sound by late August, there was still the occasional Japanese Rikko air raid.

“I remember almost the end of the first month there or close to it,”
Burke writes.
“We had a red alert and went to general quarters. A tremendous searchlight onshore was shining straight up on a Japanese bomber that was sailing over, and this Skyrocket went straight up the shaft of light and caught him. I’ll always remember that.”

End of Part 1.
 
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McPherson

Banned
Part 2 of the Bunt and Shorty show.

PT-188


Burke Smith is given orders to join the crew of PT-188 (a 24 meter Elco boat that is placed in service on June 10, 1942. McP.). At the time of Bunt’s assignment, PT-188 is under the command of LT Kilo Requesite.
“I was riding second officer at that time,
” Hank writes. (Riding second officer means that he is assigned to a boat as an ensign Duncel, the boat having an existing skipper and executive officer. In other words, a spare body along to learn the ropes and take over duties as exec in case the captain or the number one falls overboard and/or is killed. McP.),
“and we did nighttime patrols, cruising work, and that sort of business around Guadalcanal and over to Tulagi and back again. Once Gavutu Bay was clear we operated out of there.”

Even though Ironbottom Sound and the Sealark Channel is in “shaky” American hands, the surrounding jungle shorelines on the large islands of Malaita and Guadalcanal are by no means completely clear of enemy personnel. Japanese soldiers wandering from the shoreline doing whatever Japanese soldiers do when they are not busy infiltrating the Marine perimeter around Henderson Field are all too often spotted from the waters offshore. The deck log for PT-188 states;
That in late evening of 18 August 1942 a Japanese soldier out for a swim offshore near Ndama Cove is caught in the boat’s screws and chopped up as it returns from a nighttime patrol. Body parts are observed in the boat’s wake.”

It should be remarked that LT Kilo Requisite and his exec are promptly relieved of command and duty upon the boat’s return to Terere bay. It is not for committing this war crime, because running down a helpless swimmer in the water and mincing him to chum during several passes might be a war-crime for it most certainly is, even in the savage war that is waged around Guadalcanal, but the repeated runs over the hapless Japanese soldier results in damage to the PT-188’s screws and that is “destruction of Navy property” and “reckless endangerment of his command”. It is one thing to shoot the helpless swimmer with a burst from the portside 20 mm mount. Possibly disabling the boat, so that a Japanese shore party can row out and capture it or shore mortars can zero the PT-188 in and blast it to splinters, is another thing entirely. Both officers are reassigned to shore duty with the Marines along the Tenaru perimeter, “as observers”.

Another entry notes the following night:
“that five Japanese soldiers were encountered swimming in the water during another patrol run and, after refusing to surrender, ‘were eliminated to ensure the safety of the boat.’ ”
Acting Captain Burke Smith along with “Shorty” Glaser who joins the PT-188’s crew as the new exec, have learned their lessons. “Keep legally clean logs” and shoot the swimmers “after they refuse to surrender”.

Burke also recalls seeing Japanese IJA small craft operating along the Guadalcanal shoreline, near Tassafaronga as they nefariously try to slip past the American patrols attempting to block the Savo Island south channel.
“Savo Island is just a great big rock with a bit of brush on top of it like a Moe Howard haircut. The Japanese would get in close to that rock to futz the radar. Shorty would still guide us in among the shoals to look for the barges against the rockline. If Shorty got us in close enough there really wasn’t any place for the Daihatsus to hide. We would spot them, pretend to not notice them and wait for them to freeze motion and stop like a mouse trying to outwait a cat. When they stopped, we raked them with the forty sixties and had some carnival fun. They never learned.”

(It turns out that the Japanese army has installed a passive radio repeater interrogator response station on that outcrop about 5,000 meters north of Visale as a nav-aid to guide their night time Rikko raiders to Lunga Point. Of course the Japanese have to send out boat parties on a semi-regular basis to replenish batteries and fix the antenna. Curiously, the Americans decide that it makes more sense to let the Japanese radio beam guide their night raiders into American night fighters and the waiting flak trap than to knock the beacon out permanently. The goal is to attrit the air garrison based at Rabaul and forward operating from forward base strips on Choiseul. Since Rabaul is too strong to raid as of yet and mostly out of range from Guadalcanal, it makes sense to let the Japanese burn their gas and waste their planes over Guadalcanal. It is a reverse slope defense, airpower style, and it sure is backwards logic, even to a Japanese or German tactician, but it makes perfect “American” sense. Mc.P.)

Ron' 23’s patrols also take prisoners near the numerous sunken ships strewn along the northern pock-marked and bayed Guadalcanal shoreline. Small groups of Japanese sneak aboard the hulks and, using the wrecks as cover, snipe at any American ships passing by. Along with other PT boats, PT-188 takes its turn and makes firing runs on the ships, afterward commenting in the log book,
“Run negative” or “Run positive. Observed blood in the water,” or “Enemy bodies visible.”

Shorty Gets Circumcised

As the Americans push farther west along the coast of Guadalcanal away from Lunga Point toward Tassafaronga , targets of all types became fewer, so the PT crews who patrol Ironbottom Sound turn their attention to other tasks.
“It was evident by this time in the war that gunnery was much more important than torpedoes,”
Burke noted;
“The enemy was using aircraft and barges now. The big ships we were meant to fight were not showing up. So we made frequent runs out to sea for gunnery practice against floating and aerial targets of convenience, both improvised training aids we could find and the other practice targets the Japanese so thoughtfully provided us. The latter training aids, complete with shooting back at us, reinforced this emphasis on the PT’s current primary role as a gunboat.

For all of Bunt’s time on PT-188, during the Barge War, attacks are carried out exclusively with guns, and one particular engagement stands out in his mind.
“I was standing deck watch. During a nighttime operation, under complete blackout, we engaged the enemy in one his really big thirty meter Daihatsus. I was at the wheel, and Shorty was manning one of the twin 20/50s located adjacent to the cockpit starboard. We started our run and I swear the barge lit up like a Macy’s light show with all kinds of tracer coming right at us and passing all around us. We returned fire of course and lit him up good in return.”

“There was shrapnel flying around. Even though we were under blackout conditions, I could see a rip in the knee of Glaser’s uniform. I put an enlisted man at the wheel and told Shorty, ‘We are going below to examine your knee.’ There was great concern in Shorty’s voice—knowing he was due to go home to get married—when he told me, ‘The blazes with my knee, Bunt … I think my manhood is gone!’

“When we got below in the light, it was obvious that a piece of shrapnel in a straight downward flight had entered the top of his fly, and produced only a blood blister right at the tip where his Johnson had its dewlap. The main bleeding came from a gash to his leg, which was caused by a second piece of 25 mm cannon shell on a slightly different trajectory just below his family jewels. That one just missed the artery. The blood was running all over his shoes.”

Shorty personally directs medical attention to his wound as a laughing crewman tends him while Burke goes back to the wheel and radios for the location of the nearest hospital ship. Meanwhile, Japanese soldiers are jumping off that burning barge and in his absence SM2nd Tim “Moose” Watkins and RM3rd Bob “Robbie” Tall Bear proceed to chop them up with the twin mount Brownings, located port and starboard of the cockpit respectively . Burke gets his reply from NORMATIVE^1. Smith then heads the boat on a course to the hospital ship, USS Hospice, AH-15, and is able to immediately obtain permission from his section leader; PT-186 Actual (LT (s.g.) Mark “High Pockets” Gulliver, to make a full forward speed retrograde advance out of there.

^1 PTORPRON 23’s base tender, USS Moana, AGP-4, (MVY Patricia, the sister yacht of the USS Hilo. AGP-2 ( MVY Caroline II).

^2 “Permission to run away, sir?” Rarely granted, but due to the hilarious nature of the medical emergency, this time, enthusiastically allowed.

“We dropped Shorty off at the hospital ship and returned to duty. Since he was due to go home to be wedded, the path of the shrapnel entertained the crew aboard the boat for quite a while!^1 ”

(It really would have them rolling in the gun-tubs, because it would be another excuse for Glaser’s nickname “Shorty”. Hey, WW II USN PT boat crew humor is not exactly fluffy bunny or at all light in tone. As a service, where one boat in four, which at the time, it is guaranteed certain will not come back from a mission and where crew life expectancy is about 15 patrols or what a USAAF bomber crew or USN LRMP crew faced, the humor will be funereal. McP.)

Tending to the PT

In late September 1942, the boats of Ron' 23 are ordered to the northern end of Buena Vista Island near Tadhi to prepare for patrols supporting the upcoming operations around Santa Isabella Island.

“Part of the preparations involved cleaning and painting the hull of the boat,”
Burke notes.
“Our squadron was reassigned to the USS Varuna, an LST [Landing Ship, Tank], after the Japanese bombed the Moana, our previous tender. The USS Varuna was converted to PT-tender configuration. It had a cradle [known as an “A-frame”] that the boat could float onto, and we were hoisted out of the water so we could service the bottom of the boat. You were given a number of hours on the tender to clean off the tremendous growth caused by the ocean on the bottom of the hull.^3”

^3 Six months in PT boats and the USN and “Bunt” Smith still does not know what a barnacle is? McP.

If left unchecked, the growth of Barnacles and other hull-fouling sea-life creates enough drag on the PT’s sleek hull to significantly reduce the boat’s top speed, and since speed is one of the PT’s primary strengths a clean hull is somewhat essential to mission success and the safety of the boat and crew.

After PT-188 is covered in a fresh coat of camouflage paint, it is out to sea for more trials and training; because combat has certainly revealed by now that the boat’s crew either needs more target practice or they do not know how to aim at fast moving objects. It is probably both, with our hero, Bunt, in charge.
“We went out and tested our gunfire, tested the accuracy of our navigating equipment, ran the boats at different speeds,”
said Burke.
“Got them in shape for the next move.”

At this time Burke experiences a change in duty as PT-186 turns up missing. He becomes leader of Baker Section of PTORPRON 23’s second division.
“At Tadhi I became skipper of the section. What the Navy did was, they’d bring in a new skipper to train, so for a short period there would be three officers on a command boat. As soon as they thought the third officer was fit, the top officer would go up one step, the XO would be promoted to skipper, and the third officer would become executive officer. That’s how I became section captain when we were based at Buena Vista. I was second in seniority in the section, then Mark’s boat went missing.”

“Another thing, the Navy’d send us kids, just 16 or 17 years old, never been away from home at all. When they wrote letters, an officer would have to censor them, so the crew would put the letters on my desk. This one kid from New Jersey was really excited about being on a boat, and he wrote all kinds of letters home. Naturally, I went through a lot of trouble fixing his letters, because he filled them with all the kinds of details about where we went and what we did. Can’t have that!”

There might have been a little self-preservation aside from Op-Sec involved here. That kid has a nasty habit, at least before he learns the ropes, of writing about routine surrender party massacres, shooting some prisoners out of hand after they are taken and interrogated “for reasons”, the rather questionable methods of interrogation used and other things he sees, that might upset the folks back home and the Navy JAG. McP.

There is one other problem LT(s.g.) Burke Smith has to solve. And guess who he assigns to the problem?

“Now, on a PT, you had all of these enlisted men using one head at the bow of the boat for shaving and toileting. It was a lot of men in a cramped, condensed area using one stainless steel sink and toilet, so it could get really messy. Cleaning the enlisted men’s head was the nastiest job of anything on the boat, but everybody had to take a turn at it.

“I put this boy from New Jersey on there right away to break him in—and he did such a magnificent job! I put him on there, and I’m telling you, that head looked like a jewelry store when he’d come out from cleaning it!

“So when I called him up in front of the rest of the crew, complimented him, shook his hand, put my arm around his shoulder and said, ‘We just haven’t had anybody that liked that job,’ he said, ‘Well, nobody is taking it from me!’ He assigned himself! And then I censored his next letter home, and you should have seen the way he boasted to his family about being captain of the head!”

It should be mentioned that the kid from New Jersey is as dumb as a barnacle.

Shortly after his promotion to section skipper, a position for which one might get the impression that Bunt is eminently unqualified, the PT-188 prepares for her role for the next major Allied operation during WATCHTOWER, the fiasco that will be known as the Santa Isabella Derby.

Supporting the Australian Raid; The Santa Isabella Derby

Somebody at MacArthur’s AIPS figures that now would be a good time to practice for an upcoming major operation they have planned for December 1942. The practice target is a Japanese listening post located at Buala, Santa Isabella Island. The problem is, that the target the AIPS section selects, happens to be in the SOPAC theater, and not exactly under SWPOA parvenu. Tangled up, in conflicting theater chains of command, this operation is doomed to failure.

The ground phase of the operation begins on 26 September 1942 when Australian commandos paddle ashore from a submarine to raid a Japanese radio station located at Buala on Santa Isabella Island. The Aussies request that the United States provide naval support for their operation and as part of that effort 4 PTs of Ron’ 23 arrive in the area on 27 September just hours prior to the raid. The remaining 8 boats arrive with the USS Cachelot (SS 170) on 2 October 1942 to cover the rather hasty extraction.

Initially the 4 boats hide out at nearby Florakoa Point, but once the Aussies push farther inland on Buala the PTs move to Maringe Lagoon to better provide effective, close-in support. Burke writes:

“The entire squadron was assigned to the operation since we had no destroyers to spare for it,”
Bunt relates.
“From there at Maringe Point we made nighttime patrols along the coast and to neighboring islands to prevent Japanese reaction by sea. The strategy at that time of WATCHTOWER was to prevent the Japanese from supplying and rescuing some of their troops in the area. It was our duty to halt all enemy traffic, day and night, and to destroy armaments positioned along the coastline and on neighboring islands and to secure our own raiders’ extraction upon completion of their mission. We received these specific kinds of assignments if there was a Japanese radio station or other installation that needed taking out.

“Also, it was obvious that the Japanese were supplying weapons to the native populations on the island, and it became our duty while we were there to halt this traffic. This was done as gunboats, not torpedo boats. We made several nighttime forays out of Meringe Lagoon, and did practically all of our work during dark hours. From time to time, during the week, the Japanese attempted to provide armaments by submarine and surface vessel. We encountered small Japanese junks during this raid… We called them ‘Snafu Marus’ and give them the treatment whenever we found them.”

Somehow, Burke, misses the big picture, but why should one be surprised by this situation? McP.

The Japanese also employed all types of other small craft from canoes to luggers and lighters in attempts to travel to or from and along the coasts of Santa Isabella Island, during the week long operation; but PT-188 and the other Ron’ 23 PTs intercepted what they could, sinking anything they encountered that floated.

As had occurred earlier in the Battle of Indispensable Strait, the PTs are somewhat successful at wiping out the Japanese coasters they blunder into;, as well as preventing the escape or evacuation of the beleaguered enemy personnel caught at Buala (The Japanese "bait".).

Burke also credits the Australian commandoes on shore with the success the Allies experienced there.
“A very important element of this operation was provided by the Australians,”
he states.

As for the Santa Isabella Derby, the USS Cachelot demonstrates that it will not be possible for a C-class American boat to execute the actual mission for which this bungled operation is the dress rehearsal .^4

^4 Keep an eye out for Oscar Moosbreger and the USS Moondragon as she limps home to Brisbane Australia. McP.

For the Australians, two platoons worth, find an IJA rump regiment instead of the small radio listening station they were briefed to expect and it becomes a week long run around in the jungle, with the Japanese in hot pursuit, as the Australians try to figure their way out of the “trap” the Japanese almost snare them in. Three botched extraction points at Kiaba, Solonidaro Point and Kokolbako Point finally results in Ron’ 23 picking up the Aussies as they swim out into Estrella Bay. The Australian survivors make it to the boats under a covering hail of autocannon gunfire from the 6 PT boats that hammer away at the shoreline as the Japanese return the favor with their mortars and machine guns. It is a miracle that anyone allied gets out of Estrella Bay alive.

The-Santa-Isabella-Derby.png


End of Part Two...
 
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I’d suggest that they’re overusing the source and leaking data like hell. But then again the IJN doesn’t historically seemed to have had an adequate analysis section.
 

McPherson

Banned
I’d suggest that they’re overusing the source and leaking data like hell. But then again the IJN doesn’t historically seemed to have had an adequate analysis section.

Laughter... THAT is exactly what MacArthur's command was doing in the RTL. Yamamoto's ambush is a primary example of this Op-Sec carelessness. Halsey is kind of guilty of it, too, as the botched Rennell Island operation shows. I am trying to suggest some RTL elements remain present and chase off the temptation to insert unbelievable ASBs while retaining some of the real RTL goofery that I find in this history to make it seem "realistic".
 

marathag

Banned
chase off the temptation to insert unbelievable ASBs while retaining some of the real RTL goofery that I find in this history

I like to mention to people that that almost everything in the Film _Operation Petticoat_ pretty much was all that 'goofery' from many OTL S-Boat patrols and such right after the War started, put onto one sub, slightly changed, like one sub was painted only in Red Lead Primer.

Pig Boats by Theodore Roscoe is where many of those stories are collected
 

McPherson

Banned
What about a young Lt.(jg) John F. Kennedy? Is he ready to play in the Solomons?:cool:

chase off the temptation to insert unbelievable ASBs while retaining some of the real RTL goofery that I find in this history to make it seem "realistic".

To be honest I am still stuck in 1942.

The RTL goofery around PT 109 is almost unbelievable.

It is arguably the most famous small-craft engagement in naval history, and it was an unmitigated disaster. At a later date, when asked to explain how he had come to be a hero, one of the young commanders involved, by then an aspiring politician, replied laconically, "It was involuntary. They sank my boat."

Like many disasters, where the unfortunate individuals involved earn Victoria Crosses, Croix de Guerre, and Medals of Honor, or even entire Presidential Unit Citations, it comes down to accident, improvisation and pure chance. Inevitably something has gone incredibly wrong, that only in the most outré fatalistic almost psychotically sublime humorous hindsight, seems funny to the survivors (^^^).

Let me be clear. JFK is no Burke "Bunt" Smith as I write that character. Under the circumstances and with what chance handed him, he, JFK, earned his medal the hard way under the worst possible circumstances. Nor was he hunting for that medal, for political reasons, like his elder brother, Joe Kennedy Jr., did; when he flew a B-24 loaded with high explosives aimed at a German V weapon site, which blew up before he could bail out^1. That makes the Kennedy story from WW II all the more tragic.
^1 Operation Aphrodite

You see... revisionist historians get the ultimate Kennedy legend backwards. It was not John chasing Joe's shadow that caused the Kennedy tragedy to happen. It was Joe chasing John's heroism that produced this outcome and propelled John, who never really wanted it, toward his historic fate.

 
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McPherson

Banned
Part III; The Bunt and No Shorty Show continues...

Floatplanes, An Admiral And Losing The Aspidistra End Of The Boat.

On many occasions throughout the WATCHTOWER/CARTWHEEL campaign, the Americans in SOPAC and Australians and Americans in SWPOA attempt to cooperate operationally, coordinating MacArthur’s and Blamey’s air and ground forces with US Navy forces in region. As the Japanese resistance on New Guinea in the Eastern Solomon Islands falls off, the PTs go hunting along the southern coasts of New Guinea (PTORPRON 21) and up the Slot (PTORPRON 23) for enemy targets.

“From our base at Buena Vista Island we’d go over to the Santa Isabel and Choiseul Islands,” Hank explained, “to clean up some things the command wanted taken out. I had one daylight patrol where they sent a fleet officer to ride along with us. I don’t know his exact rank. He was well above my rank as a lieutenant. Anyway, he came aboard my boat and said that there was located someplace on one of these small islands around Santa Isabella a Japanese floatplane installation. It was all the more frustrating for me, because I just had the boat’s rear gun removed and replaced with a new 20/70 Oerlikon six pack I wanted to try out on the Japanese. With the brass aboard, I knew we wouldn’t get the chance”

Bunt is wrong, for a lot of reasons. McP.

It is the hero of Savo Island, Victor Crutchley VADM RN, who rides along as a favor to his buddy, Norman Scott, to get some kind of handle for why allied naval operations in SOPAC remain so fouled up. He wants to see for himself; if perhaps the Japanese floatplane aerial reconnaissance, which has been a constant problem ever since the Battle of Savo Island a month and a half ago; remains so. He suspects it is inept allied PT boat and Fairmile boat operators and general poor overall training that might be the real problem. Bunt soon obviously gives him some cause for concern.

The Japanese floatplanes obviously present a hazard for the allies because they fly at a high altitude so they cannot be seen or heard, but they can easily spot a ship’s or boat’s wake. Burke Smith writes
“We had mufflers on the boat that controlled the exhaust noise from the Packard engines. If you were rushing between islands, you would put the mufflers wide open and just roar! But if you were snooping around there at, say, 6 meters a second, you could muffle all of your sound down into the water. When we did that, the Japanese never heard us coming, yet somehow they always seemed to be ready for us.

Apparently, Burke Smith, really does not get it. The boat still leaves a wake at 6 meters per second. It is that wake that gives the Japanese, up in the low clouds, a good overall look at PT boat traffic. It does not take Crutchley long to figure it out when he sees PT-188’s rooster tail.

So with that fleet officer aboard, whoever the hell he was, aboard; we headed out to look for possible air stations for these damn floatplanes he was interested in. Soon a float plane showed up and buzzed us. I S-turned to make us a difficult target and I yelled at RM3rd Bob “Robbie” Tall Bear, to let the Pete have it with the ‘Thunderbolt’ which is what we called the 20/70 six-pack on our stern. He opened up and the whole boat shook like a hula dancer on a coke high. He missed.”

“As we were making headway—since it was broad daylight we knew we were vulnerable to that Pete upstairs, so we just shoved the throttles wide open past the stops—we knew the Japanese now knew we were there. If they wanted to come down to play we were more than ready for them. So anyway, we were roaring along, Tall Bear is hammering away at the clouds trying to get that Pete, and all of a sudden there was this awful sound coming from the stern of the boat. Now, these PT boats had direct drive; the engine output didn’t go through any gear reduction at all. We had three V-12 engines, and once they were put in gear you were going either forward or you were going in reverse.”

“Well, all of a sudden we heard this tremendous scream, and one of the prop shafts—the center shaft—had popped. When it snapped in two, it dropped the prop off, too, so the center Packard was running at full speed with no load whatsoever on it! We quickly shut it down, turned around, and headed back toward base; we had no trouble because we still had two fantastic Packard engines”.

Have you noticed, that Bunt advances to the rear quite quickly, reader? McP.

“When I limped back into base, we went to our tender, a big, long LST that was specifically equipped to take care of our PT squadron. (That would be the USS Varuna. McP.). We nested alongside of the tender during daylight; if you couldn’t dock along shore, then you nested against the side of the tender. So I took the boat gently to the tender, and it turns out they did not have a shaft and screw that was compatible with our other two. The screws were about 28 inches broad, and the supply officer on the tender said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to send you out with just two screws working.’ He said, ‘The only thing I have in stock is a set of racing screws.’

Five blade instead of four blade with an acute pitch. McP.

“I said, ‘Put her on, babe!’ That worked out the entire better for me because that definitely made the PT-188 the fastest boat in the squadron. As a result, I got some errands to do when higher-up officers needed to be moved from place to place, or were visiting a certain ship or base. So for daytime work we did a little bit of taxi service, but then at nighttime we definitely were hooked into hits over in the Russell Islands or hits along the shores of Santa Isabel.”

Messenger boat duty, ferry traffic, and the banana boat runs as Bunt blissfully and ignorantly describes it, is the usual fate of second raters. McP.

As for Victor Crutchley, well he could suggest politely that maybe the boats of Ron’ 23 needed a few more weeks of intense training and that some of the current PT skippers might be better off joining Requisite and Paqua as “observers” along the Marine perimeter, especially along Razorback Ridge overlooking Henderson Field, but his main actionable findings which he passes on to his buddy, “Norm”, are;

a. The American PT boats could use a coupled shaft indirect drive, as found on British boats, with a shear pin connector, so that the swap out of screws and shafts will be made much quicker and simpler.
b. Mufflers should be designed to exhaust down into the water at all times and all speeds.
c. The Thunderbolt mount experiment, he observes, where a six pack of Oelikons are mounted in place of the aft Bofors 40/60, is a nonstarter because it rips up the rear deck and damages the PT boat transom clear down to the screw chocks via excessive vibration when the guns fire.
d. Similarly Crutchley believes a Molins Mount with its 6 pounder repeater QFNR would encounter the same problem as the "Thunderbolt"; with too much stress on the frame of an American PT boat when it fires. Possibly a Browning 37 mm gun taken from the now defunct Aircobras might be a suitable replacement; if a more rapid continuous feed autocannon is desired? Otherwise why change what works?
d. Competent AAA training is necessary. The Japanese floatplanes are not that high up that a good 40/60 crew cannot blast them out of the sky.

Landing Australian Coast-watchers And Stormy Weather

Bunt, as he banana boats, also delivers Australian coast-watchers and native scouts to enemy-held shores.
“They were AIPS trained Scouts,”
Bunt writes. [/quote]“I put them ashore for intelligence gathering on the Japanese. We’d run the boat up on the shore and drop them off.”[/quote] Bunt quickly realizes that the native islanders are no fans of their Japanese occupiers.
“The Japanese forced the natives to squat in their presence,”
he recalls;
“They couldn’t stand. That really pissed me off.”
The native peoples of the islands will not be squatting for long, however. Time is running out on the forces of Imperial Japan in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere.

The Japanese are not the only threat the boats of Ron’ 23 encounter. The weather in the Southwest Pacific offers up challenges of its own.
“When we went to attack in the Solomons, there was a period of time when the weather was terrible,” Bunt records. “Our squadron arrived at this one spot north and a little east of Santa Isabel’s shore. Every single night we had a storm there where we were anchored. When the boat was underway, there was no shelter for anybody who was at the wheel in charge of operation, or studying a map, or something like that.”

The PT cockpit is open to the elements, which provides excellent visibility. It is designed that way fior that reason. However, all hands topside are fully exposed.
“In the daytime,” Burke Smith writes; “the sun would be so damn hot that some of the boats rigged a canvas, like an awning, over the foredeck. If they didn’t take it down before a storm hit, the wind would just take it and away the boat would go! The awning acted like a combination of wing and sail.”

“As for being in any stormy seas, when traveling from island to island we were used to being in some really deep swells, I mean to the point where you would start to climb steeply up the face of the swell.”

Bunt’s rank inexperience with open ocean boat handling barely allowed him to stay on course while plowing through such heavy seas; “You would have a course which was in your mind and set in your compass, and you would use the wheel to keep the boat headed in the right general direction,”
Bunt writes;
“Sometimes these monster waves would come one after another, where you would be climbing, climbing, climbing, and you’d get to the top where the wave would drop out from underneath you, and then you’d slam down. There were elbows, knees, and legs broken on deals like that, and especially the filaments in light bulbs."

“Anyway, the standard technique—if you were paying attention—was, as you’re going up one of these big rollers, you get almost to the top, and then throw the boat into a right hard rudder. That would kink the head of your vessel to the right, and then you would slide down the other side of the swell on your stern instead of coming down with a slam. Otherwise it would be like being on the end of a diving board with somebody jumping right behind you and landing on top.”

“When the next big roller hit, you’d go hard left rudder at the crest of the swell so that when you straightened out you had compensated for the last hard right you made.”

Talk about corkscrewing around! Pilotage can be no less crazy. McP.

Another Admiral and Bunt Gets The Boot

PT-188 may have become Ron 23’s beer delivery vehicle, but that’s not the reason she is chosen to transport the Halsey party from Efate to Tulagi in an open ocean speed run after Fletcher wins the Battle of the Eastern Solomon Islands. She is chosen for her speed. Ever since the installation of the racing screws, she has proven time and again that she is the fastest boat in the squadron assigned to the USS Varuna.
“We always raced!” Bunt declares. “Every morning returning from patrol we’d see which boat was the fastest. That’s how I got the job taking Halsey from where he flew in to where he set up his forward headquarters.”

On the morning of 18 October 1942, Ron 23’s commander, “Silly” Taylor, leads 7 boats of Ron’ 23 including PT-188 to Purvis Bay which is formed by Tulagi and Florida Island together conjointly. There they form a naval pass in review for “The Bull”

“The naval officer in charge of this Ricky Ticky deal called down and said he wanted the fastest boat to go pick up the admiral from the wharf and act as the stage boat for the pass in review.,”
Bunt describes,
“and his direct order to me was, ‘Give that old bastard, Halsey, a joy ride’."
[Meaning a rough ride to Bunt. McP.]. Apparently misunderstanding his C.O.’s intent, Bunt does exactly that thing.
"Now that was no problem for me, because there was almost always at least a two meter sea running between the coast of Florida Island and the Sealark Channe. There was a force of water down through the Sealark Channel proper."

“Halsey came down to us with some of his staff and we brought them all aboard—three staff weenies, his flag secretary and his nibs, himself. Anyway, we had these new huge mufflers on the stern, so we never wanted anybody, ever, to approach us from the aft end; because if they came that way they surer than Guadalcanal Gilly juice would blind, you would be burnt. So as certain as hell, this bozo of an Australian guy who was handling the crossover from the wharf to our boat came right in and almost got cooked on our mufflers. I shoved him off and told him to get around forward and come aboard on the bow the right way.”

“After he swung around and led them all aboard the right way, the Admiral came up, mighty spry for an old man. There was no saluting, no formalities. I wanted them farther up on the bow, and that’s when the flag secretary started to act up, so as the captain of the boat, I was kind of testy with him as we sorted it out; but I didn’t get any complaints from our higher-ups afterwards. I took Halsey to an Australian cruiser..."
[The HMAS Hobart, Crutchley’s acting flag at this time. McP.],
"... dropped them all off, and that was it.

Apparently that was not all of it. McP.
“Shortly after that, I received orders to take myself over to Lunga Point. It was there that I discovered that I was reassigned as the supply officer to the navy commissary. The sad thing about that was, you loved your boat, and you knew you were saying goodbye. I never understood why my tour was cut short, after the wonderful job we did with the PT-188.”
Bunt concludes in his memoire.

Is one kidding? McP.

The Best Attributes Of American PT Boats

With their racing screws and sleek hulls, PT crews always remember their boats for the exceptional speeds and remarkable maneuverability .

The PT boat and all of her armaments usually functioned well, the record shows across the classes,. Other than the direct drive from Packards to the screws which caused a more than acceptable number of bent or snapped shafts and lost screws, the boats, as built, had few or any major problems in service. Of course, the fixes for these defects were obvious, with the substitution of proper racing screws and the revised shaft arrangements with the shear pin coupling and reduction gears adapted in theater from the Australian built versions of Fairmile boats.

A US PT boat, from a speed of 3-5 m/s , would get up to full speed of around 20 m/s mighty fast, even when fully loaded. and with the Packards at full throttle properly tuned and fully muffled , it sounded eerily like a giant vacuum cleaner was moving across the ocean.

There was no doubt the ELCO 24 meter PT was a good boat. However, as many US based PT crews received their initial PT training at Melville with Squadron 4 on Higgins-built PTs (Higgins and Elco, remember, are the two main manufacturers of PT boats for the U.S. Navy in World War II), the question must be asked: which was the better boat? Most US PT boat crews prefer the ELCO. What is the favorite attribute of the Elco PT boat that makes it a crew favorite? Is it the graceful hull lines? The speed the boat effortlessly achieves? The Higgins boat gives a more smooth stable ride. Is it the drier ride as compared to the Higgins design? For the crews, it is much simpler than any of these reasons.

It turns out that the ELCO builders thought of a very small detail. The ELCO boats had ice cubes. Ice cubes? Yes, ice cubes, for the ELCO PTs come equipped with small GE refrigerators in the tiny galley. The availability of ice cubes to chill a drink, especially if it is Gilly juice, in the heat of the tropical Pacific is an invaluable luxury for sailors with few such things, and a cooling touch of home for men at war. THAT is one thing the Australian PTs and Bathurst trawlers, usually don’t have!

===================================================

Holiday note:

Merry Christmas readers. I hope you enjoy this little comedy and continue to be entertained. Next year I hope to make it somewhat more interesting as I finish the first phase of the Pacific War. I frankly have no idea how it will turn out ITTL. Just this part of the barge war comes out as much of a surprise to me as it must have been to some of you.

McP.
 
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McPherson

Banned
a. FIDO drops were not singular. And when dropped were practically on top of the U-boat as her conning tower was awash, at least if doctrine was followed.
b. Acoustic torpedoes are farther away and can be decoyed or seduced by towed noisemakers.
c. Exactly! The Germans were deploying a weapon that got 1.6 freighters overall and then got promptly killed. They WERE incompetent. It was about 0.8 freighter for every dead U-boat at the end of it.

The torpedo is the exclamation point that announces "Here I am, come kill me! I'm a U-boat." Of course the escorts will know. That is what a launch transient does with a short ranged torpedo.

Actually if the MAD gear designers know their physics... it cannot be defeated by that means. It is how magnetic influenced torpedoes actually work, ya, know?

Submarine torpedoes were not fired singularly either, and acoustic torpedoes could not be decoyed when designed well. The US' own submarines found the only way to hide from FIDO in tests was to dive and stop all engines, no decoys or noisemakers worked. The Mark 27 had the same guidance, and the TXI was probably getting there although it was far too late and still likely over engineered.

We agree on that.:)

Which is why the submarine would use batteries to quietly get to a safe distance from the escorts and then surface or use the snorkel.

MAD can be defeated by degaussing and, much like magnetic mines in WWII, in fact has been defeated for most of its existence. MAD systems have only ever been used as secondary systems to precisely locate submarines already roughly located, in the best case scenarios. No vehicle other than aircraft have ever used MAD (and even they don't use it much), and all available information indicates that modern MAD certainly has a range of under 10 km, and most likely less than 4 km. It cannot be used to search for submarines in general areas, and will not discover previously unknown submarines on the surface any better than visual searching, except in the very rare cases where a submarine gets unlucky.

German torpedoes and usage.

German heavy weight acoustic torpedoes had to be fired singly or at long intervals apart or they would start chasing each other in circles. That is why FIDO was itself released in hammer and anvil attacks, to keep the torpedoes from chasing each other.

FIDO tests showed that HUSL's shadow body architecture chase logic was correct, but the Germans put their sensors in the nose. Hence it was susceptible.

German competency. (They were not very good submariners.)

Creep speed. But if the DE is in hot pursuit, that flank run is about 40-60 minutes tops.

Not entirely true. It depends on hull metal, the degaussing methods used and whether the MAD uses one or two detector architectures. The Japanese used two and were dangerous. Detection (WW II) depending on atmospheric weather and ocean salinity (yes; salinity) was ~ 2000-4000 meters slant from altitudes no greater than 1,000 meters.

I brought AJE's excellent comments and my replies to this thread to remind people that this is WW II and not cold war era, nor Hollywood submarine warfare. I'm polishing the Santa Cruz entry and Rennell Island and hope to have them finished and ready to publish next week. Sorry it takes so long folks.
 
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McPherson

Banned
Santa-Cruz-ATL-1.png


I think you will see that there have been gigantic butterflies flapping their wings like mad.

No Kinkaid in sight, two Midway captains promoted to rear admirals, some heroics which you will see in the battle narrative and BOY does the Sea Wolf make a difference!
 
Hornet hit, not sunk, no exit route, in an area swept by enemy surface forces.

I am reading the diagram correctly?

Yours,
Sam R.
 

McPherson

Banned
Hornet hit, not sunk, no exit route, in an area swept by enemy surface forces.

I am reading the diagram correctly?

Yours,
Sam R.

Hornet is being towed out; post battle. There is a bit of obscuring where Pensacola sinks. I'll clean it up in the detail chart when I give the battle timeline.
 

McPherson

Banned
The Situation Prior To The Battle Of The Santa Cruz Islands.

Background And Leadup:


Although the Japanese lose the Battle of Cape Esperance, due to the bungling (but popular and now deceased) VADM Goto, Aritomo they regard it as like the Battle of Port Arthur of the Russo Japanese War where they suffered a major temporary reverse due to unexpected enemy opposition and competence. This only causes them to try even harder to dislodge the Marines from Guadalcanal and retake Henderson Field.

Cape Esperance, where Norm Scott manages to cross the Tees and dots the Japanese eyes, is regarded within the Combined Fleet as just like Togo running his battle-line over a Russian minefield outside Port Arthur, sending the Yashima and Hatsuse to glory on 15 May 1904, just as a necessary ill-fortune omen that sets the scene for another major encounter for the aircraft carrier forces of the USN and Japan’s Kido Butai, this one to be the last of its kind in the Solomon Islandss arena. It will be decisive like Tsushima and it will be the victory that decides the war, so the IJN believes, for it is a good sign to get all the bad fortune out of the way first; so that the good fortune follows. To make the omens further right, the Japanese Combined Fleet general staff under Yamamoto’s personal direction even pick the date to trash the Americans.

It will be Navy Day^1 in the United States; 27 October 1942. Somehow, the Japanese, who think 2 and 7 in combination are their lucky numbers, miss the significance of the date until after the battle, when Genda stumbles across it in his hospital bed reading about the USN celebrations.

^1 Theodore Roosevelt’s Birthday, semi-officially celebrated as “the Birthday date” of the modern steel United States Navy, even though that true date is 13 October 1775.

One Big Japanese Effort.

With deceased (VADM promoted upon death) Goto now in Takamagahara (高天原, "Plain of High Heaven” or Takama no Hara is the dwelling place of the heavenly gods (ama-tsu-kami)), having crossed the bridge ( 天の水上橋)(Ama-no-uki-hashi; the "Floating Bridge of Heaven"); it now falls upon RADM Kurita Takeo to take over that command in the forthcoming aircraft carrier battle. Kurita has the two battleships Kongo and Haruna, each with 8 x 35.6cm (14 inch)/45 guns in four twin barrel turrets, plus 16 each 15.2 cm (6 inch)/45 guns in barbettes; 8 to starboard and 8 to port amidships. This would not be of any importance, except that for the first time, with Kurita driving the show instead of that imbecile, Goto, the two “fast battleships” dash through the south channel of Savo Island, through the minefield and PT TORPron 22 and steam past Tassafaronga on the night of the 13 October 1943 as the opening preliminary move. They hammer Henderson Field with high explosive shells at literal point blank and just about demolish the airfield. The utterly surprised Americans see the ruins of WATCHTOWER the next morning in the burnt remains of dozens of planes destroyed, huge 8 meter in diameter craters the battleship Kongo walks from one end of the main runway to the other and with over 200 dead and twice as many wounded Marines as the human costs. It should be a deal breaker; a death knell for the campaign.

The Japanese follow up the very next night when VADM Mikawa, with his heavy cruisers Maya and Myoko, fire off over 780 each 20.3 cm (8 inch) shells. In the ensuing 3rd Battle of Lunga Point as the Japanese call it, TORPron 22 is virtually massacred. On the night of 15 October: 6 transports packed with 10,000 Japanese infantry troops beach themselves, and that same night the IJN cruisers Maya and Myoko again add another 800 + shell bombardment contribution to Henderson Field. Somebody, Japanese, has finally figured it out and this causes panic in the senior American commands in CINCPAC, SWPOA and the SPOA theaters.

The meeting at Noumea, Caledonia on 17 October 1944 among representatives from MacArthur’s, Ghormley’s and Nimitz’s commands is GRIM. Halsey, who is supposed to be Nimitz’s representative to the high level meeting is intercepted by Ghormley’s flag secretary as he departs his PBY and is about to whaleboat over to Ghormley’s flagship, the USS James Nishin. Whaleboat to whaleboat, without bothering to cross over or even hand salute “The Bull” the CDR hands across to VADM Halsey a sealed envelope, marked “Eyes only, destroy upon opening and reading”

It is a fools-scrap telex:

“YOU WILL TAKE COMMAND OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC AREA AND SOUTH PACIFIC FORCES IMMEDIATELY”. NIMITZ.

Nimitz is more than handing Halsey the SPOA hot potato. He is, on one of those rare instances in the Pacific War, directly intervening in a subordinate theater commander’s prerogative and responsibility; by organizing a task force, surface action group, around the new battleship USS Indiana transferred from the LANTFlt; Nimitz also sends the 25th Infantry Division from Oahu, stripping Pearl Harbor of its primary army garrison defense. He sends 50 army planes from the Oahu USAAF air garrison to join the South Pacific front over the virulent objections of MG Willis H Hale of 7th USAAF to replace the CACTUS’ losses. Plus in addition; over VADM Robert English’s own COMSubPac’s objections, Nimitz sends another squadron of GATO class submarines to be available to his new designated SPOA commander.

Ghormley Is The Problem.

Ghormley's performance appears to be subpar. His continuing pessimistic reports to Admiral Nimitz at Pearl Harbor reflect this symptom of something fundamentally wrong with the admiral. Nimitz is privately aware through correspondence from Ghormley’s navy physician that stress and an ongoing dental problem may be contributing factors. These “excuses” which ADM Nimitz, a compassionate man, is prepared to tolerate for awhile, get him into serious trouble with CNO/FADM Ernest King. That admiral takes exceptional note of Nimitz’s coddling Ghormley beginning around mid-September 1942 and really applies the screws to CINCPAC. Nimitz resists but by the first week of October with Doctor Jesus Martinez, USNR, writing Nimitz that Ghormley is now apparently “insane”, things have to change. Nimitz’s original orders to Ghormley through the stovepipe directive Admiral King gives to HIM, is that VADM Ghormley is to "personally oversee" the Guadalcanal/Tulagi attacks by U.S. forces, meaning Nimitz expects Ghormley to be on site or in the immediate area of conflict. However, Ghormley removes himself in the early planning phases and subsequent invasions or else holes up in his headquarters ship, the USS James Nishin, once he finally moves to Nouméa, more than 1,400 kilometers (900 miles) from Guadalcanal. He is quickly overwhelmed by the rapidity of the overall operation as well as lack of immediate resources assigned to him. Being a staff officer, Ghormely drifts toward paperwork, and he immerses in myriad details and becomes a party to and part of the petty political squabbling caused by New Caledonia's French government hosts, who he should have simply locked up or shot out-of-hand for the sabotage they cause in port and to his logistic operations, rather than attend to the actual fighting or be physically present in the immediate conflict areas. Ghormley fails to set foot on Guadalcanal or to make himself "visible" to combat forces as their guiding command presence.

Ghormley has a further handicap. Lacking extensive operational command at sea experience, he never develops or learns how to convey strong or decisive communications to his commanders. He is absent at the critical planning meetings in late July, which are marked by vociferous violent arguments, usually instigated by and between Richmond K. Turner and Frank Jack Fletcher, over the length of time that aircraft carriers should be able to provide air cover to landing forces and supply ships. Fletcher, who by now is THE EXPERT on US naval aircraft carrier forces, has of necessity to place more concern on protecting the aircraft carriers; to hold them in readiness to meet the Japanese naval riposte; than on the over the beach immediate support requirements of the invasion force. Part of the problem Turner churns up is also due his personally sneering at Fletcher's attempts to obey Admiral Nimitz's continued dictum against over-exposure of aircraft carriers to attack unless more damage can be inflicted upon the enemy. Things become so foul finally that Turner yells at Fletcher in one of those interminable imbroglios that the “our victor of Midway is a yellow streaked cowardly ___ __ _ _____." Admiral Fletcher is left to face this situation unresolved alone, and has to handle it as best he can with diplomacy and some loss of dignity; rather than VADM Ghormley act; who should have been there to make the decision as the theater commander as to which admiral (Turner of course) needs to stand court martial. Fletcher's interpretation of Nimitz’s order to preserve the aircraft carriers goes over with the Marines about as well as can be imagined, too, until the Battle of the Eastern Solomon Islands; when the truth dawns on them what Fletcher tries to do for them. Back in Washington, King who is totally clueless about the raucous ground truth and who still holds the opinion that Fletcher is over-cautious, wants Nimitz to can Fletcher, too. The heated arguments aside, Ghormley does one thing right. He assign Fletcher as the Commander, Expeditionary Force, and makes him the one who maintains overriding authority to move aircraft carrier air support out of the battle area as OITC. Fletcher uses that authority. After only 36 hours, and with at least 2 to 3 days (Estimated as long as 5 days by Turner who bungles the unloading.) may be needed to unload supplies to the Marines fighting on Guadalcanal, Fletcher pulls his aircraft carriers out of the immediate critical invasion operation, leaving many supply ships unloaded and vulnerable to Japanese attack, and with no air support for ground forces. He has to make that bitter decision by himself. A full 25% of his embarked fighters are gone to operational losses. His destroyers are running in ballast, the Savo Island disaster, with all that it portends, has happened and he has to prepare for the immediate aircraft carrier battle he knows is upon them all. What choice does he have, really?

As a result of all these mitigating circumstances, problems and misjudgments, both Admirals Nimitz and King become highly concerned with WATCHTOWER’s precarious state and Ghormley's inability to command or manage the situation in a sound manner. In consequence, VADM William F. Halsey is scheduled to arrive in Noumea on 16 October 1942 to interview Ghormley and his staff. He is a day late. The note Nimitz sends ahead has been waiting for him, Halsey, to arrive for a whole day. Halsey might be a compassionate man and he is Ghormley’s friend, but orders are orders. Halsey quickly arranges the interviews and staff meetings to ascertain what mess he inherits; it quickly becomes to him very apparent that Ghormley and his staff have no competent answers to serious questions that they should have handled. This discovery couples with the news from Guadalcanal about the latest Japanese troop landings and the continuing Henderson Field bombardments settles all questions for everyone, but Ghormley of course. Ghormley is summarily relieved without fanfare on 18 October 1942 with peremptory orders Halsey issues in Nimitz’s name to turn himself in at the Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor for medical evaluation.

VADM Halsey quickly and decisively takes leadership command and fully restores the balance of trust lost in the SPOA between the rear echelon feather pluckers and the fighting forces on Guadalcanal. He will make mistakes, serious mistakes. Nimitz knows this fact about Halsey, if from nothing else the Doolittle Raid and from The Bull’s tardy run down to the Coral Sea, Halsey has a tendency to act without thinking it through, but Nimitz also knows, that given impossible orders and timetables as The Bull was given during the Doolittle Raid and the dash down-under that followed immediately after, Halsey will charge ahead and “do his damndest to get it done”.

Placing Halsey in charge demonstrates that the WATCHTOWER requires a decisive, aggressive can-do-anything-asked admiral more than a measured naval tactician which is why VADM Fletcher is passed over. Someone has to make the hard buck-stops-here calls among the various army, navy and marine units mixed up in this hodge-podge multi-service command. Fletcher has undeservedly soured himself as an acceptable intercollegiate inter-service player, and as noted, FADM King hates his guts. Nimitz leaves him as TF 61’s operational commander and preserves a known quantity for what everyone, naval and senior Marine, knows must happen next. A replay of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons Islands is in the works. Else why would the Japanese have so lavishly risked battleships and heavy cruisers on bombardment missions to neutralize Henderson Field? As Ghormley should have done from the beginning, Halsey has no problem with making immediate frequent and numerous appearances upon Guadalcanal and making people everywhere on that island, from Marine private and navy seaman to Vandergrift and Scott, see his mug and impress on them that he correctly understands that the crisis is upon the USN, the Marines and everyone and anyone involved in CACTUS/WATCHTOWER.

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I present a little background research on VADM Halsey to further illuminate why he is the right man in the pickle barrel at this crisis moment:

"Fleet Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey: Effectiveness and Competence in Command"

by Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Goedecke RAN

Note: Whenever possible, I try to outsource research to a third party fighting navy when it comes to evaluating USN admirals. It kind of removes an American bias filter and gets one away from the American supporters and detractors upon the subject person and his actions. It also allows one to read a non-American centric viewpoint and reveals angles of interest and investigation outside the American narratives. And besides, the Australians have a keen interest in the subject. It is THEIR history, too, you know? McP.
 
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McPherson

Banned
From Where Did All These Odd Aircraft Carriers Appear?

(The Japanese get to play ATL, too. McP.)

General characteristics

Type: Aircraft carrier

Displacement:…….Unryū, Amagi, Katsuragi (Flight 1) 17,480 long tons (17,760 t) standard
……………………………Kasagi, Aso, Ikoma 17,150 long tons (17,425 t) standard (Flight 2)
Length:………….......227.35 m (745.9 ft) o/a
Beam:…………………22 m (72 ft)
Draught:……….......7.86 m (25.8 ft)

Installed power:…8 × Ro-Gō Kampon water-tube boilers
…………………………..4 × Kampon geared turbines,
…………………………..152,000 shp (113,000 kW) (Flight 1)
…………………………..104,000 shp (78,000 kW) (Flight 2)

Propulsion:………...4 shafts

Speed:……………34 knots (39 mph; 63 km/h) (Flight 1)
……………………….32 knots (37 mph; 59 km/h) (Flight 2)

Range:…………….8,000 nmi (15,000 km) at 18 knots (33 km/h)[3]
Endurance:……..Fuel: 3,750 tons oil
Complement:….1.100 (Flight 1)
……………………….1.600 (Flight 2)

Sensors and processing systems:

Radar:............Unryū, Amagi, Katsaragi as built (Flight 1)

……………………….2 × Type 21 radars (top of island and flight deck)
……………………….1 × Type 13 radar (mast)
……………………….2 × Type 21 radars (top of island and flight deck)
……………………….2 × Type 13 radars (mast and radio antenna)

……………………….Amagi in 1944
………………………1 × Type 21 radar (flight deck)
………………………1 × Type 22 radar (top of island)
………………………1 × Type 13 radar (mast)

………………………Sonar and hydrophone: Amagi and Katsuragi
……………………..Type 93 hydrophone
……………………..Type 3 active sonar

………………………Sonar and hydrophone: all others
……………………..Type 0 hydrophone
……………………...Type 3 active sonar

Armament:
……………………..12 (6 × 2) 127 mm Type 89 AA guns
……………………..93 (21 × 3 and 30 × 1) Type 96 25 mm AA guns
……………………..30 depth charges

……………………..Unryū and Amagi
…………………….168 (6 × 28) 120 mm (4.7 inch AA) rockets

…………………….Kasagi
…………………….120 (4 × 30) 120 ( 4.7 inch AA) rockets

all others:…….180 (6 × 30) 120 mm (4.7 inch) AA rockets

Armor:……………Deck: 25 mm (0.98 in)
……………………….Belt: Katsuragi and Aso; 50 mm (2.0 in)
……………………….all others; 46 mm (1.8 in)

Aircraft carried (as in 1942 at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands):

………………………Unryū class (Flight 1).12 + 3 (stored) Mitsubishi A6M
…………………………………………………………27 + 3 Aichi D3A
…………………………………………………………18 + 2 Nakajima B5N

……………………….Ikoma class (Flight 2) 18 + 1 (stored) Mitsubishi A6M
………………………………………………………….27 Aichi D3A
………………………………………………………….27 Nakajima B5N

………………………..Plan in refit (Amagi): 18 + 2 (stored) Mitsubishi A7M
………………………………………………………….27 Aichi B7A
………………………………………………………….6 Nakajima C6N

Notes: It is ATL 1939 and the Japanese Navy is looking to replace the Akagi, and Kaga plus expand their existing stock of aircraft carriers as they expect war with the Anglo Americans. These aircraft carriers would have to be built quickly and hopefully with some secrecy. To ensure rapidity of construction, minimal armor is to be fitted, maximum simplification is necessary and an existing proven Hiryū design is to be used.

Lessons learned from the Hiryū mean the island is starboard placed (most human beings are right dominant, this shows up in left hand driving and piloting. The aircraft carriers are equipped with a strike below fore-hanger lift and raise above aft hanger with a double decker hanger and a half arrangement very similar to British practice at this time. (1939) Unusually there is an archaic tricing arrangement for aircraft fitted. Av-gas bunkerage, smaller than Hiryu’s has a brand new automatic CO2 presurization and fire suppression system which will prove totally ineffective as the description of Katsuragi’s demise will show. These ships are floating bombs. Incredibly, the inept naval architects choose a kind of concrete that will catch fire and BURN in the presence of napalm to armor the fuel bunkers! The Americans will find this out the HARD WAY.

These flattops are fast. The first set of 3, Unryu, Amagi, Katsuragi are fitted with the same kind of cruiser machinery that powers the Soryu. It is almost too much wattage to drive the hull at 34 knots or 17.5 m/s. The turbines over-rev and can push these light “merchant scantling” hulls too fast through the water causing bow plate buckling when Unryu makes her trials in late June 1942, so speed has to be governed back to no more than 15.5 m/s or about 30 knots. Amagi and Katsuragi have similar problems.

As an aside, one of the ATL reasons these flattops are ready 3 years before OTL is that work on Shinano is pre-war deferred 1 year and the peacetime laydowns are ATL 2 years earlier.
 
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