In the case of USS Tennessee, she was taken in hand TWICE. First time, she was made "operational" so she could defend against a possible Japanese attack on the US west coast. Her AAA and her artillery was upgraded to the latest marks available, her incomplete radar suite was fixed, the pass through leak points and topside damage repaired and her superstructure cut down (cage masts removed for example). She was not battle worthy as of March 1942, but could be "fightable" if needed. It was necessary to take that de-annealed rear hull of the old ship and replate it completely.
I mean, yeah, I know about the second visit to the yard. But clearly, that was a
modernization, not just a more through repair job. Tennessee took no torpedo hits, after all. As regards "battle worthy," perhaps this is a semantic point; but the Navy sent her out on patrol in February-March and it wasn't just a training patrol: they thought she could give battle. Again, there wasn't a
blazing rush to get her (or Maryland) out, in that neither ship was in danger of sinking.
Peacetime thinking or rather more specifically "Victorian Era Navy thinking". Look good is more important than shoot good.
Well, let's be fair here: It wasn't THAT bad. For all of its mindset and its flaws, the USN on December 6, 1941 was much more capable of giving (efficient) battle than the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet of the 1880's was. Because even during the war, ship's inspections were held.
Back to Stark:
Correct information. British torps were dropped at the 30 meter line, so goddamn Stark, too, because he KNEW it and did not order Kimmel to deploy the nets as he should have.
I've never been impressed by Stark, and I am far from the only one. Replacing him with King was a giant step forward.
Stark seems to have been genuinely concerned at first when the Taranto reports came in. He queried Richardson, who initially responded as if Stark was asking him about *submarine* torpdo attacks. Richardson was surely right that a sub attack within the harbor was going to be hugely difficult. The fact that it did not even seem to occur to Richardson to address an *aerial* torpedo attack shows that deep, down, he just did not think it was possible. This, if nothing else, really puts to bed the lingering notion that if FDR had kept Richardson in place, Pearl Harbor would have turned out differently. Roosevelt treated Richardson unjustly, no question (he was certainly right on the narrow point he got fired for making, that Pearl was greatly inferior to San Diego as a home port for PACFLT), but FDR did him an enormous favor by not having him in charge of the Pacific Fleet on December 7, 1941.
But eventually, Richardson and other skeptics seem to have won Stark over. Intellectually, they might admit that shallow torpedo atack was POSSIBLE, but not at Pearl Harbor, and not by the Japanese, who might be good fighters but just not as clever or technically advanced as the Brits or the Germans.