WI: Torpedo Nets at Pearl Harbor

Okay does this save the Oklahoma, how about California? Even the Arizona was struck by at least one torpedo. Without torpedo damage how long does it take to get the fleet repaired?
 
Actually, the Japanese planned for nets: there were 40 Kates armed with torpedoes in the first wave, and some fish would've blown holes in the nets for the Kates right behind them. A few Kate pilots were willing to crash-dive into the nets if necessary.

And Arizona wasn't hit by a torpedo. A recent USN/National Park Service survey of the wreck (shown on Discovery Channel's Unsolved History: The Myths of Pearl Harbor) found no sign of torpedo damage or a bomb down the funnel.
 

Markus

Banned
To answer the PO question, bomb damage was not serious on any ship but Arizona. IIRC fixing the damage took not much time but since the ships were in the yard they got various upgrades(triple-A, radar). That took three to four month, about as much time as it took to just refloat the ships that had been "sunk" by torpedoes.


Actually, the Japanese planned for nets: there were 40 Kates armed with torpedoes in the first wave, and some fish would've blown holes in the nets for the Kates right behind them. A few Kate pilots were willing to crash-dive into the nets if necessary.

Does a torpedo detonate when it hits a net or does it just get stuck? If a detonation is likely wouldn´t one lay a double layer net?
 

Blair152

Banned
Okay does this save the Oklahoma, how about California? Even the Arizona was struck by at least one torpedo. Without torpedo damage how long does it take to get the fleet repaired?
There were torpedo nets at Pearl Harbor. They just weren't in place on the
morning of December 7, 1941. As for USS Arizona, having a torpedo net wouldn't have helped. Yamamoto converted two of Nagato's sixteen inch shells into aerial bombs. Maybe having a crew on the antiaircraft guns would have helped. Maybe, like the Nevada, if Oklahoma, Arizona, and California,
had been able to beach themselves, they would have survived. Maybe if the
the dumbass lieutenant on duty that morning had taken the warnings from the radar operators on Diamond Head seriously, instead of dismissing them as routine flight of B-17s, the battleships could have been saved. California
was later salvaged. Oklahoma was too far gone and scuttled, like the first USS Walker, a month or two earlier.
 
As for USS Arizona, having a torpedo net wouldn't have helped.

Indeed. The USS Arizona was hit by a bomb from "Kate" between Turrets #1 & 2 and the explosion — which destroyed the forward part of Arizona — was due to the detonation of the ammunition magazine and ripped appart the ship.
 

Blair152

Banned
Indeed. The USS Arizona was hit by a bomb from "Kate" between Turrets #1 & 2 and the explosion — which destroyed the forward part of Arizona — was due to the detonation of the ammunition magazine and ripped appart the ship.
There were over eleven hundred crewmen on the Arizona. Part of the 1100+
crewmen were the members of the Arizona's band, which had won a Battle of the Bands the night before. Their reward? They were allowed to sleep in the next morning. Unfortunately, the Navy wasn't counting on the Japanese
attacking Pearl Harbor. The bomb, as I said before, was a converted shell from the Japanese battleship Nagato.
 
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