Even though these two gentlemen try their best, culling the historical record, they get some things very wrong.
1. First, radar. The SG radar actually worked. Talbot's and Blue's detectors picked up returns at the expected signal thresh-hold limits. (About 10,000 -15,000 meters for the SG rigs.). The radar operators of the destroyers, manning the interfaces, were not trained properly to assess Doppler drift; so they could not pick Mikawa's ships apart from land reflected echoes, that is they could not separate target movement from the standing wave clutter their own ship's motions' generated against surrounding land and wave reflectors.
2. Second, blame the Australians. Implicit in the two presenters' comments, though heavily masked, is the assumption that the British admiral, Crutchley, and his Australian ships, were somehow an unintended or accidental impediment. This assumption ignores three factors. The RN and the USN did not have the same “jargon”. The RN and the USN did not have the same orders formats or assumptions of standing procedures. The RN OTC (Officer tactical command.), was “hobbled”. His predecessor, Cracy, had not played well with others, (The Americans.), and had been fired. (Politics.). So; Crutchley, had British and Australian orders not to make waves with the Yanks: to tread very lightly. He was not about to bluntly tell them his mind about some of the things they were doing wrong, that his experience (Narvik, Warspite, float planes, use of, for example.) had taught him, if they had no mind to listen to him. (Turner.).
3. Third, Seaplane Tenders. Turner dismissed the submarine and (USN, not SWPAAF) aerial recon reports, since seaplane tenders could not do 21+ knots. Turner knew full well that Chitose and Chiyoda, which were reported to have been deployed in the area, were fully cap;able of 28 knots. He, instead, assumed that the Japanese went about to set up a seaplane base near Choiseul, because if “he” were the Japanese, that was what “he” would do. Turner, being Turner, assumed facts not in evidence and acted accordingly.
4, Fourth, Crutchley fails to designate chain of command properly before the action. Crutchley, it must be remembered at the time, was called away to an officer's call to go over Turner's latest series of chaos inducing instructions. I am not sure how much Turner's rows with Vandergrift and his feud with Fletcher contributed to this inopportune timing, during the middle of an amphibious operation. I am strongly reminded of the incompetent Admiral Sampson, who left Commodore Schley holding the bag at Santiago de Cuba in 1898. I will write something about that comparison in a bit.
5. Whitewash. Bode of the USS Chicago.^1
^1
As harsh as the critique of the USS Chicago's skipper was^2, there: it can be argued charitably, the Captain Bode mishandled Chicago in battle. (This will not be the last captain of that ill-fated ship, to mishandle her, for Rennell Islands will be in the Chicago's future.).His partner in incompetence was the captain of the primary target: Captain Howard Bode of the cruiser USS Chicago. Bode had actually been dining with the Admiral. It being several hours after dinner had started one must wonder how alcohol affected both their judgements. The Captain made his way back to his command, where his subordinates had done everything right. They were preparing the ship for sea, along with its escort, the destroyer USS Perkins. They had sighted the midget submarine attacking the Kuttabul, and opened fire at it.
Bode (right) too refused to believe there were submarines present. He told off his officers, commanded the Perkins to stand down, and ordered a signal made to Muirhead-Gould, apologising for firing in the Harbour. Once the Kuttabul explosion happened he changed his mind, and ordered Chicago to sea. On the way out of the Harbour they sighted the third submarine – but failed to attack it.
Bode later committed suicide over further being the wrong man in the wrong job. A few months later he mishandled Chicago so badly in the Battle of Savo Island that he was the only commander the subsequent inquiry labelled as doing the wrong thing. When he learnt what was in the court’s findings Bode shot himself.
^2
My comment: Riefkohl was overall senior officer in tactical command. Bode was the senior officer present in the southern force. Crutchley did not make that relationship, formal or clear, in his parting instructions, as an American would. He assumed seniority was the chain and would be followed as in the RN. Refer to my previous comment about how the British and American navies did not do things the same way or even speak the same technical English.During the early evening Turner recalled Crutchley to his flagship for consultations of what to do regarding Fletcher’s retreat. Crutchley came over in his flagship the Australia denuding the southern force of its commander as well as one of its three heavy cruisers. He left the commanding officer of Chicago Captain Howard D. Bode in tactical command but Bode did not have his ship take the lead position in the patrol assuming Crutchley would return bymidnight.
6. Whitewash. Specifically, Richmond Kelly Turner. The real author of the disaster: the man who should have been court-martialed for it, as Bode almost was, can be named as Richmond Kelly Turner. He was the one who set the faulty dispositions you see arrayed in the chart above, NOT Crutchley. That was not Crutchley's doing at all. It was 100% Turner. I could add that the idiotic commanders' conference, which Turner blamed, he ordered because of Fletcher's notification; to him that per the OPPLAN (And that miserable miscreant, Turner, knew this had been cooked in pre-Watchtower.), Fletcher was about to withdraw to refuel and replenish his air groups to replace lost aircraft. The officers' call is a typical CYA tactic, for a “just in case something goes wrong, we need to get our stories straight”. The odd thing is that Turner called it before the disaster. It was a “blame Fletcher” party.
I should remark, at this juncture, that Sampson had decided on an in-person in your face to yell at General Schaffter of 4th Corps. This was, after that, nitwit had bungled an overland attack on the Moro that guarded the mouth of the Santiago Fjord. Sampson pulled the armored cruiser New York out of line. He took the battleship Iowa with him, also. This left the armored cruiser, Brooklyn; the Indiana, whose engines Sampson had damaged. This left her almost a cripple in his glory hunt to shoot up San Juan, Puerto Rico. The obsolete Texas was present to man the line against Cervera's breakout. The only bright thing Sampson did, was advise Schley, that “he did not have to conform to Sampson's movements” which Schley took to mean he was in charge; a LIBERAL interpretation of USN standing orders, and the defense he used after he won the battle and was court-martialed. Before that deranged idiot, Sampson, left the blockade line, he apparently yelled at Schaffter on the ship to shore telephone. (The Americans ran a line from an aviso on the blockade line to Schaffter's headquarters at Daiquiri.). He, Sampson, later used that phone call as his excuse for leaving the line, since in his mid-tirade, Schaffter hung up on him. Hence, Sampson insisted on the face to face to thrash issues out. HOWEVER: the Cuban insurgents reported to the American fleet that Cervera was raising steam. That report was before Sampson decided to visit Schaffter in person.
Needless to say, at Savo Island, you have three reports (one from an American sub, and two from the Australians who flew air searches. for MacArthur's air force) on Mikawa's movements just BEFORE your Turner mandated CYA officers' call before Savo Island? Unlike witless Sampson, who left competent Schley behind to win the Battle of Santiago Bay, Turner took everybody with a clue out of the equation, in an analogous “enemy approaches” situation.
There are other myths in the video, but these are the major ones that needed correction.
Hyths
7. The biggest one is that the Japanese trained for this action as part of their Kantai Kassen drill. They knew how to night fight.
8. There is some truth in that the 1930s Americans did not drill much in night actions. It is not that they had not tried. They had. What the commenters in the video did not know or failed to explain, was that the USN discovered that in a night action (Fleet Problem X forward), fleet control disintegrated and what happened was a knife fight in a curtained phone booth. Blue on blue and Orange on orange was just as likely as Blue on Orange. Target track was a problem when target ID was difficult. The formal line of battle and distributed gunfire modus was a complete joke. It is a myth that USN tacticians did not know ambush torpedo attack tactics, followed by gunfire against the burning cripples. This sequence was the only method in 1942 that worked, before the radar kinks were worked out.
9. Not mentioned and not explained was why did the Japanese use searchlights, when they had floatplanes with parachute flares that lit the battle-space so that Allied warships were constantly illuminated to be shot at. Chokai used her searchlights to fingerpoint out specific targets to be gunned down by every Japanese ship present. This was Mikawa's way to distribute his gunfire. It was an exceedingly clever distribution of fire method drill to be used in night fighting. The Americans never did catch on until post-war.
10. Mikawa kept it simple, Susie. Even so, about mid-battle, his “follow the leader” line tactics broke apart, as ships' tracks confusion and ID problems intruded. Part of the reason Mikawa did not try for the transports was that he had to waste precious time rounding his ships up to reform his line. That hour or so, wasted, made it likely that he would be caught by Fletcher before he pulled out of range. Maybe, Mikawa should have pushed his luck? He chose not.
11. 90% of the winning of a battle is successful superior recon and the resultant situation awareness. Savo Island is the classic lesson for this dictum.
12. Surprise is the advantage conferred by 11.
13. Surprise imposes confusion. HMAS Canberra was confused; so why blame her for not alerting the Allied fleet?
14. USS Chicago (Sydney Harbor incident above illustrates her problem.), had an OOD who did not react to Canberra's plight ahead of him. The only acceptable explanation was that Bode poisoned the ship's culture into inaction. His own cowardice might be an issue nin this?
15. USS Patterson. She was the only Allied warship on the ball. She tried. She tried hard. Commander Walker fought his ship to the limit.
16. Vincennes, Quincy, and Astoria? Gunfire and thunder of naval rifles their crews saw and heard? OODs see it and do nothing. Now this finally becomes Riefkohl's problem after his OOD wakes him up. Riefkohl was aware that the Japanese were coming. Torpedo explosions from the south were actually felt through the keels of the American cruisers even before the gunfire was seen. Riefkohl demonstrated complete bafflement as he reported to his bridge. He tries to IFF for clarification. The Japanese thank him with a storm of gunfire that hits his line.
17. Training can mitigate. Lack of training exacerbates. Blaming Riefkohl for his own ship, is permissible. Not for the whole fleet. Crutchley, technically, is the fault point, but remember what I wrote about his orders from his superiors concerning the Americans? In effect, the lack of training goes all the way up the chain and eventually lands at Harold Stark, who screwed the USN up between 1939 -1941 as CNO. He and his, had two years of hot naval war to examine. He and his knew USN fleet deficeincies. As a concrete example, ONI had specs on the Type 93 torpedo before the War. Before that nitwit, Stark, was ever CNO, he was Bu-Ord. HE pooh-poohed the notion of the Type 93. "We cannot make one, so the IJN cannot." This was in spite of the fact that a certain USN officer, Ralph Waldo Christie, during that time, played with Navol torpedoes that promised similar Type 93 performance. Another more recent example? There was an observer with the RN, named Royal Ingersoll (Future CINCLANT Actual), who watched the FAA do a number on Taranto. He even went to the trouble to find out how a Swordfish could drop torpedoes into shallow waters less than 40 feet deep and have them run hot to hit Italian battleships. Ingersoll mentions in his letter to ONI, the case of Pearl Harbor. How it might be a good idea to rig torpedo nets. He further mentions that a cable reel system for the Mark 13 torpedo, as the British fitted to the Swordfish to control drops, fitted to the Devastator might cure the breakups, cold sinks, and broaches that USN torpedo bomber pilots complained happened when they tried to drop their own fish. Yup. Stark pooh-poohed that, too.
So, no-training and failing to adapt to the new war (night fighting), tactics which the British and Italians used against each other was also his fault. Two years, that cretin wasted. How many American sailors died? How many battles did the USN lose?
18. Getting planes and AVGAS off the cruisers might have been a good idea? Except that you needed them for scouting. The Americans, like the Japanese, expected to use cruiser float planes to scout and spot the fall of shot. Later, after Savo Island, Norm Scott, tried to use cruiser float planes at Cape Esperance, as the Japanese had done at Savo Island, but with all of the other deficiencies Admiral Scott sought to remediate, 2 years worth in less than 40 days, it was not possible to fix it all as will happen at First Guadalcanal, where an inept Callaghan got him killed. So... at Savo and sometimes later (Rennell Island.), an American cruiser would turn into a bonfire, as Astoria did.
19. How much was Fletcher to blame? Turner did his best to tar Fletcher with dereliction. I do not agree with the commentators that Fletcher ran away and abandoned his cover mission. That did not happen. What hap;pened, as John Lundstrom goes to great pains to show in "Black Shoe Admiral", was that son of a bitch, Turner, played a fiddle game with commo traffic, addressed to Ghormley, to Nimtiz as second addressee and to King, to shift the blame for the Savo Island disaster onto the carriers and their commander. Fletcher did not order the transports to leave. That was ALL Turner. Fletcher hovered just outside Betty range of Rabaul to refuel and to take on replacement fighters. Fletcher fully expected to fight an aircraft carrier battle in the coming days for Guadalcanal. He could not fight one if the Japanese land based air damaged and dedecked his flattops, now could he?
Guess who won that battle, outnumbered and outgunned, and saved the Marines? It was not that idiot, Turner.
20. Did Mikawa muff it? I am not sure. Mikawa's fuel state was terrible. He had racked up serious battle damage on Chokai. If he hanged around, Fletcher would have caught him, because Fletcher reversed course and tried that following morning to find Mikawa. Would three cruisers sunk be worth six shot up transports? No. Again our second guessing commentators are leaving out crucial vital information that is relevant to the facts as the participants knew and acted upon them. That is part of the myths that obscure the hyths.
21. Guadalcanal would not have been abandoned. Nimitz would have found a way. Again I disagree with the commentators. Savo Island was actually the Kasserine Pass of the USN. Commanders would have been relieved and WERE relieved (Ghormley for health, Fletcher for wounds, suffered in action.). Politicians in uniform survived (Turner and Merritt.) and the war ground on.
statistics: Posted by Carbon1234 — 11:01 AM - Today — Replies 1 — Views 17