waynec
Posts: 299
Joined: 6/5/2002
From: Colorado, littleton
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quote:
quote:
ORIGINAL: Honda
A few months ago, I saw a documentery on Discovery, I think, about a what-if scenario regarding PH. The idea was to see what would've happened if USN took the warning before the daybreak (and took it seriously) and came out to play. The conclusions were that it would've been a catstrophe for USN. The main reasons were:
1. The old doctrine that BB was the queen of the seas was still hard-coded in Kimmel and BB fleet would have probably been sent out to engage the KB
2. After being hit, US vessels would suffer much more from flooding and after sinking they would stay sunk on the ocean floor
3. USN AAA was not as deadly as later in the war
..
there are 2 things to consider:
some Kates carried 800kg bombs instead of torps, which have to be dropped from 9000ft or more to reliably penetrate, the rest had torps modified for shallow waters ie. not very good vs maneuvering targets. level bombing against moving targets sucks, as you know and Vals can't hurt BB armor. that's IF they can find the fleet.
agree the level bombers would have a problem against moving ships. AAA was standard for the time ie arizona has 8 open mount 5"/25 manual feed aa guns (4 per side) and 8 .50cal HMG which were found to be useless. some BBs had four quad AA guns additionally which were not very good either. i think there was only 1 aa fire director per side which meant they could only engage 2 targets simultaneously. as we saw in later battles, this would be totally inadequate against a multiple targets at multiple attack directions. the DDs would be concerned with the large number of japanese submarines patrolling in the area.
if the fleet sortied, the first recon planes over the harbor (which reported the carriers being gone) would have reported this. the first wave had 40 KATEs with torpedoes and 51 VALs. granted the VALs would not cause significant damage to the BBs but could beat up the cruisers and escorts and take out the airfields. the second wave had 54 KATEs that would have to be reconfigured (different munition racks had to be installed for the torpedoes) and 80 VALs. this reconfiguration would take abut 1 hour and they could get the second wave off before the first returned.
let's say the recon plane sends back to KB (at 0615) the US fleet is getting up steam (on orders from the reaction to the WARD report). the japs still launch the first wave (0615) and lets say the ships get up to speed quickly and start to sortie by 0700 which is probably unreasonable for the BBs. that means the channel is clogged with ships, the BBs may be starting to move when the first wave hits at 0745. if the japanese do NOT rearm the second wave, they may catch ships stacked up do to sinking ships in the channel. these could be CAs, CLs and DDs which could be taken out in the first wave. it's not a very wide channel.
bottom line (and i have studied this quite a bit) by 0600 on 07dec41 it was inevitable that what happen happen. arizona probably would not have blown up but OTOH pearl harbor could have been blocked for a month or more by sunken ships. and, most important and empasized about nagumo at midway (SHATTERED SWORD), kimmel was a product of his training and tactics and he stated he would not sortie the fleet without air escort from his carriers. he could not trust the army to provide air cover once the fleet sailed. it was the army job to defend the fleet IN PORT and defend the installations on oahu.
now if the fleet had advance warning and was at sea on the morning of 07dec41 well...
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RE: Pearl Harbor Alerted - 
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