Apollo11
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Joined: 6/7/2001
From: Zagreb, Croatia
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Hi all,
quote:
ORIGINAL: wdolson
The center force should have caused more havoc than it did, but the southern force was doomed to fail. The southern force was not well organized, had only two BBs, the US had excellent information about where they were going and when they would arrive, and the US had time to set up a layered defense that forced the Japanese to run the gauntlet of PT boats first, then DDs, then Cruisers, and finally coming under the guns of the bombardment force covering the transports.
When the BBs opened up they did all their shooting by radar and finished off the force that had already been ravaged by the first layers of the defense.
The center force was led by one of the few officers in the IJN who knew the Code of Bushido was bunk. His father was a scholar on medieval Japan and he knew how to read and write ancient Japanese. He knew from original sources what the samurai's code really was and knew that the Code of Bushido was a politically motivated warping of the original code.
Thus he valued saving Japanese lives over stupid suicide missions. He did what damage he could and retired before his force took further damage.
There is a very good book about Leyte I read a few years back. I forget the title right now. I loaned it to my father, so I can't look.
If the center force had turned on the landing ships. They would have run into Olendorf's surface fleet that had defeated the southern force the night before. Olendorf thought Halsey was covering the San Bernardino Straits, so he wasn't positioned to deal with a force coming at him from the north, and many of his ships were low on ammo, but the center force would have been boxed into a narrow space with a very large US surface force and the CVE's off shore would be on alert to send aerial aid. The center force also did not know that Halsey had taken the bait hook line and sinker and his fast mobile forces were finishing off the carriers to the north.
If Halsey had left his battleships covering the San Bernardino Straits, the Battle Off Samar would not have happened. The big gun boys would have found out what would happen if the Yamato squared off against Iowas. I suspect the Americans would have won easily because the Japanese had to go through the Strait single file and would have emerged into a crossed T with every ship spotted on radar and by aircraft long before getting into visual range. The long range gunnery would have been the Yamato and some older Japanese BBs vs something like seven US fast BBs with better radar and in prime position.
Bill
I respectfully disagree Bill!
The Japanese had complex (again  ) plan that deliberately meant sacrifice of part (or whole) of their fleet. All was done to insure that USN is drawn away and that US landing ships are destroyed / damaged / disrupted by all means possible...
And what happens when almost everything succeeded for the Japanese?
Kurita "drops the ball" and makes a whole lot of wrong decisions for the Japanese...
His failure (and it was failure because other parts of the Japanese fleet knowingly scarified themselves for his success) is unforgiving IMHO!
Also, how he saved Japanese lives when, for example, battleship Yamato withdrew from battle in "Battle off Samar" and never turned for the US landing ships where something useful for the Japanese could have been done?
Would that be suicidal?
Sure - but Japanese fleet finally might have done something (and dying for that would mean something in war terms - not only in "Bushido" point of view)!
Few months later battleship Yamato was sent to one way suicide mission without any hope of success and meaningful duty!
So... would Japanese suicide mission against US landing ships change the war?
Of course not - it might have prolonged it for few months - the outcome was inevitable (just as the outcome was inevitable the very second Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbor - they lost the war the minute they started the war)!
Leo "Apollo11"
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 Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance! A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE
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What good are battleships? - 
) But for game purposes nobody seems to mind much as it happens to be a lot more fun. Basically, you use the for the same purpose that they were used historically. You just use them a lot more..
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