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spence -> RE: Best way to Kill PT Boats? (8/11/2008 1:26:49 PM)
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quote:
Yeah, and how many other times during the war did anyone's DD get sunk by a depth charge blowing up from being strafed? I'd say that's a prime example of a rare occurrance.
For that matter, the concerns over oxygen fueled torpedoes was why no one but the IJN tried them, but other than in the Leyte Gulf battle AFAIK no IJN ship had them blow up on board from enemy attack.
DD's vs PT's, where both sides knew where the other was, tended to end up badly for the PT boats. The PT's worked best from ambush, not high speed, noisy gun and torpedo fights.
I think the F4F actually put a 100 lber into the DCs on that DD (Kisaragi?). But there is quite a bit of gun camera footage showing Japanese ships of varies types and sizes blowing up during a strafing attack.
As far as the torpedos are concerned the danger was very real and cost the Japanese dearly over the course of the war. Read the TROMs for IJN cruisers at Combined Fleet. IIRC Mikuma, Suzuya, Chokai, and Kinugasa may be listed amongst those ships which suffered devastating explosions of their own torpedos along with several light cruisers. A near miss by a 5" shell was enough to touch off the torpedos on one of the cruisers at Leyte Gulf.
Somebody else made the comment that "they'd never seen a ship sink because of fires". For real sailors a fire at sea is not something that goes out after a little bit posing little threat to the ship and crew. There's lots of water handy to fight a fire but it remains one of the deadliest perils of the sea even without somebody doing all they can to start, maintain and supplement the fires.
The real IJN was really no better at sinking PTs than the PTs were at sinking IJN DDs. So apparently the IJN only rarely knew where the PTs were (unlike the game). The threat posed by PTs caused a couple of "mission kills" off Guadalcanal: supply runs where the supply canisters were thrown haphazardly into the sea while the DDs took off and a completely ineffective bombardment by CAs on 13/14 November 42.
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