Yup instead of too little too late, it was too much too late.
If the Kaps had been able to pivot those resources into carriers and new planes, it would have been a very different war. As it was, they built the best battleships in the world, right after battleships were made strategically irrelevant
Battleships weren't "irrelevant", just useful for all the shit Japan didn't need to do like coastal bombardments, combat in inland seas, and convoy escorts. Okay, Japan actually DID badly need convoy escorts, but they weren't about to send the biggest targets in the ocean basically alone to the south pacific for that, you need more support ships for that to become viable.
Battleships became too expensive to justify how useful they were, and that's different to becoming outright useless.
They weren't useless, but they were strategically irrelevant, they did not matter in the big picture any more. The Japs wasted what use they could have been put to, but they couldn't be used to change the course of the war after air superiority
More or less a complete disregard for the practice in the early years, followed by "oh fuck this is important" and STILL not doing shit, followed by "shit is about to completely collapse" and some reform
they used cruisers because all of their transports got sunk because they didn't design any destroyers for escort use and had to use destroyers as transports
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/june/why-japans-anti-submarine-warfare-failed >Before the fall of 1941, only one officer was assigned in the GHQ section for the entire duty of rear-line defense. With war imminent, the rear-line defense duty became the care of two officers: one for mining and anti-aircraft defense and the other for protection of shipping. >In the headquarters of the Yokosuka Naval Station, whose area of responsibility included the entire eastern and southern coast of Honshu (600 miles) and from Tokyo Bay down to Iwo Jima (700 miles), there was only one officer who attended shipping protection. This officer was called “Staff Officer for Education,” as he was designated to the administration of various educational institutions. >Until April 10, 1942 the Japanese Navy had no unit whose duty it was to escort merchant vessels. On that date, two escort groups were activated: the 1st Escort Group consisted of ten old destroyers, two torpedo boats and five converted gunboats to escort merchant vessels sailing the 2500 mile sea lanes between Singapore and the Japanese homeland; and the 2nd Escort Group consisted of four old destroyers, two torpedo boats and one converted gunboat to take care of military supply line between Yokosuka and Truk. >On November 15, 1943, the Grand Escort Command Headquarters was created to exercise supervision and operational command over all of shipping protection. Upon creation, it had under its command less than 50 ships of 800 tons and above, including four converted gun-boats and several destroyers so obsolete as to be incapable of ocean sailing. Only four destroyers were organized into a Destroyer Group. All other ocean-going escorts were administratively independent of each other. There was neither unified tactical doctrine nor unified communication training between these individual escorts.
Captcha: PR4Y4 (Japanese merchantmen)
How the hell do you ignore convoy protection this fucking much? Japan was on the Allied side during the Great War; they should've been taking lotsa notes.
they had an okay doctrine to beat the USA battlefleet on their side of the pasific
they sunk a good part of the battle fleet in Hawaii and never figured out that maybe they have to reconsider their doctrine
They also didn't have anywhere near enough ships to escort their convoys.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
The Navy actually had one of the best doctrines of a maritime power and committed to it in a way a lot other nations did not. Frankly, the USN did so well in 1942 through a lot of luck and the IJN should have done better.
>that is for people who aren't samurai, I am a samurai, I will sink 3 American battleships by myself not guard a stinky filthy merchant
Yes they were that dogmatic.
Army sucked Samurai cock. The Navy sucked Mahan's cock. If its not one decisive battle like Tsushima why invest into was the standard thinking of the time. Yamamoto got a lot of shit for consistently reminding GHQ that the Americans would not give up like the Russians since the Americans could just replace the losses with better ships.
How the hell do you ignore convoy protection this fucking much? Japan was on the Allied side during the Great War; they should've been taking lotsa notes.
A mixture of arrogance and
>As of December 8, 1941, the Japanese merchant vessels were distributed, in the way of use, as follows:*
Army use 519 ships 2,160,500 gross tons
Navy use 482 ships 1,740,200 gross tons
Civil use 1,528 ships 2,436,300 gross tons
Total 2,529 ships 6,337,000 gross tons
>As has been already explained, the president of the Economic Planning Board demanded that at least 3,000,000 gross tons would have to be retained constantly for civil use. This was made impossible at the outset of the war due to an extra shipping demand by the Army and Navy
Even at the start of the war Japanese shipping was in a dire state. Slowing down the flow of materials via convoying was seen as unacceptable.
Their carriers were already sailing without aircraft on them, and their aircraft were being piloted by fresh recruits. More carriers wouldn't have done shit.
the Yamotos keels were laid in 1937, 1938, and 1940. If the Japs had pivoted to carriers before the Musashi launched in 1942, they would have had ample planes and men and Midway would have gone very differently.
Battleships weren't "irrelevant", just useful for all the shit Japan didn't need to do like coastal bombardments, combat in inland seas, and convoy escorts. Okay, Japan actually DID badly need convoy escorts, but they weren't about to send the biggest targets in the ocean basically alone to the south pacific for that, you need more support ships for that to become viable.
Battleships became too expensive to justify how useful they were, and that's different to becoming outright useless.
Battleships were extremely useful and could have been pivotal in numerous naval battles. They just usually weren't specifically BECAUSE they were so threatening every admiral took extreme measures to avoid engaging battleships on anything but dominating terms. I mean, they were pivotal in numerous naval battles, including the one Musashi was sunk at since the American southern force of Battleships annihilated the Japanese Southern Force coming up to attack the landings at the Phillipines. Yamato failed because of a suicidal destroyer torpedo charge forced it to disengage as well. And Midway could have ended with a gun duel between Japanese heavy guns versus escorts and carriers as well. Battleships only truly became strategically irrelevant when all weather strike aircraft became a thing, and have never actually become tactically irrelevant, just not cost effective. The value of a battleship is a lot of firepower in one place, but ASMs push that cost vs value back to a range where you either want to risk much smaller, cheaper ships, or none and just use saturation strikes from carriers 3000 miles away instead.
To be honest using old hulls like those as modern barges for missiles might work simply because anything short of a Granite isn't going to do shit to the actual superstructure. Particularly the Iowas which are made of 100% munitions grade armor steel. Anything short of a casaba howitzer isn't going to get into the machinery spaces. So you could use it as a giant battery and radar post with lots of space for spare radar gear if it gets damaged. The weird spaced armor on the Iowas with their inclined belt and outer hull around it make them a real bitch for modern missiles to penetrate unless their have fuckoff huge shaped charges.
nishimura's fleet was made up of outdated ww1 junk and one of them was sunk by a destroyer. they wouldn't have gotten anywhere even if none of oldendorf's battleships had been there.
That's kind of fair but the American fleet was also made up of mostly WW1 and post WW1 vintage stuff they just did a better job of modernizing them. Like the only reason that fleet didn't also go north is that most of the big ships were way too slow.
>If the Kaps had been able to pivot those resources into carriers and new planes, it would have been a very different war
If the Japs had put those resources into carriers and planes they'd have, for the sake of argument, 4 extra fleet carriers which in 1944 would mean exactly dick because their pilot training, pilot recovery, and damage control would still be shit, because all of those things were the result of cultural failures, not doctrinal failures.
plus, ironically, the US battleships would have been given a much longer leash and looked better in comparison
And even if you could somehow snap your fingers and give the IJN those carriers in ‘41, there was zero goddamn chance they would have made it further east than Hawaii, and certainly couldn’t capture Hawaii. End result: the USN turtles up for a couple years while they build up the Essex murderball. Japan still gets nuked.
I think battleships with American AA were not obsolete but battleships without American AA were obsolete. similar to tanks with APS vs tanks without APS
US WWII Navy AA is overestimated.
Even more BB AA is overestimated while they themselves maybe be tough to crack they didn't participated in air battle when primary targets is Aircraft Carrier.
> Okay, Japan actually DID badly need convoy escorts
DECISIVU BATTARU BLING GREAT HONARU OPON GRORIOUS NIPPON DAI KESSEN HIROHITO BANZAI NO NEEDU TIN CANNU BOATSU
*commits sudoku*
They were a huge morale boost and a symbol of naval supremacy. All navies had capital ships built specifically for this reason. the germans had the tirpitz, the italians had the roma, the british had the hood, the americans had the iowa and so on. The only problem is that they built them too many, one was sufficient, three were a waste of steel and without the philippines for the japs every ton counted
>the IJN commits to it's ride or die, no turning back, decisive battle. >Chickens out at the decisive moment.
Many such cases.
Japan managed to go the whole war without actually committing these ships to anything and wasted multiple opportunities.
They were not aggressive enough, despite centering a strategy of aggression.
Modernized AAA would give it something like: >36-42 CIWS from 12.7mm-25mm >6 Phalanx systems >8 Oto matics >4-6 Laser systems >Would have enough left over space to double all of the above >Could also add 3-4 Ticonderoga's worth of missiles by removing rear turret
>alternate timeline >Yamato survived the war in port instead of being sent on suicide mission >somehow survived the post war years until re-commissioned into JMSDF >modernized and turned into a guided missile battleship
We love to compare the Iowa class to Yamato, I know, but its kind of crazy to think they were much closer to the launch date of the North Carolinas. And even if they weren't the standards Yamato was designed to steamroll, I don't think that fight would go well for the americans. At least in early war configuration.
The Yamato hit some ships at Leyte Gulf, but that's pretty much offset by being chased off by a bunch of destroyers and some planes that may or may not have been carrying ammo at that point in time.
The tragedy, though, is that we never got to see the Yamato inevitably get dumpstered by Iowa-class battleships because Halsey took the obvious bait to the north and just kinda left without telling anyone.
>Colorado >doesn't have the radar suite of the Iowas >literally the least modernized of the class >dabbing on Yamato
Cmon anon, Iowa vs Yamato is a debate that will last forever, with Colorado it's non chance
Iowa vs Yamato is a toss-up. Anything earlier than Iowa isn’t.
Standards get fucking annihilated.
The South Dakota’s put up a good fight, but eventually get sunk.
Same for North Carolina, but more fire.
Washington seethes at South Dakota so hard that she summons the ghost of Ching Lee and fiddles Yamato.
If they'd hate America AA doctrine and weapons they would have been a real bitch to kill. Also it they hadn't mistaken Taffy 3 for a full fleet they could have at least fucked up those beaches pretty good. They were meant to wade into a line of standard US battleships and fuck them up, but that never happened.
Turns out that when your entire doctrine and war planning centers around repeating a fuck up that the Russians committed and is widely known the enemy tends not to fuck up in the same manner. Unless they are Russians of course.
Yamato was in the fleet for Pearl Harbor. After the attack they should brought it in close and they'd be able to force the entire island chain to surrender to about 500 soldiers who'd mostly be Civil Affairs, due to its ability to shell anyone that caused trouble. Once you got your own land based aircraft on Hawaii it would buy another year or so (not that would make diff in long run but you never know). Maybe that would prevent Hitler feeling a need to declare war on USA, if USA suddenly had to get busy in Pacific. Also coulda/shoulda used in Salomons.
Not capital ships with ANY aircover were ever sunk by aircraft alone in WW2.
>Yamato was in the fleet for Pearl Harbor. >Commissioned: 16 December 1941
Even if it was, the Japanese fleet had absolutely zero staying power in the vicinity of Pearl, and any claim otherwise is operating off video game logic.
the Yamotos keels were laid in 1937, 1938, and 1940. If the Japs had pivoted to carriers before the Musashi launched in 1942, they would have had ample planes and men and Midway would have gone very differently.
>ample planes and men
More carriers wasn't going to suddenly mean more trained pilots. The IJN was seriously considering leaving the Shokaku and Zuikaku behind during Pearl Harbor because there wasn't enough pilots with sufficient experience to outfit them. They decided then to begin pulling trainers out of the schools to make up the difference.
You're probably looking at late 43 early 44 levels of Japanese shipping lost in 42. Unironically. The US hit SO many torps that just didn't detonate, it only wouldn't be late 44 levels due to the lack of subs on station and airbases to strike merchant marines with.
They had the strategic effect of the USN overestimating the japs because they, too, believed in the importance of battleships, and thus the USN won battles they were overprepared for. Many such cases.
>CARRIERS CARRIERS CARRIERS CARRIERS
fuck this History Channel horseshit
Carrier aircraft couldn't fight at close range, at night, in fog and in heavy cloud, not until the late 50s when all-weather strike carrier aircraft were available, which was when battleships were immediately binned
To be fair, they did .
Yup instead of too little too late, it was too much too late.
If the Kaps had been able to pivot those resources into carriers and new planes, it would have been a very different war. As it was, they built the best battleships in the world, right after battleships were made strategically irrelevant
Battleships weren't "irrelevant", just useful for all the shit Japan didn't need to do like coastal bombardments, combat in inland seas, and convoy escorts. Okay, Japan actually DID badly need convoy escorts, but they weren't about to send the biggest targets in the ocean basically alone to the south pacific for that, you need more support ships for that to become viable.
Battleships became too expensive to justify how useful they were, and that's different to becoming outright useless.
They weren't useless, but they were strategically irrelevant, they did not matter in the big picture any more. The Japs wasted what use they could have been put to, but they couldn't be used to change the course of the war after air superiority
>They weren't useless, but they were strategically irrelevant
This and this entire thread is all in hindsight.
They were still stuck on the Russo-Japanese War mindset. Where they're battleships defeated the Russian Navy.
>convoy escorts
What *was* Jap doctrien for convoy escorts? We used DE's, because all we had to contend with were U-boats. What did they use?
More or less a complete disregard for the practice in the early years, followed by "oh fuck this is important" and STILL not doing shit, followed by "shit is about to completely collapse" and some reform
they used cruisers because all of their transports got sunk because they didn't design any destroyers for escort use and had to use destroyers as transports
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/june/why-japans-anti-submarine-warfare-failed
>Before the fall of 1941, only one officer was assigned in the GHQ section for the entire duty of rear-line defense. With war imminent, the rear-line defense duty became the care of two officers: one for mining and anti-aircraft defense and the other for protection of shipping.
>In the headquarters of the Yokosuka Naval Station, whose area of responsibility included the entire eastern and southern coast of Honshu (600 miles) and from Tokyo Bay down to Iwo Jima (700 miles), there was only one officer who attended shipping protection. This officer was called “Staff Officer for Education,” as he was designated to the administration of various educational institutions.
>Until April 10, 1942 the Japanese Navy had no unit whose duty it was to escort merchant vessels. On that date, two escort groups were activated: the 1st Escort Group consisted of ten old destroyers, two torpedo boats and five converted gunboats to escort merchant vessels sailing the 2500 mile sea lanes between Singapore and the Japanese homeland; and the 2nd Escort Group consisted of four old destroyers, two torpedo boats and one converted gunboat to take care of military supply line between Yokosuka and Truk.
>On November 15, 1943, the Grand Escort Command Headquarters was created to exercise supervision and operational command over all of shipping protection. Upon creation, it had under its command less than 50 ships of 800 tons and above, including four converted gun-boats and several destroyers so obsolete as to be incapable of ocean sailing. Only four destroyers were organized into a Destroyer Group. All other ocean-going escorts were administratively independent of each other. There was neither unified tactical doctrine nor unified communication training between these individual escorts.
Captcha: PR4Y4 (Japanese merchantmen)
How the hell do you ignore convoy protection this fucking much? Japan was on the Allied side during the Great War; they should've been taking lotsa notes.
they had an okay doctrine to beat the USA battlefleet on their side of the pasific
they sunk a good part of the battle fleet in Hawaii and never figured out that maybe they have to reconsider their doctrine
They also didn't have anywhere near enough ships to escort their convoys.
The Navy actually had one of the best doctrines of a maritime power and committed to it in a way a lot other nations did not. Frankly, the USN did so well in 1942 through a lot of luck and the IJN should have done better.
Army sucked Samurai cock. The Navy sucked Mahan's cock. If its not one decisive battle like Tsushima why invest into was the standard thinking of the time. Yamamoto got a lot of shit for consistently reminding GHQ that the Americans would not give up like the Russians since the Americans could just replace the losses with better ships.
>that is for people who aren't samurai, I am a samurai, I will sink 3 American battleships by myself not guard a stinky filthy merchant
Yes they were that dogmatic.
Great article.
A mixture of arrogance and
>As of December 8, 1941, the Japanese merchant vessels were distributed, in the way of use, as follows:*
Army use 519 ships 2,160,500 gross tons
Navy use 482 ships 1,740,200 gross tons
Civil use 1,528 ships 2,436,300 gross tons
Total 2,529 ships 6,337,000 gross tons
>As has been already explained, the president of the Economic Planning Board demanded that at least 3,000,000 gross tons would have to be retained constantly for civil use. This was made impossible at the outset of the war due to an extra shipping demand by the Army and Navy
Even at the start of the war Japanese shipping was in a dire state. Slowing down the flow of materials via convoying was seen as unacceptable.
> What *was* Jap doctrien for convoy escorts?
“This is NOT HONORABU. Therefore we’re not going to do it. Army delenda est”
Roughly.
That's the funniest but most accurate 14 word description of the Japanese military I've heard in quite some time.
Their carriers were already sailing without aircraft on them, and their aircraft were being piloted by fresh recruits. More carriers wouldn't have done shit.
the Yamotos keels were laid in 1937, 1938, and 1940. If the Japs had pivoted to carriers before the Musashi launched in 1942, they would have had ample planes and men and Midway would have gone very differently.
Battleships were extremely useful and could have been pivotal in numerous naval battles. They just usually weren't specifically BECAUSE they were so threatening every admiral took extreme measures to avoid engaging battleships on anything but dominating terms. I mean, they were pivotal in numerous naval battles, including the one Musashi was sunk at since the American southern force of Battleships annihilated the Japanese Southern Force coming up to attack the landings at the Phillipines. Yamato failed because of a suicidal destroyer torpedo charge forced it to disengage as well. And Midway could have ended with a gun duel between Japanese heavy guns versus escorts and carriers as well. Battleships only truly became strategically irrelevant when all weather strike aircraft became a thing, and have never actually become tactically irrelevant, just not cost effective. The value of a battleship is a lot of firepower in one place, but ASMs push that cost vs value back to a range where you either want to risk much smaller, cheaper ships, or none and just use saturation strikes from carriers 3000 miles away instead.
To be honest using old hulls like those as modern barges for missiles might work simply because anything short of a Granite isn't going to do shit to the actual superstructure. Particularly the Iowas which are made of 100% munitions grade armor steel. Anything short of a casaba howitzer isn't going to get into the machinery spaces. So you could use it as a giant battery and radar post with lots of space for spare radar gear if it gets damaged. The weird spaced armor on the Iowas with their inclined belt and outer hull around it make them a real bitch for modern missiles to penetrate unless their have fuckoff huge shaped charges.
nishimura's fleet was made up of outdated ww1 junk and one of them was sunk by a destroyer. they wouldn't have gotten anywhere even if none of oldendorf's battleships had been there.
That's kind of fair but the American fleet was also made up of mostly WW1 and post WW1 vintage stuff they just did a better job of modernizing them. Like the only reason that fleet didn't also go north is that most of the big ships were way too slow.
> it would have been a very different war.
No. No it wouldn’t have. Not without alien space bats
>If the Kaps had been able to pivot those resources into carriers and new planes, it would have been a very different war
If the Japs had put those resources into carriers and planes they'd have, for the sake of argument, 4 extra fleet carriers which in 1944 would mean exactly dick because their pilot training, pilot recovery, and damage control would still be shit, because all of those things were the result of cultural failures, not doctrinal failures.
plus, ironically, the US battleships would have been given a much longer leash and looked better in comparison
And even if you could somehow snap your fingers and give the IJN those carriers in ‘41, there was zero goddamn chance they would have made it further east than Hawaii, and certainly couldn’t capture Hawaii. End result: the USN turtles up for a couple years while they build up the Essex murderball. Japan still gets nuked.
I think battleships with American AA were not obsolete but battleships without American AA were obsolete. similar to tanks with APS vs tanks without APS
US WWII Navy AA is overestimated.
Even more BB AA is overestimated while they themselves maybe be tough to crack they didn't participated in air battle when primary targets is Aircraft Carrier.
Over a dozen DP guns and fifty Bofors 40mms is not obsolete at all
> Okay, Japan actually DID badly need convoy escorts
DECISIVU BATTARU BLING GREAT HONARU OPON GRORIOUS NIPPON DAI KESSEN HIROHITO BANZAI NO NEEDU TIN CANNU BOATSU
*commits sudoku*
They were a huge morale boost and a symbol of naval supremacy. All navies had capital ships built specifically for this reason. the germans had the tirpitz, the italians had the roma, the british had the hood, the americans had the iowa and so on. The only problem is that they built them too many, one was sufficient, three were a waste of steel and without the philippines for the japs every ton counted
Captcha: G4Y000
Their dogshit 25mm AA didn't help either, that's for sure.
The messy turret castle look on the Japanese battleships is so fucking cool
>the IJN commits to it's ride or die, no turning back, decisive battle.
>Chickens out at the decisive moment.
Many such cases.
Japan managed to go the whole war without actually committing these ships to anything and wasted multiple opportunities.
They were not aggressive enough, despite centering a strategy of aggression.
The IJN knew they were already fucked, might as well go out with some cool-looking ships
Modernized AAA would give it something like:
>36-42 CIWS from 12.7mm-25mm
>6 Phalanx systems
>8 Oto matics
>4-6 Laser systems
>Would have enough left over space to double all of the above
>Could also add 3-4 Ticonderoga's worth of missiles by removing rear turret
>alternate timeline
>Yamato survived the war in port instead of being sent on suicide mission
>somehow survived the post war years until re-commissioned into JMSDF
>modernized and turned into a guided missile battleship
>turned into a guided missile battleship
Remove 2nd turret, replace with fuck ton of VLS
Bonus edition: make nuclear powered
muvluv moment
>IJN Yamato destroyed more aircraft from blowing up than her AA shot down
>when you spend more time on "muh warrior samurai spirit" than weapons R&D
We love to compare the Iowa class to Yamato, I know, but its kind of crazy to think they were much closer to the launch date of the North Carolinas. And even if they weren't the standards Yamato was designed to steamroll, I don't think that fight would go well for the americans. At least in early war configuration.
The Yamato hit some ships at Leyte Gulf, but that's pretty much offset by being chased off by a bunch of destroyers and some planes that may or may not have been carrying ammo at that point in time.
The tragedy, though, is that we never got to see the Yamato inevitably get dumpstered by Iowa-class battleships because Halsey took the obvious bait to the north and just kinda left without telling anyone.
I'm more interested in radar-guided Smolorado dabbing on Yamato.
>Colorado
>doesn't have the radar suite of the Iowas
>literally the least modernized of the class
>dabbing on Yamato
Cmon anon, Iowa vs Yamato is a debate that will last forever, with Colorado it's non chance
Iowa vs Yamato is a toss-up. Anything earlier than Iowa isn’t.
Standards get fucking annihilated.
The South Dakota’s put up a good fight, but eventually get sunk.
Same for North Carolina, but more fire.
Washington seethes at South Dakota so hard that she summons the ghost of Ching Lee and fiddles Yamato.
If they'd hate America AA doctrine and weapons they would have been a real bitch to kill. Also it they hadn't mistaken Taffy 3 for a full fleet they could have at least fucked up those beaches pretty good. They were meant to wade into a line of standard US battleships and fuck them up, but that never happened.
Turns out that when your entire doctrine and war planning centers around repeating a fuck up that the Russians committed and is widely known the enemy tends not to fuck up in the same manner. Unless they are Russians of course.
Just look how much use japan got out of the Kongō's in comparison.
Fast is good as it turns out.
Bongo bongo bongo...
des~
Yamato was in the fleet for Pearl Harbor. After the attack they should brought it in close and they'd be able to force the entire island chain to surrender to about 500 soldiers who'd mostly be Civil Affairs, due to its ability to shell anyone that caused trouble. Once you got your own land based aircraft on Hawaii it would buy another year or so (not that would make diff in long run but you never know). Maybe that would prevent Hitler feeling a need to declare war on USA, if USA suddenly had to get busy in Pacific. Also coulda/shoulda used in Salomons.
Not capital ships with ANY aircover were ever sunk by aircraft alone in WW2.
>Yamato was in the fleet for Pearl Harbor.
>Commissioned: 16 December 1941
Even if it was, the Japanese fleet had absolutely zero staying power in the vicinity of Pearl, and any claim otherwise is operating off video game logic.
>ample planes and men
More carriers wasn't going to suddenly mean more trained pilots. The IJN was seriously considering leaving the Shokaku and Zuikaku behind during Pearl Harbor because there wasn't enough pilots with sufficient experience to outfit them. They decided then to begin pulling trainers out of the schools to make up the difference.
How would japan have fared if you gave them US 5" guns and VT proxy fused shells from the beginning?
There would have been a bit more than 9 aircraft lost picking off Yamato and most of her escorts at the very least.
A better question would be how much better would the US have done if their torpedoes weren't garbage in 42.
You're probably looking at late 43 early 44 levels of Japanese shipping lost in 42. Unironically. The US hit SO many torps that just didn't detonate, it only wouldn't be late 44 levels due to the lack of subs on station and airbases to strike merchant marines with.
OP doesn’t understand the concept of binding-in-being
They had the strategic effect of the USN overestimating the japs because they, too, believed in the importance of battleships, and thus the USN won battles they were overprepared for. Many such cases.
/thread
>CARRIERS CARRIERS CARRIERS CARRIERS
fuck this History Channel horseshit
Carrier aircraft couldn't fight at close range, at night, in fog and in heavy cloud, not until the late 50s when all-weather strike carrier aircraft were available, which was when battleships were immediately binned
At least we got Space Battleship Yamato out of it.