“Combat Damage”
January 2nd, 2009 From
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>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 17:40:45 -0500
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>From: Marc James Small
>Subject: “Combat Damage”
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>At 04:48 PM 12/10/97 -0500, Eric Bergerund wrote:
> >No doubt wiser heads can fill in this one better than I, but US CVs were
> >most certainly sunk in fleet exercises of the 1930’s. The lessons that the
> >USN drew was that a carrier engagement would be chaotic, fast and very
> >violent for carriers. Not a bad description of 1942 I’d say. The admirals
> >didn’t get it all right prior to Pearl Harbor, but I think they earned their
> >supper during the 1930’s.
>
>
>Well, there was a significant bias in the way damage was assessed in the
>1930’s. BB’s were almost never sunk or even significantly damaged.
>Submarines were sunk with ease. CV’s were blown away by a single shell or
>torpedo. ZR’s just fell out of the sky.
>
>The results were good in one regard, and bad in others:
>
>– Battleship fans were convinced their ships remained invulnerable, a
>feeling not really disposed of until Leyte Gulf
>– HTA advocates were made to feel like distant cousins from an unsavory
>branch of the family, but were allowed to remain at the table and were
>ignored sufficiently to allow them to develop both some >senior admirals
>(King and Halsey, among others) and some fine doctrine which >proved itself
>at Coral Sea, Midway, and on a few occasions thereafter
>– LTA was never given a fair trial
>– Submarines were discounted as unimportant, a factor which did not
>encourage young hard-chargers to volunteer and which did not >cause a fair
>test of the torpedo’s faults. Both of these resulted in a hard time for
>the Silent Service when the strike on Pearl Harbor left our subs as the
>only effective force available in quantity. (Fortunately, the IJN had
>reached the same conclusions, and never gave its submarines >the emphasis
>it should have.)
>
>The lessons of the 1930’s exercizes, fortunately, were not to damn the USN
>into losing the War, as, ultimately, they caused the IJN to lose. But, I
>still wish we’d had a squadron of ZRS’s based at Pearl and patrolling out a
>couple of thousand miles in early December, 1941. It would have been the
>swan song for lighter-than-air, but, how sweet a song it would have been!
>
>Marc
>
>
>msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
>Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!