What "Flavor" for your Pacific Island Bombardment.

[SeaMonkey]

So what'll be....some 14 inchers, 16s or God forbid 18 inch shells from the Musashi or Yamato landing on your little Pacific playground.

Reading Robert's AAR got me to thinking about shore bombardment and its representation here in the SC PTO edition. I mean what if a task force creeps in at night, or with plenty of air cover, daylight, and starts to rain shells as big as a man on your airfield or island habitat.....what can we expect as losses?

If those BB squadrons from the Combined Fleet had gotten through to those Leyte beacheads what havoc would ensue? I'll use an example from Admiral Takeo Kurita's playbook using the Haruna and Kongo's 14 inch shells late one Guadalcanal night.

Anyone remember what happened?

[scottsmm]

not sure about this but was there a small naval battle at Gudalcanal in which the US had a couple of warships but was mainly protecting it's landing force and the battle happenend at night in which the japs won but they didn't know about the landing force so they escaped tragedy mainly by the cover of darkness. Not sure SeaMonkey if this is what your refering to but it seems possible. Although I very well could be wrong my strongest knowledge of the war comes from the European Theatre not the Pacific Theatre.

[SeaMonkey]

Nice try scotts, but no cigar. This was not a surface engagement unless you include the island of Guadalcanal as a warship, but no doubt there was an exchange of large caliber weapons.

[Bill101]

Are you referring to the shelling of Henderson Field?

[Moonslayer]

Scottsman is thinking of the battle of Savo Island if I am not mistaken. It is the starting engagement of my Guadalcanal mod and happened the night after the US Marines landed on the island. The Japs had the jump on the US ships but failed to press home their advantage due to fear of the US Carrier force which they believed was still in the area.

Seamonkey is indeed referring to the shelling of Henderson Field on the night of the 13th of October by the two battleships. 58 planes (out of 90) were taken out of action. The primary goal of the shore bombardment was to put the runway out of action but this failed to succeed.

[SeaMonkey]

Moonslayer...kudos...why did it fail?

What conditions would have been considered a success?

Bill???

I need two chemists for my lab, any thought provoking answers will be considered as passing the first interview and you'll be allowed to apply for the positions.

[thetwo]

SeaMonkey,

You are discussing two different scenarios.

1. Invasion in progress with ships and landing craft caught between deep water and the shore. In this case a battleship group, with escorts, could wreak enormous damage with two caveats.

A. Persistence: Could the battleship task force remain in possession of the battle area long enough to deny reinforcements for a period of days?

B. In that kind of close in fight, even light combat units pack substantial punch and the stakes escalate fast. Battleships are not built for this kind of fight with multiple targets at close range. Even their secondary batteries can have trouble. Defenders reach a "desperation or panic threshold" very quickly and unusual tactics will be tried. Ramming, loading landing craft with explosives, torpedo attacks launched in a cluttered environment might not be detected until too late. This is a dirty battle area.

Without doubt they could do serious damage to the shipping. Their main batteries will have trouble depressing sufficiently to engage nearer targets; an oft overlooked reality in battleship wargaming. If the battle were confused enough, the battleships can lose their escorts in short order too. Friendly fire, at night, was not unheardof in the Gudalcanal engagements.

2. Bombardment of shore installations and troops who have had the even smallest time to dig in is difficult. (Infantry under fire are HIGHLY motivated diggers.) Oh, the act of shelling is easy, but accomplishing anything is hard. A 14" shell may weigh 1500lbs or so and a pair of battleships can throw several hundred as a simple exercise of the guns. Actual results except against the flimsiest of fixed installations would have been pure luck.

The bombardment of Henderson Field was a known location with the goals of cratering the airfield, destroying and damaging aircraft, destroying supplies (POL especially). Aircraft can be replaced or repaired. Engineers can repair airfields. Supplies can be replaced unless area denial (of the battle area) can be assured or at least contested vigorously.

This can be extrapolated to other bombardment situations where tens of thousands of tons of munitions were used on a single target for no real effect. (Air and sea bombardment Pacific, Atlantic, and Med.) There is a good reason the basic, cheap entrenching tool is the most effective defensive tool a soldier or marine can possess besides his rifle.

So, to answer your question, it was a raid and that was the intent. The Japanese were looking for a short-term benefit from the action. Denial of the full benefits of the airfield's functionality to the Americans for a few days, maybe a week if they were lucky.

To put this in perspective, the American Navy was short carriers and there was an aversion to pushing carriers too far forward. This set the stage for the many "gun battles" in the waters around Guadalcanal. (Also the reason for much Marine resentment of the Navy that lingered for years.)

/ /

You asked what would have happened had the Japanese gotten into the landing areas at Leyte. I can give my thoughts. These will be based on the assumption that the four surviving battleships who turned north after the destruction of Taffy 3, continued the attack. In my opinion the southern group was too weak to be a threat. (By the way, I consider this the first suicide mission of the Japanese battleships, rather than the Yamato mission.) With that assumption, here goes.

As the Japanese ships closed, their progress would have been reported and the landing ships would have been pulled south. Landing operations would have been suspended, at least in the most threatened areas. These landings might have been postponed or diverted to new beaches to the south. I am not familiar enough with the operations to comment further on this. I do think at least some landings would have continued as long as possible.

All of the landings had their own escorts. Minesweepers, subchasers, frigates, destroyers, CVE's (escort carriers) providing close air support, and these assets would have been thrown into stopping, delaying, or diverting the oncoming force, much as happened. Bottom line, there were still smaller combatants intermixed with the landing forces. In this case, at the point the northern force retired, they had only been engaged by one of the immediate covering forces. Taffy 2 and Taffy 1 were till moving to battle area.

Taffy 3 had sunk two Japanese cruisers and inflicted damage disproportionate to their tonnage. We can expect that the other groups would have performed as respectably. In this kind of knife fight battleships were at a disadvantage. Their big guns can destroy a target they can hit, but hitting a DD or DDE moving laterally at a distance of a few miles is hard with big guns. Then add the continual maneuvers to dodge torpedoes and possible torpedoes and the strain on the crews grows.

Let's assume the four battleships make it to the landing areas, but that their last two escorts, both cruisers, have either been sunk along the way or turned back due to battle damage. Many transport ships have fled (most especially the troop transports). Some remain and you shoot up what you can see. No problem there. Your heavy shells may even pass through them before detonating if you still have armor piercing rounds available. Shelling of visible and very large stockpiles on shore yield very satisfactory secondary explosions and fires. You've probably set the Allies back a week or two in their local build up. But probably no more than that. Morale impact would have been more significant than the material losses.

Now, can you get out? Do you have ammunition? How many of your battleships still have fire direction centers that were not wrecked by all the incoming rounds and bombs that could not penetrate the armor belts of your ships? How many of your battleships are taking on water? How long until the American carriers get you into range?

[SeaMonkey]

Uhh tt...when can you start?

Actually I was looking for a simplier answer and how it might be modelled by PTO. Obviously "success" is a matter of perspective, just as it seems the "truth" is nowadays.

Kurita was tasked with a 90 minute bombardment, but cut it short by 15 minutes because of his hesitant use of the 2 BBs in such a capacity, especially in restricted waters consistent with Etajima indoctrination.

Actually there are many accounts where naval vessels' barrages of Pacific islands were particularly effective, but met with intermittent success. Since t2 brought up some very good points about bombardment effects on a dug-in enemy defender, it reiterates my point of using an engineer to build improvements laid out in "The 1st House Rule" thread.

Some of the shore defenders' eye-witness acoounts of Kurita's foray of Guadalcanal leads me to conclude the tactic, in conjunction with a shore side attack(amphib & otherwise), very well could have caused a major re-evaluation by the USA in reference to their present position.

Perhaps it would have taken numerous similarly prosecuted night actions to achieve the desired effect but my conclusion was in this instance it was a successful Japanese strategy. Could be that PTO will provide us with a simulation accurate enough to test the theory.

And...thanks to thetwo for his continuous contribution to keep the forum interesting...glad you found SC.

[scottsmm]

Yes your right Moonslayer my weakness of knowldege of WWII comes from the Pacific theatre. Oh and SeaMonkey I don't appreciate your comment about Guadalcanal as a warship engagement that's simply unnecessary and totally unprovoked. I do understand the concept that Gudalcanal is an island in the south Pacific ocean.

[SeaMonkey]

Take it easy scotts!!! No slight intended. In this day and age I find it behooves me to examine every possible perception. You just never know how people will interpret things, I mean Pacific islands were known as unsinkable aircraft carriers.

I sometimes forget that it is difficult to discern on a forum the tone in ones comment, it is after all...."just words"..."no speeches".(a pun on Obama)

My apologies.

[scottsmm]

Alright maybe I did take it a little bit to seriously but I never heard people refer to the Pacific Islands as unsinkable aircraft carriers (wouldn't suprise me though if they were called that) and you do have to admit that Obama gives good speeches and the question of racism I think decides the 08' elections unfourtantly.

[SeaMonkey]

scotts, just google "unsinkable aircraft carrier".

The rest I won't touch with a ten foot pole!

[scottsmm]

you know what they say about "learning something new everyday" here is an example of that