Greetings,
Marco_Trigo wrote:
While American submarines appear to have been a lot more adequate at destroying Japanese cruisers, Japanese cruisers faired a lot better against their American and English counterparts than their submarines.
Basically what made the IJN cruisers apparently so successful early in the Pacific War was that they were fighting against a numerical inferior force and with little to no organization or doctrine...it was the ABDA Force. In Guadalcanal what played the most important role it was the Long-Lance torpedoes that were carried by most of the IJN cruisers and destroyers...that's as far as I can tell their only advantage against their adversaries. Also Guadalcanal was still an early campaign where the Allies were still learning (sometimes in the bad way) how to conduct operations and skilfully trained and experienced IJN Officers like Mikawa, Tanaka and Hara had their chances of victory. I believe that the success attributed to the IJN heavy cruisers gets a lot of boost when we speak of the First Battle of Savo but never before or after they were able to do a similar action with such results. The following Solomons Campaign, with a more seasoned Allied surface forces and with improved radars, etc made the IJN cruisers much less effective.
Marco_Trigo wrote:
English surface forces also proved highly efficient against Italian and German cruisers. Their submarines? Not so much.
If I recall correctly no German cruiser was ever sunk by British surface forces during WWII, however RN submarines bagged one light cruiser and damaged a lot of the DKM capital ships sometimes more then once. In the Mediterranean Italian cruisers were also lost to submarine attacks but the RN submarines were far more keen and instructed to attack and sink the supply convoys to North Africa on which they did a lot of damage.
bengtsson wrote:
Just finished rereading Hara's Japanese Destroyer Captain book. You have to admire the skill of many of the Japanese surface warriors like Hara. The fact they lasted over a year in the same arena with the rapidly expanding USN says alot for the individual fighting spirit of Japanese sailors.
Finished that book a couple of months ago as well. I must confess it was one of the best readings I've read in the last few years. The Guadalcanal and Solomons Campaign pretty much shows how narrow minded the IJN minds could be sometimes.
Marco_Trigo wrote:
As it turned out, the carriers and destroyers were perfectly capable of standing up for themselves.
They managed that because Kurita decided to withdraw. It's not that simple. The IJN Force present at the day was far superior in numbers however it was under air attack for several days therefore their crews tired from constant readiness alerts and attacks. The strategy used by Kurita could have been more successful and possibly to turn out in a small victory to the IJN if they had proper intelligence of the whereabouts of the other USN surface forces; if Kurita had committed or able to do so his destroyers properly (torpedoes were fired at great ranges and none found its mark); etc etc etc...the list is long. Properly used that IJN force and in proper conditions that Taffy force wasn't supposed to survive regardless of brave acts of the USN escorts...half a dozen of destroyers plus unshielded "pants down" CVE's wouldn't have been no matches for a determined and organised force as Kurita's one could have been.