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Changing Destiny (Kancolle)

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Question. Were the Japanese ships 'better' then American ones? Faster, sure I won't argue that point but looking at what the Standards were hit with, only 3 of the 12 didn't survive the war. Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma took 7-9 torpedoes to sink her (yes she started to roll over after 3 hits but she was also under peacetime conditions). A golden BB took out Arizona and Pennsylvania was hit in the stern in such a way that 3 of her 4 shafts were bent. The rest of the Standards took pounding from bombs, torpedoes, and Kamikazes and largely shrugged off the damage. Their foreign contemporaries took less damage and suffered more damage. Fuso apparently broke in half after 2 torpedoes,
 
Sir_Gaea said:
Question. Were the Japanese ships 'better' then American ones? Faster, sure I won't argue that point but looking at what the Standards were hit with, only 3 of the 12 didn't survive the war. Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma took 7-9 torpedoes to sink her (yes she started to roll over after 3 hits but she was also under peacetime conditions). A golden BB took out Arizona and Pennsylvania was hit in the stern in such a way that 3 of her 4 shafts were bent. The rest of the Standards took pounding from bombs, torpedoes, and Kamikazes and largely shrugged off the damage. Their foreign contemporaries took less damage and suffered more damage. Fuso apparently broke in half after 2 torpedoes,
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I think at least part of this is damage control.

[INSERT AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
[INSERT ANOTHER AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
[INSERT YET ANOTHER AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
[INSERT YET ANOTHER ANOTHER AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
 
Sir_Gaea said:
only 3 of the 12 didn't survive the war. Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma took 7-9 torpedoes to sink her (yes she started to roll over after 3 hits but she was also under peacetime conditions). A golden BB took out Arizona and Pennsylvania was hit in the stern in such a way that 3 of her 4 shafts were bent. The rest of the Standards took pounding from bombs, torpedoes, and Kamikazes and largely shrugged off the damage.
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How are you using the word "survive"? Because Pennsylvania wasn't sunk by that torp.
 
AlphaDelta said:
I think at least part of this is damage control.

[INSERT AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
[INSERT ANOTHER AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
[INSERT YET ANOTHER AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
[INSERT YET ANOTHER ANOTHER AMERICAN DAMCON ANECDOTE HERE]
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Heck, some of it was seemed to be that we just built the girls tougher. Some of the attacks just bounced off the armor. No need for DamCon there, maybe someone latter to repaint the surface the attack scuffed.

By survived I mean was still in services by the US Navy after the war. It wasn't economical to repair Pennsylvania so the US Navy removed her from service before the war ended.
 
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landcollector said:
Actually, Crossroads happened roughly a month before her Decommissioning.
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Repairs were made to enable Pennsylvania to steam to the Marshall Islands, departing Long Beach on 28 April, where she was used as a target ship in the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll during July 1946. She was then towed to Kwajalein Lagoon where she decommissioned on 29 August. She remained in Kwajalein Lagoon for radiological and structural studies until 10 February 1948, when she was sunk stern first off Kwajalein. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 19 February.
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Well, okay then. Only 2 of the Standards were taken out during the war. Both were running under peacetime conditions.

I mean look at Warspite. She got hit amidships with that missile bomb of the Germans and was left lamed and her X turret permanently inoperable. Maryland took a Kamikaze to her forward magazine and had a Kamikaze slam into one of her turrets. The magazine damage didn't leave anything permanent and the turret hit just meant she had the roof replaced next time she was in dock, the turret was unaffected.
 
Sir_Gaea said:
Exactly. Which goes back to my question "how were the Japanese ships better then American?"
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Same way German tanks were superior to American, in some cases. Quality, compared to quantity. More Fletcher-class destroyers were built during the war than every destroyer line the Japanese ever did. And by the time America had the quality advantage, the war wasn't in doubt.
 
Another thing. I was reading a book on battleships while under a headache so take this with salt, but it seemed like the All or Nothing armor came about because A. Someone noticed that the effective ranges of naval weapons was increasing incredibly quickly and B. The ship builders wanted to save money to get the most out of the budget the US Congress allotted to each ship.

So, armor what was needed and ignore the other stuff to save money.
 
XWingExecuter said:
I think it's going to be best that Pearl gets totally ran over like it did IRL. America needs that hit to carry itself thru the war and the story itself needs some threat to characters and death to keep things interesting. Also, the loss of the Pacific fleets ability to really fight is what forced the Navy to turn to carriers in the first place, and if a bunch of battleships survive, they are still going to take priority over carriers and probably really fuck up the US Navy down the line when they keep getting into gun battles with IJN ships that are better than theirs. America needs those battleships unable to be placed in combat if it wants its carriers to get good and eventually defeat the Japanese.
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Even if they do what I'm suggesting, Pearl Harbor is still going to be a bloodbath for the USN, USMC, and USAAF. Its just that it will be slightly LESS of a bloodbath. That and the forces at Hawaii would likely at least get in a few actual worthwhile hits that might end up being pivotal months later.

Even if its just Arizona that goes up like a roman torch and everything else in the harbor can be fixed within weeks, the US population is still going to be screaming for retaliation/blood.

Frankly, the only way to at least partially mitigate things in how the general population views the war, is to make 105% sure that declaration of war into the Secretary of State's hands a good hour or so before the raid happens, preferably 2-3 hours. That would pretty much wipe away a massive chunk of the 'stabbed in the back' feeling that Roosevelt used to whip up pro-war feelings in the USA. Get rid of that pretext, and suddenly its going to be a whole helvalot harder to get the population to commit to a total war economy/total war campaign like was done in the OTL. Instead it might be an initial rush for revenge, but taper off quickly, and turn into a political mess like WW1 was for the government (as the population most certainly wasn't fully supportive of that war).
 
If the battleships survive Pearl in such a way as to be put into battle quickly, they may very well be sunk in a less then optimum spot when compared to the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor. American AA at the start of the war wasn't great, especially on the battleships, and these battleships would most likely come under a combined surface and air attack. They would be incredibly weak against the planes and would need support from friendly carriers and would be fighting at best a even fight against the Japanese battleships. Lets not forget that if the US battleships get sent out, they will probably pull the attention of the Yamato, and they'd stand no chance against that and its support fleet.
 
XWingExecuter said:
If the battleships survive Pearl in such a way as to be put into battle quickly, they may very well be sunk in a less then optimum spot when compared to the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor. American AA at the start of the war wasn't great, especially on the battleships, and these battleships would most likely come under a combined surface and air attack. They would be incredibly weak against the planes and would need support from friendly carriers and would be fighting at best a even fight against the Japanese battleships. Lets not forget that if the US battleships get sent out, they will probably pull the attention of the Yamato, and they'd stand no chance against that and its support fleet.
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50 of this, 50 of that. You can't get everything.
 
CompassJimbo said:
I don't remember the World's Most Heavily-Armed Hotel being with the task force sent against Pearl.
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While she may not have been part of the Pearl Harbor task force, she would most likely be deployed against US battleships afterwards. A good surface engagement so early in the war that the Japanese believe they have victory all but assured would certainly draw out the Yamato, and not a single US battleship would stand a chance against her, and any fleet put together would likely stand little chance against the fleet the Yamato would sail with.
 
XWingExecuter said:
While she may not have been part of the Pearl Harbor task force, she would most likely be deployed against US battleships afterwards.
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Nope. She went to Midway as Yamamoto's flagship, and little else until Ten-Go. She wasn't even commisioned until a week after Pearl. She went between Truk and Kure until '44, at Leyte Gulf.
 
The Japanese, even though they built the world's biggest and most badass battlewagon (at the time. Stop looking at me like that, Jersey, and this isn't your time to shine right now), were very relunctant to actually use her. She guzzled their limited fuel stocks (one of the many, many mistakes Japan made during that period), was most likely a bitch and a half to fix if she took a hit, regardless of whether it penetrated or not, and she'd be facing angry American carriers who would be all too eager to sink her.
 
Sir_Gaea said:
I mean look at Warspite. She got hit amidships with that missile bomb of the Germans and was left lamed and her X turret permanently inoperable. Maryland took a Kamikaze to her forward magazine and had a Kamikaze slam into one of her turrets. The magazine damage didn't leave anything permanent and the turret hit just meant she had the roof replaced next time she was in dock, the turret was unaffected.
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The armor of a Standard would have probably been penetrated by a Fritz-X too.

Sir_Gaea said:
Another thing. I was reading a book on battleships while under a headache so take this with salt, but it seemed like the All or Nothing armor came about because A. Someone noticed that the effective ranges of naval weapons was increasing incredibly quickly and B. The ship builders wanted to save money to get the most out of the budget the US Congress allotted to each ship.

So, armor what was needed and ignore the other stuff to save money.
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Actually, no. The Navy started looking at the effects of large-caliber gun hits on a warship, and realized that armor that failed to stop an incoming round was worse than useless, because it would only serve to trip the fuze. That being the case, and a ship having a limited mass budget, all of the armor "budget" should be spent on armoring the critical portions of the ship, so that hits from heavy guns on the rest of the ship would go through-and-through, leaving much smaller holes than a bursting charge would, while allowing the critical parts of the ship to be much more heavily armored than an incremental armor scheme would permit.
 
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