Battle of Kolombangara 7/12-13 1943

The Americans with their line ahead battle tactics get another butt whooping in the Solomon Islands.
Click here

Something appears to be wrong with the linked page. I find only a snippet of the battle information.

Dean

Upon closer inspection, the page seems to be complete, just abbreviated.

Should have read it before commenting.

Dean

It appears that Ainsworth significantly underestimated his enemy.

(quoted from post at 15:31:00 07/12/19)
It appears that Ainsworth significantly underestimated his enemy.

Click to expand...

If you go and look, battle by battle, land air and sea you will see that US commanders did this over and over again throughout the war. A lot of it was the fact that they knew, as flag rank officers that most likely they would never have a change again at fame and glory. So they launched operations that were unnecessary or ill prepared. They did it in Korea and Vietnam too.

Thanks UD.

Rick

Bingo, Rick.

I could say much more, but choose to not do so.

Dean

From what I have read the First Battle of Savo Island was the worst naval defeat we suffered after Pearl Harbor when we lost three heavy cruisers in a night time action. A lot of these were night time actions and the crews were new to radar and had difficulties distinguishing ships from clutter due to the islands. One of my uncles by marriage lost a brother when the heavy cruiser USS Vincennes was sunk.

They made up for it later when the USS Washington totally wasted the Japanese battleship Kirishima during the naval battle of Guadalcanal. In total the Japanese lost two battleships, one heavy cruiser and a number of destroyers. We lost two light cruisers and a number of destroyers. We would have probably done even better if the battleship South Dakota had not had communications and power problems. She got shelled, but this allowed the Washington to escape notice until she bracketed and ranged the ships in the Japanese squadron. Again this was a night time action.

I had another uncle who was on the Destroyer USS Pritchett (DD-561) radar picket station nine) during the Kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa. They were recovering survivors from the Destroyer Callaghan when a kamikaze went down about ten feet on the left side of her stern. The blast bowed in her hull and damaged her superstructure, but she was able to keep on recovering survivors for two more hours. I think seeing the Callaghan go down and the other ensuing attacks had a profound lifetime affect on him.

"....A lot of it was the fact that they knew, as flag rank officers that most likely they would never have a change again at fame and glory. So they launched
operations that were unnecessary or ill prepared. They did it in Korea and Vietnam too." That, making poor judgements unnecessarily putting my life at
risk, and had I re-upped again, I'd be over 10 and would be on the back side of the mountain to retirement....would have to see it through to 20.