Battle of the Philippine Sea - What if Admiral Lee sailed west?

[Music] [Music] this month the fine folk over on patreon decided they wanted to hear me talk about what could have happened if the battle of the philippine sea had involved admiral lee taking up the opportunity for a battleship fight now i mentioned this in passing during the video on admiral lee himself but provide a bit more context as to why this is being asked because of course historically the battle is known as the great marianas turkey shoe to encounter almost exclusively between aircraft from different aircraft carriers i'm going to start out by reading the relevant passage from paul stilwell's excellent battleship commander book which is of course the latest and greatest biography on admiral lee and it deals with how this situation both arose and then obviously didn't arise so with the american approach to the marianas the prospect of an invasion so close to the japanese homeland was too grave to go unchallenged vice admiral jisoburu ozawa's force at tawi tawi in the philippines and vice admiral matome ugakis at batjan in the dutch east indies both fueled with unrefined oil they sorted on the 13th of june and headed for a rendezvous east of the philippines that same day lee and a coterie of seven fast battleships joined by a number of destroyers left the carrier groups to deliver the first surface ship bombardment of the islands of saipan and tinian zaipan was to be the first of the marianas to be invaded by u.s forces tinian would come later tinian would prove to be the base for army air force b-29s launching heavy bombing raids on the japanese home islands the old battleships were not scheduled to arrive for shore bombing until the following day and so lee's ships got first crack their crack was a dud as samuel elliot morrison assessed the event sad to relate the bombardment of 13th of june was a failure the new battleships had not had sufficient practice in the slow deliberate process of focusing on individual targets nor were the float planes of league ships experienced in distinguishing targets observing the fall of shot and sending appropriate corrections to the firing ships the fast battleships method morrison noted differed considerably from the type of fire used against other ships thus most of the 16-inch and 5-inch projectiles went wide a sailor with a sense of humor summarized the 13th of june operation as a navy sponsored farm project that simultaneously ploughs the fields prunes the trees harvest the crops and adds iron to the soil on the afternoon of the 17th of june with the japanese fleet approaching in an attempt to stymie the attempts by the americans to strengthen their foothold on saipan admiral spruance sent out his battle plan in a message to lee and mitcher our air will first knock out enemy carriers then will attack enemy battleships and cruisers to slow or disable them battle line will destroy enemy fleet if enemy elects to fight or by sinking slowed or crippled ships if enemy retreats action against the enemy will be pushed vigorously by all hands to ensure complete destruction of his fleet destroyers running short of fuel may be returned to saipan if necessary for refuelling spruance then specified that mitchell would be in tactical command for the operation he and lee were to seek the best methods for engaging the japanese under advantageous conditions at 0-400 on the 18th of june mitchell and lee received a scouting report from the submarine kavala that showed the japanese fleet heading east towards saipan at 19 knots as mitch's chief of staff commodore ali burke tried to urge lee's forces into a surface action against the japanese burke was aggressive and experienced in surface tactics he believed that league ships were well trained and battle hardened and that lee would be eager to take on the japanese fleet on mitch's behalf he sent a dispatch to the battleship commander do you seek night engagement it may be we can make air contact late this afternoon and attack tonight otherwise we should retire eastward tonight leader murdered with an emphatic message that left no doubt as to his preference do not repeat not believe we should seek night engagement possible advantages of radar more than offset by difficulties of communications and lack of training in fleet tactics at night would press pursuit of damaged or fleeing enemy however at any time historian clark reynolds reported that both mitchell in command of task force 58 and many officers on nimitz's staff in hawaii were most disappointed because nimitz had emphasized the importance of destroying the japanese fleet admiral lee doubtless recalled the confused close quarters action of guadalcanal and that the japanese were skilled at night operations as his aide greel artisan put it you have to recognize that if you're going to be the father protector for the carrier task force and the air arm is going to be the one that really does the job you don't have the time to train yourself and your ships to a level of sharpness that surface ships operating on their own would require from artisan's perspective lee knew that he was performing a valuable function in protecting the carriers though he was not happy in playing second dog he did however recognize the realities of the situation and the obligation they conferred in a sound recording he made 10 months after the battle commodore burke summarized the exchange of messages in rather prosaic language he did however add a further possibility that might have occurred we could choose the time of attack we could fight either during the night or the next morning he added we also received a dispatch from the commander of fifth fleet which stated that task force 58 must cover saipan and our forces engaged in that operation and he felt the main enemy attack would come from the westwood but it might be diverted to come in from the southwestward well we thought so too in an interview with this author that's uh paul stillwell 32 years after the battle burke was much less restrained than in his sound recording of 1945. he complained that lee was not one to volunteer opinions and suggestions he did not view it as a defect in lee but instead as lee's complete understanding of the responsibility of command burke said of lee's decision not to engage i was amazed that admiral lee did not want to do that he did concede that lee was concerned about being involved in a melee and that such an engagement could take place only at night this contradicted his view in the 1945 recording that the battle could have taken place in the daytime burke did say that he was not criticizing by tying the decision to lead sense of caution and the fact that being linked to the carriers had not provided many opportunities to exercise independent command responsibility he added though you can never outguess another man dr alan millett distinguished professor of history at the ohio state university considered that lee's explanation was really an excuse for having cold feet not being willing to take the sort of risks that aviators and submariners did in routinely during the war lee had remained in the battle area so he would be in a position to engage the japanese surface fleet but in this instance declined when the opportunity was presented admiral spruance was cautious about letting his ships stray too far from saipan lest they leave the beachheads vulnerable to a japanese attack from a separate force that could slip in behind burke's suggestion that lee might take out the enemy heavy combatants in the morning was at odds with the japanese preference for night action the idea that the american fleet could have chosen the time for the engagement is unlikely the japanese had the option to advance or retreat as it suited their purposes as clark reynolds wrote lee had a healthy respect for knight torpedo attacks by destroyers and submarines he also said that spruance had naive assumptions even after the gilberts and truck that a surface action was possible during daylight with carrier aircraft present sprunce's handling of the new jersey at truck in february had nearly come a cropper reynolds who well appreciated the power of naval aviation by this point in the war added being a formalist like lee leaving nothing to chance spruance then quickly supported lee's decision and agreed to the alternative a night retirement towards saipan little did these battleship wean tacticians realize that only at night could a pure surface action take place in the presence of fast carrier forces among those who criticized lee's decision not to engage the japanese heavies was historian malcolm weir who reported that some officers on board lead ships expressed surprise at their commander's decision lieutenant frank pinney was assistant gunnery officer of the iowa during the marianas campaign years later he wrote to muy i recall the stated reason for not sending the fast battleships to look for the japanese in the philippine sea battle was a lack of practice in night engagements as far as my gunnery department was concerned all our engagements except for shore bombardments had been night shoots against japanese planes and the main battery under full radar control couldn't have cared less whether it was day or night i believe the other gunnery officers felt the same way on the afternoon of 18th of june mitchell arranged his various carrier task groups to be prepared for the following day's actions burke acting for mitchell deployed the battleships to the west of the carrier formations that is closer to the japanese burke said he wished he had received more input from lee regarding the deployment burke's reasoning was that it would suck in the planes against a hell of a hard anti-aircraft target task force 58 would also provide air cover for lee's heavy ships one result of that positioning came the following day when the alabama provided the first radar detection of the approaching japanese planes at a range of about 190 miles lee asked the iowa to confirm the contact which she did at 130 miles following the engagement lee saluted both ships to iowa well done to alabama very well done burke recalled that he probably asked lee if he had an opinion regarding positioning the battleships to the west and lee didn't offer one afterward lee conceded that putting them there was a good idea on the 19th of june lee had set up the anti-aircraft screen in a circular formation with the indiana in the center as guide there were six more battleships and a covey of cruisers and destroyers it was a day that would gain the nickname the great marianas turkey shoot because of the one-sided results of the action the japanese lost more than 350 aircraft to the shooting of american pilots and anti-aircraft gunners on board ships an onslaught of japanese carrier planes came toward task force 58 off saipan the us fighter planes had a field day sending enemy pilots to the afterlife so there you have it broadly wiley made the decision and what some people have said about it thereafter personally my point of view is that lee probably made the right call he is in the best position to decide at that point how experienced his ships are in surface-to-surface training and night training in particular he knows already how good the japanese are because he's been at the receiving end of it and well from the naval battle of guadalcanal he's perfectly aware that one of the reasons that south dakota was still with the fleet was because the japanese had started out that particular fight loaded with type 3 bombardment shells and not ap shells going to they had switched to ap shells thereafter but you know one congo class battle cruiser was a very different proposition from what he knew that japanese were sailing around with at the moment which of course does bring up the point what were the strengths on the two sides now if you look at a basic order of battle you might think it's fairly obvious which way things should go the us has seven fleet carriers eight light carriers seven battleships eight heavy cruisers 13 light cruisers and 68 destroyers the japanese on the other hand have only three fleet carriers six light carriers five battleships but they have 11 heavy cruisers only two light cruisers and 31 destroyers there's a bunch of submarines out there as well but that's the surface fleet strength so you might look at it and go okay well we'll write off the carriers in me in the immediate term because this is supposed to be a battle line engagement although obviously there would be air support if it's a daytime fight you've got seven battleships versus five battleships eight heavy cruisers on the american side versus eleven on the japanese side so maybe three heavy cruisers might counter balance two battleships maybe with long lances at least then you have 13 like cruisers versus two so definite american advantage there and 68 destroyers versus 31 again definite american advantage there but what's hidden within that is that both sides have split their forces into a number of groups the japanese for example have the a force and b force which are centered on aircraft carriers and they've absorbed quite a number of destroyers and some of the cruisers a b force also has one of the battleships the nagato with them for surface action and leading the japanese formations is the van group and we'll come to what that involves a bit later on the american order of battle has task group 58.1 which is centered on carriers task group 58.2 which is also centered on carriers task group 58.3 which is you guessed it also centered on carriers and then task group 58.4 which drumroll please is also centered on carriers but as well as having four different carrier task groups there's a lot of cruisers and destroyers assigned to each of these forces so when we get down to task group 58.7 because it just takes a bit of a jump we find out what admiral lee actually has on hand and his forces are as follows he has a pair of iowa class battleships the iowa and new jersey he has three out of the four south dakota class ships the south dakota alabama and indiana the only one that's not present is massachusetts and he has the two north carolina class battleships north carolina and washington so he actually has seven out of the eight fast battleships that the us would ever build he then has four heavy cruisers the new orleans class new orleans san francisco and minneapolis and the one-off wichita which means that he has four heavy cruisers and no light cruisers and then finally he has a total of 14 destroyers one porter class one mahan class three bagley class and nine fletchers and so bearing this force in mind we're going to consider in this video two potential scenarios one of which has a multiplicity of possible outcomes and the other of which is relatively pedestrian by comparison now here's the kind of map that you quite often see for the historic battle of the philippine sea which is great and all it's not that useful apart from in very broad terms because whilst it shows the roots of the us and japanese fleets it doesn't really tell us where they are relative to each other i mean if you were just to read this map as shown you'd think that perhaps there was a surface action i mean look where those arrows are in the middle it looks like the two fleets pretty much came broadside to broadside which is not actually historically what happened instead we can look at something like this which is a much more detailed map and very helpfully has time stamps and date stamps on it so bearing in mind that in the book extract we just read ali burke was proposing to admiral lee in the early morning hours of the 18th that they should do something now what's happening on the 18th with the two sets of forces well here you can see that well the map on par on the right the us fleet actually doesn't pick up until halfway through the 18th but at that point the fleet is directly west of saipan and tinian at the roughly the same time on the 18th the japanese fleet is somewhere in the last element of its north eastern course you can see it's at 6 00 am has turned from almost north to mostly northeast and then at 3 40 p.m on the 18th it's reached the northernmost point of that leg and heads straight south and then we can see further to the east the us fleet by 8 30 pm on the 18th has reached the westernmost point of its first leg and then doubles back towards tinian overnight and during that same time we can see the japanese are progressing south so around about the same time like 30 for the americans 9 o'clock for the japanese on the 18th the japanese are most of their way through their southern leg and obviously the americans have just turned around now if you look at the tracks of the fleets and where the airstrikes are launched from and over to where the corresponding time and shortly thereafter is for the opposite fleet you'll notice that actually during the 18th the two fleets came to either within range of each other or very nearly within air striking range of each other and more particularly you can see at 9 pm on the 18th ie that evening the van force cut a hard tack to port so whereas the two forces primarily centered on carriers force a and force b headed south until the early morning hours of the 19th the van force headed east did a little circle and then headed back west by northwest later on so the van force was standing much further to the east than the japanese carrier forces and then later on was shadowing it to sort of roughly a north easterly position until they rejoined again in the early afternoon of the 20th so the first part of burke's comment that if they proceeded further west that by the end of the 18th by afternoon of the 18th they'd be in air striking range that does seem to hold up they almost certainly would be especially when you consider how far the japanese moved versus how far the americans moved you can see that during the 18th american fleet wasn't utilizing the full range of its speed options to quite the same degree as the japanese although of course neither fleet was moving at full pelt you'll also notice there in almost center of the map that there was a direction finding fix of the enemy fleet at 8 20 pm on the 18th very shortly before the u.s fleet historically turned around so they know almost exactly where they are although obviously this happens about 40 minutes before the van force breaks away from the carrier forces now whether they would have needed this fix if they'd continued to press west and launched airstrikes in the early afternoon presumably preceded by scouting missions is another matter so let's assume that lee has taken up the offer he says yes i will lead my battleships and other forces west and i will engage the japanese fleet at night so the rest of the american care forces are following along slightly further behind and at some point in the mid to late afternoon scouting aircraft spot the japanese fleet presumably either around about the time it's about to go from heading almost north to heading south or just after it's started heading south and so airstrikes are launched as we recounted in the book extract the their primary targets are going to be the japanese carrier forces so they're going to bear the brunt of the attack and maybe a few attacks will be launched on the battleship force as well the van force but given that it's a relatively short period of time during which these attacks can be launched you probably are going to get one big strike wave off because then it's going to be night time and nobody's going to want to fly in those conditions so the most of the attacks that the american forces make are likely to be directed against the enemy carriers which is good for our scenario because it massively decomplicates everything because whatever happens to those carrier task forces force a and force b really doesn't affect our scenario too much for a knight engagement because as we see the historically the van force headed east and is even more likely to do so if the carrier forces have come under attack and so if lee proceeds west with his battleships he is almost certainly going to run into the van force in some way shape or form and so if there is going to be a night action it's probably going to be between these ships and the that japanese van force so with all that said what was the van force and here's the forces that lee's ships would be facing off against now you might notice first of all there are still some carriers there there's three light carriers chitosecular and zuiho but they're not going to be operating any aircraft at night if anything at best their shell magnets at worst they're just annoying things to have around for this kind of engagement so although they are there they're unlikely to factor into the main part of any engagement in any significant sense unless of course there's some case of mistaken identity or they just happen to show up and get shelled more importantly however you can see that both yamato and musashi are present as are the battle cruisers congo and haruna there are four heavy cruisers the entire takao class atago chokai maya and takao one light cruiser the argano class noshiro which is heading up the destroyers which include the shibakaze she of the many torpedoes seven of the jugamo class and one lone kagero class the hamakaze or at least that's what they'd started out with the hayanami one of the seven yugabots had actually been sunk almost two weeks earlier by a submarine on their way to the engagement zone now you might think obviously that this gives the us something of an advantage they outnumber the japanese in cruisers by basically two to one with the floating exception of the nishiro but light cruiser though it may be i think we can all agree that one organo class like cruiser is not the equivalent of seven destroyers the heavy cruiser category is a little bit more of an even fight it's 4v4 they're all heavy cruisers they're all pretty well designed and to be fair the new orleans class have shown they are not exactly the world's most durable vessels when it comes to night engagements with japanese heavy cruisers and the ones they faced at sour island were not exactly as powerful for the most part as these four but then we move on to the battleships and well seven versus four tells a story of all of its own and two of these ships a congo class which you know washington one of the two earliest least well protected battleships of the american force had already shown didn't really rate in combat against a modern american fast battleship their guns if loaded with ap shells could still do some damage so you can't count them out entirely but the biggest focus and no doubt is the two yamatos because well especially in close range night action they can do some serious damage to pretty much anything in the us battle line regardless of whether it's in iowa or south dakota or north carolina and perhaps more importantly and this feeds into admiral lee's assessment being in my view correct the japanese forces here were not like the japanese forces that had been encountered at guadalcanal remember when washington and south dakota had taken on hiroshima and its associated ships the americans had radar and the japanese did not which would give them a decisive advantage at this point however whilst the americans do have more radar because it's literally more advanced radar than they'd had in 1942 the japanese also have surface search radar yamato and musashi have multiple installations thereof and there's a few other sets distributed throughout their force now that said they're not as advanced as the american radar sets but they can pick up incoming ships at a range that is well beyond most reasonable estimations of battle line engagement range for daylight engagement let alone where those ranges might be during a nighttime engagement obviously necessarily going to be a little bit shorter not perhaps massively so by 1944 the iowa's gunnery officer was correct when he said that radar doesn't actually care whether it's night or day but the fidelity of the radar and therefore at what range it can achieve a target lock is at this point if you're looking at a fleetwide basis going to require that the range is somewhat closer than it would be in a daylight engagement and so whilst the americans might know where the japanese are before the japanese know where the americans are unfortunately a point-blank kiroshima style ambush of the japanese fleet simply isn't on the cards the japanese are almost certainly going to see the american ships or at least some of them before the main fighting commences even if they're only going to have a few minutes to respond potentially now at night based on how the various formations of the japanese and u.s navies traveled at night in other circumstances we can make an estimation of roughly what shape these ships would be in relative to each other when they potentially run into each other the japanese are probably going to be traveling in two pairs of capital ships with their cruisers arranged both ahead and to the port and aft quarter behind and they're gonna have the destroyers in a loose screen with one or two running behind as well the americans if admiralty is anything to go by going in knowing that they're expecting a night engagement and now he has you know a few more forces than he had available at guadalcanal are probably going to be going in using a slightly more extended line formation so the battleships will be traveling in a line with a chevron screen of destroyers forward some destroyers scattered either side and aft and the cruisers probably also on either side and more towards the aft able to fall back slightly to clear the gun lines very quickly if the battleships need to engage but also in a position to be able to use their guns to repel incoming attackers if necessary if they're the ones being attacked first this kind of traveling formation is very different from the anti-aircraft focused circular formations that lee would historically adopt to see off incoming aircraft so we mentioned two scenarios and one of which would have several possible outcomes the first one is the longer one assuming that this knight engagement takes place between the forces as described we have to look into really three cases best case worst case middle case so the best case scenario is somewhat reductive it's just an expanded version of the night action during the second night of the naval battle of guadalcanal in this we would hypothesize that the american battleships along with their destroyers and cruisers are sailing along and they've got some idea of where the japanese surface forces might be from some late afternoon reconnaissance and then the destroyers start to pick up the japanese formation relaying this information back to admiral lee he can work out the enemy's course and speed and put his ships in a position to cross the enemy's tee in this scenario the cruisers and some of the destroyers would fall back to be aft of the battle line and the rest of the destroyers that were chevron in front would form a pack on the port bow assuming for the moment that the fleet is going to pass with its port side facing the enemy the idea of this would be to keep constant lock on the enemy with radar to limit the japanese ability to fire back with their heavy guns once they realize what's going on and also to minimize the advantages that the long lance has over the mark 15 the us surface launch torpedo because if the japanese are heading straight at them then the closing speed between the american torpedoes and their targets is going to be considerably greater and also the japanese are quite conveniently closing some of the distance so you could in theory launch beyond the range of the american torpedoes just and the japanese would enter range by the time the torpedoes actually hit that outer limit this has an added advantage in that it forces the japanese to make a very difficult choice because obviously firing torpedoes effectively straight down the throat of a formation isn't necessarily going to result in too many hits because the power of the tar of a ship is a relatively small target but if the japanese realize that their torpedoes incoming then they either have to stay heading in at the americans which favors the americans because they've managed to cross the t or if they choose to turn to present broadside and unleash their own torpedoes anyway they're now presenting their broadsides to the incoming american torpedo salvo which is going to end much worse for them and if they don't realize that the torpedoes are incoming and they just turn broadside anyway well that's going to have pretty much the same result in either case having a relatively steady battle line and the opening advantage means that the american ships should be able to absolutely pummel the japanese ships in fairly short order by using radar as their primary method for concentrating their salvos it's going to make it slightly harder for the various ships to get confused between the shell splashes of different ships targeting different japanese vessels and with such a significant advantage in battleship numbers it's highly likely that admiral lee will at least at first allocate some of those battleships to help clear out the smaller japanese vessels because their torpedoes pose a fairly significant risk to all of his ships at which point the americans have a significant firepower advantage with their destroyers and we could say for instance that the battle line consists of the two iowas up front the two north carolinas in the middle and the three south dakotas aft and if the three south dakotas are detailed to deal with japanese cruisers along with obviously the american cruisers then given their relatively light build the japanese cruisers are not going to last very long under that fire the secondary guns of the battleships at least the south dakotas are going to be concentrating on the japanese destroyers as well so there should be a fairly quick wipeout of the japanese light forces there will obviously be long lances in the water there will be fire coming back there may even initially be some return fire from the japanese battleships but overall american light vessel casualties should be light and at the same time you would have the lead for battleships dueling with the four japanese ships the japanese would be somewhat aware of what's going on having spotted the american formation shortly before the americans opened fire but admiral lee probably would have been keeping all his ships on a wait until they twitch order and then the guns fire so two congos potentially being engaged by two north carolinas well we know how this story ends we've seen it already at guadalcanal it'll take a few minutes but i don't think congo and haruna have much of a chance in this circumstance the two iowas dueling it out with the two yamatos and we're anticipating that this engagement is probably taking place at medium range for battleships is a lot closer of a fight both sides are imminently capable of hurting each other but in this more optimistic scenario the americans have already got their radar targeted gun locks achieved and of course their overall theoretical rate of fire and their rate of train and elevation is better than that of the 18.1 inch guns so they're getting in more accurate salvos sooner and hopefully relatively quickly suppress the yamato's ability to fire back especially with their secondary batteries probably also engaging obviously the secondaries aiming at the superstructure the battleships main guns shooting at whatever they can get they'll probably be some hits in return and those will probably hurt very badly but depending on who finishes off who sooner either the south dakotas or possibly the north carolinas or possibly both will eventually wind up coming in to help finish off the two yamatos in this potential scenario the most likely outcome would like possibly be one maybe two american cruisers sunk or damaged maybe three or four american destroyers in the same circumstances and anything from two to three american battleships damaged to some degree this of course would be a great crushing victory but with damaged and sinking vessels around and obviously no strict guarantee that absolutely every japanese ship is gone and not able to fire things like you know a last minute long lan salvo admiral lee would probably break away east and signal mitchell to finish off any survivors and of course any survivors of the japanese carrier groups the following morning with aircraft by contrast the worst case scenario would be the one that lee apparently seems to have at least considered if not necessarily entirely worried about the ships obviously have less than optimal amounts of surface to surface gunnery training more recently and crucially as lee pointed out he's not entirely confident that they have a lot of training in the communication necessary for a night action now granted at the action of guadalcanal where south dakota and washington were operating electrical failures meant that south dakota wasn't able to communicate with washington but if the communications protocols are unclear or captains aren't quite up to speed with following them we can hypothesize a worst case scenario where the american battle line is proceeding and perhaps an outriding japanese destroyer spots them and communicates back their location before it's probably inevitably destroyed by american gunfire now as the japanese fleet comes in for action there are two crucial advantages that they have compared to the last scenario one although the americans will see where the main formation of the japanese fleet is first the japanese have a pretty good idea not only that the americans are out there period but be where they are so they have more time to prepare for action deploy their formation etc etc and that's the second part of the advantage because not only do they know where the americans are they're also able to get ready for it and by knowing roughly where the americans are they can set their course thus and so in a worst case scenario after the destruction of the japanese destroyer that basically tells everyone what's going on the japanese shape out into a battle line and they head towards the americans on a approximately 45 degree course give or take a 5 10 degrees trying to force a closing engagement between battle lines and they're able to do this hypothetically relatively quickly when they do this the american ships are a little confused as to what they should be doing because as i said they haven't quite practiced how to communicate with each other fully and whilstly is getting them under control it costs them a few minutes which are pretty vital because all of a sudden unbeknownst to the americans a loss of long lances have suddenly entered the water specifically just over a hundred of the things and that's before the four cruisers might be able to turn and use their other broadside of torpedoes later in the battle and of course the japanese destroyers will be carrying reloads with these torpedo launches coming at around the same time that the main gun engagement is starting lee now faces a very difficult decision he can either keep the battle line in formation which will help with gunnery obviously or he can break the formation and turn away now with radar-guided gunnery and fire control systems maneuvering at night or at all isn't quite as negative in experience as it would have been a couple of years earlier but with the communications issues plaguing the fleet it could lead to collisions it could lead to ships getting lost and more importantly by disrupting the formation it's probably going to throw off the aim of various ships because when radar picks up a contact it doesn't helpfully tag it with yamato musashi kongo harona it's just large contacts at a distance you can shoot at them but if things are disrupted when you come to look again well you may see a large contact but was it the same large contact you were shooting at before or not who knows and so again hypothetical worst case scenario could go one of two ways either for whatever reason either because lee decides it's the lesser of the two evils or because ships just don't get the message the american battle line generally continues onwards shoots merrily away at the japanese who are obviously merely shooting back right before several dozen long lancers arrive the first notion of trouble is probably going to be destroyer getting atomized just off the port bow of the american battle line but then you're going to have several thousand pound warhead impacts all along the battleships that's gonna slow some of them down which is going to throw the formation out others potentially taking multiple hits on the same side might start to actually founder damage control crews are going to do the best they can obviously but these launches have taken place a bit closer range than the battle of the java c and of course a line of battleships is a significantly larger target than destroyers and small cruisers now whilst this very successful torpedo salvo might not hit all the battleships and indeed it might not overly trouble the some of the ones that are hit although to be fair a thousand warhead detonating is a little bit more than what the american torpedo defense systems are designed to handle the main problem is that it's disrupting the engagement of the japanese ships and again hypothetical worst case scenario some of the american ships are falling back the ones that are recovering and able to continue fighting make a fatal mistake a couple of the battleships target yamato and in so doing they miss musashi kongo and haruna are still getting badly worked over but musashi basically has the equivalent of what deathlinger had at the battle of jutland uninterrupted practice fire and very soon 18.1 inch shells have crippled or possibly even destroyed at least mortally wounded one maybe two further battleships at this point lee's active fighting battleships are approximately equal numbers to the operational japanese battleships and by this point the surviving japanese cruisers and destroyers who will have been ferociously fighting their american opposite numbers will at least have got some reloads left by the light of birding ships and with searchlights going off all over the place lee almost certainly recognizes that there's going to be a second follow-up salvo of long lances which is not going to be a good thing and so he would order his surviving ships to double back to try and protect or at least assist the other disabled and crippled battleships and other ships further behind whilst calling obviously for mitchell to send in as much aircraft reinforcement as he can as soon as light allows now the japanese ships will have been quite badly worked over as i said the congo's probably are not going to be in the best of shapes yamato having been double teamed probably also not in the best of shapes and so with a second torpedo salva that's more of a and stay away from us kind of rather than a hard-pressed attack the japanese forces or at least what's left of them probably melt away into the darkness now technically speaking by seeding the battlefield it is an american victory and the chances of the surviving japanese ships lasting very long the next morning against a very very angry and vengeful set of carrier air groups well overall the japanese will probably lose most of their ships but in terms of the actual gun and knight action it's going to be a much more debatable scenario because whilst the japanese will have lost some ships and had others damaged most likely the combination of 18.1 inch gunfire and long lances mean that the americans will have either lost or had damaged see badly significantly more of their capital ships and so as perhaps some holes slip under the water and others are taken in tow the american fast battleship line is left massively reduced as to be fair are their escorts and all it took was a few extra minutes of japanese preparation and a slight screw-up in the series of communications within lee's task force and now perhaps you can understand why lee wasn't too keen on undertaking this action the middle case scenario is somewhat hard to estimate precisely under the most likely overall uh circumstances of engagement there will be a ferocious fight between destroyers and cruisers but the japanese will be unleashing their long lances in fairly large numbers so whilst gunfire will probably rapidly overwhelm and destroy or drive off the japanese lighter forces it really comes down to how many long lances hit sure some japanese gunfire will probably total or badly damage some of the american lighter forces but many of the losses are going to be a roll of the dice of it did that destroy a catch a long lance or not because if it didn't that strong might otherwise be relatively fine and if it did well that's probably so long for this world for the destroyer similarly a few long lances that leak through may or may not damage or even badly damage some of the battleships but it's somewhat less likely if the japanese have to worry about the more immediate problem of shooting a bunch of angry fletchers who are coming to try and destroy them the battleship engagement should go quite heavily the in the americans favor it is after all seven versus four and as we said before the congos don't really rate too highly in this line engagement but in a reasonable engagement scenario the 18.1 inch shells well are still 18.1 inch ap shells there is every likelihood that one or more american battleships are going to be quite badly damaged by return fire it only takes one or two salvos to land for something of that size to do some pretty nasty effects and so whilst lee's force the following morning will be victorious and possibly still have all this battleships flow an unlucky combination of 18.1 inch shells and long lances or just very very luckily placed one of either could see more one or two heading to the bottom even if slowly but lee's force overall will be successful with a relatively positive kill rate the main issue is going to be that even if none of the battleships are outright sunk there's going to be a lot of towing and slow maneuvering back to safe harbor and lee's overall battleship force is going to be somewhat diminished now in the immediate term that's probably not going to matter too much because once again the carrier air groups the next morning are probably going to finish off the survivors both of their own attacks the previous knight and obviously anything that survived lee's forces but going forward when more air attacks come about and perhaps even weeks or months later during the invasion of other islands with significantly fewer available battleships because they're either being repaired or possibly even replaced there could be further ongoing american casualties as more japanese ships get past a now reduced american screen still it would be quite an impressive victory and would of course be the last major line confrontation between multiple battleships on either side you'll notice in all this we didn't mention the three light carriers because to be frank in any scenario their best course of action is just to get out of the way worst case scenario they just get mopped up towards the end of the battle the other scenario is one that lee mentioned so perhaps he does go west to try and find the japanese line but somehow the van of the japanese force and the american battleships miss each other in the night and lee decides to double back to form the anti-aircraft screen that he historically would do at this point the battle of the philippine sea would progress broadly along the same lines as it did historically with the exception being that just after three o'clock in the afternoon on the 20th when the sighting of the japanese fleet is received lee's task group is unleashed and heads straight for it whilst more details are confirmed along the way they would be overhauled by and presumably wave at the american aircraft that are being sent to strike the japanese forces but by the time night falls and they spot the american aircraft heading back again they're able to of course get a very reliable fix on where the japanese are they continue closing at full speed as early night falls and then on the evening of the 20th as the damaged and limping japanese forces are heading away they're detected on radar by these forces which gradually overhaul them and begin to gobble them up pac-man style which to be honest is a fairly spectacular victory but probably not the most interesting scenario because there's precious little at that point that the japanese are going to be able to do about it with this whole exception that if heavily attacked the van force may double back and try and force a knight action battleline versus battleline again but it's perhaps more likely that using their various ships high speeds the japanese fleet would take the more pragmatic course of just setting course away from the americans at the absolute maximum possible speed they could manage which broadly is still going to be faster than the overall american battleline speed is thanks to the fact that the south dakotas and north carolina is going to be around 28 knots and they'll just try and preserve their aircraft carriers so a few extra ships will be picked off but not too many as i said unless a major battle line action develops but at that point that's probably going to trend more to the slightly optimistic side of things when we look at the potential engagement over the night of the 18th 19th as opposed to the more negative one because the americans going in with all the information and primed and ready to fight whereas the japanese are going to be somewhat confused and trying to organize a desperate loss and to save their remaining carriers as opposed to anything else so there's some options as to how the battle of the philippine sea could have progressed had lee decided to commit his surface forces to an action as opposed to letting it be fought out mostly by aircraft if you think that something else might have happened or you want to make some other comment as to the scenarios presented then please feel free to say so in the comments below as of always of course these are alternate history considerations and anything could have happened we've just broadly tried to consider best worst and reasonable mid-case scenarios for what would have been an incredibly complex and very open to roll of the dice luck set of engagements that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 302,453

Keywords: wows, world of warships, USN, IJN, WW2, Pacific War, Admiral Lee, Alternate History, USS Washington, USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, Battle of the Philippine Sea

Id: Apw5TbIkTqQ

Length: 52min 20sec (3140 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022