Oh man what a blow to the U.S. that would have been !! Without its Carrier-ships it would have been impossible for the U.S. to control the Pacific !! However i don't remember why they werent at Pearl Harbor ! KBO
They went off on an exercise I believe. Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
That's my understanding too, one of those lucky flukes of war, however there are conspiracy theorists who suggest that the US deliberately sacrificed the Battleships to save the Carriers... :roll:
Aftermath of Pearl Harbour Then there is the theory that us Brits knew about the attack but said nothing. :smok: Something I've never heard a proper answer for was why MacArthur was given a second chance when Kimmel and Short weren't. Despite 8 hours or so passing since the initial attack on Pearl, the Japanese bombers found the US aircrfat in nice neat line and nothing to oppose them.
The Lexington was off taking planes to Midway. The Enterprise was coming back from dropping of Wildcats at Wake. The Enterprise had been due back Dec 6 but a storm had delayed her.
Re: Aftermath of Pearl Harbour If us Brits knew half the things people claim we did then you have to wonder why we spent 1939-41 getting our collective backside kicked. I believe the answer to that is that MacArthur had political connections that saved him, Kimmel and Short didn't.
Re: Aftermath of Pearl Harbour You've been reading 'The Foresight War' :roll: Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
Yes, and that was the best thing to happen to the US Navy on that day. On a side note, Admiral Halsey, aboard ENTERPRISE, actually tried to find the Japanese task force. Fortunately, they evaded his searches.
Enterprise was delivering planes 2 wake the york town was at sandiago and the lexington was giving planes to midway those my friend are the reason america diden't lose the war even if they where lost america could make up in a year for it's lose (the battle ships never really did matter just a waist of meatel then think of all the battles won in ww2 that battle ships played even a minor part in how many?
The battleships were hardly a waste of metal. Admiral Nimitz used the old BBs as bombardment platforms to support his amphibious landings, while the fast battleships were used as escorts for his carriers. If the American carriers had been at Pearl Harbor on December, their destruction would have been a devastating blow to the US Navy. Loss of the carriers would have severely limited the ability of the USA to strike back at Japan, or even defend against their attacks, for at least two years. American morale, low as it was at the time, would have been even worse with such a development.
Battleships saved many carriers and other ships from getting sunk by kamikaze attacks later in the war and also protected the carriers and other "soft-skinned" ships from surface attack.
Quite true. Many Japanese pilots during the war, kamikaze or not, would go for a BB in a heartbeat. The same was also true for many American pilots, too.
I actually think that it was luck that we lost the Battleships at Pearl, if we didnt, we would, like the rest of the world be using them as our main platform for naval battle and we would lose them in the deep water around the Philipines if we went with our plans for fighting the Japanese. They would not be largely salvagable there, like at pearl.
Admiral Nimitz said that he believed that it was "God's mercy" that the fleet was caught at anchor. Otherwise, they would indeed have been sunk in deep water, with much higher casualties among the crews.
