374. Super cruisers and Beyond Burma

 

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COVID and the Pacific War 

Day 522/67 = 8/21/21

The new cases curve has finally reversed. And pretty dramatically. Hospitalizations are still going up, but that’s to be expected. I’m actually thinking I may drop back to a single mask for the final Stern Grove concert.

But that’s not why I’m writing: I am still reviewing my old blog posts and came to another assessment of Japanese ship building decisions leading up to WW2. Drachinifel has also talked about this in a Drydock episode or three. Latest thought: what about a scaled up Tone class ship instead of the Yamatas? Not sure about the actual gun size, but there would be six grouped in three twin turrets with a small citadel. The rear would be AAA and float planes. The speed would be at least equal to the Kongos. The protection would be better than the Kongos. It would have torpedo tubes deep in the hull. It would be hard to argue for anything below 15”, but 16” would probably make it too large a ship. You probably couldn’t get double the ships, but you probably could have had three by the start of the war and maybe one or two more during the course of the war. 

Now that I think of it, if you really do this knowing what the war will be like, you could argue for going with a well protected 12” armed ship -- the ship the USN thought the Japanese were building and built the Alaska’s in response. So a ship between the Tone and the Kongo. Smaller but still powerful guns. Similar speed. Better protection. Full load of torpedoes. These ships would have been perfect for the Solomons and for carrier escort duty. And they would have saved fuel oil over the Kongos in those roles. So if a ship like this could have been built on 20,000 ton displacement, then you might well have had four of them by the end of 1942 and six by the end of 1943. Maybe.

Day 530/75 

The final Stern Grove Festival concert (Tower of Power) had to be cancelled after a burst water main flooded the venue bringing down some trees and doing extensive damage. They will be lucky to have everything repaired for the 2022 Festival season. I’m already signed up for a number of events in September, so this is not the end of my greening work, but it was significant as the resumption of my greening work after the unprecedented pandemic break, I was actually looking forward to that final concert. I’ve yet to work a full eight hour shift, but that’s coming up soon. We will see how I hold up. For the businesses' sake, I’m glad to see so many events are happening. Most of them have been up north and I haven’t worked them. I still think these gatherings are a little nuts, but at least it’s outdoors.

At the moment it looks like I could end up making about half my usual greening income this year, which would be nice. More than I expected to make this year.

Day 545/90

Now I feel bad about something beyond being slow to continue this blog. The neighborhood restaurant that contributed the most to making last year tolerable, was Beyond Burma. While their tea leaf salad was disappointing, everything else was excellent and I went there about once a month and picked up food for four or five meals. Post-vax, when I could move around more, I returned to my previous favorite Burmese restaurant (with the amazing tea leaf salad). I just walked past Beyond Burma and they are closed and the room emptied out. They had spent most of the pandemic redecorating. I just checked my records, and I hadn’t given them any business in five months. I didn’t even get a chance to say thanks, and goodbye.

320. So random

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Every Breath You Take

The day after I returned from Portland I walked down to the Bank Cafe only to find it closed with a vague sign saying they hoped to be open soon. The reason I was going there was because they have a good (corporate) HVAC system and that was a particularly smokey day. I figured being there would be the best thing for the health of my lungs given the poor air quality.

When I tried again on Wednesday, after the air had cleared, I discovered they had been closed because of the poor air quality. The logic of this eludes me as I suspect my air cleaner at home is better than what most people have. Some schools closed for the same reason, which was even worse as, with nothing else to do, some of the kids just went outside and played in the murky air. How many people have HVAC systems at home with air cleaning capacity? I would love to have one of those high end systems that bring in air, filter it, run it through a heat exchanger, and then distribute it around the apartment. There’s a second fan pulling air out of the apartment, and through the heat exchanger. You can even adjust the power of the two fans so that your space is positively or negatively pressurized (I’d go with positively to keep the neighbor’s cigarette smoke out.) I’d also like world peace. My guess is that operating a system like that -- even with the heating and cooling units off -- would take more electricity than I currently use for everything else.

After Black Friday or The day after...

The first two blocks of Stockton street are carpeted and entirely free of construction stuff, but I can’t tell if this is the usual just-for-the-season change or if they are actually done. I passed a dog having a nearly orgasmic roll on the grass-like carpet. I can’t tell if they are not finished setting up the holiday street furniture or what. (They weren't finished yet.) The first block seems in good shape but the next block seems incomplete or thrown together at the last moment. Since this is possibly the last year the street will be pedestrianized -- as the subway is supposed to open next year -- you’d think they would go all out. And that second block is the one with the puppies and kittens in the Macy’s windows. Last year it was kind of a mess because several areas -- like the shaft down to the station one hundred feet below -- were still blocked off. This year the entire block is clear.

Black Friday it rained all day but today is sunny and perfect, really. I’m not having any luck thinking of things I need to shop for. Aside from some groceries. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I really have better luck ordering clothes from LL Bean than from dropping into a store. The decline of local retail is one problem I do contribute to. Though, considering how few clothes I buy... And I do try to save something for Christmas Eve. Sadly, the only thing on my wish list so far is having my apartment cleaned by someone other than me. And I usually end up regretting that.

I've been holding on to this hoping to resolve the question of the future of Stockton Street. I believe they are going to return it to traffic use as soon at they complete the electrical work and possibly repave the sidewalk outside Neiman Marcus. The next block up is still blocked off as a staging site for work on the subway, except for a single lane. Maybe they will wait until that's freed up as well. Though it would be odd to have two, newly paved yet unused blocks of street in the heart of Union Square.

Bank Cafe

Now that the scaffolding is down outside, they’ve moved the comfortable chairs back to the corner window. Where I’m now sitting. And so I’m noticing that the Amazon Go store is now open diagonally across the intersection under the Crocker Tower. I’m curious to see how it works, but I’m afraid if I go over there they will grab me and throw me out on the sidewalk for the crime of not owning a smartphone.

Politics... but not what you're thinking

I’ve written before (I’m pretty sure) about San Francisco’s ridiculously large political footprint in California politics. Both our U.S. Senators and our new Governor have held city offices, two of the three were mayors. But now it’s getting out of hand. The former city DA and former California Attorney General and newly elected US Senator is now running for President. I assume she’s trying to steal a march on Gavin Newsom, our newly elected Governor (and ex-Mayor) as they are both such obviously attractive Democratic candidates. Only I can’t support her this time.

The problem is that she has no administrative or legislative experience. I’m sure she would be better than Trump, but that’s a very low bar. Also, it would be nice if she were to do the job we just elected her to do for at least a couple years before running for something else. I’m still waiting to see if Newsom has learned from the mistakes he made as Mayor. If so, then he would be an excellent candidate in four or so years. 


Kamala Harris would probably be a very good U.S. Attorney General if someone else were to be elected President, but I would still like to see her serve out her Senate term. The only silver lining I can see here would be if she moved on and then Newsom appointed Willie Brown to fill her seat for the rest of her term. Now that would be spectacular.

“Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.”

― Sun Tzu

While I really like this quote, I think it’s only true in part. I can think of plenty of battles and wars that were lost before they were fought, but there are also battles that were won against the odds by playing the situation just right. Midway would be an example. And there are other battles won by the side that made the fewest mistakes -- that would be a long list.

But it is true that you need to be prepared to win. El Alamein would be a battle Sun Tzu would have appreciated. Also the Battle of Nashville.

IJN After action assessment

The DDs were great, just not enough of them as the war progressed. CAs also excellent. CLs 2nd rate, Japan could and should have upgraded here. BBs  only the Kongo class was really useful. The USN got better service out of even the antique Arkansas than the IJN did out of its “real” BBs. 

Besides CLs the IJN should have invested in super cruisers, ships with the speed of a CA, the same weapons with perhaps a heavier main battery, and better protection. A description might sound like the Deutschland class, but what I have in mind is more a large CA than a small BB. The IJN could have gotten much more use from these ships than they did from the Yamatos. (6 x 11” in twin turrets, probably 15-20k displacement.) Ironically, the USN thought the IJN was working on larger cruisers like this which is why they built the Alaska class ships. Only the IJN didn't think seriously about it until they learned of the Alaska class, and then it was too late as even the Alaskas didn't get into service until the last year of the war. The Alaskas are actually a bit more ship than I have in mind. The Des Moines class ships are more like it, though they took advantage of rapid-fire 8" guns rather than larger guns.

297. The Decisive Battle

The Decisive Battle

There are so damn many YouTube channels devoted to military history it’s getting ridiculous. There are now two devoted to doing short ship biographies. I click on them thinking, well, I know this material, but I wonder if they will cover X, and then I listen to the entire thing and learn a few things I didn't know. And since there have been a series of them on WW2 USN ship classes recently, it’s got me thinking of yet more ways to address the ungraspable scope of late Pacific War conflict. Yes, I know I need help, but until I receive it, here’s a “quick” look at the “Decisive Battle” of the Pacific War that doesn’t go into the action, but merely looks at the ship assets at the time.

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was focused, before the actual war, on a Decisive Battle that it imagined would occur in the Western Pacific somewhere around the Caroline/Mariana Islands. All their plans -- including the ships and planes they chose to build -- were in the interest of winning this battle. They imagined the US Fleet would have to fight its way across the Pacific, getting weaker and weaker as it suffered losses from submarine, aircraft, and other attacks. Only when it was weaker and over extended would they charge out with their heavy battle force to crush the USN. The only part of this plan that went the way the IJN hoped was their husbanding of their battleship assets to mid 1944. Everything else was a disaster.

The USN did suffer losses, severe losses, especially during 1942. But as they surged forward they brought with them floating dry-docks and other repair assets that allowed them to maintain their ships even in the Central Pacific. And the flow of ships returning to America for more extensive repairs was more than offset by the constant addition of new ships to the fleet. The commissioning of new ships increased year by year and was still going strong when the war ended. As often happens, the IJN had expected their opponents to do what they would/could do. (The USN made the same mistake when it took them over a year to notice that Japan was not building new tankers and destroyers fast enough to replace their losses. Once they realized this, those classes of ships were made priority targets and their losses surged until Japan had a severe shortage of both.)

Now, there is one problem to going into asset detail about “the” Decisive Battle of the Pacific War -- there were kind of two of them. The Battle of the Philippine Sea was the decisive battle. After that engagement the IJN had no chance of winning. But that had been one of the carrier vs carrier battles where surface ships didn’t engage each other. The Decisive Battle everyone envisioned had to involve the battleships. So there is also a sub-Decisive (or post-Decisive) Battle of Leyte Gulf. I’m just going to cover the final battle as that should make my point. 

Also, I can’t help pointing out that two more USN new battleships, two battle cruisers (technically "Large" cruisers), and twelve new heavy cruisers in addition to thirteen Essex class carriers and three even larger Midway class carriers were in the pipeline and would be commissioned later in or just after the war ended.

I will list the ships belonging to the major divisions of each navy’s forces at Leyte Gulf. I will also, and this is central to my point, indicate if the ship was commissioned during the war or before the war began. What you will see, I believe, is that the USN fleets the IJN actually encountered in mid-1944 were to a large extent a new navy -- one that hadn’t existed on December 7th, 1941. While the IJN fleets would be what had survived the fighting to that point.


The Battle of Leyte Gulf - October 1944

USN Third Fleet, Task Force 38
Task Group 38:1 - CVs (Large Fleet Carriers) Wasp, Hornet, Hancock - CVLs (Light Fleet Carriers) Monterey, Cowpens - CAs (Heavy Cruisers) Chester, Pensacola, Salt Lake City, Boston - CLs (Light Cruisers) San Diego, Oakland

Task Group 38:2 CV Entrepid - CVLs Cabot, Independence - BBs (Battleships) Iowa, New Jersey (Halsey's flagship) - CLs Biloxi, Vincennes, Miami

Task Group 38:3 - CVs Essex, Lexington - CVLs Princeton, Langley - BBs Massachusetts, South Dakota - CLs Santa Fe, Birmingham, Mobile, Reno

Task Group 38:4 - CVs Franklin, Enterprise - CVLs San Jacinto, Belleau Wood - BBs Washington (Lee), Alabama - CAs Wichita, New Orleans 

USN Seventh Fleet, Task Force 77
BBs West Virginia x, Maryland y, Mississippi, Tennessee y, California x, Pennsylvania y- CAs Louisville, Portland, Minneapolis, HMAS Shropshire - CLs Denver, Columbia, Phoenix, Boise

x = Sunk at Pearl Harbor. y= Damaged at Pearl Harbor

Task Unit 77.4.3 - CVE (Escort Carriers) Fanshaw Bay, Kalinin Bay, Gambier Bay, White Plains

Task Units 77.4.1-2 had similar numbers of war-built escort carriers

CA HMAS Australia and CL USS Honolulu had been badly damaged prior to the start of the battle and were retiring to Manus for repairs.

IJN 
Northern Force -  CV Zuikaku - CVLs Zuihō, Chitose,  Chiyoda - BBs Hyūga, Ise - CLs Ōyodo, Tama, Isuzu
Center Force - BBs Yamato, Musashi, Nagato, Kongō, Haruna - CAs Atago, Maya, Takao, Chōkai, Myōkō, Haguro, Kumano, Suzuya, Tone, Chikuma - CLs Noshiro, Yahagi
Southern Force -  BBs Yamashiro, Fusō - CA Mogami

Second Striking Force -  CAs Nachi, Ashigara - CL Abukuma 

So, at the closest thing the Pacific War had to the imagined "Decisive Battle," the IJN could only bring two new super-battleships and three new light cruisers. Meanwhile, aside from Seventh Fleet's old fire support battleship force and the heavy cruiser force (the new heavy cruisers were just starting to hit the fleets), the USN was almost entirely wartime construction.

What would also be interesting to show (I have to draw the line somewhere) would be the USN assets that weren't even mobilized for this battle. While the IJN had been carefully -- arguably, too carefully -- husbanding their main battle force for this moment, the USN had been using their assets more vigorously which meant that there were, for example two battleships that were not present for one reason or another (they were either being rested or repaired). And the same was true of all the other classes of ships. 

And since all this data about the USN fleets is here, as I've mentioned before, you can see that Admiral Lee had his flag on the USS Washington when he should have been on either the Iowa or New Jersey so he could lead the fastest and most powerful battleship force Third Fleet could delegate. And Halsey had his flag on the New Jersey when it should have been on a cruiser for maximum flexibility. 

(I've been thinking about this since I published it last night and I want to give Admiral Lee the benefit of the doubt here. He had a strong bond with the Washington and her crew, and if you divided the American battleship force into two equal units, three fast and three slow, then Washington would fit with the Iowa class ships. But, the whole idea of a "fast" force is to have the speed to chase down the enemy, and Washington would have slowed the force down from 33 knots to 28 knots. The only sensible division of the battleship force would have been two fast and four slow. So Lee really should have been on one of the Iowas or on a cruiser. 

Both Spruance and Kurita realized that the logical place for a modern fleet commander was in a heavy cruiser, but Halsey had to be in the biggest ship under his command. And even though he got burned by this at Leyte Gulf, he didn't learn and stayed on the New Jersey for the rest of the war. While this only led to embarrassment, not disaster, at Leyte Gulf, it is indicative of his poor decision making while in command of Third Fleet.)

P.S. The final IJN operation of the Pacific War was Operation Ten-Go, a suicide run by the BB Yamato with some escort ships to attack the American invasion force off Okinawa. Spruance was in command of Fifth Fleet at the time, so he sent his battleship force, again six ships but this time three Iowas (though not Iowa) and three of the slower South Dakotas. Marc Mitscher was in command of Task Force 58, the carrier force, and he had no patience for the dreams of the battleship officers. He launched a massive attack that sank both Yamato and the CL Yahagi about the time they lost sight of Japan. 

But here's what caught my eye when reviewing this engagement. The IJN lost between 3,700 and 4,250 men killed on that day. The USN's two worst days of the Pacific War were when Pearl Harbor was attacked (2,335 killed) and the Battle of Savo island (1,077 killed including Australians), so a total of 3,412 killed. And the IJN threw away more lives than that for Ten-Go with nothing at all to show for it. No one has any idea how many men the IJN lost at Leyte Gulf but it would have been far higher than even this 4,250 figure.

The tree that wouldn’t die

After two rough years, the little potted tree in our alley, now sitting outside my window, has finally had a good year. 

Not only have all its remaining branches remained unbroken, but it’s developed a bush like addition at its base. I will probably trim this once it drops its leaves -- in the next month or so -- but I wanted to give it all the leaves possible to make up for the branches it’s lost.

While it still looks green and fairly healthy, in fact it is preparing for its yearly taking-out-of-the-trash. Its leaves are accumulating whatever the tree doesn’t need, and soon I will be sweeping up its garbage. The leaves lost their completely-healthy look last month. But I’m still just amazed that the poor thing is still seemingly thriving, given its modest pot, modest supply of water and nutrients, and modest dose of sun -- between the narrow alley and all our fog, its sun exposure is truly limited.


I’ve thought of planting something more attractive in the dirt around its base, or just mulching it, but for all I know the grass that has found a home there is fixing nitrogen or something else useful. At any rate, migrant grass is probably the perfect sidekick for such a determined little tree. 

48. Gears & webmail

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The magic middle

It never ceases to amaze me how trains of thought I've been following for most of my life, and writing about for years, can still lead to new realizations. This must be one of the great advantage of teaching. I'm going to approach this new realization in a round about way -- possibly as an homage to Martha Grimes.

In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Richard Feynman writes about a brief time in his grad student days when he worked in industry. Here's a quote I've always remembered, this is a mechanical engineer giving him advice for a project, "when you have a gear ratio, say 2 to 1, and you are wondering whether you should make it 10 to 5 or 24 to 12 or 48 to 24, here's how to decide: You look in the Boston Gear Catalogue, and select those gears that are in the middle of the list. The ones at the high end have so many teeth they're hard to make. If they could make gears with even finer teeth, they'd have made
the list go even higher. The gears at the low end of the list have so few teeth they break easy. So the
best design uses gears from the middle of the list." That passage has always stayed with me as an argument for the safety of a middle course. 

Now, I've talked before about Hitler's fondness for super tanks and the Imperial Japanese Navy's (IJN's) similar fondness for super ships, but also about how the IJN opted to skimp on protection for their aircraft in exchange for maneuverability and range. And I've contrasted these detrimental extremes with the success of more moderate options like U.S.N. battleships and light fleet carriers. I don't think I've mentioned Soviet tanks, but the T-34 is perhaps the best example of a middle-of-the-range tank, not as good as the best German tanks but with some better features than the U.S. tanks of the same period.

If production issues, maintenance issues, fuel logistics, and the ability to cross weak bridges or be transported on narrow trains were not factors, any sane tanker would want a Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B (King Tiger). But those issues are always factors. I started this train of thought with the exploits of Sepp Dietrich during the Battle of the Bulge in mind. He ended up having to abandon some of the best tanks in the world and escape on foot because he couldn't get across rivers and ran out of fuel. I can't say that he would have done better with Panzer IVs, but I don't think he would have done worse, and they may well have given him options (and time) he didn't have with his King Tigers. 

Would the IJN have done better with battleships more like the Iowa's than the Yamatos? They wouldn't have done worse. And it's reasonable to assume they would have had the ships sooner and been a little more willing to risk them in battle. By opting for the extreme end of the scale they stressed their manufacturing sector (not always a bad thing) and limited their other material options. You can argue that what the IJN really needed was a modern upgrade to their excellent Kongō-class ships. Both as escorts to their carrier fleets and as backup for their cruiser forces in the Solomons battles -- fast ships armed with 16" guns and powerful AAA could have made a real difference. (More likely, they would have freed up more of the Kongōs to participate in the Solomons.) But I digress...

My point is that, to again quote what I'm told is an old Russian proverb, " 'Better' is the enemy of 'good enough'." The best possible tank or battleship is almost certainly too much tank or battleship. (Aircraft carriers are a bit of a special case since they require so much room and become more efficient the larger their air group. The "don't-keep-all-your-eggs-in-one-basket" argument against super-carriers falls apart when your non-super-carrier can't support AWACS or fighters competitive with ground based air craft. The U.S.N. wasn't completely wrong, at the beginning of WW2 when they were reluctant to invest in small carriers.)

So does this principle extend beyond war and engineering? I think it's true for the built environment: Buildings, airports, cities (though I have read that buildings over 100 stories tend to be inherently more stable due to factors I can't easily explain.) And I do think people tend to underestimate the disadvantages of Light-Rail vs Heavy-Rail for city transit systems. It certainly applies when it comes to breast implants.

HOA

The past two days I've been cleaning out my webmail folders after the shit-storm of emails related to the retrofit this summer. June through September. First I moved all related emails into folders by topic, then I review them and delete the ones that are redundant (most of them). This is like a mental version of the "In previous episodes" video montage at the beginning of a TV show or mini-series episode. It makes me very tired. What a lot of bother and cat herding. I have to keep reminding myself how much more it would have cost me if I owned the entire building (and so could have avoided all the interaction with other owners).

Next - 49. HSB 2016