Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "Shore Bombardment in WW2 - We're in the re-landscaping business now!" video.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Overlord planning was obsessed with tactical surprise, so even though the minesweeper would be visible the evening of D-1, the shore bombardment mission was limited to 30 minutes. This was to be followed up by heavy bombers , which were supposed to provide the real softening up of the beach defenses while the ships preserved their ammunition for on-call fire support after the troops hit the beaches. However, the bombers came in perpendicular to the beach, bombing through overcast using radar. Afraid of dropping short and hitting landing craft, the bombers instead dropped late and scattered their bomb loads a couple miles inland, contributing precisely nothing to the success of the operation. Note their fault, they were just being used to do something they physically could not do.
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@bificommander As Parschal and Tully mention, the Midway defenses included four 7" taken from pre-dreadnoughts of the Connecticut and Mississippi classes. Until destroyed, these would be a threat to anything up to and including cruisers. As the US would discover during their own amphibious landings, naval gunfire needs to be pre wisely directed in order to destroy dug-in targets, and infantry is even harder to dig out.
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@jean-francoisaubry USS Tullibee and USS Tang, to name a couple.
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@rambling_reiver not at all. The superheavy was specifically an armor piercing shell and had a bursting charge of about 40 pounds, while the 1,900 pound "high capacity" shell had a bursting charge of over 150 pounds. As for the issue of the superheavy shell itself, we dont have to speculate about it vs a normal weight shell, because we already have an apples to apples basis for comparison in the 16"/45 guns of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes versus the 16"/45 guns of the Colorado class. The newer guns used the same Mark 8 superheavy shell, while the Colorados could not used that shell (too long for the ammunition feed) and instead used a conventional weight shell of about 2,200 lb. Despite the higher velocity of the lighter shell, it is expected to penetrate about 1-1.5" less armor than the slower super heavy shell at all ranges, from the muzzle out to any practical range. This is based on the same US Navy formula, so all other potential sources of bias are eliminated.
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@johnshepherd8687 no, the US would have put Midway under seige with submarines out of Hawaii and gone on with its plans in the South Pacific. A Midway taken by the Japanese might have remained in Japanese hands, on starvation rations, until the end of the war.
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@datgood121 the German navies have a long history with the 8.8 cm gun in various lengths. There was an 8.8 cm/78 gun used as an AA gun on the Deutschland class cruisers when they were launched. This fired a 20 lb HE shell at about 3100 fps. Other guns in this caliber were in service from the 1890s or so.
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