Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The USN Pacific Submarine Campaign - The Struggle is Real (Jan'43 - Jun'43)" video.

  1. Depends on your definition of "land"...
    6
  2. Well, they made a really great set of guns... (and at least swallowed their "pride" about the 1" and bought the foreign-designed 40mm and 20mm).
    4
  3. Ending: The wonderful thing about Mk14s: Fire ten, go boom only ONE.
    3
  4. Even with the paltry budget they had in the '30s, they could have non-destructively tested the depth controller and had that fixed. Same for the magnetic exploder, the testing would have had to be a bit more expensive in recording gadgetry, but it could have been done. Nothing would have answered the contact exploder testing besides actual impacts, so we can understand (but not forgive) their hesitance. But two (not one) categories of warships relied on these as their big punch: subs and destroyers. Not testing their operation and lethality should have been a dereliction-of-duty offense. But then, we gave MacArthur the Medal of Honor in 1942.
    2
  5. I thought she dumped him when he wanted to celebrate. Now I'll have to watch it again...
    2
  6. He's begun the research into that issue, as reported here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzCk7lc0ooQ I gather he wants to do some more before he writes (or records) a definitive answer to that question.
    2
  7. They actually thought smaller guns would discourage subs from attacking escorts on the surface. Psychological manipulation.
    1
  8. Testing & Development is a whole different order of magnitude more rigorous today than it was pre-WW2. Which is why our anti-tank missiles are working in Ukraine while the Russian active defense tank armor is not.
    1
  9. According to legend, one of them hit a damaged IJN carrier at Midway, failed to detonate, and floated on the surface nearby, where several crew used it as a floating log when they abandoned ship.
    1
  10. You may have stumbled across a new conspiracy theory...
    1
  11.  @parrot849  BuOrd was working too hard on the fully automatic 8inch gun turret to worry about minor issues with 10 year old systems...
    1
  12. It went beyond BuOrd, up to the CNO (Pratt?), as he had offered only one useless ship as a target, on condition they not sink it, which BuOrd declined. The '30s were all about saving money, and torpedoes were individually very expensive ordinance. And at the time, no one knew that the earth's magnetic field varied around the planet.
    1
  13. It was the USN design, and USN responsibility to test and verify. It was also only produced at NTS Newport R.I., due to opposition from New England congressmen. On a good day they got one or two out the door. Later in the war they opened it up to private companies, but the shortage lasted into 1944. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo
    1
  14. In the game War In The Pacific: Admirals Edition, there is a setup option "US torpedoes historic" On or Off. When you turn historic performance off, you do a LOT better in 1942 and 43. How many carriers did Drach mention in this episode that were missed? There were several more in '42.
    1
  15.  @marcusfranconium3392  Perhaps that money would have been better spent equipping Dutch land forces to handle the German air and ground assault. An interesting what-if...
    1
  16. It is a part of the film Operation Pacific (1951).
    1
  17. Upgrading the explosive was a partial step in that direction - Torpex or RDX.
    1
  18. Radio - but not as much as Doenitz commanded...
    1
  19. That would take years - testing, production ramp-up, training, pulling the old and replacing... Just be glad that BuOrd swallowed their pride with the Bofors and Oerlikon...
    1
  20. The time period you list covers the latter Solomons, the New Guinea, the Gilberts , Marshalls and Aleutians campaigns, plus stuff like the raid on Truk. All had significant destroyer and cruiser level engagements, plus lots of daily air battles. I gather by "major" you mean battleships and carriers. Both sides were low on carriers, and the Japanese were on the defensive, while the US launched the Essexes and Independences and trained the invasion fleets. The IJN recognized that the ongoing battles in the Solomons were not "critical" to homeland defense, and they were rebuilding the carrier air squadrons which had been decimated by being fed in piecemeal for long-distance flights. In the Pacific the Allies were not "saving it for D-Day", they actually launched a parallel major invasion of the Marianas in June '44. Japan did not "try something" because her strategy was defensive, to try to hold what she had taken (principally the Dutch East Indies with their oil) and make the Allies pay badly enough that they would accept a negotiated peace. They also knew that they could lose everything else up to the Marianas and Philippines and still survive, but once that line was breached they were doomed.
    1
  21. The bombers were having big problems in '43 - strategic bombing was hitting the target less than 5% of the time, and the losses were over 10%. The fix they needed was escort fighters and more critical target selection like fuel centers.
    1
  22.  @Voron_Aggrav  Part of the issue here is that they did not know how badly it was working, due to lack of and variety of testing. And part of that is due to penny-pinching by higher-ups in the Navy and Congress. As to the war-time reaction to reports of problems, yes they heard the issues but as desk-bound bureaucrats they were so wrapped up in their careers and the struggles to expand the production and expand the fleet that they were too willing to chalk it up to cautious commanders and faulty crew maintenance. Which is why Washington deskjockeys were rotated out to the fleet and vice versa.
    1
  23.  @Voron_Aggrav  You, sir, are a reasoned, logical, and compassionate thinker. But at least BuOrd was working hard on the fully automatic 8inch gun system...
    1
  24. If they could get alongside - those IJN destroyers were fast!
    1