Comments by "Bk Jeong" (@bkjeong4302) on "The Drydock - Episode 094" video.

  1. John Rodrigues IIRC that was South Dakota that caused said incident.
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  2. Samar involved actual torpedo attacks as well as fake ones.
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  3. I would argue against any of the unfinished WWII-era battleships as being the best unfinished ship.....they were unfinished for a reason (and the ones that got built should also have been left unfinished).
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  4. I’d argue Mitscher was better than Spruance. Spruance was skilled, but what he did at Truk (and tried to do at Okinawa) really shows his biases IMO.
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  5. Admiral Tiberius The issue with Okinawa is that Spruance opted to use the Standards as the INITIAL force against Yamato....except Mitscher understood that aircraft carriers would give the Japanese vessel no chance to put up a fight and beat him to the punch, causing Spruance to relent.
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  6. Admiral Tiberius Given that the timetable for Samar meant the Japanese weren’t going to accomplish their objective for Sho-Go anyways (being too late to attack the landings), not sure whether that should count as a point against Halsey. Everything I’ve read on Ten-Go indicates Spruance had every intention of going for a battleship engagement first, but after Mitscher independently called for air attacks he relented.
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  7. Admiral Tiberius It DIDN’T “almost cause a disaster”, because the popular perception that the landings were vulnerable to Centre Force is wrong. By the time the Battle off Samar began the landings were coming to an end. Centre Force would have found few if any targets even if it got to the landing beaches totally unopposed.
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  8. Admiral Tiberius You’re not looking at the timetables and following the old, unsupported assumption those troops and supplies were still at sea. Those troop and supplies had already landed by that point, so they wouldn’t be lost to Centre Force, and of the three Taffy groups only one (Taffy 3) was ever at risk-the Japanese never located Taffy 1 and 2. The MOST damage the Japanese could do at Samar was the loss of Taffy 3, and that’s it.
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  9. Admiral Tiberius Good luck sinking further supply runs when Seventh Fleet (which historically already tried to intercept Centre Force at Samar, though this failed due to Kurita retreating) and later the fast carriers are after you.
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  10. Nuke89345 To be fair to Spruance, at least at Okinawa he eventually relented. But the fact he even tried for a surface engagement is infuriating. Yes, the Americans would still win (there were definitely enough Standards present to sink Yamato and neither side has an effective range advantage here), but why even bother giving the enemy a chance to put up a serious fight? Samar is probably one of the most misunderstood battles in WWII (from the very nature of the engagement to the role of various participants). It wasn’t a desperate defence of the landings, the odds were arguably in the American favour, the Japanese had no hope of achieving operational success, White Plains never sank a cruiser, most of Kongo’s supposed hits in that engagement never happened, Kurita made the right choice (and arguably Halsey did as well, by extension), and it definitely doesn’t support the idea battleships are needed as carrier escorts (as often claimed in regards to Samar). Heard of Browning before.
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  11. Nuke89345 Yeah. Really a mark against Spruance there. I personally hate seeing online discussions on Samar for those specific reasons. All the inaccurate claims get repeated, and it becomes a fanwank of the Taffy 3 surface units and White Plains (easily the most overrated vessel in the engagement) at the expense of most of Centre Force (except Kongo, the second most overrated vessel in the engagement) plus literally every other American vessel involved.
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  12.  @stuartwald2395  Given that the timetable of the landings would have prevented Kurita from attacking the landings anyways, even if Kurita hadn't;'t turned around Halsey arguably made the right call.
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  13. calvingreene90 Exactly.
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  14. calvingreene90 Because they were pointless and wastes of resources, or would have been if completed.
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  15. Superheavy, but fired horizontally at point-0blank range.
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  16.  @moritamikamikara3879  There were.
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  17. SonOfAB_tch2ndClass Picked up by other IJN vessels.
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  18. Frank DeMaris Agreed with North Cape. Hard to get worse than an Arctic blizzard.
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  19.  @karlvongazenberg8398  I'm serious about there actually being torpedoes: American records show that contrary to popular belief, the CVEs actually did have aerial torpedoes available (though only Taffy 2, which actually participated in the battle, was armed with them when the engagement started) The idea the Americans bluffed their way to victory at Samar is widespread, but is based on poor historiography.
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  20.  @TraditionalAnglican  Th0ugh in this case, Germany already has way too big of a surface fleet and building more is going to make that worse.
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  21.  @TraditionalAnglican  The surface fleet was never going to be a good idea.
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