Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "The Drydock - Episode 062" video.

  1. At Pearl Harbor: had the Americans been on a decent level of readiness and had competent officers analyzing the radar reports they could have launched all planes to oppose the attack and simultaneously counterattack. Now the counterattack would probably not do a lot of damage given the available types, inefficient in attacks on ships, but still, they might damage a ship or two perhaps allowing for the approaching USS Enterprise to pick it off. However, the fighters and advance warning to ships would result in much greater Japanese losses as well as reduced US ones. US packed 390 planes on Hawaii, that's a serious force. And that's excluding those on the approaching USA Enterprise.
    2
  2. 30:46 Germans: Schlezwig-Holstein actually fired the opening shots of the war by shelling the Polish troops in Danzig on 1. Sep. 1039. In 1944 as mentioned the Prinz Eugen but also Scheer and Lutzow and some destroyers shelled the advancing Soviet troops in the Baltics, directed by ground spotters via radio supposedly causing significant losses (see Task force Thiele). Imperial Japanese Navy : Kongo and Haruna bombed the Henderson Field in 1942 destroying 40 planes. Before that heavy cruisers also bombed it destroying 10 planes, During the battle for the Philipines in 1945 a Japanese naval task force shelled one of the landings. Royal Italian Navy: Armored Cruiser San Giorgio supported the Italian defense of Tobruk. Protected with torpedo nets it shrugged off up to 39 torpedo attacks by the British torpedo bombers and was eventually scuttled when the city fell. The French National Navy: The battleship Paris ineffectually tried to shell the advancing German troops in 1940. Soviet Navy: Marat, Oktobarskaya Revolutsiya, Maxim Gorky, Kirov and many other ships shelled Finnish coastal guns in the Winter War and the Axis in the Baltic including around Leningrad and Parizhskaya Kommuna, Molotov, Komintern and Voroshilov and many other ships shelled the Axis around in the Black Sea. Royal Hellenic Navy: The destroyer Vasilissa Olga took part in the shelling of Catania, Sicily. Possibly also of Panatelleria just before the garrison surrendered. Royal Yugoslav Navy: River monitor Drava shelled a Hungarian airfield just as the hostilities commenced. Also the destroyer Beograd was to shell the Italians at Zara but was damaged by bomb near misses by the Italian aircraft so it had to limp back to port for repairs. Spanish Navy: Shelled the Rif (wrecking the Espana battleship in the process...) and later ships of both sides in the civil war shelled the opposing positions.
    1