Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Development of US Navy Tactics (1895-1939) - From Small Beginnings..." video.

Very interesting interview. Thanks for offering it. A couple observations: no-one is ever fully prepared for war. I have yet to hear a General or Admiral not say "if we had had another year (or two), to prepare, we would have been in a better position". As a wise man once said "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy". wrt the USN figuring out that a thrust across the Pacific to defend the Philippines or Guam would run a gauntlet of Japanese held islands: the Marianas and Carolines had been Spanish colonies prior to 1899. With the US having paid Spain to give up it's claims to the Philippines and Guam for payment of some $12M, Spain sold the Marianas and Carolines to Germany for about $4M. Japan, as an ally of the UK, rolled up these German colonies in WWI, and continued to hold them under a League of Nations mandate. The US could have avoided that situation by buying all the Spanish colonies in 1899, rather than cherry picking the two properties they did, thus preventing any potential enemy sitting astride the supply lines to the Philippines. wrt the US having bases in the Caribbean: I did some back of the envelope calculations of the value of all the UK held islands, plus British Honduras, by extrapolating what the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands in 1917. As it turned out, the total value of the West Indies colonies was just about equal to the debt the UK owed the US after WWI. At the same time, Arthur Balfour wrote a note to the French ambassador to the UK saying that, if it was up to the UK, it would forgive France's debt to the UK, and forego reparations from Germany, but, as the US was demanding repayment in full, with interest, in cash, the UK needed the cash from France. If the UK had signed over the colonies to the US, it would wash out the UK's debt to the US. Then the UK could follow through on Balfour's proposal and cancel all the debts owed it by it's allies, because, again, allied debts to the UK were almost exactly what the UK owed the US, so, again, the debts wash out. Then the Caribbean becomes essentially a US lake. This colony for debt swap was widely discussed in the press at the time, but Lloyd-George and President Harding both said "no". On the USN's severe shortage of scouts: this became glaringly evident in a pair of exercises in early 1916, when the weather was less than ideal. The DDs that were supposed to do the scouting were forced back to port, while the BBs plowed ahead, with no idea what lay over the horizon. It did not go well for the "attacking" force. Shortly after the US entered WWI, capital ship construction was given much lower priority, so that resources could be focused on addressing the US' deficiency in scouting and ASW forces. Three of the Colorado class, which had not been laid down, were postponed until after the war, and work on Maryland, Tennessee and California was slowed to a crawl. Maryland and Tennessee were laid down in April and May, respectively, of 1917, days or weeks after the US' declaration of war, escaping the postponement that delayed the other three Coloradoes. Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare Feb 1, announcing it's intention to sink without warning neutral flagged ships, including those from the US, in the designated war zone, reneging on a promise made in 1915. As if that was not enough of a defacto declaration of war on the US, the Zimmerman telegram was a further provocation. Bottom line, unlike 1941, the US' declaration of war in April was not a response to a surprise, but a culmination of a long series of provocations that afforded the US plenty of time for planning prior to making the declaration. I can't help but wonder if there was discussion in the Wilson administration and the Navy Department to take a page from the Admiralty's book of 1914 and cancel the Tennessees and Coloradoes outright, for the same reasons, before Tennessee and Maryland were laid down, and scrapping California on the slipway (a photo from March of 17 shows all that had been assembled of California was the keel and bottom of the hull), so that three more slipways, steel and manpower would be available to address the USN's critical shortage of smaller ships.
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@johnfisher9692 those four ships cancelled in 1914 are a fascinating pivot point: what if Fisher had been a better salesman and all three cancelled Rs were reordered as Renown class battlecruisers? Would Hood have been built? What if Fisher is less of a salesman and none of the cancelled Rs were reordered as Renowns. Would the Admiralty have built three, or all four, Admiral class battlecruisers? Without the left over guns and turrets from the cancelled ships, would the Courageouses have been built? And if not, what would the UK carrier force look like in the 30s? Or, what if the Admiralty did the same as the USN, postpone the four ships until after the war, then build them to their obsolete designs, the way the USN did with three of the Colorados?
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@ph89787 with a properly coordinated attack, combined with the historical factors of some US personnel, like Waldron, being right about where the Japanese force was, and command being willing to listen to them, the IJN would have been slaughtered. A lot of TBD drivers would have survived the day, there would have been no "flight to nowhere" and no other SBD force's success hinging on the chance sighting of a Japanese DD. With all three US carriers steaming together, rather than Yorktown exposed and naked by itself, the combined CAP would have been better able to swat the Japanese counterstrike, and Yorktown may have survived.
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@johnshepherd8687 yes. That's what I keep telling my Canadian friend when he cries about how old and decrepit the four pipers were that FDR gave the UK. My point about the Marianas and Carolines, for instance, is that the US could have scooped them all up in 98, because Spain did not have the wherewithal to say "no", but left the supply lines to the Philippines open to being cut by another power holding those islands.
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@geographyRyan generally they are cut up for scrap. I have seen a photo of then SecNav Denby with a torch in hand, making a ceremonial first cut in one of the ships cancelled for Washington Treaty compliance. Some, like Tosa and Washington, were used for target practice. A few, like Kaga and Lexington, were converted into something else.
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