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Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 1 (IJN 3(?) : 2 USN)" video.
@seanbryan4833 Given how many things Halsey didn't get court-martialed for that he should've been, that's no guarantee.
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@CaptainCoffee37 Callaghan was given the Medal of Honor basically to cover up his incompetence. By all rights, had he survived the battle he should've been court-martialed.
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@dclark142002 Given how bad USN torpedoes were in 1942, I'm not sure how much difference it would've made. Remember, the Mark 15 destroyer torpedo had all the same flaws as the Mark 14 submarine torpedo. Running too deep, a magnetic detonator that didn't work, and a contact detonator that also rarely worked. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those torpedoes that hit Hiei without exploding weren't actually a result of being too close for the torps to arm, but because of the 70% dud rate of USN torps.
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@follker I think Drach has addressed this one before. The issue is post-penetration damage. A tank is tiny compared to a warship, and usually has only 4-5 crew packed tightly together. A shaped charge warhead that penetrates the tank has a very good chance of detonating the ammo and/or killing the crew. The sheer size of a battleship means that even if it's a 460mm shell with a shaped charge, the molten jet it creates isn't going to have such effects. It'll be very bad for whoever is in the section that gets hit, but for the ship itself you'll simply have a big hole in the side. A conventional AP shell, on the other hand, does its actual damage with its bursting charge. Once it gets through the armor, it explodes inside the ship. There are however some examples of shaped charge torpedoes. A big hole above the waterline isn't going to sink a ship. A big hole underwater will. All the shaped charge warhead torpedoes that have entered service, as far as I know, are submarine torpedoes. They give even a small torpedo a very good chance of doing fatal damage to a submarine.
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That's exactly what it was. If Callaghan had survived, he should've been court-martialed for his consistent incompetence.
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