Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "The Battle of Samar (Alternate History) - Bring on the Battleships!" video.

  1. OK ... first off - thanks for doing this. I found it very interesting. For myself I probably preferred the discussion oriented format to the Battle Report format for what would have been an artificial and hence varying result. That is to say - a Historical Report - is based on what we believe actually happened and other than discussing what did really happen would pretty much come out one way. Doing an Alternate History Scenario - could come out a lot of different ways. Next - (once more) it is The Battle OFF Samar. Yes that is a historically odd reference, probably due to the method in which an American Admiral referred to the battle - but that IS what it's called. Your first mis-statement of this in the historical video is one thing but - here - this is the second time you've done it and after all the scolding you got in the first one - you really should have said it right. Now - that was a serious criticism but it is based on the fact that your efforts are other wise scholarly - and hence more is expected of you. For a slightly less serious one - "But what about the Torpedo boats??? You left out the PT Boats!!!" Ha! Ha! I was part of a group of war gamers 30-40 years ago that did a lot of things like this with tiny rectangular pieces of card board moved about on the floor, using a set of Naval Warfare rules developed by one of the guys in the group. We had all played "Jutland" from Avalon Hill and using Mike's Rules did a round robin of the worlds WWII navies, French, Italian, British, German, American and Japanese - so - I've got some experience in trying to do things like this and do appreciate the effort involved and the vagaries of the results. We also fought some computer scenarios using the Great Naval Battles Computer Game on my LAN. We never did merge Surface and Air Combat scenarios with either of these rules - though we did have the Warship Commander Rules for more modern scenarios that merged them. Of course, in war gaming a scenario you have to limit it somewhere - such that it is by definition - artificial. If viewed as part of the over all situation existing in Leyte Gulf - all those small carriers would have been there too and with none of them being attacked by Japanese surface forces, they would have been free to attack the Japanese Center Force with better armed and more organized strikes. So, while the Japanese Force might win some limited scenarios, over all, they would have little chance of prevailing over the American forces present in Leyte Gulf. .
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  2. My comment last time didn't include what I would have done. If I had been the American Admiral ... First, I would have had my Fleet Fall back onto the Battleships. Three battle lines - Destroyers - then Cruisers - then Battleships. Next I would have had my destroyers maintaining a smoke screen between the US ships and the Japanese ones. Sit back behind the smoke screen as the Japanese try to blindly penetrate it and slaughter them as they come. The way to win a naval battle is to eliminate the weaker ships first - and take their guns out of the equation. Thus the American Battleships would target the two Battle Cruisers in pairs, then the Nagato and then the Yamato. Your biggest problem here would be not wanting to have to many ships fouling the range on any one target. Here, because of this - you might want to target the Yamato by the 16" gun battleships right away. Another real world problem you might have here - is whether or not you could tell which target was which ship from your radar returns. Then - another factor could be the float planes anything but the destroyers might be carrying - which could theoretically report the fall of shot to their ship. Then you'd have AA from the ship and possibly jamming to consider. Now - the biggest problem with all such plans is the unexpected. Naval Engagements are often decided by Critical Hits. Hood, Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Hiei were all done in by critical hits. Hood blew up, Bismarck & Hiei took steering hits and Scharnhorst was about to get away when she lost speed because of a hit - and was caught - not to mention the early loss of her radar. Of course, as I mentioned last time - this is all just setting up an arbitrary battle to game out - as the Americans would have had all those small carriers and their air groups - which actually did a lot of damage to the Japanese Center Force in the real world *OFF* Samar. .
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