Posted on 03/06/2018 8:28:24 AM PST by C19fan
The Navy reused names to confuse the Japs.
Nope, the Japanese actually knew they sunk 'Hornet' since their destroyers watched her sink.
Japanese continually overestimated how many US ships they had hit and sunk.
The Navy wanted to memorialize ships that had been sunk in action.
They even named a Baltimore class cruiser 'Canberra' after an Australian cruiser sunk at Savo Island.
Can you imagine how many more ships would have been sunk by US forces had they had the Long Lance.
OK, that makes sense I just remember reading the story about it getting torpedoed and the sub crew couldn’t believe it sank.
Long Lance was fueled by pure oxygen and the tanks for it and torpedo reloads were kept amidships on cruisers and destroyers.
Thousands of pounds of explosives and pure oxygen to fuel fires kept amidships.
Not surprisingly, when a Japanese destroyer went up, it was typically lost with few if any survivors.
If you go through Japanese ship losses, their detonation contributed to the loss of quite a few ships.
It was as dangerous to them as it was to us but we were replacing our ships with much better and up to date designs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_November_1944_reconnaissance_sortie_over_Japan
On November 1, 1944 a B-29 recon plane flew a photo mission on one of the very few crystal clear days over Tokyo.
Japanese freaked, everyone in the city saw the silver plane flying back and forth but it was too high for fighter interception (They tried) or for their AA guns.
One of only 2 photographs that survive of the supercarrier Shinano were taken on this mission.
The Japanese navy decided it was too dangerous to complete the carrier in Tokyo and rolled the dice to finish it in the Inland Sea (Kure). They lost.
Excuse my goof. Your photo wasn’t showing up so I posted it again.
Then when I check the posting your photo was now showing.
I can’t get the other one to show either.
Guns and Gun Directors
Shinano was hit with four torpedoes. You may be confusing it with Taiho which was hit by one. It likely would have survived had some fool of a damage control officer not turned on the ship’s ventilation system, thereby spreading gasoline vapors through the ship and turning it into a floating bomb waiting for a match.
The ship was intercepted by Archerfish because (a) one of the shaft bearings was running hot, slowing the carrier down about one tenth of a knot, so that Archerfish was able to intercept her some hours later, and (b) the Japanese admiral recalled the destroyer escort that tried to counterattack Archerfish after the sub broken the a cardinal rule of submarine warfare by using its radar. By my lights, the sinking of Shinano was the result of a series of miracles favorable to the U.S. Navy.
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