"Battle of Savo Island - the Allies were warned " Topic

Rad Admiral Morison in his 15-volume account of the US Navy's World War II accused the RAAF crew of a Hudson on reconnaissance mission of not alerting the Allied fleet to the presence of the Japanese. This was false and the crew have finally been vindicated and an apology issued.

link

Good to see that Mr. Geddes and his crew have been exonerated. Makes one wonder what other unfounded statements are in Morrison's history.

Old news (VERY old news). Most (if not all) historians have discarded Morrison's initial analysis long ago. IIRC, the sighting report was lost/mishandled/delayed/ignored (pick your favorite) in transit. Given the abysmal state of the USN's night fighting skills, it would have had no impact on the tactical battle.

coastal2,

What you say may be correct but Morrison's statement is a defamation of the character of that aircrew. As to impact on the tactical battle, an alerted force in waiting for the attacking Japanese may have given a better account of themselves.

Did Morrison write and publish before the equivalent of the official secrets act?

I often wonder how much of it was over confidence on the part of the USN, RN, RAN and RNNLN?

I rather agree with Coastal.
All advantages to the IJN for training hard to practice their night fighting skills.

Old news indeed. There are a number of slips that added up to the disaster along the line of for want of a horse.

Holding anyone's feet to the fire for an official history published shortly after the war is a bit harsh.

Every official history needs to be read with a grain of salt simply due to the relative closeness to actual events.

Historians cannot really sort these things out until decades later.

As an aside one may read USN concern (or guilt if that's your thing) for Australian-US relations in the naming of USS Canberra.

Bob

Savo Island was a slap in the face rude awakening. So much needed improving and you can see the lessons learned within months.

"Neptune's Inferno", a more recent history of the Guadalcanal naval campaign, finds much blame to go around, very little to the air spotters. They got the number of ships right, the type wrong. McCain's HQ sat on the report for a while. When they sent it on, the receiving HQ let it sit in the inbox for a while. Various other brass proceeded to ignore it. Some paid with their lives.

IMO, it was more like a year before the USN fully completed its course work in night-fighting.

B

Yes, the defeat at Tassafaronga months later is more disappointing.

In night actions later in the war the US trounced the Japanese. Basically after learning how to properly use radar the Japanese advantage in night-fighting went away. As I understand it the fuel shortage reduced their training time as well.

Attrition during the Solomons campaign – of both ships and the quality pre-war trained crews – certainly played a role in the demise of the IJN. But the American also benefited greatly from the painful on-the-job training program taught to them by the IJN.

Probably the most important factor was the ability of the USN to commit divisions and squadrons of destroyers and cruisers that had actually had an opportunity to work and train together (Arleigh Burke's Desron 32 "Little Beavers", Simpson's Desron 12 "Scrapperoos", Desrons 22 and 45 plus 'Pug" Ainsworth's CruDiv9. This was also the time when the USN finally freed destroyer divisions to tactically maneuver independently from the cruisers

Secondly was the American adoption of the Japanese "torpedoes first" night tactical doctrine. Once all the bugs were worked out to make the MK15 DD torpedo a serviceable weapon, SG radar guided destroyer torpedo attacks proved deadly, with the 6in/47 light cruisers very efficiently sweeping away surviving IJN ships.

All that having been said, even in later 1943, the IJN was still by no means a complete push-over.

B