"Damage Control Competence" Topic

Does anyone have a feel for the relative competencies at damage control for the major navies of WW2? I realise it can vary a lot within one navy; for instance in May 1940 good damage control saved HMS Kelly, but in November 1941 poor practice (plus design flaws) led to the loss of HMS Ark Royal.
I am thinking about having three levels of competence. With a basic national level for each navy, potentially modified by a dice roll the first time damage control action is required. Or am I over-thinking this and should just let the dice decide?
My homebrew rules cover fire and flooding, either of which can be fatal when uncontrolled.

Drachinfel has done a Youtube video comparing factors of US and Japanese damage control practices in WW2, which suggests that it may be worth factoring in differences for navies.

YouTube link

SeeKrieg IV has specific ratings info on damage control by nationality for the various navies of the world. I couldn't readily locate my copy, but I think it boiled down to the US and Germany being best, and the rest of the world all being about the same.

Simplistically expressed, the US and Germany had an ability to correct damage up to about 20% during the engagement. Everybody else, about 10%. In operational terms, this ability could EITHER be charged off against damage, (essentially erasing it), or, used to dice to correct critical systems failures, or, to combat fires.

I've read a good bit about the Japanese Navy during WWII. A friend once asked me about the Japanese navy's damage control capability during WWII. I fairly blurted out, what I now believe is a pretty fair assessment, that the Japanese philosophy of damage control was, don't get damaged.

Based on considering the ability to control and contain flooding, fires etc. to conduct system restoration and in terms of the design and equipent features put into ships:

US clearly the best

UK, RAN, NZ, Ger, Italy, France on par – obviously with variations

Japanese – not great

I think there is a learning curve though. A lot of damage control is preemptive preparation and the US seems to learn the hard way on that – Fully fueled float planes sitting on catapults amidships in a combat zone was found to be a not so good idea at Savo Island for example.

GQ3 rates damage control abilities pretty much as David Manley described.

I think part of the IJN's issues were cultural in that as with ASW, damage control was essentially defensive in perception and not something the hotshot high speed/low drag officers wanted to focus on.

I also think lugging around those extremely volatile Long Lance torpedoes couldn't have helped survivability. As I recall, damage to onboard Long Lance's resulted in catastrophic damage on multiple occasions rendering best effort damage control moot.

+1 McKinstry

From what I understand, at Midway, after Mogami and Mikuma collided, they tried to limp out of harm's way. When they knew they'd been sighted by search aircraft, Mogami's captain jettisoned his torpedoes. Mikuma didnt. Both ships got savaged, but Mogami got home.

Thank you for this. It is much as I expected, though I had a hunch that the Italians were not quite as good as the other European navies.

I don't, yet, have any Japanese ships so rules to deal with Long Lances are not required for a while.

I think the Italians were a bit variable. Their lighter forces, say DD and under, were pretty active and generally gave as good as they got against first team opposition such as the RN but the larger ships both from a certain operational timidity and near constant fuel concerns, were not that active and when given the need for damage control, weren't all that good.

. . . but the larger ships . . . when given the need for damage control, weren't all that good.

Hmmm… Vittorio Veneto did better than Prince of Wales or Bismark when torpedoed in the the vicinity of the propellers…

The crew of Veneto certainly did better than Bismarck from a single torpedo hit but I think the design was also a bit different as Veneto had 4 screws and three rudders compared to 3 and 1 or 2 for Bismarck. I was thinking of the Zara's, in particular Pola at Matapan as well as the Cavour at Taranto. Certainly Cavour was an obsolete design even after modernization but she was destroyed by a single aerial torpedo hit, in harbor.

I'm not sure how to compare POW as she took a prop strut hit that caused the shaft to flail the hull and almost immediately two more port hits that knocked out much of her power that pretty much crippled her DC efforts. I've always tended to credit the RN with a tradition of training and pure stubbornness that brought home some fairly savaged ships that others would have abandoned.

WRT the Zaras at Matapan, 2 of them were blown to bits by 15" shells at point blank range, so damage control was pretty much irrelevant. Pola's damage control wasn't very successful, but I have no details other than the ship apparently lost all power. Note that HMS Cumberland suffered progressive damage at Dakar due to a single French shell hit, with the ship being immobile at one point, IIRC. Luckily for the British, there were no enemy ships around when immobile, so she was eventually able to recover.

WRT Cavour, the British used magnetic exploders at Taranto. This resulted in the torps mostly exploding under the ships. Not only did this largely bypass their side protection systems, but it produced additional damage and progressive flooding due to whipping of the hull.

WRT PoW, "Death of a Battleship" PDF link says it was one torpedo hit during the first attack, resulting in progressive damage, resulting 15 minutes later in a "out of control" signal being hoisted.

It was previously believed that two torpedoes struck the port side. This report will show that there was only one
that struck, based on a marine forensics investigation by co-author Kevin Denlay (Expedition ‘Job 74'). Therefore,
given the many reports of an immense column of water erupting outboard of P3 and P4 5.25" turrets that was
thought to be a second hit, in all likelihood was another torpedo being set off close to the hull just milliseconds after
the first, having possibly been detonated ‘sympathetically' by the shock wave from the first hit less than 50 meters
further aft.

Admittedly all 3 BBs mentioned in my original comment were hit in a bad place, which bypassed their side protection systems.

Aviator beat me to it. The Drachinfel video is excellent.

The Battlestations! Battlestations! rule set gives different damage control abilities to different nations, and more interestingly, different values for the same navy depending on the year of the engagement. Sort of reflects navies learning the hard way.

Nick

I like the idea of three tiers, in effect Good, Average, and Below Average, but I'd want to apply these factors by ship type. Is there any reason to consider IJN damage control worse than in other navies when we are not talking about aircraft carriers?

The carriers were tinderboxes, but the BBs and CAs stood up to some severe damage. Musashi was hit by what, 19 torpedoes? Bombs as well? Hiei and Kirishima were scuttled after being shot up by 16", were they not? Likewise Fuso was blown in half by torpedoes but one half stayed afloat and continued to draw fire.

Impressive for pre-WW1 ships.

Here's an interesting account of Kirishima's damage from the Navweaps site, which bears on this:

link

This is an interesting reminder of the roles that situational awareness and familiarity with design performance parameters can play in damage control. Not a uniquely Japanese challenge, but perhaps some systems of organization and command handled it differently.