An often-overlooked series, the Combat Narratives are an important "snapshot" of what we thought we knew about what had happened in the various naval battles of 1942-1944, before we gained the Japanese documentation and interrogations after the end of the war. These were also written before...
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An often-overlooked series, the Combat Narratives are an important "snapshot" of what we thought we knew about what had happened in the various naval battles of 1942-1944, before we gained the Japanese documentation and interrogations after the end of the war. These were also written before (long before) full declassification of the USN and USA SIGINT activites made available the full range of information we had about the IJN and IJA. As a point of interest, one should compare the claims of sinkings, shoot-downs, etc by the USN with the fuller, post-war histories of Morison and others and a study of "What we thought we knew" going forward into the war versus "what really happened" that only has been developed in the fullness of time since the war. The series was supposed to help commanding officers fight smarter, and reduce personnel losses in combat by giving tutorials on what happened, so that better tactics could be devised. To this end, perhaps it helped; toher lessons, or points, were unfortunately overlooked by most commanders, even those who ought to have picked up on several issues that the narrative noted, but did not emphasize.
An equally critical point of this narrative is Appendix 1. The reports of torpedo malfunctions! The Appendix, as well as the report of the Shaw, p. 64 footnote, all of which were available to Admirals Halsey, Nimitz, and King by November, 1942, SHOULD have been a significant red flag that U.S. torpedoes were not performing in anything close to a satisfactory manner. Instead, the admirals continued to believe the self-satisfied pap from BuOrd Torpedo department that "it was all due to poor weapons employment" rather than due to poor weapons. In fact, both Halsey and Nimitz (who ought to have known better) called for additional torpedo training of their Destroyer captains. In reality, what was needed was remdial training of several Admirals, and a four-star investigation of the problem, which was not undertaken until 1943 under Admiral Lockwood, and then only for the USN torpedos of all models. Moreover, when issued in 1943, the report ought to have generated a full-cry investigation; it did not. Torpedo problems were not begun to be ironed out until late 1943-early 1944, and then mainly because Admiral Lockwood was refusing to accept BuOrd torpedos until they had been re-worked by the shops at Pearl Harbor (reworked Mark V exploder firing pins; elimination of the Mark VI exploder). By that time, thousands of US servicemen had lost their lives, and temns of ships and submarines had been lost attempting to use a fatally-flawed weapon design.
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