Fictional Warships - Novels

[Dilandu]

Unable to outrun them due to earlier damage, Edsall's commander put on a virtuoso display of destroyer handling and managed to avoid everything thrown at him, while making occasional attempts to damage his pursuers. With magazines running dry, an embarrassed Admiral Nagumo called up an air strike which did sufficient damage to bring Edsall to a stop, with a cameraman on Tone filming Chikuma pounding the ship to pieces at close range. Japanese witnesses reported that 'an officer', widely assumed to be Lt. Nix helped his crew abandon ship, then returned to the bridge to share his ships fate.

Well, there are reasons to think that Japanese guuners on heavy ships weren't exactly trained as good as they was supposed to. The first is that Japanese Navy could not afford replacing worn-out barrels as often as other navies; so battleship gunnery exercises were limited by worries to "wear barrels out before decisive battle". The second - Japan obtained their first radio-controlled target ship, the "Settu", much later than other major naval powers. So Japanese crews experience in engaging maneuvering target was likely quite limited.

 

[Graham1973]

Well, there are reasons to think that Japanese guuners on heavy ships weren't exactly trained as good as they was supposed to. The first is that Japanese Navy could not afford replacing worn-out barrels as often as other navies; so battleship gunnery exercises were limited by worries to "wear barrels out before decisive battle". The second - Japan obtained their first radio-controlled target ship, the "Settu", much later than other major naval powers. So Japanese crews experience in engaging maneuvering target was likely quite limited.

Thanks for the additional information, it's another example of how logistics can influence warfare.

In this case, because of a weapons component production bottleneck, taking down one old destroyer with a more than competent commander required two heavy cruisers, two battleships and a three carrier airstrike (The 26 planes involved in the airstrike came from Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu.), a situation the Imperial Japanese Navy rightly regarded as a fiasco.