phillies wrote:runsforcelery wrote:
Fire is, indeed, the main killer of ships that don't sink outright. However, have you really looked at late-WW II USN firefighting equipment and training? The survival of the Franklin and the Bunker Hill wasn't exactly purely fortuitous.Dilandu wrote:That's the factor often missed in discussions about the Pacific War - the fact that USN ships have literally the best damage control parties in the world, and were build from STS steel (basically homogenous armor) instead of usual construction steel. No other navy of WW2 era could afford to use such expensive materials. So, basically, the average USN warship could survive twice as much damage as average IJN warship of similar class (Japanese were notoriously bad in damage control... and their ships were structurally weak, overweight with weapon)
These readers will doubtless recall that when the Hiei engaged US destroyers and was set on fire, it had serious problems, though there is some dispute as to exactly how it was sent to the bottom, and exactly where. The sunken hull of the Kirishima, on the other hand, has apparently been found.
Readers may also recall the Japanese BB that was given depth charge racks, just in case, or the CL that was given so much extra weaponry that it capsized.
For that matter, the Long Lance came with a nasty hidden price tag: liquid oxygen stored in the torpedoes themselves and in reservoirs aboard ship. Care to guess what happened when they took a shell hit and the fires started? At least one of the Japanese heavies disabled by destroyer gunfire and torpedoes off Samar probably succumbed to the explosion of her own torpedoes.