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Seems a bit redundant to me. Why not just "Allied submarines in the Pacific War"? Gatoclass ( talk) 16:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
While I generally found Parillo reliable, there's a contraditcion in that table of losses. It implies a handful of RN & RNN boats sank about 300K tons of shipping. Blair (p.360) credits the SubForce with 725K tons by JANAC. He credits Japan with 5.4 million tons shipping plus 575K tons tankers at war's start, loss of 725K, a net increase in tankers of 111K, for a net tonnage loss of only 89K. The 1943 & 1944 figures seem off, too. Trekphiler ( talk) 11:32, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
This is in regards to the last paragraph in the opening section, where the claim is made that 3 boats were lost to bad torpedoes and at least one boat (Robalo) to command error. The source referenced, Silent Victory, says the following:
"By [the time Robalo was lost], the codebreakers had given Christie at least four intercepted messages regarding Japanese minefields in Balabac Strait, containing specific details on which waters were mined - or likely to be mined. Kimmel's Operations Order contained specific information on how to transit the strait and what to avoid. Since the Japanese mined the strait in March 1943, it had been used about forty times by U.S. submarines. In 1944 Crevalle, Tinosa, Puffer, Ray, Bluefish, and Lapon (among others) had passed through safely. Kimmel himself in Robalo had passed through it in April, westbound to Indochina on his first patrol." (Silent Victory, pg. 687)
Blair speculates that either Robalo strayed off course into shallow water and struck a mine (perhaps he had sighted the enemy and was making an approach), or that the Japanese may have moved the minefields (which is what Kimmel's brother, Thomas, believed). Thomas also "doubted Christie's wisdom in continuing to use Balabac Strait this late in the war. Wrote Thomas, 'The Japanese were obviously in retreat and the urgency for transiting a dangerous strait with known minefields was certainly greatly reduced if not non-existent.'" (Silent Victory, pg 688). Be that as it may, an investigation into the loss of Robalo and Flier (also lost to a mine in Balbac about 3 weeks after Robalo) cleared Christie and his staff and found no fault with their operations; the investigation was headed by Admrial Daubin, COMSUBLANT, a rival of Christie who wanted his job (Silent Victory, pg 716). Following the loss of Flier, Christie stopped using Balbac strait. He probably would have stopped using it after Robalo was sunk, except that he didn't know where or how the boat went down until Flier's survivors made it back to Australia (Silent Victory, pg 715).
The point is, sending Robalo into the Balabac Strait was a calculated risk that had paid off in the past. Christie was aware of the minefields, but he had good intelligence on their location and 40 other boats had successfully made the trip. You can debate if it was worth the risk, but that's not the same as stating as fact that Robao was lost to a "command error." If that's the case, why not list the four boats that Fife lost in 1943? Or arguably you could list Bonefish, lost in the Sea of Japan raid in 1945: with Japan essentially defeated, why risk submarines in such confined waters? What about the controversy over Christie sending Sam Dealey and Harder out on patrol 5.5? Or the boats that were run aground and lost? Take Darter: she hadn't had a fix in 24 hours and was navigating across an area marked as "Dangerous Ground" on the chart, strewn with shoals and rocks (Silent Victory, pg 755). Was Darter lost to "command error"? The list goes on and on.
These were command decisions where real risk had to be weighed against potential gain. Sometimes it paid off. But when it didn't you can't simply call it "command error," a vague statement that could encompass a whole range of decisions. If that was the case, nearly every loss could be attributed to command error.
On another note, I know of only 2 boats definently lost to poor torpedoes, Tullibee and Tang, which are also the only two that the footnote mentions. If it is known that a third boat was lost to a circular run, it needs to be added in the footnote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.151.230.9 ( talk) 14:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Blair's "playing checkers" chapter referred to Fife, not Christie (Silent Victory, pg 371). I'm not a fan of Christie by any means, but I certainly don't think he was indifferent to his boats and men: look at how hard he fought for Dealey's MoH, for example. As far as "undue hazard", again that's a very fine line you are trying to draw. One man's undue hazard is another's calculated risk: Lockwood could be charged just as easily as Christie, except that "Uncle Charlie" generally has a better reputation than the champion of the magnetic exploder, and some of his riskiest decisions paid big dividends (Hydeman's Hell Cats, for example). The point is to be objective and present the facts: the fact is you can debate Christie's decision to send Robalo through the straits, but it's far from fact that he caused Robalo's loss.
On a related note, the opening paragraph may be an inappropriate time to talk about losses. You can break it down by any number of catagories: 2 lost through bad torpedoes, 1 lost by enemy submarine, so many lost due to air attack, etc. It may just be better to say that the U.S. lost 49 boats in the Pacific due to all causes (52 total in the war; good point on that, BTW) and give losses it's own section, where they can be broken down by specific cause. If you want to mention the specific controversies around Christie (Robalo, Flier, Harder, etc.) it might be best to do that in his biography article.
Offensive submarine warfare against the merchant fleet of an island (= depending on merchant fleet for all trade in 1940s) has been conducted earlier...twice. Not as successful, mainly due to stiff resistance. I included it in 'prelude'. Because, the development of the doctrine to use submarines not as fleet submarines but for 'unlimited' warfare against all shippings was certainly influenced by those who did it way before the allies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiaozhouzhou ( talk • contribs) 12:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
A cartoon in the NYT at the end of WWII said "We couldn't have done it without allies like Britain and Texas" I found this page informative about the Dutch and the British submarine activities during WWII, but very uninformative about the role of the USN. Unless one already knows something about this area of the war, a skim through this article tends to leave one thinking that three allied submarine forces were of a similar size. I think that the size of text on the the relative efforts made by the three allies should be reflected in the relative size of the entries on those efforts. A mention should also be made about other allies such as Australia not having any boats ( Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service).
I think that much of the lead should be moved down into sections and the lead should become an overview of the article. So for example if the lead information on the interdiction of ships in and out of the Japanese homeland was moved into a section, it could then include more on the debate about how effective the he blockade was, and could it have won the war?
Another question is the legality of the operations. Did any/all of the three navies have a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare? If so was it zoned (what about Soviet and other neutral shipping etc). If it were unrestricted submarine warfare, what are the expert opinions on the legality of that (see for example unrestricted submarine warfare#Post-WWII concept. -- PBS ( talk) 06:28, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Alright, I'm aware that the defense of British Malaysia was unsuccessful, but I think more is needed to elaborate on this point. For instance *how* was it unsuccessful? To what extent, and why?
You can't just call something "unsuccessful" (a nebulous and *relative* term by itself) without some sort of justification for using that term. And please don't assume bad faith on my part by referring to my calling for citation as "you're being ridiuclous". I just think more information is needed, that's all. 75.45.238.87 ( talk) 16:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
The "War of attrition" section has:
"the Japanese never successfully developed a cost-effective
destroyer escort better suited for convoy duties"
I'm pretty sure that's incorrect; the IJN developed and built the Kaibokan type escort vessel in large numbers (
here, and
here, for example) which compared pretty well in armament, range and speed with the DE's.
Also, the Introduction is at some pains to point out that the Allies were operating "exactly as the Germans did" by engaging in an unrestricted submarine war. That may be so, but it looks pointy as it is; that stuff should be in a separate section, not occupying half the Intro, which is supposed to offer an overview of the subject.
My two-pennyworth...
Xyl 54 (
talk)
23:29, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Rather than continuing back and forth with more edits and undos, I thought I'd take the discussion of how many boats were "lost in action" in the Pacific to the talk page. Trekphiler, it seems we have a difference of opinion on what constitutes being "lost in action". I feel the last sentence of the "Strategic Implications" section should state 48 boats rather than 42 were lost in action, and that you are under-counting for two reasons. The first is that any boat lost on a war patrol was, by definition, "lost in action" regardless of the cause. The second is that by deciding to not count certain kinds of losses (BTW, at least four boats, not one, were lost to strandings: S-39, S-36, S-27 and Darter (I assume by "wrecks" you meant strandings since all 52 boats we lost were wrecks)), it is impossible to arrive at a definitive number as we cannot be sure of the exact way some boats were lost. Indeed, the Navy, in the Naval Historical Division's publication "United States Submarine Losses in World War II" made it clear that we would probably *never* know for sure how and where (beyond a rough geographic area) some of the boats were lost. Because of this, the authors of the same book lumped all the boats lost during war patrols in the Pacific together: "The ... 48 [boats] were lost either directly or indirectly as the result of enemy action, or due to stranding on reefs during combat operations" (page 1). Note also that in the table summarizing the losses on page 8, the cause of loss for five boats is shown as "unknown" and the level of certainty of the causes for a further 14 are listed as merely "Possible to Probable" (out of the total 52 boats lost in the war). While new information has come to light since the war, notably the location of the wreck of GRUNION a few years back, in some cases we are in no better position to make a solid determination of what happened to these boats.
I understand well the point you are trying to make, but I do not think one can or should state a definitive-sounding number in the way you have when so many of the facts are regrettably obscured by the fog of war. Perhaps a compromise would be to end the paragraph with wording such as "Poor torpedoes claimed at least two U.S. submarines out of 48 lost on war patrols in the Pacific." This would take the interpretation of which boats were lost in action out of the equation. Tpmcnamara ( talk) 03:33, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Too many assertions are substantiated with substandard citations. Some examples: 1. "For instance, their destroyers had deficiencies in sonar and radar compared to equivalents of other navies, despite their impressive night fighting capabilities, even though these warships formed the bulk of convoy protection." This is supported by a link to some blog that lists Japanese destroyers and their specifications. I'm not sure what the relevance is. More importantly, I'm not sure why it is acceptable for an assertion to be supported by a random irrelevant citation. 2. "Moreover, Japanese Navy doctrine in relation to commerce defense was derisively bad[;]""reinforced Japanese overconfidence." Citations for these assertions do not carry page numbers. There are many other such "shotgun" sources in this article. Any assertion thus substantiated should be deleted. 3. One citation is given as "Blair, Silent Victory, pp.509 et al.." et al is used to group several authors, not for pages. An assertion so poorly sourced should be deleted.
173.77.3.250 ( talk) 02:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Roughly more than half of the losses have been caused by submarine. The rest has been sunk by mines, aircraft or ordinary risks at sea. Figures and good descriptions for the submarine warfare can be found in Naval Blockades in Peace and War in the Chapter The American Submarine and Aerial Mine Blockade. 5glogger ( talk) 04:59, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
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Seems a bit redundant to me. Why not just "Allied submarines in the Pacific War"? Gatoclass ( talk) 16:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
While I generally found Parillo reliable, there's a contraditcion in that table of losses. It implies a handful of RN & RNN boats sank about 300K tons of shipping. Blair (p.360) credits the SubForce with 725K tons by JANAC. He credits Japan with 5.4 million tons shipping plus 575K tons tankers at war's start, loss of 725K, a net increase in tankers of 111K, for a net tonnage loss of only 89K. The 1943 & 1944 figures seem off, too. Trekphiler ( talk) 11:32, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
This is in regards to the last paragraph in the opening section, where the claim is made that 3 boats were lost to bad torpedoes and at least one boat (Robalo) to command error. The source referenced, Silent Victory, says the following:
"By [the time Robalo was lost], the codebreakers had given Christie at least four intercepted messages regarding Japanese minefields in Balabac Strait, containing specific details on which waters were mined - or likely to be mined. Kimmel's Operations Order contained specific information on how to transit the strait and what to avoid. Since the Japanese mined the strait in March 1943, it had been used about forty times by U.S. submarines. In 1944 Crevalle, Tinosa, Puffer, Ray, Bluefish, and Lapon (among others) had passed through safely. Kimmel himself in Robalo had passed through it in April, westbound to Indochina on his first patrol." (Silent Victory, pg. 687)
Blair speculates that either Robalo strayed off course into shallow water and struck a mine (perhaps he had sighted the enemy and was making an approach), or that the Japanese may have moved the minefields (which is what Kimmel's brother, Thomas, believed). Thomas also "doubted Christie's wisdom in continuing to use Balabac Strait this late in the war. Wrote Thomas, 'The Japanese were obviously in retreat and the urgency for transiting a dangerous strait with known minefields was certainly greatly reduced if not non-existent.'" (Silent Victory, pg 688). Be that as it may, an investigation into the loss of Robalo and Flier (also lost to a mine in Balbac about 3 weeks after Robalo) cleared Christie and his staff and found no fault with their operations; the investigation was headed by Admrial Daubin, COMSUBLANT, a rival of Christie who wanted his job (Silent Victory, pg 716). Following the loss of Flier, Christie stopped using Balbac strait. He probably would have stopped using it after Robalo was sunk, except that he didn't know where or how the boat went down until Flier's survivors made it back to Australia (Silent Victory, pg 715).
The point is, sending Robalo into the Balabac Strait was a calculated risk that had paid off in the past. Christie was aware of the minefields, but he had good intelligence on their location and 40 other boats had successfully made the trip. You can debate if it was worth the risk, but that's not the same as stating as fact that Robao was lost to a "command error." If that's the case, why not list the four boats that Fife lost in 1943? Or arguably you could list Bonefish, lost in the Sea of Japan raid in 1945: with Japan essentially defeated, why risk submarines in such confined waters? What about the controversy over Christie sending Sam Dealey and Harder out on patrol 5.5? Or the boats that were run aground and lost? Take Darter: she hadn't had a fix in 24 hours and was navigating across an area marked as "Dangerous Ground" on the chart, strewn with shoals and rocks (Silent Victory, pg 755). Was Darter lost to "command error"? The list goes on and on.
These were command decisions where real risk had to be weighed against potential gain. Sometimes it paid off. But when it didn't you can't simply call it "command error," a vague statement that could encompass a whole range of decisions. If that was the case, nearly every loss could be attributed to command error.
On another note, I know of only 2 boats definently lost to poor torpedoes, Tullibee and Tang, which are also the only two that the footnote mentions. If it is known that a third boat was lost to a circular run, it needs to be added in the footnote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.151.230.9 ( talk) 14:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Blair's "playing checkers" chapter referred to Fife, not Christie (Silent Victory, pg 371). I'm not a fan of Christie by any means, but I certainly don't think he was indifferent to his boats and men: look at how hard he fought for Dealey's MoH, for example. As far as "undue hazard", again that's a very fine line you are trying to draw. One man's undue hazard is another's calculated risk: Lockwood could be charged just as easily as Christie, except that "Uncle Charlie" generally has a better reputation than the champion of the magnetic exploder, and some of his riskiest decisions paid big dividends (Hydeman's Hell Cats, for example). The point is to be objective and present the facts: the fact is you can debate Christie's decision to send Robalo through the straits, but it's far from fact that he caused Robalo's loss.
On a related note, the opening paragraph may be an inappropriate time to talk about losses. You can break it down by any number of catagories: 2 lost through bad torpedoes, 1 lost by enemy submarine, so many lost due to air attack, etc. It may just be better to say that the U.S. lost 49 boats in the Pacific due to all causes (52 total in the war; good point on that, BTW) and give losses it's own section, where they can be broken down by specific cause. If you want to mention the specific controversies around Christie (Robalo, Flier, Harder, etc.) it might be best to do that in his biography article.
Offensive submarine warfare against the merchant fleet of an island (= depending on merchant fleet for all trade in 1940s) has been conducted earlier...twice. Not as successful, mainly due to stiff resistance. I included it in 'prelude'. Because, the development of the doctrine to use submarines not as fleet submarines but for 'unlimited' warfare against all shippings was certainly influenced by those who did it way before the allies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiaozhouzhou ( talk • contribs) 12:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
A cartoon in the NYT at the end of WWII said "We couldn't have done it without allies like Britain and Texas" I found this page informative about the Dutch and the British submarine activities during WWII, but very uninformative about the role of the USN. Unless one already knows something about this area of the war, a skim through this article tends to leave one thinking that three allied submarine forces were of a similar size. I think that the size of text on the the relative efforts made by the three allies should be reflected in the relative size of the entries on those efforts. A mention should also be made about other allies such as Australia not having any boats ( Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service).
I think that much of the lead should be moved down into sections and the lead should become an overview of the article. So for example if the lead information on the interdiction of ships in and out of the Japanese homeland was moved into a section, it could then include more on the debate about how effective the he blockade was, and could it have won the war?
Another question is the legality of the operations. Did any/all of the three navies have a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare? If so was it zoned (what about Soviet and other neutral shipping etc). If it were unrestricted submarine warfare, what are the expert opinions on the legality of that (see for example unrestricted submarine warfare#Post-WWII concept. -- PBS ( talk) 06:28, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Alright, I'm aware that the defense of British Malaysia was unsuccessful, but I think more is needed to elaborate on this point. For instance *how* was it unsuccessful? To what extent, and why?
You can't just call something "unsuccessful" (a nebulous and *relative* term by itself) without some sort of justification for using that term. And please don't assume bad faith on my part by referring to my calling for citation as "you're being ridiuclous". I just think more information is needed, that's all. 75.45.238.87 ( talk) 16:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
The "War of attrition" section has:
"the Japanese never successfully developed a cost-effective
destroyer escort better suited for convoy duties"
I'm pretty sure that's incorrect; the IJN developed and built the Kaibokan type escort vessel in large numbers (
here, and
here, for example) which compared pretty well in armament, range and speed with the DE's.
Also, the Introduction is at some pains to point out that the Allies were operating "exactly as the Germans did" by engaging in an unrestricted submarine war. That may be so, but it looks pointy as it is; that stuff should be in a separate section, not occupying half the Intro, which is supposed to offer an overview of the subject.
My two-pennyworth...
Xyl 54 (
talk)
23:29, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Rather than continuing back and forth with more edits and undos, I thought I'd take the discussion of how many boats were "lost in action" in the Pacific to the talk page. Trekphiler, it seems we have a difference of opinion on what constitutes being "lost in action". I feel the last sentence of the "Strategic Implications" section should state 48 boats rather than 42 were lost in action, and that you are under-counting for two reasons. The first is that any boat lost on a war patrol was, by definition, "lost in action" regardless of the cause. The second is that by deciding to not count certain kinds of losses (BTW, at least four boats, not one, were lost to strandings: S-39, S-36, S-27 and Darter (I assume by "wrecks" you meant strandings since all 52 boats we lost were wrecks)), it is impossible to arrive at a definitive number as we cannot be sure of the exact way some boats were lost. Indeed, the Navy, in the Naval Historical Division's publication "United States Submarine Losses in World War II" made it clear that we would probably *never* know for sure how and where (beyond a rough geographic area) some of the boats were lost. Because of this, the authors of the same book lumped all the boats lost during war patrols in the Pacific together: "The ... 48 [boats] were lost either directly or indirectly as the result of enemy action, or due to stranding on reefs during combat operations" (page 1). Note also that in the table summarizing the losses on page 8, the cause of loss for five boats is shown as "unknown" and the level of certainty of the causes for a further 14 are listed as merely "Possible to Probable" (out of the total 52 boats lost in the war). While new information has come to light since the war, notably the location of the wreck of GRUNION a few years back, in some cases we are in no better position to make a solid determination of what happened to these boats.
I understand well the point you are trying to make, but I do not think one can or should state a definitive-sounding number in the way you have when so many of the facts are regrettably obscured by the fog of war. Perhaps a compromise would be to end the paragraph with wording such as "Poor torpedoes claimed at least two U.S. submarines out of 48 lost on war patrols in the Pacific." This would take the interpretation of which boats were lost in action out of the equation. Tpmcnamara ( talk) 03:33, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Too many assertions are substantiated with substandard citations. Some examples: 1. "For instance, their destroyers had deficiencies in sonar and radar compared to equivalents of other navies, despite their impressive night fighting capabilities, even though these warships formed the bulk of convoy protection." This is supported by a link to some blog that lists Japanese destroyers and their specifications. I'm not sure what the relevance is. More importantly, I'm not sure why it is acceptable for an assertion to be supported by a random irrelevant citation. 2. "Moreover, Japanese Navy doctrine in relation to commerce defense was derisively bad[;]""reinforced Japanese overconfidence." Citations for these assertions do not carry page numbers. There are many other such "shotgun" sources in this article. Any assertion thus substantiated should be deleted. 3. One citation is given as "Blair, Silent Victory, pp.509 et al.." et al is used to group several authors, not for pages. An assertion so poorly sourced should be deleted.
173.77.3.250 ( talk) 02:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Roughly more than half of the losses have been caused by submarine. The rest has been sunk by mines, aircraft or ordinary risks at sea. Figures and good descriptions for the submarine warfare can be found in Naval Blockades in Peace and War in the Chapter The American Submarine and Aerial Mine Blockade. 5glogger ( talk) 04:59, 23 October 2022 (UTC)