Re: [FT] Re: Small vessels and the Line of Battle

Some thoughts on small ships in combat.

> Jutland had destroyer and light cruiser squadrons engaging
> each other, if I recall--the big boys were preoccupied with
> each other, and probably would have had trouble hitting the
> small fry anyway.

The battle of Jutland saw several actions of destroyers vs destroyers
and 
cruisers versus cruisers.
There was also some action where destroyers went in to attack with
torpedoes on 
the capital ships.  This had two effects
	1) They took lots of hits (the destroyers)
	2) the battleships did get hit by torpedoes (not many) and it
caused the 
capital ships to do alot of turning.
See
	http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/wwi.html
	http://www.richthofen.com/scheer/
	
> 
> There was an action in WW2 in which the Americans had an
> ambush.  Japanese fleet came steaming through a channel, USN
> DD's on either side engaged with torpedoes while the
> American heavy ships crossed the Japanese T and obliterated
> them.

This was one of the four seperate battles that made up the Battle of
Leyte Gulf. 
 There were two battles that involved small ships shooting torpedoes at
big 
ships (Battle of Surigao Strait and Battle of Samar).  The Battle of
Surigo 
Straights the torpedoes gravely damaged the Japanese fleet before the
cruisers 
and BB got to fire.  In the Battle of Samar the torpedoes cause some
damage but 
bought time for the planes to get in and also the ships to get away
See
	http://www.escortcarriers.org/bosamar/index1.html
	http://ac.acusd.edu/History/WW2Timeline/LUTZ/leyte.html
	
	
> 
> I can't think of an occasion (which may mean nothing as I'm
> not a naval historian) when DD's were worth bringing to the
> party--except for the threat of torpedoes.  The equivalent,
> I'd say, is a rack of SM's, capable of doing heavy damage in
> one punch--but torps don't take up as much space on a real
> DD as a SMR would on a FTFB ship.  But if you allocated each
> DD a MT missile, or figured out some way to split a SMR rack
> among a DD squadron, you could make it work.
> 

The other item that no one has mentioned is that the small ships were
used for 
alot of the day to day actions of the navies.  during WWII the US built
10 
battleships but over 400 destroyers snd destroyer escorts.  They were
used for 
antisub, escort, shore bombardment, landing direction, carring supplies 
(admittedly only in emergencies), picket duty, message relaying and
other stuff. 

One of the areas that does not get much press is logistics.  Most of the
convoys 
had small ship escorts (exception were runs to Russia had BB due to the
Tirpitz) 
with maybe an escort carrier and a cruiser.

John W. Fox