All US Battleships in a single row December 7th 1941

[Paul Nuttall]

West Virginia and Oklahoma took most of the torpedo hits December 7th but what if all the battleships present had been in a single line rather than with two of them masked by others...is there space...is the Japanese control of the attack such that they can spread the torpedo attacks out between more ships?

Does not having some ships side by side reduce the effectiveness of the level bombing?

[Bob Dedmon]

Not enough room for one. What I've read of the attack plan the torpedo planes were to spread their attack a bit more than they did. With the exception of the Arizona/Vestal all the exposed battle ships were hit by at least 1 torpedo.

[M.Becker]

The WV and Oklahoma took most of the torpedo because they were opposite the exit from the channel to the submarine base that the Japanese used to approach.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... rlmap2.png

They could have spread out wider but than some planes would fly over land, over the water of the sub base, land again and finally water. They would have gotten uplift over the land and downlift over the colder water. And they had a very narrow window of drop altitude. Too low and the fish will run shallow and hit the belt armor, too high and it'll hit the harbor bed. IIRC at least one did and was recovered.

So they clustered together and over concentrated on two lead BB.

Any ships more to the front would have IMO been safe enough because there's not enough open water to the side the planes were coming from. Any one more to the rear would have been a prime target for the other group of planes that approached from the opposite site and sank Utah.

[Craiglxviii]

Here’s Ford Island on the day:

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And an image of the battleships moored up, taken from north looking to south. VESTAL is the ship top left.

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Finally, Ford Ialand in context of the rest of the harbour. It’s clear from this view exactly how much clear water there was around Battleship Row for the Kido Butai pilots to make their drops, and why the head of the line took the brunt of the attacks.

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