Posted on 04/23/2013 11:23:16 AM PDT by varmintman
Those were beautiful ships, as well as armed to the teeth.
That's also the picture I get. Particularly, the radar gun direction trumped the Japanese long-lance torpedo beyond some point. There was one battle around the Solomons in which a couple of Japanese destroyers all but wiped out a U.S. fleet including cruisers with those torpedoes. After the Americans perfected the radar gun control, that didn't seem to happen any more.
Early fire control radar was actually inferior to Japanese optics, especially at night in the Solomons. As for the Sumners, the fwd dual turrets made theships front heavy and made them poor sea boats. When most were modernized under FRAM conversion theB turret was removed and replaced with an ASW like hedgehog and weapon Alfa.
did anyone ping Jeff Head?
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