Makes you wonder how they lost so bad at Leyte Gulf with a weapon like that Long Lance
In the end the Long Lance was as destructive to their ships as to ours. They lost five or six cruisers from onboard torpedo detonations, including two at Leyte.
I think we weren’t nearly as complacent about the Long Lance at that point, plus, I am not sure that engagement was as well suited to a torpedo attack by the Japanese as say, the engagement at Savo Island.
At Savo Island, we knew about the Long Lance, but still thought the IJN was inferior in a head to head engagement. We were wrong, and arrogantly wrong. They cleaned our clock, but good.
It took longer for us to learn, but we did.
Makes you wonder how they lost so bad at Leyte Gulf with a weapon like that Long Lance
My grandfather was in that battle. His tin can fired off a bunch of torpedoes. They all missed according the the ship history I read.
“Makes you wonder how they lost so bad at Leyte Gulf with a weapon like that Long Lance”
Leyte Gulf was actually 3 battles. One was a carrier v. carrier battle. The second was US Battleships “crossing the Tee” of a Japanese battlegroup emerging from a narrow strait (not much of a chance to deploy torpedoes there). And the 3rd battle was a run & gun affair between another Japanese battlegroup and Taffy-3 — a group of Jeep Carriers guarded by destroyers & destroyer-escorts. The only ones shooting torpedoes in that last engagement were the US DD’s & DE’s.