ORIGINAL: Miller
Come on, an average of 30 ships sunk a day[:-] The best gunners in the world would struggle to get that sort of score.......totally overated regardless of task force composition in my opinion[:@]
Unfortunately for your arguement, "your opinion" doesn't really qualify as "source material". What you need to remember is that in an age before "Fire Control Radar", Coast Defense Installations such as Oahu had a tremendous ACCURACY advantage over any seaborne artillery. The guns are solidly "fixed" and surveyed, and they are wired into a sophisticated Fire Control System with spotting and plotting stations all around the island. They are pre-registered, and have tables available to make allowance for everything from humidity to tide levels.
To fire accurately, naval guns fire control need to plot the range and bearing of the target continuously. From a moving vessel, this is difficult. You have a limited space to mount your range-finder, and you have to plot the bearings from moving and rocking and vibrating base (even a bit of vibration becomes a factor when the range is MILES). Your "base-ends" for range finding are 8-20 meters apart, making 1000ths of a degree vital. Ashore, only the target is moving, and the base-ends for your plotting stations are miles apart, and multiple, and tied in directly.
A ship is also a much bigger "target" than a CD gun. A hit anywhere causes damage to a ship (even a near miss can cause damage. Billy Mitchell specifically ordered his bombers to try for "near misses" when making the final attack on the Ostfriesland.) To "knock out" a CD gun, you have to literally hit the gun. Otherwise, at very best, you "supress it" for a short while, or much more likely just chew up some rock and dirt. But if you miss a ship's guns, you can still hit other vital areas. The ship's guns won't help if the ship is sinking..., Oahu can't sink.
The actual result of the above is that CD artillery is 10 to 20 times more accurate than seaborne artillery.
That's why the batteries only have 2-4 guns/mortars, while ships mount the largest number possible. If you can expect a hit with every 3rd shell instead of every 30th against a ship (or every 300th shooting at a CD gun), you don't need as many guns. In your example, your attacking TF didn't even have anything with the fire-power to "supress" the defense---so it was "target practice" with a vengence. If you only lost 30 ships a day, it's because the system UNDER-estimates the accuracy of CD Installations.
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