Tropedo Resupply?

[pad152]

Tropedo Resupply?

Scenario 6 - playing allies

Can't resupply my Battleship and Battlecrusier tropedoes at Pearl Harbor (port level 6), 2 AD's in port, no AE's, 40K+ supplies.

If destroyers can resupply with AD's why can't capitial ships?

[Tankerace]

ORIGINAL: pad152

Tropedo Resupply?

Scenario 6 - playing allies

Can't resupply my Battleship and Battlecrusier tropedoes at Pearl Harbor (port level 6), 2 AD's in port, no AE's, 40K+ supplies.

If destroyers can resupply with AD's why can't capitial ships?

Same basic reason as WitP - doctrine. The US never saw the AD as a a supply platform for anything larger than its own DesRon, as they were always attached to destroyer squadrons. That and the fact that, especially after Jutland, by 1922 torpedoes would be going to Cruisers and Destroyers before battleships, it was finally realized it was pretty idiotic to close to 4,000 yards and fire torpedoes when you can stand off 15 miles and hammer away.

Look at a copy of the flawed, but nevertheless revealing, Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. It lists each DesRon, how many DDs in each, the light cruiser flagship, and the destroyer tender assigned. An AD would never have been used for a battleship or armored cruiser, at the most (and this is iffy) it would supply the Light or Protected Cruiser assigned as its DesRon flagship.

That said, i'd build Pearl into a size 9 port. Realistically, all torpedoes coming in that far from the mainland would be reserved for destroyers, the battleships (supposedly... this is the one thing I still can't grasp but you gotta love 1920s planners) were to operate out of San Diego or San Fransisco. Pearl was seen as a relatively small forward base for use by DesRons and submarines, and as a coaling station for the fleet enroute to the PI.

[pad152]

Thanks

I guess I'm still dealling the issue of Pearl Harbor not being a major fleet base. The manual (page 142) is wrong on this, it says AD's can resupply ships (not just destoryers) with torpedoes with a port size less than 8.

[engineer]

One pertinant item was that during the 1930s a new channel was blasted through the coral to give much easier access from the ocean into Pearl.  During the WPO period there was a nasty "S" turn maneuver that I've seen described that was necessary to reach the harbor. 

For that reason the Lahaina Roads were planned as a concentration point for the relief force bound for the Philippines. The Navy planned on laying minefields to secure the channels into the roadstead to prevent Japanese subs from playing havoc with the fleet.

[engineer]

Here's the reference.  The channel modifications were funded in 1936.
[blockquote]
When the Fleet visited Pearl Harbor that year [1934] for maneuvers, all Fleet units, except the Ranger, Lexington, and Saratoga, were berthed without difficulty. These latter three vessels were forced to anchor off the shores of southern Oahu to avoid the risk of running aground. Entrance into the Pearl Harbor lochs required large ships to back off on their screws to make the difficult turn at the end of the channel. As early as 1920 commanding officers of the Arkansas, Idaho, and Wyoming regarded the channel as difficult to navigate. From 1921 to 1928, eleven ships went aground along its sloping reefs. The appropriations of 1936 tended to remedy this defect and increase the facilities of the Navy Yard to the position of a major overhaul base on the same footing with Mare Island and Puget Sound. http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/pearl/hawaii-3.htm[/blockquote]
If you figure that Lexington and Saratoga are in WPO in their original capital cruiser configuration and you might even have some even bigger battleships and more battleships with Pacific Fleet than historical, this bit of geology might be worth degrading Pearl's harbor capacity a bit.  Of course, one can also easily postulate that with no Washington Naval Treaty, the channel upgrade was accelerated.  It might also be a point to emphasize by giving the early scenarios a more primitive Pearl Harbor than the late scenario where the USA would have had an extra four years to build up its positions in the Hawaiian Islands.