ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
... It's bloody Fog of War, it's supposed to be wrong sometimes.
+1ORIGINAL: denisonh
It is an abstraction of what happened in RL.
In the pre information age, stubby pencil, world where hundreds of operational reports are transmitted through multiple HQs across the Pacific then are sorted through and analyzed by hand, the chances of getting accurate and timely information is not as good as you think. ...
In this era, particularly if a battle went poorly, it could take weeks (as in when the ships got back to port .. literally) before quasi accurate information was available to upper command levels and even then it was less than complete. Wounded ships in sub infested waters tend to observe rather strict radio procedures.
People now are far too used to getting their info via CNN within seconds of the occurence. You need to dial back your expectations quite a bit.