ORIGINAL: rtrapasso
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
Well, I'll just provide my daily Halsey missive and be on my way:
"[Admiral Nelson's counsel] guided me time and again. On the eve of the critical battle of Santa Cruz, in which the Japanese ships outnumbered ours more than two to one, I sent my task force commanders this dispatch: ATTACK REPEAT ATTACK. They did attack, heroically, and when the battle was done, the enemy turned away.
Of course, despite his bluster, this was not true. Halsey suffered one of the few (only?)* tactical defeats in a carrier battle for the US, and arguably also suffered a strategic defeat:
"Dr. John Prados offers a dissenting view: this was not a Pyrrhic victory for Japan, but a strategic victory.
By any reasonable measure the Battle of Santa Cruz marked a Japanese victory -- and a strategic one. At its end the Imperial Navy possessed the only operational carrier force in the Pacific. The Japanese had sunk more ships and more combat tonnage, had more aircraft remaining, and were in physical possession of the battle zone... Arguments based on aircrew losses or who owned Guadalcanal are about something else -- the campaign, not the battle."
But admittedly, Halsey talked a good game. [:'(]
*Coral Sea maybe being the other tactical defeat.
I would call Santa Cruz a Tactical Victory and a Strategic Defeat for the Japanese. Ultimately war is about control of land, even in the Pacific. Whoever controls the islands is the ultimate winner. No matter what the Japanese did to USN forces around Guadalcanal, they never had the upper hand on the ground where it counted. They really only threatened Henderson Field once in the whole campaign. Other attacks on the field were never strong enough to put the US hold on the field in serious doubt.
All the naval battles around the island were all about who could supply their troops and get in reinforcements. From that perspective, the Japanese lost pretty consistently.
Over the course of the Pacific War, the USN did not do all that well offensively against IJN carriers in head to head battles. The US only clearly won 1 battle in 1942 and the Battle of the Philippine Sea was a clear defensive win, but the USN failed to sink any IJN carriers from the air. At Leyte the USN only sank the IJN carriers because the IJN had thrown them out there as bait. As far as the overall objective of holding on to the land mass in question, the US never lost a carrier battle. After the campaign in the SRA, the US never lost a battle period. Whenever the US threw in naval assets to contend a land mass, the Japanese always lost.
It's a classic example of "won the battle, lost the war".
Bill
