Further, one does not risk one's battleships, unsupported, unless one has air superiority over the water in which they will be operating. Battleships, so the argument goes, are impotent in the face of airpower. The first explanation, which I would term 'the conventional wisdom', hinges on the potency of airpower. The traditional answers to the question of Japanese capital unit commitments have been along two main lines. Marines referred to it) conducted by the Japanese battleships Haruna and Kongo against Henderson Field on the night of October 13-14, it is difficult to argue the point. Indeed, given the clear (if temporary) success registered after 'The Bombardment' (as the U.S. Japanese battleships, had they been present, clearly could have been decisive in a number of these surface confrontations.īattleships also could provide the sort of heavy gunfire support necessary to neutralize Henderson field. Night surface actions were fairly common in the Solomons campaign.
Additional Japanese capital ships clearly would have been useful in two ways:īattleships could help establish naval dominance in the Guadalcanal area by providing a crucial superiority in surface firepower over Allied forces who did not (yet) have a comparable number of capital vessels available to them in the Pacific. One of the most frequently-asked questions brought up for discussion by readers of my website, and contributors to some of the World War II newsgroups I read, has been (roughly paraphrased), 'Why the heck didn't the Japanese send their battleships down to Guadalcanal and put Henderson Field out of business for good?' Oil and Japanese Strategy in the Solomons: A Postulate Oil and Japanese Strategy in the Solomons: A Postulate
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