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Bill Murray · #5 (**permalink**) October 27th, 2004, 03:07 AM

First of all let me start by saying that TA's post made me go back to Cutler's book (The Battle of Leyte Gulf) to check what I had printed in my original post and low and behold I found that I had made a mistake and posted some bad information. It was not Kurita's diary that the quote. "an alert formation against submarines" came from in reference to Kurita's Center Force disposition in the Palawan Passage. This quote came from the diary of VAdm Ugaki who was commanding BatDiv 1 containing the Yamato, Musashi and Nagato as part of Kurita's force.
Second - the weapons systems information posted was extremely enlightening. This is an area in which my knowledge is extremely lacking, so I greatly appreciate that.
Third - TA, you state "In Japanese doctrine a primary role for submarines was scouting. They were rarely used in restricted waters so, by Japanese thinking the submarine threat would be perceived as minimal." This seems to be contrary to even Japanese philosophy from before the war. While Prange in "At Dawn We Slept" gives the primary role of the Japanese subs at Pearl Harbor as an scouting/intel role there are also subs who's job it was to sink US warships trying to escape from the Harbor. Paul Dull in "A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1941-1945" shows where the pre-war plan for the Japanese was to use their large fleet subs (the I-class sub) as weapons of attrition to whittle away ships from the US fleet as it made its way toward the Philippines in preparation for the Great Decisive Battle. An example of this can be seen in the I-168's sinking of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) and the USS Hammann (DD-412)at Midway. Also a quick cursory reading of a section in Masanori Ito's "The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy" in which he laments that greatest cause of failure of the Japanese submarine force in the war was their gradual diversion from offensive to defensive assignments. He shows where their subs started life in the role of attriting US warships and moved to scouting duties and eventually relegated to supply ship duties for bypassed outposts toward the end of the war.