By the time of Jutland, fleet commanders on both sides were riveted by the dangers and the opportunities of the massed torpedo attack by their escorting destroyers. Jellicoe was criticised for turning the Grand Fleet away from Scheer’s desperate torpedo attack, but that was the laid-down tactical doctrine of every dreadnought fleet worldwide, and as Jellicoe was well aware, he was, in Churchill’s phrase, the only man who could lose the war in a single afternoon.
It was of course the threat of a torpedo attack that could be almost as useful as an actual mass torpedo launch. In the Second World War, the Royal Navy used the same tactic to fight off the vastly superior Italian force attacking a Malta-bound convoy in the Second Battle of Sirte in March 1942, and to protect Convoy JW51B from attack by the Hipper and Lützow in the German debacle of the Battle of the Barents Sea on the last day of 1942, which so enraged Hitler. After the 1940 Battle of Narvik, Royal Navy flotilla attacks were carried out against single opponents: the Bismarck, Scharnhorst and, finally, the Haguro.
AMERICAN DESTROYER ATTACKS
Using their extremely potent destroyer torpedo armament, US Navy torpedo doctrine laid down a large range of attack options, which as in every fleet were practised to perfection, but which in their case would never be put to use in a major fleet action — unless one counts the series of torpedo attacks carried out in the Surigao Strait against the Fuso and Yamashiro.
The very comprehensive Destroyer Torpedo Attack Instructions (Tentative), issued by Commander Destroyers Pacific Fleet, as Destroyer Tactical Bulletin № 4-43, described how to carry out a wide range of torpedo actions, and gave prominence to the ‘threat’.
Part I
Objects of Torpedo Attacks
A strike is a torpedo attack to destroy or damage the physical objective.
A threat is a torpedo attack to influence the enemy’s tactics.
A strike may be ordered for:
1. A primary blow against the enemy.
2. As an initial blow against the enemy to be followed by destruction by other weapons.
3. As a secondary blow to complete the destruction of vessels damaged by other weapons.
A threat, if accepted by the enemy, may become a strike, but its original purpose remains unchanged. It is employed to:
1. Prevent the enemy from closing the range.
2. Force the enemy to open the range.
3. Dislodge the enemy from a position which is advantageous to him.
4. Force the enemy to break off the action and enable his own forces to retire.
In a threat, complete concealment is not generally wanted, although advantage may be taken of concealment during the approach to reduce the effectiveness of enemy gunfire and thus reach a more effective firing position. Torpedoes may be expended more sparingly than in a strike, and torpedo fire may be withheld altogether if the enemy maneuvers as we desire.
A melee is a close range encounter in which the combatants form a confused mass. Our objective in provoking a melee will be to create such a situation for the destroyer torpedo attack possibilities which it offers, while the enemy is temporarily disorganised and unable to take coordinated action to repel or evade the attack. In a melee, the advantage often lies with the inferior force, and in all cases to the force which is on the offensive.
These instructions might have been written twenty-seven years earlier, for the Battle of Jutland, and they described the type of fleet actions which would never again occur.
JAPANESE MAIN BATTLE PLAN
The IJN’s pre-war plan for engaging the numerically superior US Pacific Fleet involved three succeeding phases, in which the powerful 24in Type 93 ‘Long Lance’ torpedoes were to play a major role:
1. First, attrition by submarines and surface forces.
2. Then a night attack by fast battleships of the Kongo class, Type ‘A’ heavy cruisers, and Special Type destroyers. This force was to launch a long-range salvo of 130 torpedoes from 20,000m (22,000yds). The Kongos, heavy cruisers and destroyers would then break through the American screen and bring their remaining ready torpedoes and those of the special torpedo cruisers Oi and Kitakami to bear at ranges down to 2000m (2200yds). After fighting their way clear, the night attack force was to reload torpedo tubes and prepare for further attacks. If the officer in tactical command judged it appropriate, the main battle line could be committed to the night attack if that effort was going better than expected.
3. Finally, a daylight battle line engagement at dawn following the night attack. This would begin with a long range salvo of 280 torpedoes, and when the Japanese battleships opened fire on the American line, light cruisers and destroyers would close and launch their remaining torpedoes.
Based on over-optimistic forecasts of a hit ratio of at least 15 per cent of all torpedoes expended, both the night and dawn torpedo attacks were predicted to cause the loss of up to six American capital ships.
The Japanese appear to have misjudged the potential of their Type 93 torpedoes, overemphasising their extremely long range instead of their high speed. At the Battle of the Java Sea the Japanese heavy cruisers and destroyers launched a total of some 164 torpedoes. They did sink the Dutch cruisers Java and De Ruyter, and the destroyer Piet Hien, but this represented only three hits or 1.8 per cent of expenditure, far below the hoped-for hit ratio necessary to decimate the full American battle line. The Japanese came closer to their required hit ratio when they sank HMAS Perth and USS Houston in Sunda Strait, with five hits from a total of thirty-seven torpedoes expended. But when opposing lines were free to manoeuvre, it was highly unlikely that the Japanese battle strategy would have worked.
In any case, Admiral Yamamoto decided that to reduce the Americans’ overwhelming superiority in numbers, the Japanese were going to have to sink them in their base at Pearl Harbor.
CO-ORDINATED TORPEDO BOMBER ATTACKS
Towards the end of the Second World War the sheer size and power of the Japanese super-dreadnoughts Musashi and Yamato required mass torpedo attacks, co-ordinated with dive-bombing, to overwhelm and sink them. In its training film entitled Aerial Torpedo Attack: High Speed, High Altitude produced in 1945, the US Navy stressed the vital need for co-ordinating torpedo attacks with other types of attack, dive-bombers, strafing runs and rocket attacks by fighters. With the massive anti-aircraft batteries mounted on Japanese capital ships — the Yamato class super-battleships even adding their 18.1in guns to the AA barrage by firing San-Shiki incendiary shrapnel shells — torpedo plane pilots were formally forbidden to attack well-defended ships unless they had support.
Back in 1942, the low, slow American torpedo planes from their carriers had suffered crippling casualties at the Battle of Midway, because they had bravely gone into the attack with very few fighter escorts, and the dive-bombers which caused the fatal damage to the Japanese carriers did not arrive until most of the torpedo planes had been shot down.