I am biased after reading this book in HS but The Big E was the most important ship in the Navy for a couple of years following Pearl Harbor and by rights should have been the surrender ship. . . . The disaster was losing the Philippines. A bunch of old slow battleships weren't going to turn the tide. A small force of fleet of carriers could and did (plus the submarine fleet that gets a nod of respect at Pearl Harbor but generally not much as much credit as deserved).
I'm a patron (small dollar, unfortunately) of both USS Iowa and USS New Jersey. I've read discussion at these sites and also elsewhere about the great respect with which The Big E is held. It was the most decorated U.S. warship of WWII, correct? I believe it was scrapped in, maybe, 1959? That was a sin, so many say; it should today be a museum ship. Without any question.
Some time ago I was fascinated to learn that the Japanese failed to adapt their war strategy, which was to deliver a crippling blow to the U.S. Pacific Fleet making recovery difficult and requiring years. The IJN would await, in its own waters, arrival of whatever meager force of ships the U.S. could muster and defeat it in a gigantic battleship engagement. That's right, battleships.
Meanwhile, the USN quickly adjusted to carrier warfare priority (well, there weren't many major surface combatants available early on) and achieved an incredible triumph only six months after Pearl Harbor, in June at Midway. The four IJN carriers involved in the December assault on Hawaii were sent to the bottom.
And submarines. The Pearl Harbor sub pens were undamaged, correct? After a horrendous defective torpedo problem was solved, the U.S. submarine force was strategically crucial thoughout the Pacific war. A tragically unheralded story of great human courage.
The Iowa Class battleships are special. Even today, although all four are museum ships, they remain the only big Navy ships in the world that can sail with U.S. CVNs at speed, knot for knot (33 knot design, but might have reached 36 knots in the 1980s). They are, some naval architects have opined, to be the finest warshps ever built by the United States.
Why? They were built without cost contraint; each cost some $110 million ($2.4 billion now); they were the most expensive "platforms" (non-nuclear?) weapons of all World War II.
Yet, the U.S. quickly cancelled the final two Iowas (Illinois and Kentucky) as well as the follow-on huge (but slower) Montana Class battleships. Carrier power ruled, and our people knew it.
Instead of traversing the Pacific with whatever naval power we could muster, 3-1/2 years after December 7 Admiral Nimitz sailed the western seas with a fleet of some 1680 ships. Not only was it larger than all the ships of the other Allied and Axis fleets combined, it was the most powerful in world history.
It's 2024, and this fact continues to overwhelm me. The U.S. priority in the war was Europe, and there went most of our effort. Although the Pacific was secondary, the awesome production of U.S. industry to deal with both theaters is difficult to comprehend. It's so fascinating.
(Wanted to mention that the four Iowas, though their mission changed, with 9-1/2 acres of deck space bristling with anti-aircraft weaponry, they sailed with the U.S.'s fast Essex Class carrier task forces, providing the top in-close air defense to our CVs.)
