Talk:USS Washington (BB-56)

Battleship duels

I have removed the paragraph claiming that Washington was one of only two modern US battleships to engage another battleship, since I know of at least seven others (South Dakota in the same engagement against Kirishima as Washington; West Virginia, California, Tennessee, Maryland and Mississippi against Yamashiro at Leyte Gulf; and Massachusetts against Jean Bart during Operation Torch), and as I am no expert there may be others of which I am not aware. If "duel" is understood to mean a single-ship action then the term would not apply to Washington in any case, since there were two US battleships involved, to say nothing of the smaller ships on both sides. The statement that it was the only US battleship to sink another battleship during the war is also inaccurate. Yamashiro was also sunk during its engagement with the battleships in Surigao Strait; while Yamashiro was torpedoed as well as being damaged by the battleships and this damage was arguably chiefly responsible for the sinking, Kirishima was in any case not sunk by Washington but scuttled after being crippled.

All in all, the paragraph seems irretrievably flawed: if corrected it would become so underwhelming as to make its inclusion pointless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zburh (talk • contribs) 21:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me as if the author of the paragraph above missed two key words qualifying the cliam in the article. Those would be "modern", which West Virginia, California, Tennessee, Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania (which was also present at Surigao Strait and uncredited in the paragraph above) decidedly were not, unless you count the rebuilt Tennessee, California and West Virginia as modern (because of their extensive rebuilds, this classification would not be without some foundation in fact). The other key word is "engage" which I am fairly certain that during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal the South Dakota did not engage Krishima, due to a power failure among other reasons. By the time Washington engaged Krishima, it was the only American warship still capable of offensive operation, so duel is not entirely inaccurate. The escorting destroyers were all sunk or damaged and South Dakota was damaged and slowly recovering from a system-wide power failure and retreating from the action.

In the most complete sense of the word, Krishima was sunk by Washington. Was Bismark sunk by King George V and Rodney or did the Germans scuttle it? I credit Brittish fire with the sinking. Same situation, different ships.

More fertile territory would be to discount Krishima as a battleship. It was built as a battle cruiser (according to Jackie Fishers overall design guidance and similar to other ships that rapidly perished at Jutland) and although upgraded between the wars was still lightly armoured for a battleship. This is the reason that Krishima's sister Hiei suffered so badly several nights before at the hands of cruisers and destroyers.

The damage that Yamishiro accumulated before engaging the battle line is hard to judge as so few of the senior officers survived. In any case, both Fuso and Yamishio had poor protection and were poorly maintained, neither were engaged in first line operations after Midway. To illustrate this, Fuso sank as the result of a single torpedo hit. Yamishiro had already accumulated several torpedo hits and dramatically was reducing speed before engaging the battle line. The ship was probagbly doomed from accumulated damage and her demise was simply hastened by battleship fire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.109.142.253 (talk) 21:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC)