Damage control encompasses all the activities taken by the crews of warships to minimize the effects of battle damage and keep the ship afloat and operating. Thus, it includes fire fighting, shoring, and emergency repairs of all kinds.
A hit in a magazine leading to a magazine explosion, as happened to the British battle cruiser Hood or the U.S. battleship Arizona, was one way for a warship to be destroyed outright in battle. Another was for an underwater explosion (from a mine or torpedo) to break the back of the ship. More typically, a ship was lost through a combination of progressive flooding, loss of stability, or fire. A ship hit below the waterline suffers immediate flooding in compartments breached by the enemy's weapon, which is followed by slower progressive flooding through bulkheads penetrated by splinters or through hatches or pipes distorted by the shock of the explosion. Progressive flooding can be controlled by pumping and through emergency repairs to restore watertight integrity. Loss of stability refers to flooding to one side of the ship that causes it to capsize and sink even though the ship nominally has enough buoyancy to remain afloat. It is controlled through counterflooding on the undamaged side of the ship, which restores the ship to an even keel. Fire hinders damage control and can cause secondary explosions. Uncontrolled fire can reduce a warship to useless scrap metal even if the hull remains buoyant.
Some idea of the relative importance of various
kinds of damage control can be gleaned from loss statistics. Of the
five U.S. fleet and light carriers lost during the
war, one (Yorktown) was lost to
progressive flooding, while the other four (Lexington,
Wasp,
Hornet,
and Princeton) were all lost to
fire. No U.S. battleship was lost at sea, but of the battleships sunk
at Pearl Harbor, one (Arizona) was lost to a magazine
explosion, another (Oklahoma) capsized, and and the
other three (West Virginia, Nevada, and California) were victims of
progressive flooding. It is likely that no conceivable damage control
could have saved the first three, but the Nevada and California might have been saved by
better damage control; California,
in particular, was preparing for inspection and had so many hatches
loosened that her watertight integrity was all but nonexistent. As it
was, Nevada was salvaged
within a year and California
and West Virginia were
repaired in time to participate in the final campaigns of the war.
Prewar damage control drill, at least in the British Navy, put a great deal of emphasis on shoring of bulkheads, which was probably misplaced. Bulkheads were designed and tested to withstand any head of water they were likely to be exposed to. In the United States Navy, it was recognized almost at once that the loss of Lexington need hot have happened had better damage control procedures been in place. Lexington suffered two torpedo hits and three bomb hits at the Battle of the Coral Sea but was able to resume flight operations. However, inadequate damage control procedures led to a gasoline explosion and fires that went out of control and forced the scuttling of the vessel. Thereafter fire fighting became to the Navy what rifle marksmanship was to the infantry: A basic skill expected of all hands. Some of the lessons of the disaster had already been absorbed and put into practice by the time of the battle of Midway, where the Yorktown's fuel officer had already introduced the use of carbon dioxide to flush fuel lines and blanket the fuel tanks.
Fire fightning equipment and techniques were relatively primitive in all navies at the start of the war, but improved considerably, especially in the U.S. Navy. The Japanese discovered at Midway, and the Americans with the loss of Wasp, how easily water mains could be broken by shock and fire curtains destroyed by splinters. Portable pumps increased in number and capacity; firefighters were equipped with more and better asbestos suits; and foam was introduced for fighting fuel fires.
By the end of the war, the United States had
perfected damage control to the point where Franklin
could be saved, and return to the United States under her own power,
after experiencing kamikaze hits
that set of numerous secondary explosions in her hanger. There can be
little doubt that Franklin
would have been lost had her crew been trained and equipped for damage
control in the same way that the crew of Lexington was when the latter was
lost at Coral Sea.
References
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index