Editing Cruiser (section)

===Pearl Harbor through Dutch East Indies campaign===
The [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] on 7 December 1941 brought the United States into the war, but with eight battleships sunk or damaged by air attack.<ref>Morison vol III, p. 158</ref> On 10 December 1941 HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and the battlecruiser {{HMS|Repulse|1916|6}} were [[Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse|sunk by land-based torpedo bombers]] northeast of Singapore. It was now clear that surface ships could not operate near enemy aircraft in daylight without air cover; most surface actions of 1942–43 were fought at night as a result. Generally, both sides avoided risking their battleships until the Japanese attack at Leyte Gulf in 1944.<ref>Morison vol III, pp. 188–190</ref><ref>Morison vol XII</ref>

Six of the battleships from Pearl Harbor were eventually returned to service, but no US battleships engaged Japanese surface units at sea until the [[Naval Battle of Guadalcanal]] in November 1942, and not thereafter until the [[Battle of Surigao Strait]] in October 1944.<ref name=FriedBat1>Friedman battleships, pp. 345–347</ref> {{USS|North Carolina|BB-55|6}} was on hand for the initial landings at Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942, and escorted carriers in the [[Battle of the Eastern Solomons]] later that month. However, on 15 September she was torpedoed while escorting a carrier group and had to return to the US for repairs.<ref name=FriedBat1/>

Generally, the Japanese held their capital ships out of all surface actions in the 1941–42 campaigns or they failed to close with the enemy; the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942 was the sole exception. The four {{sclass|Kongō|battlecruiser|0}} ships performed shore bombardment in Malaya, Singapore, and Guadalcanal and escorted the [[Indian Ocean raid|raid on Ceylon]] and other carrier forces in 1941–42. Japanese capital ships also participated ineffectively (due to not being engaged) in the [[Battle of Midway]] and the simultaneous [[Aleutian Islands Campaign|Aleutian diversion]]; in both cases they were in battleship groups well to the rear of the carrier groups. Sources state that {{ship|Japanese battleship|Yamato||2}} sat out the entire [[Guadalcanal Campaign]] due to lack of high-explosive bombardment shells, poor nautical charts of the area, and high fuel consumption.<ref name=G&D54>Garzke and Dulin (1985), p. 54</ref><ref name="jackson128">Jackson (2000), p. 128</ref> It is likely that the poor charts affected other battleships as well. Except for the ''Kongō'' class, most Japanese battleships spent the critical year of 1942, in which most of the war's surface actions occurred, in home waters or at the fortified base of [[Chuuk Lagoon|Truk]], far from any risk of attacking or being attacked.

From 1942 through mid-1943, US and other Allied cruisers were the heavy units on their side of the numerous surface engagements of the [[Dutch East Indies campaign]], the Guadalcanal Campaign, and subsequent [[Solomon Islands campaign|Solomon Islands]] fighting; they were usually opposed by strong Japanese cruiser-led forces equipped with [[Long Lance]] torpedoes. Destroyers also participated heavily on both sides of these battles and provided essentially all the torpedoes on the Allied side, with some battles in these campaigns fought entirely between destroyers.

Along with lack of knowledge of the capabilities of the Long Lance torpedo, the US Navy was hampered by a deficiency it was initially unaware of—the unreliability of the Mark 15 torpedo used by destroyers. This weapon shared the [[Mark 6 exploder]] and other problems with the more famously unreliable [[Mark 14 torpedo]]; the most common results of firing either of these torpedoes were a dud or a miss. The problems with these weapons were not solved until mid-1943, after almost all of the surface actions in the Solomon Islands had taken place.<ref name=BuOrd1>Rowland and Boyd, pp. 93–94</ref> Another factor that shaped the early surface actions was the pre-war training of both sides. The US Navy concentrated on long-range 8-inch gunfire as their primary offensive weapon, leading to rigid [[battle line]] tactics, while the Japanese trained extensively for nighttime torpedo attacks.<ref name=FriedCru1>Friedman cruisers, pp. 312–315</ref><ref name=FriedDes1>Friedman destroyers, pp. 168–172</ref> Since all post-1930 Japanese cruisers had 8-inch guns by 1941, almost all of the US Navy's cruisers in the South Pacific in 1942 were the 8-inch-gunned (203&nbsp;mm) "treaty cruisers"; most of the 6-inch-gunned (152&nbsp;mm) cruisers were deployed in the Atlantic.<ref name=FriedCru1/>