OT: The Battle of Savo Island

[Emperor's Child]

Parasite said:
If you think the SEIV AI is bad, read this book. It shows how some of the battles went down back then. It includes some great gems like assigning the only DD with modern fire control to fire star shells for the fleet. The ship with surface radar is put last in the column, and has no ability to advise others because the front ship is just off the scope and radio silence is in effect for them. Once the admiral yells "Cease Fire, Cease Fire" when his ship starts firing on a friendly ship, but forgets he has the microphone open and transmits to the whole fleet in the middle of battle.

This is that "Fog of war" thing that most people just don't get. We often are lulled into assuming that our understanding of how a battle transpired from reading it in a well-researched book is how it occurred. But in fact the people who were there at the time usually had a small fraction of the information about what was happening around them, were sleep deprived, given lots of new equipment they are not familiar with, and under lots of stress. These are conditions that you just can't model or have a good understanding of unless you have experienced them yourself, yet are very central to the decisions made at the time. Yes, the decisions look pretty dumb from the 20/20 hindsight perspective, but it is pretty standard fare for actual combat.