Statistics
Excluding those ships that preceded the first "Special Type", or Fubuki, destroyers, Japan had sixty-eight font-line destroyers in commission at the declaration of war with the Allies (in contrast to the 144 planners had proposed). A further sixty-four were commissioned during the war, but these failed to compensate for the losses incurred and the number of ships available declined steadily until mid-1944. There was a further catastrophic decline in October and November, 1944, when over twenty were lost. Only thirty-one survived hostilities. The high level of destroyer losses has been attributed to the poor effectiveness of their anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weaponry and radar, the aggressiveness with which they were used, and their being squandered on supply missions to Guadalcanal.
Read more about this topic: Japanese World War II Destroyers
Famous quotes containing the word statistics:
“We ask for no statistics of the killed,
For nothing political impinges on
This single casualty, or all those gone,
Missing or healing, sinking or dispersed,
Hundreds of thousands counted, millions lost.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination.”
—Andrew Lang (1844–1912)