Talk:General Discussion/@comment-4133273-20150104114322/@comment-24332640-20150105011832

"Kirishima couldn't sink South Dakota at point blank range and got herself sunk."

That's a big oversimplification...

It's generally believed that Kirishima was firing sanshiki rounds. This is simply because she was getting ready to fire on Henderson field and her encounter with the South Dakota was a complete surprise. The rounds were already loaded, and reloaded them would have taken time so they opted to just fire what they had rather than giving the South Dakota to chance to fire first. That was probably the right desicion because it damaged South Dakota's fire control and did enough damage to her superstructure that she was temporarily unable to react. But there was no way sanshiki rounds would actually sink a BB.

Then when Kirishima was reloading (most likely with proper AP rounds) she was fired on by the Washington, which she completely failed to spot. It wasn't South Dakota that sunk her at all...in fact if only South Dakota had been there it's likely she would have won that engagement.