Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-70.83.39.226-20160202181251/@comment-26998554-20160205070545

Well, two of the American ships were battleships about as old as the Kongou, and increasingly obsolete as the age of surface combat ended. I suppose for the others it came down to a need for data on their new super weapon - because two cities and a desert doesn't provide much in the way of knowledge about effectiveness against military targets.

I should point out, though, that the commander of the weapons test at Operation Crossroads was an admiral (I've been unable to find any list of ships that were under his command) - from what I've seen, conflict in the branches of the US armed forces come more in the form of sports rivalries and ocassional communication failures.