Reddit reviews The Last Battle Station: The Story of the Uss Houston
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There were a lot of shell problems.
The Last Battle Station, by Duane Schultz, discusses the ammo issue aboard the USS Houston. Near the start of the war, the West Coast Fleet Gunnery School (probably at San Diego) test fired a batch of ammo and found it defective:
> Although the crew had drilled hundreds of times on the technique of firing their five-inch guns, the first opportunity they would have to actually fire them would be at war, against the enemy. Further, only four people aboard the Houston knew that the ammunition for those five-inch guns, the prime defense against air attack, was faulty....
> They requested permission to test-fire the ammunition to find out if they were as bad as reported by the gunnery school. Request denied. For reasons of morale, (Captain Albert H.) Rooks, (Lt. Cmdr. Arthur L.) Maher, (Air Defense Officer Jack) Galbraith, and (chief enlisted man, Gunner James E.) Hogan agreed to keep the information to themselves.
Granted, that's 5-inch ammunition. But we know the Mark 14 torpedo also had issues, so it's not really a surprise to hear there were issues with large caliber shells.
The Houston story is another story entirely. That ship was doomed even before the war began.