Trading Taffy 3’s torpedoes for Tribal gunfire

Would Taffy 3 have done better with Tribal-class destroyers replacing its historical escorts?

The Tribals would add gunfire but lose torpedo capacity, so a well-trained force might achieve roughly the same exceptional result rather than a dramatically better one.

The answer begins by emphasising how much Taffy 3’s historical escorts accomplished against a much stronger Japanese force. Seven worked-up Tribal-class destroyers would bring more gunfire than the destroyer escorts and could inflict serious damage. They would also carry fewer torpedoes than the large American destroyers, reducing one of the weapons that made the historical attack so dangerous. Because the original force already achieved an extraordinary result, the counterfactual is judged likely to perform similarly rather than transform the battle.