Midway revisited

[AmiralLaurent]

Very good AAR. It would be better if it was posted in the AAR section but it was fun to read.

I think you should consider the Midway and Andaman Battle as the same battle. Result is 2 CV lost and 2 CV damaged for each side, so it is an overall Japanese defeat.

Your CV groups are too scattered. The Southeast Fleet is useless, too weak to resist an Allied CV raid or to sail under LBA range, and its extra punch would have made the difference in both CV battles.
But more than CV you were lacking BBs. I don't know what is your BB situation but for Midway operation I would send 6 BBs rather than 2. Also after the first bombardment, BB have only 1/3 of the initial ammunition and are far less efficient.
In May 1942 and later you may assume that each atoll may be defended by a full division. It's better to bomb troops before the landing just to know what is waiting you.

It could have been worse. In the evening of the 27 I would have retreated my carriers if I was your opponent. At this date he knew that you had not enough troops to take Midway and he had hit two CVs while his were intact. On the other hand he had lost part of his airgroups. Sending the BBs to Midway was a good move but then using them to chase your damaged ships was overkill. Using CAs and DDs will have probably given the same result and with their greater speed they may be out of range of your CV AC after dawn. The best tactic IMOO would have been to set Midway as their home base with retirement orders and to put all remaining fighters on Midway on CAP 100% over the island. Your tired CV airmen will have suffered more losses and scored less hits.

But it is always easy to comment a battle after its end.

[ChezDaJez]

You're probably right that I should have put it on the AAR forum. I just never thought of it as an AAR.

I pretty much agree with your assessment. I didn't bring enough to the battle to win.

Carrier wise, I thought that 2 were operating around the Brisane area. Now idea why I thought that but it was a hunch. Even still, I figured that if he did have all 3 fleet carriers available at Midway, my 4 fleet carriers and Junyo should be able to take care of them. Only one squadron was less than 90 experience and it was 84. So I was confident my carriers could handle whatever he brought and that turned out to be the case.

I kept the CVL/CVEs near Rabaul just in case Enterprise was down there. As it turned out, a lack of carriers wasn't the problem. Kaga was the only one hurt. Akagi took a bomb but her damage was only 6 pts. He lost two carriers for moderate damage on one of my.

I felt I had to keep two CVs in the Bay of Bengal to counter the Brit CVs there. His B-17s had been pounding my airfields and resources in Burma and I felt he might make a move on Andamann but I didn't determine that until it was too late to move additional troops from the DEI up there. The surprise was finding Enterprise with them. I never for a moment envisioned she was there. Her fighters kicked butt on my Bettys that first day. I had over 100 Betty/Nells available in Singapore ready to move to Rangoon on a moment's notice, which is what I did. However, they refused to fly after the first day and didn't play any significant part. Probably had their morale broken even though they averaged over 80 experience. In the end though, the presence of those CVs kept his invasion of Andamann from being successful. It wouldn't have been long before B-17s would have been operating from there and that would have been intolerable. You yeah it was an expensive victory but necessary.

The big mistake was not bringing enough troops to accomplish the job. I had a full division available in addition to the troops I brought in 4th fleet. Very stupid mistake. (I didn't have enough PP to move another one over) I also did not bring anywhere near enough battleships which was another huge mistake. Chances are it would have resulted in a major fleet action with his BBs. I could have brought Yamato (that would have been cool) but didn't. I had every major warship available. Prior to this battle the largest ship I had lost was a DD and the only ship that had damage at the start were DD size or smaller.

Anyways, live and learn.

Chez