The key to carrier combat???

[Drongo]

Originally posted by wpurdom

You can't judge the quality of the IJN "first team" from Coral Sea or the Guadalcanal battles. The first team was Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu. The Japanese regarded Hara's division of the Shokaku and Zuikaku as not up to speed, distinctly inferior, and more of the quality of the balance of their carriers.

Thanks for you thoughts wpurdom. I assume you're referring to the views held in the IJN on Shokaku and Zuikaku just prior to Pearl Harbour. This would certainly have been valid for the time given the intense operational training your "first team" underwent over a long period compared to the relative newcomers.

The Shokaku and Zuikaku are included in my "first team" for several reasons. The ships didn't join the fleet till Nov 41 but their airgroups were well trained by then from anyones standard (except the IJN). The pair took part in the intensive last month of operations (Nov-Dec) in preparation for Pearl Harbour. By the time they first met the USN CV's in May 42, they had participated in all the major carrier operations up to that time, excluding Darwin/Dutch East Indies but most importantly, including the Indian Ocean sweep (where air and naval opposition was encountered). When they joined the surface forces for participation in Opeation MO, they would have been as experienced as any other member of the Kido Butai and by then, experience was a more important factor than level of training. You would expect any initial deficiencies would have been shaken out over that 6 month period.

The post that you commented on was part of a discussion on whether or not the IJN carrier fleets should have any 'starting' advantage over the USN in '42 and how could that advantage (if any) be measured. The Shokaku and Zuikaku had the same experience, were trained in the same tactics/doctrines and led in the same style as the rest of your 'first team'. This would justify them being included in comparisons with their USN counterparts in determining whether an advantage existed or not. If you still feel your 'first team' were superior to the pair because of their training levels pre-PH, then it would just mean that your "first team"s advantage was greater rather than Shokaku and Zuikaku lacked it. Removing the pair from consideration also has the disadvantage that you'll be left having to pretty much relying on Midway for comparison, a battle (as you mentioned in your post to mdiehl) that was very heavily influenced by factors beyond the relative merits of each side's carrier fleets.

[wpurdom]

"This would justify them being included in comparisons with their USN counterparts in determining whether an advantage existed or not. If you still feel your 'first team' were superior to the pair because of their training levels pre-PH, then it would just mean that your "first team"s advantage was greater rather than Shokaku and Zuikaku lacked it. "
I thought from my own readings that within the IJN the Sho and Zui were not considered up to the level of the other 4 even in May and June of 1942, but that reading wasn't recent enough to give you my source(s). Even if that was the feeling, that feeling could have been based on mere unit pride and not in reality.
Really, who knows? Since what I regard as the "first team" only got to attack with bits and pieces of one CV in one CV battle, I guess one would have to say the data from Midway lacks statistical significance. I suppose someone who made intensive study of the operations between 12/7 and 5/1 or did a lot of interviews of Japanese officers could form an opinion that might be worth something. Drongo - I don't disagree with your analysis of the operations of the the Sho, Zui and the second tier Jap CV's. Personally, I have a gut feeling that the 4 Midway CV's were a level above the other carriers in the world in performance (just like I have a gut feeling that the air teams of the the Yorktown, Enterprise, and Lex were probably a notch above the Hornet at the time of Coral Sea and Midway - just the difference between Leslie of the Yorktown SDB's and the leader of the Hornet SDB's made a decisive difference). I think the very best of the air leadership stayed with the first four. I believe I could come up with other indicia consistent with my hypothesis, but I don't contend that I could produce conclusive evidence for or against.

[Drongo]

wpurdom,

You could be right that the opinion within the IJN about Shok/Zuik being a rung down from the other four persisted through to Midway (bet you it wasn't there afterwards). I definitely saw that opinion in IJN accounts pre PH (mind you, since one of the factors influencing the date of the operation was their availability, they couldn't have thought too badly of them). I've never seen it in later accounts but that doesn't mean much. Because I've always mistakenly tried to focus my reading on events rather than the highly entertaining area of IJN service politics, I have to plead ignorance as well. Maybe we should try to convince Matrix to employ a resident historian (of everything) to bang people on the head when they get it wrong. Might take some of the fun out of the forums though.

[CynicAl]

Originally posted by wpurdom
At Midway, the US knew from code-breaking the forces they would face at Midway, the exact vector of the invasion fleet and the approximate vector and morning the Striking Force would approach Midway from the NW. The U.S. had two weeks to prepare for the early morning ambush theyy were preparing. As was pointed out they did a very good job laying out the abundant searching assets they had to catch the Japanese right where they expected them as well as taking precautions against inccorect information.

The difference between the attempted ambush by the USN at Midway and IJN attacks at Pearl, Darwin, and Midway is quite simple and can be expressed in two words: moving targets. The US knew roughly from what direction the FCSF (and other elements of the plan) intended to approach, which allowed them to preposition their own CVs and deploy search aircraft to improve their chances of finding and hitting the Japanese first. But that's not the same thing as hitting a fixed target - ports and airfields don't maneuver. That was part of the problem the US had at Midway.

There's another thing, too. US preparations for Midway could not begin until Japanese radio traffic was intercepted and deciphered - meaning the the IJN got rather more time to prepare than the Americans did. And that's not even going into the months of detailed planning and preparations, including full-on rehearsals for the air groups involved, which the First Air Fleet benefitted from at Pearl Harbor.

But how did their attack go? Each element attacked separately and without coordination. First the Midway TBD's and B-26's made a torpedo attack without fighter cover. 5 of 6 TBD's and 2 of 4 B-26's were shot down and they didn't come close to endangering a Jap CV. Then 16 SBD's attacked, all missed, 8 were shot down and 6 of the surviving planes never flew again. Then 15 B-17's attacked from 20,000 feet, all missed. Then 11 Vindicators attacked, all missed but 9 returned safely.
Was the CV strike any better coordinated? No. The Hornet SBD's and fighters got lost and eventually most of them made it to Midway. The Hornet TBD's attacked by themselves and all 15 were shot down with no hits. Enterprise's fighters got separated from her planes and though they followed the Hornet TBD's for a while did not participate in the battle. the 14 TBD's from Enterprise attacked by themselves, scored no hits and 10 were shot down. Yorktown's fighters went in with the torpedo bombers, all but two were shot down, no hits. So of the 41 TBD, they all attacked at separate times, got no hits and all but 6 were shot down. These various attacks lasted from 710 to 1015.

The biggest factor you're overlooking is weather, which had a serious impact on both visibility and radio communication. US airgroups which launched together and intended to proceed to the target in company got separated in the clouds; squadrons which planned to make a "running rendezvous" en route to the target never spotted each other because the visibility was so poor. On top of that, the Japanese CVs had changed course during the morning, so that the strikes from Enterprise and Hornet had to find Nagumo's ships before they could attack them. (Fletcher waited longer to launch his strike from Yorktown, and was rewarded with a later sighting report reflecting the turn. This is how VB-3 could attack at the same time as VB-6 and VS-6, despite having launched considerably later - perfectly mundane, no supernatural intervention - aka "miracle" - required.)

Of course what happened then was that the Enterprise SBD's and the Yorktown SBD's (launched one hour and 40 minutes later)miraculously arrived at the same time and although they had no fighter cover got an unimpeded attack on the Jap force, "encountering no interference from fighter planes and very
little from anti-aircraft fire." Under these ideal conditions, the 37 planes from the Enterprise scored 7 hits. The 17 SBD's from Yorktown scored 3 hits. Due to the incredible fortune of timing, these hits were enough to make each carrier into a raging inferno.

For one thing, the number of hits credited to EAG is probably low. Most of VB-6 joined VS-6 in attacking Kaga, and it is quite likely that they scored significantly more than the "official" tally of four hits. (The three hits on Akagi were made by just five SBDs.) For another thing, you're ignoring the defective bomb arming switches in VB-3's aircraft, which caused 4 SBDs to jettison their bombs prematurely, and the fact that the last two sections of VB-3 were waved off of Soryu as that carrier was clearly a loss by the time they were ready to push over - so that's actually three hits out of nine dropped, not seventeen. Later that day, the EAG/YAG attack on the Hiryu netted 4 hits of 13 bombs dropped on that ship.

Just to make it clear, when you speak of the "incredible fortune of timing," what you really mean is the incredibly poor plane handling aboard IJN CVs, which resulted in large quantities of HE lying around the hangar deck at the least opportune moment. Compare that to the DC procedures initiated on Yorktown as the first strike from Hiryu approached. Tell me again, which navy had sound doctrine?

In response, Yamaguchi, freed up to do want he wanted to do earlier, got off 18 Vals and 6 fighters in a first wave from the surviving carrier Hiryu. He also sent 2 recon planes in advance to lead the strike in. In a second wave, he scrounged up 10 Kates and 6 fighters. Of the first wave, 6 planes were able to penetrate into diving position and 3 got hits on the Yorktown. The 10 Kates in the second wave did a coordinated anvil attack, 4 were able to to get into launching position and 2 hit the Yorktown.

Yamaguchi couldn't have launched much earlier, no matter how much he wanted to. His carrier was busy maneuvering to avoid attacks from land- and carrier-based bombers; in between attacks his flight deck was busy servicing CAP aircraft. He never had time to bring a strike up on deck, warm up the engines, and launch it until after the US attacks ceased. Had he tried to make his CAP gut it out while he got his strike off, his fighters would have been out of ammunition by the time the VT squadrons attacked, giving Torpedo Eight, Six, and Three a virtual free pass.

Though the Vals did well to hit with 3 of 7, the performance of the Kates would be more impressive had Yorktown been able to maneuver at full speed to avoid their torpedos, as she'd done quite successfully at Coral Sea a few weeks earlier.

[mdiehl]

Gentlemen.

IN HP Wilmott's The Barrier and the Javelin there is ample evidence that IJN recon doctrine was inadequate, and that they knew their ability to project recon at Midway was not up to the standards that they assumed in planning the operation. They went ahead with it anyhow. The more I look at Japanese operational planning, the more I shake my head. Wilmott actually calls Midway a Japanese Schlieffen plan.

As to my comments on set piece CV based air attacks, the US actually coordinated several attacks in the early stages of the war. There was in particular a two-carrier raid by, IIRC, Lex and Saratoga on a Japanese amphibious landing on Buka. Not only was the US strike coordinated (140 a/c arriving on target simulataneously), but it also had to clear the Owen Stanleys en route. Brown was canned for achieving inadequate results, but it turns out that his assessment of damage (several transports sunk, a large number of DDs and other support vessels badly damaged) was pretty good. It was a serious setback to the Japanese NG capmaign and deprived them of assets that might have made a big difference in the night actions of the Solomons campaign.

So, yes, the USN did coordinate at least two multiple CV strikes against land targets prior to APril 1942, and yes these were well coordinated surprise attacks that inflicted considerable damage.


Wpurdom. The "incredible fortune" in timing to which you allude was not luck at all. It was a deliberate effort to time the arrival of the USN strike to catch the Japanese fleet unprepared. It was also the principle reason why the US strike was badly coordinated. It was deemed a greater benefit to launch a strike at long range to achieve the criticial timing window, than to close the range and launch a better-coordinated strike. Because of the long range, the TBDs and SBDs had to be launched first and sent on their way to the targets, with the assumption that the faster and more fuel hungry F4Fs could overtake and join them en route.

[wpurdom]

mdiehl - Perhaps in the future I will have more time for comments. For now I will confine myself to three comments I can make without reference to sources.
1. What I was referring to as miraculous was that Leslie arrived at the same time as McClusky though launching more than an hour and a half later.
2. What Yamaguchi proposed that Nagumo rejected was launching immediately with what was on hand - Vals and Kates with whatever was on board - to level bomb with HE and torpedo bomb with those that hadn't been changed. I don't remember whether this was at first sighting or when the carrier was sighted and the returning strike was only 15 minutes away. Had they done so it would have undoubtedly been a mess, but I am sure it would have been more effective than the Hiryu's later immdeiate strike with what was on hand and it probably would have lessened the damage to the carriers a considerable amount. At that stage it probably wouldn't have been enough for an outright Japanese victory in the battle.
3. Had the Tone's catapult not malfunctioned, delaying the critical plane's launch by one-half hour, Nagumo would have gotten his first report of the US fleet around 0700, fifteen minutes before he broke up the spot on the shipping strike and would have gotten the full strike off at the latest by 0800.

BTW your comments on the leadership in the battle are right on point. Yes the Spruance-Browning command team did a brilliant job in timing their strikes and, had the strike found their targets as quickly as Leslie did, neither a timely Tone launch nor Yamaguchi's suggestion would likely have been in time to help the Japanese. Because of problems in execution it took a string of lucky breaks for it all to work out (seeing the Japanese DD at the last possible moment, having the uncoordinated TBD strikes bring all the Jap fighters down low, having Leslie and the Yorktown TBD's go straight to the target to catch up to the Enterprise strike).
Nagumo showed himself both at Midway and Pearl to be even more unsuitable for his job than Fletcher was for his. And the Japanese generally had entirely too much fondness for scattering diversionary forces all over the place. A US command team would not have sent TF's everywhere but would have concentrated all of the TF's in the same general vicinity (KISS) which would have at best meant that a enemy would have trouble sorting out where to hit and at worst would have meant several lighter CV's to support the Hiryu after the three other CV's were sunk. Of course, having the Japanese plan highlighted this weakness to the highest degree. I have never understood why Yamamoto gets so highly rated or why he was worth killing at the risk of disclosing our decoding of Japanese signals.

[CynicAl]

Actually, I think Nagumo made the smart call at Pearl Harbor. From a post I made over in the WitP forum a while back:

" First, there's the timing to consider. A third wave would have had to wait for the survivors of the first wave to return, repair, refuel, and rearm; consequently a renewed strike could not have begun launching until well after noon. Thus a third wave would have faced the prospect of a long overwater return flight and carrier landing in the dark. Physically and mentally exhausted after nearly twelve hours of flying (including ~2 hours of combat flying) that day. Rusty after not being able to practice even daylight carrier ops since leaving home waters, due to the need for operational security. Operational losses would have wrecked Nagumo's air groups, even disregarding the much stiffer resistance (especially flak) another strike would have faced without the element of surprise.

Second, sticking around would have unnecessarily exposed Nagumo's carriers. Returning fliers reported that Oahu airfields remained operational with an unknown number of heavy bombers - in hindsight we know that high-altitude level bombing posed no threat to maneuvering ships at sea, but in December 1941 this was less clear. Nagumo also knew that the US had at least two CVs somewhere in the vicinity, but their exact locations were unknown - all he knew was that he hadn't caught them at Pearl. Had Nagumo remained in the area, he risked having ~100 SBDs and TBDs show up over his formation from an unexpected direction while his own aircraft were stuck belowdecks preparing for another strike at Oahu. Again, we know that at most only one US CV was in position to even attempt an intercept, but Nagumo could not know that.

Third, he had to keep to a fairly rigid refueling timetable. His destroyer screen didn't have enough fuel to stick around Oahu very long, so Nagumo had to get back or else risk being forced to abandon them, out of fuel, adrift, and helpless on the open ocean. Nagumo's screen represented a significant chunk of Japan's total destroyer force, and almost all were of the most modern and capable types - losing them would have cost the IJN dearly.

Fourth, Nagumo's orders were to hurt the Pacific Fleet badly enough that it would not be able to interfere with Japanese operations in what they considered the crucial first six months, while Japan established a defensive perimeter. He'd accomplished that mission - had in fact succeeded beyond his wildest dreams - so there was really no reason to stick around, risking Japan's precious carriers and invaluable air groups. Certainly nothing that outweighed the very good reasons to get out of Dodge. Small wonder that Nagumo's staff advised him to quit while he was ahead (despite Fuchida's postwar claims to the contrary). "

I didn't even get into the extent of damage the Japanese could reasonably expect to inflict on the targets usually proposed for such a hypothetical follow-up strike, given the relatively small number of aircraft available to Nagumo, and the limited armaments of those aircraft. For now, I'll just say their chances of wiping out PH as a fleet base and forcing PacFleet to operate from the West Coast were basically nil, and leave it at that.

[mdiehl]

Fifth: there wasn't all that much left for him to hit at PH anyhow. Another strike would have been the aerial equivalent of rape n pillage, long after any conceivable military objective had been completed. Much ado has been made about destroying the oil stocks there. Apart from some environmental consequences, new oil and the means to dispense it in the necessary quantities could have been available within a few weeks.

Wpurdom, I misunderstood your original msg. Thanks for the clarification. Seems like we see it the same way.

Nagumo can't be blamed for Midway, even though I would not rate him a great carrier ops admiral. The flaw was the plan itself. Particularly where every substantial objection to which there was no adequate military reply was overruled on the grounds that Japanese spirit and racial superiority would carry the day.