Participative thread - about carriers & carrier ops IRL

[RangerJoe]

I always wondered about the puny islands on the Japanese carriers and why they were not all on the same side.

Also, Commander Evans of the Johnston learned from the battle of Jutland to steer towards the shell splashes. Apparently the enemy ship would correct and then miss the target again. Commander Evans (MOH) charged Kurita's fleet [X(] at Leyte Gulf. The Johnston's torpedo attack blew off the Kumano's bow. [:D]

[Korvar]

ORIGINAL: Fishbed

By 1945, that's how well the USN had drilled itself into making Task force simultaneous "all ships" maneuvers happen. It's quite a sight...

Very true. Also the flight decks stretched to the horizon...

A main weakness of the Fletcher-class destroyers was their poor maneuverability, but with time the task forces became so crowded with capital ships that it ended up being a relative non issue and probably made the coordination easier since the turn radius differential was minimal.

[Korvar]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

I always wondered about the puny islands on the Japanese carriers and why they were not all on the same side.

Also, Commander Evans of the Johnston learned from the battle of Jutland to steer towards the shell splashes. Apparently the enemy ship would correct and then miss the target again. Commander Evans (MOH) charged Kurita's fleet [X(] at Leyte Gulf. The Johnston's torpedo attack blew off the Kumano's bow. [:D]

"Chasing salvos" or "chasing splashes" was a reasonable bet that the enemy would not fire in the same spot twice. The tenacity and audaciousness of the attack, however, is what saved the rest of the task force from a much worse fate - even more than the damage inflicted. Kurita was so taken aback that he became much more cautious and withdrew much sooner than he otherwise would have as a result.

It's also a good example of why it pays to study history... [:D]

[Barb]

Actually there are two kinds of "turns" for fleet:

1. Individual turn - Flagship orders Turn to new heading or relative bearing (by flags, blinkers, or TBS). All ships within column/division will acknowledge receiving. After that, the Flagship orders "Execute" (dropping flags, etc) and each ship will start the turn at the moment this is observed. It results in ships in line "< -----" to get paralel "\\\\\" (heading up) by "TURN STBD 6" or something like that.

2. Division/Formation turn - same procedure but with one more flag for Division/Formation/Squadron meaning that whole formation is to change heading (ideally over the single place in the ocean) one by one - thus not changing formation, but whole formation changing heading. "FORM TURN PORT 18" would result in whole formation going from "< ----" turning left (port) one by one till "----- >" (like a SNAKE).

[spence]

This allowed the carriers to sail closer together to give a degree of mutual support, while still being able to turn away from one another when needed to maneuver;

"Shattered Sword" indicates that the Japanese Navy utilized very very dispersed formation with individual carriers spaced about 8000 yards apart along with a single plane-guard destroyer following relatively closely. With lots of space between the carriers mutual support in any meaningful sense just didn't happen and maneuver seemed pretty much the only defensive tactic used. The Japanese adopted a different formation(more or less the USN-style ring) in 1944 which allowed for mutual support.

[Korvar]

You're right, maneuver was the primary defensive tactic for the ships themselves.

Mutual support for the IJN had more to do with the CAP rotation, not AA. The IJN carriers had to have clear decks to rotate (land, refuel, take off) CAP patrols, which meant that spotting a strike force on deck would preclude rotating the CAP. Having at least one deck clear in the task force helped immensely with juggling strike preparation and ongoing CAP. Since the IJN also preferred radio silence (and not all Zeros had radios anyway), the IJN CAP was much more of an independent operation and relied on visually observing what other units of the task force were doing, as well as visual signalling between carriers - hence why maintaining visual contact with the other carriers was essential.

The Japanese AA was pretty anemic in any case (as were all carriers early on) but was not helped by the relative ineffectiveness of the 25mm guns even when installed in quantity.

[Fishbed]

Great thanks everybody, much appreciated!

[L0ckAndL0ad]

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn

Combat Information Center, is a monthly magazine created during WW II to spread the best practices in the rapidly developing art of integrating information (particularly radar) for command and control in U.S. Navy ships.

https://maritime.org/doc/cic/index.htm

I'm reading CIC 44-08 (Vol. 1, No. 6), page 28 (16 actual in the document), "CIC ON THE USS BLOCK ISLAND". It refers to "CTG", but I'm not 100% sure who that is?

"One ACI Officer - Principal tactical adviser to CTG, in charge of the preparation, accumulation and dissemination of all reports and data of a tactical significance to the task group. One of his major duties each day was preparation of CTG's operational report, based on the CIC log."

"One Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer - CIC watch officer and adviser to CTG on ASW tactics."

Commander of the Task Group?

ps: also, ACI Officer -- Air Combat Intelligence Officer, correct?

[Trugrit]

Yep,

CTG…..Commander Task group

ACI…...Air Combat Intelligence

Mark This Web page:

https://www.acronymfinder.com/Military- ... t/CTG.html

https://www.acronymfinder.com/Military- ... t/ACI.html