Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "The Drydock - Episode 003" video.

Part I On the subject of Midway Might Have Beens ... There are a couple of different approaches that can be taken to re-fighting battles ... When I was in High School and College me and my buddies were war gamers and did in fact refight Midway any number of times. As such - we stretched the rules as much as we could get away with - **so we could win the game**. There was one engagement where the Japanese managed to get Betty's to bomb Midway and the Americans stripped all the P-40's out of Pearl Harbor and all the P-38's out of Alaska. The Japanese team justified what they had done to the games judge some how and we justified what we were doing because "the Americans KNOW". When you're doing that - you're playing a game - not recreating history. The Real Japanese and Americans NEVER would have done the kind of things we did because both teams knew with absolute certainty that the Japanese were going to attack Midway and that the Americans were going to be there. I mean ... that's why we all showed up. We KNEW what was going to happen. If the judge had said - "Oh ... there was a Typhoon ... the Japanese aren't coming ..." we all would have shaken up our soda's and sprayed him with them. Doing things like this was a lot of fun - but - thinking that there was any relationship between what we were doing and historical reality - would be silly. So - the other approach is a historical one - where you look at the options the real people involved had based on what they would or would not have done and what they did or did not know. The Japanese and Americans were - different. You can't predict what an individual will do based on a group - and you can predict what a group will do based on an individual - BUT - you can notice tendencies. The Japanese tend to be big on consensus. They'll get together and thrash things out - then - once they come up with a consensus on what they are going to do - they'll carry that out. They tend to over plan things down to the smallest details. They train very hard and each person in the effort knows what their job is and is determined to do it. Their problem is that they tend toward a certain rigidity in their thinking - and that makes it difficult for them to respond flexibly when things don't go according to plan. The Americans tend to be more individualistic. They can be "team players" but ... they also have a tendency - if the team doesn't have a plan and a leader with a strong enough personality to enforce it - to go their own way. This can result in a fragmentary effort - unless - they have leadership and training that can focus it. But - when the plan falls apart - they are much quicker to adapt to change. Now one thing not mentioned enough - though the Japanese have talked about it - was the attitudes the two sides brought to the battle. The Japanese had what they called Victory Disease. They had won so much in the early months of the war that it didn't really occur to a lot of them that they could possibly lose. This had an effect on the way they did things. When they needed to be drastically changing what they were going to do - they tended to just go along with their normal methodical way of doing things. Here - I need to talk about the way the Japanese did things with their carriers - as this had an impact on WHAT they did. The Japanese did not operate in Air Groups - they operated in Carrier Divisions. For the Japanese a Carrier Division was like one ship with two hulls. The air crews of that Division trained together and coordinated the operations of the two air groups together - as well as coordinating the actions of the individual squadrons within each air group. As such - they were very, very efficient and doing things in 1942 that the Americans weren't doing until 1944. But it was more than that. Different parts of the fleet each had their roles. Carrier aircraft did not search for the enemy. That was done by scout planes from the cruisers. This preserved the aircraft of the Carrier Divisions for fighting. But - when the sun came up and they launched their search aircraft - there was a problem with the one from the Tone. Now - if they had been more flexible - they could have had another aircraft take that plane's patrol sector - but they didn't. They got the plane off eventually but - it was late - and it was the one whose search sector the Americans were in. Now - there is a problem that all carrier aviation has to deal with - which is that it takes longer to launch aircraft from a carrier than it does from an airfield on land. Because of that - the first aircraft to take off - have to loiter while the others join them and hence are burning fuel the whole time. Because of this - there was a tendency to launch the aircraft with the most range first but there was also a tendency to send aircraft off in smaller groups to increase the range at which they could strike. I need to truncate this here or YouTube will do it for me. .
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Yes! .
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@ausintune9014 One thing about an enclose gun is that you don't have to deal with the weather. .
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As to British Ship naming - I believe - that one factor there was that the British had a lot of ships and had to come up with a lot of names. .
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Part II OK ... now to discuss how the way the Japanese did things impacted Nagumo's decision making when it came to launching his air strikes. Prudently - he wanted to have a reserve in case there were American ships there but - he also wanted to hit Midway as hard as he could. Now - how to do those two things? Well ... the Japanese plan was BASED on the idea that the Americans wouldn't know they were coming. Thus - he didn't need to take half his carrier divisions and hold them in reserve - but could launch a full strike from both divisions. That is what he did. Now - could he have kept one carrier in reserve - with aircraft sitting on it's flight deck - ready to launch against American Carriers if they were found? Well ... that would have broken up a Carrier Divisions aircraft - which was not the Japanese way of doing flight ops and - with a strike group on deck - they would be vulnerable to being hit by the Midway aircraft attacking - and - not able to launch - AND - recover the CAP. So he op's to have the second strike - from both carrier divisions equipped with anti-shipping weapons - torpedoes and AP Bomb's rather than HE Bombs and that is waiting for the order to launch if they find any American ships they want to attack. THEN - Midway is a tough nut to crack ... they haven't found any American Carriers yet ... and there is need for another strike on Midway - so he has the strike - from BOTH Carrier divisions - rearmed with HE Bombs. THEN - that late search aircraft from the Tone's report comes in - that they've spotted American ships. Now - Nagumo is in a quandary. The Plan - has just gone out the window - he has planes with the wrong weapons on them ready to launch - and a returning strike group he needs to land - and he's still getting attacked so he has to service his CAP. There are those who have said he should have sent his strike at the Americans no matter what they were armed with. HE would be very effective on the Wooden flight decks of those American Carriers. The thing is - sending aircraft to attack enemy warships with HE was NOT what the Japanese did - they sent them with torpedoes and AP. So - that is what he was going to do. But - by the time they were rearmed - he'd be dealing with his returning strike and have to land them. So - since Victory Disease told him that he couldn't lose - he opted to recover his first strike - then launch the aircraft reequipped with AP & Torpedoes. He just never got the chance because the American Dive Bombers showed up and ... we all know what happened there. The thing is here - that saying "Oh! Nagumo Should have done THIS!" or "Nagumo Should have done THAT!" doesn't take into account the mentality of the Japanese and the way they were trained to do things. So - saying things like - "well he should have put fighters on all those light carriers" and had them participate in defending the fleet - wasn't something the Japanese were going to do. The light carriers the Japanese had with them at Midway - were each assigned to one of the support groups. Midway was to be an amphibious invasion only AFTER which would they have to deal with American Warships. The air groups on these ships were fixed. They couldn't just snap their fingers and rearrange their fighter forces to put all fighters on these ships. Those other fighter aircraft - wherever they were already had a job doing whatever it was they were already assigned to. Besides Victory Disease told them they were going to win and The Plan - said the Americans weren't going to be waiting for them. Now - whether the Aleutians operation was to keep the Americans from launching attacks from the Aleutians against Japan, a diversion or both - it pretty much was a waste of resources - except for the aspect of things where there were Americans it kept busy dealing with it. But for Midway - they could have used those ships - and gone to the Aleutians later. But Victory Disease was telling them they didn't need to concentrate those ships at Midway - and The Plan said the Americans weren't going to be there anyway. The Shokaku - Zuikaku Carrier Division, that had fought at the Coral Sea - had the Shokaku damaged and the Zuikaku's air group shot up. If they'd been Americans - they'd have put the Shokaku or someone else's aircraft on the Zuikaku and could have had it at the battle. But - the Japanese operated in Carrier Divisions - and half that division wasn't going anywhere so they didn't send the other - the way the Americans did with the Yorktown and Saratoga's Air Group. Now - I should deal with the Americans here and if this was like a real balanced treatise I would but this is long enough so I'll just summarize them. The Americans started with a really, really big advantage. Then their air operations were (especially compared to the Japanese) a complete cluster fuck. But - they got lucky - the Enterprise and Yorktown dive bombers found the Japanese at the same time - with the Japanese CAP diverted - and the Japanese lost 3 carriers in just a few minutes. Never was a book better titled than Walter Lord's Incredible Victory. The point of all of this is - all this 20/20 hindsight - Monday Morning Quarterbacking - about the Japanese ignores the fact that the Japanese did what they did for reasons having to do with their doctrine, their training and the mentality of the day. Having Surprise on your side - makes a big, big difference. The other side has to adjust their thinking and hurry their decisions ... which if they aren't flexible in their thinking or ways of doing things - can be a problem. .
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