Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "IJN Akagi - Guide 286" video.

  1. Technically an angled deck can launch and recover at the same time, but you often see them using the foredeck as a parking area during recovery operations. Large strikes often need to land around the same time, so they park them forward or to the side to rearm and refuel, only putting planes that need maintenance down below in the hangar. One tactic the Japanese mastered before the US was the deck-load launch, spotting about half their planes at the rear of the deck and launching them quickly in conjunction with a similarly-spotted twin carrier, then melding the two partial-groups into one strike on the way to the target. That is why Pearl Harbor was "two strikes" but not of the same planes, and when the second strike was launched there were no planes left to form a third strike (aside from a few fighters held back for CAP).
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  2.  @Trebuchet48  Most of his photos come from public sources, often national archives, which do not have the best labeling to being with and are sometimes labeled wrongly.
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  3. The Lexingtons did get a small refit in the '30s that altered the shape of the bows. Most USN money was going into rebuilding the battleships and building new cruisers and carriers then.
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  4. I was thinking it was Enterprise vs Shokaku & Zuikaku...
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  5. Sounds like Russia's Kyiv Occupation Force...
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  6. The practicalities don't work out. First off, the lowest flight deck is quite low and would take water over the bow in any sea state. To have any significant hangar behind it you don't have much deck length, necessitating catapults, but catapults are much slower to get off more than one or two planes than a pre-spotted deck launch. Each deck needs to be shorter than the one below it, meaning your top landing deck ends up less than 2/3 your ship length. And you still need elevators to get between the decks, taking up even more usable space. It also overwhelms the bridge and fight control team to have three different things going on at once. Pre-planning the timing of launch and recoveries on a single flight deck worked better.
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  7. Lexington's are higher (flight deck) and have better arcs of fire. Would not have lasted long, as there are so many flammable things about.
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  8. No. 250ish were not recovered, probably died in the explosions and fires.
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  9. Yes, but they were smaller, lighter bi-planes and the multiple decks led to a much smaller hangar. At Midway the decks were kept clear for CAP cycles, while the strike was rearmed on the hangar deck.
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  10. The downturned funnel used a water-injection system to cool the stack gasses, which might be the white vapor you see. I suspect the smaller vertical funnel was only used for max-speed evolutions.
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  11. 1. The initial stacks on Akagi and Kaga were an attempt to solve the smoke problem on flat-deck Hosho, their first carrier. Akagi tried the downward-curving stack (with a smaller vertical stack behind it), while Kaga tried big tubes leading to rear exhaust. Neither solution dealt with the problem of smoke at low level drifting back into the ship - only tall stacks did, and they were trying to keep the flight decks clear. Kaga was later rebuilt with the downward-curving stack, but the gun stations abaft it had to be enclosed. Plus when the weather got bad or the ship listed it was possible for a wave to cover the opening. Note that the Hiyos, the Taiho, and the Shinano all had island funnels, while the Unryus went back to the downward side stacks of the Hiryu design. 2. On Akagi, the rebuild put a small island on the port side, since the stack exhaust was on the starboard. A right-handed pilot would have a tendency to pull the stick to the right, causing starboard drift. The problem (at least with single-propeller planes) was the plane itself tended to pull to the left due to propeller torque. The Brits found the solution first with starboard islands and the rest copied them. There was some discussion about whether the IJN carrier-pairs (Akagi-Kaga and Hiryu-Soryu) were designed with alternating islands so they would be facing each other as they steamed alongside, but I have not seen that verified. The Shokakus both had it to starboard.
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  12. Except the Hiyos, and the Taiho, oh and the Shinano...
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  13. The IJN did not know what the term "defensive" meant. It was solely offensively minded. That said, if it had gone defensive, the first order of business would have to be overhauling the fleet back home and then redeploying to a good central reaction base like Truk. A better northern warning system would have to be developed to prevent future Doolittle-style raids. More airpower would need to be moved forward to the Marshalls, the Rabaul area, and Malaya/Burma. More intermediary airbases built to shuttle aircraft around, stocked with fuel and spare parts. More aircrew training to build up a pilot reserve. Push the subs forward to scout and interdict the SLOCs to Australia. And get captains to work with that metal mattress thing called "radar". Maybe even develop some fighter control tactics.
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  14. Kills of what - other warships? aircraft? merchants? sea life?
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  15. You may be thinking of the battleships sunk in the Gulf of Thailand, but the water off Midway is thousands of feet deep.
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  16.  @nathanielweber7843  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQeP7LMrjJA
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  17. Still on board - but dead.
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  18.  @geordiedog1749  They probably died in explosions and fires on June 4th.
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  19. They were paired in the '20s, but Kaga was based on a Tosa-class battleship while Akagi was based on the Amagi-class battlecruiser. Unless you are talking about AL.
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  20.  @rjlarose5271  Oh, OK - yes, they are not too many miles apart. I think Kaga sank first.
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  21.  @LostShipMate  The French took half of North America with just canoes...
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  22.  @WALTERBROADDUS  And Nimitz had the option of saying "No Thanks", as he did not need Midway and could retake if taken. Plus he had B-17s.
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  23.  @yoseipilot  Enterprise stuck around, despite her damage. Hornet and Wasp were sunk, Saratoga was torpedoed again and sent back to the yard - all in '42. By mid-'43 the Essex swarm began and it was a different war.
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  24.  @bkjeong4302  After 7/14/42 CarDiv5 = CarDiv1...
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  25. It would probably be a night action, in which case the Lex's radar would help out, plus her 8"ers were on flight deck level while Akagi's 8"ers were lower in hull. Depends on the timing re: rebuilds too, since Agaki lost the turrets in the mid-'30s.
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  26. The middle part of the deck is higher than fore and aft, which was part of original design to help planes decelerate when land on aft while accelerating when taking off on forward. The rebuild did not smooth it all out, and added an extension on the rear to catch planes coming in too low.
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  27. The 8 inch guns were put there for that very possibility, but operations showed that it was unlikely and they got in the way so they were removed. Probably a night scenario, pre-radar so early-to-mid '30s, vs Lexington would be a tough fight. Lots of unarmored flammable stuff inside so lots of chances for critical hits.
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  28. The Japanese got their start with British ships and designs - Kongo was built in UK yards, the rest in Japan.
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  29. The canvas hammocks of the crew were rolled up in tubes and attached as extra padding on the island against shrapnel.
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  30.  @mikespangler98  Sounds more like abbreviations, they depended on the coding system to keep the "codename" secret. They did learn from the Germans about using a separate geographical grid besides Lat-Lon.
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  31.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Aside from tests, the Americans never used the lower deck catapults (they were perpendicular, so no deck wind assist, and located in the hangars). Later on they added forward flight deck catapults, but they still took longer to load and reload for multiple plane launches than a deck-load strike. Escort carriers had them, but their flight decks were much shorter than fleet carriers. Cruisers and battleships could only launch one plane at a time from their catapults, then had to use a crane to reload.
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  32.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Sorry, I was assuming pre-war carriers. Yes, the CVEs had them too, during the war.
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  33.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Then again, I thought you referenced "lower-deck catapults".
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  34. The Lexington's had their bow redesigned...
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  35. Saw one note that they were removed from Akagi and added as casement guns to Kaga, but that does not make sense since Kaga was rebuilt first.
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  36. As long as it is "short"...
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  37.  @scottgiles7546  He's done that twice now, plus another hour on his own, so make that seven hours cumulative. Another great version is by Montemayor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo
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  38.  @scottgiles7546  Then again, there was that 18 minute feature on the Medway...
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  39. Drach mentioned the idea in his video on Midway with Parshall, but said in wargaming it came up with multiple different outcomes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhHKPvfL5k
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