Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The Drydock - Episode 270 (Part 1)" video.

  1. @ 1:41:48 There was NO "Third Wave". After the second wave left around 7AM the only planes left on the Kido Butai flight decks were CAP fighters, I'm not sure how many but I think two chutais or around 18. IJN carrier attack doctrine was the massed strike composed of two parts, each part being half of the attack strength of each carrier, because (simplistically) only about half of the full complement of planes could be fit on the flight deck for a single launch (allowing enough take-off room at the forward end). Carriers were matched in pairs, and each unit would contribute an entire squadron of either dive bombers or torpedo bombers (which doubled as horizontal bombers when needed, particularly for land attacks), sending the other squadron up with the second half of the strike. The fighter squadron was split between escort fighters going with the strike and CAP fighters that stayed back to defend the fleet. When people theorize about a "Third Wave" what they really mean is a second strike by what was the First Wave, after it flew back, landed, refueled and rearmed, and was spotted and launched again - which would take about 2-3 hours, counting flying time. This was the big problem at Midway - the First Wave was on its way back while the Second Wave was still in the hangars, armed for anti-ship strike in case anything threatening was discovered by recon. The commander of the First Wave called for a second strike on Midway, and Nagumo ordered the rearming of the attack planes with land-attack weapons (swapping torpedoes for bombs), when the first report came in of USN ships in the area. The big problem was what to do then - send off the second wave to hit the ships with the wrong weapons while the first wave circled the carriers, or landing the first wave while rearming the second wave again and then launching the rearmed second wave. Note also that the original question was pitched as to what the Enterprise could have done on the EVENING of Sunday the 7th, ie after the KB had already started heading north. I don't know if Enterprise could have caught them, particularly since her planes did not have the longer range of the lighter IJN planes and she would be approaching from the southwest at a diagonal.
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