Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "Basic Fleet Tactics - 1,000 years of holding the line" video.
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@bkjeong4302 Bk, as Hat Trick mentioned, you are judging early-war formations with post-war ideas. Remember the lesson of the Glorious, however stupid her captain was. There are times when the carrier cannot operate her planes - at night, in bad weather, and even when trying to transit in a different direction than the wind. At Coral Sea during the night of May 7-8 the carrier forces may have been significantly less than 100nm apart, depending on whose track you believe. At Midway the US carriers had to turn toward the Japanese to conduct flight ops while the IJN was turning away. Spruance turned away at night despite the hit he would take on range in the morning, knowing that he had no heavies in his formation to battle potential IJN heavies at night (and the Japanese did consider trying to find and fight him that night).
The fast battleship had several reasons for joining the carrier formation. She protected the formation from other fast battleships or heavy cruisers, she acted as a heavy AA escort, she also was a magnet to draw battleship-focused attackers away from the carriers, and she served as a fuel reserve to top off destroyers when the oiler was not close by. Flank speed was very expensive in fuel, even for the very efficient US boilers, so it was only used for flight operations and attacks. Cruising speed of 20-25 kts was much more common and fuel-efficient. But due to the relatively short range of US carrier planes the US carriers had to close in to launch strikes and could not maintain a "several-hundred-mile gap".
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Tom, the inter-war formations were not presuming the most vulnerable asset was the aircraft carrier. The overriding consideration was to preserve the true "capital ship", the battleship, from harassment by smaller enemy ships, subs, and aircraft. The carrier was either on detached scouting duties or in the "fleet train" behind the battleships, with enough room to maneuver for air ops but primarily tasked with air cover over the battle fleet. The UK was using a similar formation with the carrier near but behind the heavy ships (at least into '41-'42, judging by their ops in the Med). The Japanese were also prioritizing the battle line, but when they experimented with all-carriers in mid-'41 they had two parallel lines of pairs a short distance apart at the center. When attacked by air, they would open the "cover" formation up to give the carriers more room to dodge, but no escorts would stick close to them. The escorts main job was anti-sub and anti-surface defense.
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