Comments by "Bk Jeong" (@bkjeong4302) on "The evolution of the carrier air wing in the Pacific from Pearl Harbour to Santa Cruz" video.

  1. Basically. Meanwhile their dive bombers were shit, the inverse of the USN situation (at least until the Avenger and Helldiver came along and flipped things back in favour of torpedo bombers).
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  2. 1942 in the Pacific, aka the Shokakus vs. Yorktowns contest while every other Japanese and American carrier in the theatre is dying and/or being shoddy conversions or (for Saratoga) being drydock queens.
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  3.  @Jon.A.Scholt  Agreed. Far more historically important and worthy than the six fast battleships that were preserved (speaking of which, the one American fast battleship that actually did anything significant, that being Washington, also sadly wasn’t preserved).
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  4. “Flying torpedo boats!”
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  5. I wouldn’t call 1/3 and 1/4 of the entire air complement (for the IJN and USN respectively) of carriers being filled with fighters “not being concerned with fighters”. Obviously both sides kept adding even more fighters at the expense of strike aircraft, but they still had a decent number of fighters from the start.
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  6. Japan is a good example of this: their pilot losses during the Guadalcanal campaign was far more of a problem than the four (older and less capable) carriers lost at Midway.
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  7. Now if only someone would make the Shokakus vs. Yorktowns special. Probably will go down as the greatest capital ship rivalry (or even warship rivalry in general) in all of history.
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  8. Samar was honestly an example where it’s questionable if Kurita ever had any chance of success, given that he showed up five days after the landings, not when the transports were still loaded with troops and supplies….
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  9.  @gordonculp8381  SoDak’s AA performance at Santa Cruz was FAR worse than what her crew claimed, especially when cross-referenced with Japanese sources showing their aircraft losses during the engagement. The ENTIRE AMERICAN AA FIRE COMBINED at Santa Cruz downed just over a dozen planes (most Japanese losses came from the Wildcats instead), far less than the number SoDak alone claimed to have shot down.
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  10. Mostly because the carriers fought until they became combat-ineffective. By the end of 1942 the only two fleet carriers left standing in the Pacific were Zuikaku (which had lost basically all her pilots at Santa Cruz thanks to Enterprise and Hornet and was thus combat-ineffective) and Enterprise (which was badly damaged, in large part courtesy of Zuikaku, and was barely combat-effective). Saratoga and Shokaku were under repair and Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet and Wasp were dead.
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  11. Corsairs still didn’t have the torpedo punch needed for use against capital ship-grade targets.
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  12. There is a reason both sides were down to one barely-operational fleet carrier, one fleet carrier in drydock and a bunch of dead fleet carriers by the end of 1942.
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  13.  @gregorywright4918  Zuikaku was also sunk mostly via torpedo bombers, IIRC.
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  14. The Japanese also shifted towards more fighters as the war progressed, and the video shows this?
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  15.  @jlvfr  Japan had a few carriers (including a complete Unryu-class) even at the end of the war; they didn’t have pilots.
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