Here's one for the Navy! http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2010/06/june-4th-1942-midway-the-forgotten-victory.html#more And a final note of warning:
For the Pacific Theater, Midway was maybe the most critical victory. We had a little bit of lady luck on our side during that battle and good thing we did. Japs outnumbered us and had better fighters at that early juncture of the war. I'd like your opinion on something. I got into an argument with a guy a year or so ago, about whether us or the the Japs had technologically superior carriers. I submit we did, and he presented himself forth as some kind of military expert and swore the Jap carriers, such as the ones at Midway were better, compared to the Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown. One of my points was the first time the Yorktown was hit at Midway, the fire suppression capabilities were so great that by the time Japs planes saw it the 2nd time, they thought it was a different carrier, not one previously hit, so they attacked it again. The Japs carriers, like the one that took just one direct hit and sunk, forget which name, all the planes on the 2nd deck being rearmed and the bombs etc removed, just stacked along the sides while the new bombs were loaded, the fire spread through that deck in seconds and they were not equipped to deal with it. What is your opinion of our WWII carriers compared to the Jap carriers of that time?
We were and are far ahead of the curve in both equipment and operation of same, IMVHO. The redundency of water tightness and bubble skin hulls make sinking a US Carrier a very hard thing to do unless a direct hit with a nuke. The proof of this is seen time and time again with the Battle damage taken yet the Ships always return to serve again and again. Look up what happened with INTREPID during WWII, Forrestal during Vietnam, The mighty O when they sunk her off the coast of Fla. There is much more to building a Carrier fleet than just putting a ship into the water and you can look no farther than the Russians and Chinese to see that is true. The ONLY nation I would put at a level near to ours are the Brits. Nope the Japs may know how to build them big, that in no way makes them good! Ask your friend if he believes the Jap Carriers better then why did our 3 beat their 6 given the Zero was clearly better than our Hellcat? It ain't the gun thats bad; its that SOB pulling the trigger that makes the difference!
another amazing thing about the Jap carriers was they had no radar. How primitive is that? That cost them big at Midway.
Just watched the movie again yesterday. I know it wasn't the intention at the outset, but we basically sacrificed our fighters and torpedo bombers, which caused the Japs to use all the fighter cover, so when the dive bombers came in at just the right time, it was wide open for them. They just had to worry about the anti aircraft guns, that's bad enough, but nothing like having Zeros on your tail. Those dive bombers got some great accuracy, the ones who had bombs left. The accidental drops along the way by some of the dive bombers meant they were going in at about half strength. The unloaded planes served to help draw fire too, to help the still armed ones get through. Man, when those bombs hit the Jap carriers, it was like watching a Super Bowl TD moment. Then to have their best carrier admiral decide to go down with the ship really cost them too later in the war.
The book "Shattered Sword" by Parshall and Tully is great! It has research from the Japanese side that others did not have for earlier works. It is a must read for WWII naval fans. As to the Japanese carriers, the Shokaku and Zuikaku were every bit as good as the US Yorktown class but they have been badly beaten up at Coral Sea, What is interesting is that had the Japanese had air groups as seperate units instead of dedicated ship's company they may have been able to cobble together a group and sent the undamaged one (can't remember which one was damaged and which one lost most of its air group) to Midway. A fifth carrier would have been a huge value for the Japanese.
There was a History Channel episode a few years ago that looked at Midway from the Jap perspective. That was interesting. I read that none of the 4 carriers they used at Midway had radar. Did the two you mention have it? I think at this point of the war with the Japs, and Germany too for that matter, being on the offensive they spread themselves too thin. They tried to do too much too soon. Had they forgone the Coral Sea action which was a done to allow the Port Moresby invasion, would it have mattered much if they waited on Port Moresby and focused on Midway first?
None of the major Japanese vessels had radar at this point of the war. The great Zero fighter didn't even have a radio to save weight. The Coral Sea adventure by the Japanese navy was wrong for them on a host of levels. Their First Carrier Striking Force was the best (and nearly their only) strike weapon. They divided it by sending only two carriers to the Coral Sea where a defeat in detail was possible. As it was they lost their use for the biggest battle they had planned, Midway. That is a failure of the first order. If they wanted the Midway operation to be decisive then both Coral Sea and the Aleution attack should have been avoided and everything concentrated on Midway. While the Army wanted to control New Guinea in order to close off a land front, they wanted to reign in the Navy and forced them into the Coral Sea campaign. The best chance the Japanese had of taking Moresby was when they went over the Owen Stanley's to do so. Had they tried that first instead of attempting an amphibious end run it may well have succedded.
I would say they were in fact better having been built later to gain advantage due in no small part the end of the Naval Treaty of 1936 which allowed for more tounage. Yet the Japanese didn't take full advantage of that situation as did the US with its Essex Class. When you compare those two classes the US Navy's ships are clearly better in all respects yet were not that far apart time wise! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_class_aircraft_carrier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Shōkaku To compare the Japanese to the Yorktown class, though realistic because of the true situation of US Ship building, or lack there of, yet in all honesty when compared to the Essex Class they are clearly lacking imvho and their compared war records bare that out.
GA, I agree whole heartedly that the Essex Class were the epitome of WWII aircraft carrier production. Even the Taiho and resultant Unryu classes were inferior to the Essex's. That is in part because of construction it is also in part because of the superiority in US systems and training. Operational intelligence and construction were a leading feature of the American war effort. I can think of no other WWII military which used the lessons of the war better in fighting the war later on. I compared the Yorktowns and the Shokakus principally because that it the way I usually see them compared in the literature. They were the last full sized carrier classes built by each side in the interwar period. Japanese carriers had excellent facilities but always suffered from a lack of attention to damage control matters in their training and staffing. Also the Japanese habit of doing everything in the hangers and nothing on the flight deck proved to be a doctrinal shortcoming. (The Brits started the war that way also and changed after observing the US systems.)
