Recent content by CV12Hornet

The British preferred close range as their decisive range band, with a desire to close to 15,000-16,000 yards. The Brits themselves estimated they would lose a battleship per four enemy battleships firing during the run-in from 34,000 to 20,000 yards. Ultimately, until after 1937 the Brits...

I will admit that 3 hits out of 117 shells fired is pretty sad, yes. Nonetheless, a greater hit rate can be expected in daylight and open waters.

By Leyte, Japanese gunnery skills had degraded for lack of practice, and more importantly, British battleships are larger and less nimble targets than the DDs, DEs, and even CVEs of Taffy 3.

As far as an Anglo-Japanese war… Japan has only three battleships worked up and active in 1936: Haruna, Fuso, and Yamashiro. Kongo, Kirishima, Nagato, Mutsu, Ise, and Hyuga are all in various stages of working up. Hiei is still demilitarized and OTL would be modernized the next year. On the...

Congrats, you've just reinvented Nu Metal. Seriously, a lot of Nu Metal acts were set up exactly like you described: rap MC, lead guitarist, DJ using turntables for rhythm. I'm thinking of Crazy Town in particular, who as I understand it were not unusual in their setup for the genre. Now, Nu...

I disagree on Halsey. One carrier against three would've been odds too long for him. It's longer odds than Santa Cruz, and I think Halsey initiating battle then was damn close to recklessness.

I’d agree with Raizo Tanaka being one of the IJN’s best, but I wouldn’t put him anywhere near Japanese high command. The guy was an excellent squadron level tactician and ops man, but I feel he would fall into the Peter Principle if put any higher. I’d disagree with Yamaguchi. While I’ll...

Both is out of the question. The Polaris subs shanked the USN’s budget in the kidneys, they’re not giving up surface ships or carriers to buy seaplanes.

Yeah, but not for any doctrinal reasons. They only had one inline and all the available V-1710s were needed for existing fighter projects. Plus, the V-1710 wasn't as powerful as the R-2600 and R-2800 radials that powered American twin-engine bombers.

Which military aircraft? The US military's appetite for risk was pretty low post-Vietnam when the Teen Series was being developed. I don't think it'd go on any of those.

Their remaining carriers were used to ferry supplies to Luzon a few times, but otherwise, yeah, by the time the kamikazes were employed their carrier fleet was defunct.

The same way they didn’t concede the field in the run up to Santa Cruz: by dancing around just out of reach, always a threat lurking in the back of the minds of Japanese admirals. By Santa Cruz the USN had better scouting than the Japanese, something that’s going to be all the more acute with...

Okay, I'm going to try and explain this again. If the Japanese use kamikaze tactics at Eastern Solomons, and if, as you claim, they are more effective at knocking out the American carriers - Wasp is still in the combat zone, having been off refueling during Eastern Solomons. Hornet got there...

Oh, please. They're not severing the line to Australia, period. They don't have the ground forces on hand to pull off FS successfully, even without American carriers around causing trouble. And again: if the USN takes more carrier losses early in the campaign they're going to play cautiously...

Sure: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1951/february/battle-philippine-sea Newer sources I have put the total Japanese aerial losses at 476 and have somewhat different numbers for aircraft losses, though they're in agreement that the preponderance of losses were from American...