...Those Marvelous Tin Fish: The Great Torpedo Scandal Avoided

McPherson

Banned
I was pleased to see him cite Craig Symonds' "Mitscher and the Mystery of Midway."

It's a crying shame that we have three Flight III Arleigh Burkes in the build queue to be named for senators, but none for John C. Waldron.
He got one in 1961. What torques me off is that Lyndon Johnson is going to get one. I still have heartburn over the way he micro-managed and then misled the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin and later botched the USS Liberty Incident. There may be some mitigation for LBJ, because that rat-bastard, McNamara, was involved up to his eyebrows and may have pulled a Mitscher on him, and to get along, LBJ may have stayed quiet and followed the "party line". Still... the old saying of "God looks out for fools, drunks and the United States of America." takes on a profound new meaning when one remembers that the United States of America, with notable exceptions, has usually been led by "fools and drunks".
 
A more substantive thought:

There is a charitable interpretation that Mitscher was trying to protect the air group officers who had mutinied in the air and broken group discipline. There is the further implication that Spruance allowed it to pass. But I note with sarcasm that Spruance cited that as far as accuracy in after action, the action reports of USS Enterprise were to be accepted and that USS Hornet's reports were not. So Spruance knew what a mess USS Hornet was and why Mitscher lied.

Charitable interpretation.

I am not charitable. Based on the events in near time and in later actions, it is my opinion, that Marc Mitscher, who was already approved and about to receive his admirals stars about post Midway, was protecting himself first, last and always.

As always, you're a hardass in judging commanders, so I can't say I am surprised that you have a long keel-haul list here, too.

But I think Craig Symonds' assessment has something to be said for it. Pete Mitscher and Stanhope Ring had an absolutely sh*tty week, and their errors cost men's lives. No question about it. Mitscher filed a false action report, and it was (as you say) so obviously faulty that Spruance dismissed it right out of the gate.

But while it's reasonable to think that Mitscher was covering his own ass, it's also not implausible that that was mixed with a real desire not to trash the honored dead by filing an accurate report that would have required court martial proceedings for what were, in fact, multiple mutinies by air crews. In human affairs, motives are so often mixed. And I don't think it is unreasonable to think that was the case here, too. His record in the war showed an unusual concern for his men's welfare.

The thing about 1942 was that basically no one in the U.S. Navy had any appreciable experience in major combat, and as is always the case in such situations, a service has to find out the hard way which men are really suited to it, and which are not. (One of the things I liked about Band of Brothers was how it depicted this process, on multiple occasions.) It also requires some recognition that the former category will entail learning curves, and an ability to allow good men to learn from their mistakes.

I really don't know much about Stanhope Ring but I am inclined to think I'd have sent him to a training command back in the States. Pete Mitscher did have better weeks later in the war, so it is harder to say what to do with him. He deserved at least a hard tongue lashing and for all I know, Nimitz might have given him one off the record. I'm less sure he belongs in the box of Howard Bode and Carleton Wright, men who simply were not cut out for combat commands and should have been kept as far away from them as possible, if indeed not court martialed. I am not as bloody minded as you are, Mac, but I do share the belief of many that the USN ought to have held obviously bad commanders accountable more often than it did in the war.

He got one in 1961.

He did. I just think it's one of a handful of names that should always have a plank attached to it, like Ernest Evans. I think we're agreed about the politicians.
 
Honestly in my opinion ships should only be named after political leaders when the pool of suitable notable naval personnel has no one suitable ie never. The only exception is if said political leaders were notable naval personnel before they became politicans or did something absolutely vital for the navy like say Carl Vinson. But hey that's just my opinion.
 

McPherson

Banned
A more substantive thought:
I am always pleased to explain my thought process.
As always, you're a hardass in judging commanders, so I can't say I am surprised that you have a long keel-haul list here, too.
The people, who make life and death decisions, are usually volunteers who chose the career path which led to their position to decide who lives and dies. The tendency is, because we are all human and fall short of the expected 100% success ratio, to be charitable, which is why I entitled that section "Charitable Interpretation".

Let me quote a man who fell short of the 100%:

Raymond A. Spruance quotes: A man's judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.

A man's judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.

It can be hard to be that self-honest. One realizes that Spruance had to make hard choices during the battle, that he burned pilots like torpedoes and he gambled with the future of the United States every bit as much as Jellico did with Britain at Jutland. And then when the reckless gamble paid off and the appalling cost in lives rolled in, he gets orphan pilots from USS Hornet and USS Yorktown trapping on USS Enterprise who eventually tell him what actually happened out there three hundred twenty kilometers and two hours flying time away from him. Think about what Spruance knows.

1. He ordered a strike aloft and somehow, USS Hornet sent hers off late. Never mind that USS Enterprise was the clown club and right in front of Spruance's eyes, he sees that the air division has functionally collapsed adeck and aloft and he has to send the VS-6 and VB-6 dive bombers off unescorted and hope the fighters and torpedo planes can chase, form up and they all go in together. Spruance has to find out NOW that Miles Browning effed up the air-op order and did not pass an intent along to USS Hornet.

2. Post strike results, Spruance has word of mouth that he has two Japanese flattops de-decked and only possibly a third. He knows that all of the Japanese flattops were congregated now because USS Nautilus told him where they were and how many. (Murphy love that boat. I just wish she had gotten Kaga.). Pilot scuttle-buck is filtering up from the ready rooms that Hornet's strike was sent off to attack a Japanese formation believed to be north of the USS Nautilus' reported one. Except, factor this item; that Spruance has kept a master plot on his own cellophane covered cardboard plotting chart, with grease pencil updates and by his own charted estimate, the reputed IJN task force would be too far away to hit Midway Atoll as hard as Captain Simard has broadcasted. Two flattops could not do it. It had to be three or four and where USS Nautilus said they were. Now he learns that someone over on USS Hornet has sent off half his naval airpower on a wrong line of bearing guess. Someone has wasted 50% of TF-16 striking strength.

3. Then Spruance gets word of how scattered the USS Hornet strike was and of the mid-air mutiny because Johnson's pilots yakked to the Midway ground echelon and of course Simard dutifully reports.

4. Can you imagine the man's RAGE?

5. Poor Frank Jack Fletcher... USS Yorktown launches a half strike, goes exactly where they are supposed to go, kills a flattop and returns as expected, even though they have problems of mid-air coordination themselves, but they perform as expected and soon USS Yorktown will be the bomb and torpedo magnet for the IJN revenge party. USS Yorktown is thrown on the funeral pyre as a payment for Mitscher's mistakes. Fletcher will be blamed for the USS Yorktown's loss.

6. Spruance, meanwhile, has to go along to get along. There is nothing to be gained in mid battle by doing a Takeo Takagi and benching an aircraft carrier commander. He is still fighting for his navy's life. He has to use what he has and do the best he can. Then Mitscher shows he cannot even get an air-op off when it is absolutely certain where the enemy is and it is critical to kill that enemy before the enemy ripostes again.

7. I honor Spruance right down to his socks. The man had to swallow bitter poison and smile at the lie his navy needed. That requirement was not in the natural moral inclination of the man to be honest.

8. As for Mitscher, if I had been his Marine bodyguard, I would have shot him and pleaded temporary insanity at my court martial. No board would convict me.

But I think Craig Symonds' assessment has something to be said for it. Pete Mitscher and Stanhope Ring had an absolutely sh*tty week, and their errors cost men's lives. No question about it. Mitscher filed a false action report, and it was (as you say) so obviously faulty that Spruance dismissed it right out of the gate.
9. But Spruance kept it quiet. See items 1-8? It was not just mutinies in the air. It was Mitscher second-guessing Spruance; because "he was an aviator" and he "knew" better. !@# !@#$ him. He was not USNWC trained.
But while it's reasonable to think that Mitscher was covering his own ass, it's also not implausible that that was mixed with a real desire not to trash the honored dead by filing an accurate report that would have required court martial proceedings for what were, in fact, multiple mutinies by air crews. In human affairs, motives are so often mixed. And I don't think it is unreasonable to think that was the case here, too. His record in the war showed an unusual concern for his men's welfare.
10. Did it? Like Miles Browning he showed a routine habit of sending off pilots too far on fly-out to strike at moving targets at uncertain positions. His staff turned in sloppy work and his air-ops were "substandard".
The thing about 1942 was that basically no one in the U.S. Navy had any appreciable experience in major combat, and as is always the case in such situations, a service has to find out the hard way which men are really suited to it, and which are not. (One of the things I liked about Band of Brothers was how it depicted this process, on multiple occasions.) It also requires some recognition that the former category will entail learning curves, and an ability to allow good men to learn from their mistakes.
11. Well, the USN had trundled through six months of operations, including the awful one at Coral Sea and they sort of showed that they could do naval air-sea combat. Their doctrine and training was "sound". Aubrey Fitch, Wilson Brown and Frank Jack Fletcher had been tested and they showed they could execute. They made mistakes, but not navy-killing ones. Halsey had bumbled along and he had not done so well. It was his TF-16 that Spruance inherited. USS Hornet had been under Mitscher's feet for four months. That is enough time to shake out a ship's company and figure out who goes where and what needs to be fixed.
I really don't know much about Stanhope Ring but I am inclined to think I'd have sent him to a training command back in the States. Pete Mitscher did have better weeks later in the war, so it is harder to say what to do with him. He deserved at least a hard tongue lashing and for all I know, Nimitz might have given him one off the record. I'm less sure he belongs in the box of Howard Bode and Carleton Wright, men who simply were not cut out for combat commands and should have been kept as far away from them as possible, if indeed not court martialed. I am not as bloody minded as you are, Mac, but I do share the belief of many that the USN ought to have held obviously bad commanders accountable more often than it did in the war.
12. See item 9>? Spruance had a Coral Sea Japanese type command foul-up situation on his hands. He could not personally teleport over and command USS Hornet the way he was now handling USS Enterprise air-ops with McClusky's input. He had to use the human tools he was given and make compromises. Mitscher does belong in the same box with Bode and Wright. He killed USS Yorktown. The Japanese helped him out, to be sure, and there is the chance that USS Hornet's air group would still have bumbled it, "if" that idiot, Stanhope Ring, had simply turned and homed in on Waldron's radio signal, which he heard, and joined the USS Yorktown attack I estimate would be in progress at his, Ring's, own estimated time of arrival. I mean the clown was following Mitscher's bearing on a wild guess, so why could he not turn and follow a Waldron bearing on a certainty? They stand people against the wall for willful mistakes like that one. And I mean Mitscher and Ring.

13. About Waldron.
He did. I just think it's one of a handful of names that should always have a plank attached to it, like Ernest Evans. I think we're agreed about the politicians.
14. You have to understand... Waldron mutinied. He was correct to do so, because he had basically figured out in his head, what Spruance charted on a plot-graph, but what if he had been wrong? That is the "compromise" Spruance made that allowed him to live with his own conscience after all the chickens flocked in and cackled at him: "You screwed up and lost the USS Yorktown. and killed over 200 pilots and aircrew." Remember... the guy with the brass is still the one who takes it in the ___, when his own stupid inconceivably incompetent subordinates screw him over with their ineptitude.

Only now... and I mean only now, do we see how good the good American admirals were. Even confounded Halsey shows up better than we knew, because of the godawful human material they had to use to get the job done.
 
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USS Yorktown is thrown on the funeral pyre as a payment for Mitscher's mistakes. Fletcher will be blamed for the USS Yorktown's loss.

Well, I think this makes it into an active choice by Fletcher and Spruance that it wasn't. Yorktown was simply closer to Nagumo's fleet than Spruance's carriers were; it had the bad luck to be spotted first. The thing is, even after suffering two successive strikes, it was on the way to being saved until a certain Japanese sub showed up. There was never any plan to offer her up as a sacrifice of some sort.

And exactly who blamed Fletcher for Yorktown's loss? Spruance certainly did not; I've read his report. I've never seen that Nimitz did, either.

Re: Mitscher's rep for concern for his men:

10. Did it? Like Miles Browning he showed a habit of sending off pilots too far on fly-out to strike moving targets at uncertain positions. His staff turned in sloppy work and his air-ops were "substandard".

I mean, this is a question of competency, not care, surely? Mitscher's air crews certainly thought this of him. They liked serving under the guy. This was after all the guy who turned on his ship lights at Philippine Sea so that his pilots could find their way home at night, at considerable risk to his carriers. (Fortunately, it worked.)

11. Well, the USN had trundled through six months of operations, including the awful one at Coral Sea and they sort of showed that they could do naval air-sea combat. Their doctrine and training was "sound". Aubrey Fitch, Wilson Brown and Frank Jack Fletcher had been tested and they showed they could execute. They made mistakes, but not navy-killing ones. Halsey had bumbled along and he had not done so well. It was his TF-16 that Spruance inherited. USS Hornet had been under Mitscher's feet for four months. That is enough time to shake out a ship's company and figure out who goes where and what needs to be fixed.

Well...as others have noted, Brown was really just too old for the job, and Fitch was only a year younger. Even so Fitch held important assignments going forward where he performed creditably, so I don't feel there was a serious injustice there... Fletcher, alas, made an enemy of Semper Iratus himself, and so he had no maneuvering room if he ran into flack, as he finally did at Guadalcanal, and his actions were put in the worst light: he was done brown, as the Brits would say. Morrison compounded the problem after the war, which chafes me more, in some ways.

I don't disagree that Hornet was not fit for purpose at Midway. Mitscher has to take some blame for that. That said, Hornet also did not have the combat experience of Yorktown or Enterprise, either. There's just no substitute for that! Carrier warfare was a brand new thing, and the USN (like the Brits and the Japanes) was still trying to figure out how to do it. Her people did do somewhat better in the Solomons.

I am . . . still discinlined to agree with you on Mitscher at the end of the day. He had a dismal performance at Midway. He did better later in the war. Maybe someone else should have been given his shot, but I do not think I can say he was a net hindrance to the Pacific Fleet post-Midway.
 
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McPherson

Banned
Well, I think this makes it into an active choice by Fletcher and Spruance that it wasn't. Yorktown was simply closer to Nagumo's fleet than Spruance's carriers were; it had the bad luck to be spotted first. The thing is, even after suffering two successive strikes, it was on the way to being saved until a certain Japanese sub showed up. There was never any plan to offer her up as a sacrifice of some sort.
It would not have mattered if Hiryu died at the same time as Akagi, Kaga and Soryu. It was a stopped and crippled USS Yorktown that I-168 stalked. That is the point. Hiryu was left alive to hit USS Yorktown twice.
And exactly who blamed Fletcher for Yorktown's loss? Spruance certainly did not; I've read his report. I've never seen that Nimitz did, either.
Semper Iratus.
Re: Mitscher's rep for concern for his men:
There have been many commanders who had concern for their men, whose incompetence led to them wasting those men and who have been subsequently damned by those same men (the survivors), for not spending them wisely. McClellan's men loved him until the day he died, but they also damned him for Antietam. The same can be suggested for Mitscher.
I mean, this is a question of competency, not care, surely? Mitscher's air crews certainly thought this of him. They liked serving under the guy. This was after all the guy who turned on his ship lights at Philippine Sea so that his pilots could find their way home at night, at considerable risk to his carriers. (Fortunately, it worked.)
Halsey turned on his lights. McCain turned on his lights. Fletcher turned on his lights This was not USN unusual for dusk or night landings. It was just part of doing business.
Well...as others have noted, Brown was really just too old for the job, and Fitch was only a year younger. Even so Fitch held important assignments going forward where he performed creditably, so I don't feel there was a serious injustice there... Fletcher, alas, made an enemy of Semper Iratus himself, and so he had no maneuvering room if he ran into flack, as he finally did at Guadalcanal, and his actions were put in the worst light: he was done brown, as the Brits would say. Morrison compounded the problem after the war, which chafes me more, in some ways.
Richmond Kelly Turner.
I don't disagree that Hornet was not fit for purpose at Midway. Mitscher has to take some blame for that. That said, Hornet also did not have the combat experience of Yorktown or Enterprise, either. There's just no substitute for that! Carrier warfare was a brand new thing, and the USN (like the Brits and the Japanes) was still trying to figure out how to do it. Her people did do somewhat better in the Solomons.
Different captain... Charles P. Mason, different CAG, Walter F. Rodee, and of course the promoted captain of the USS Enterprise as her admiral, George D. Murray. MUCH better performance. Leadership matters.
I am . . . still disinclined to agree with you on Mitscher at the end of the day. He had a dismal performance at Midway. He did better later in the war. Maybe someone else should have been given his shot, but I do not think I can say he was a net hindrance to the Pacific Fleet post-Midway.
YMMV and should. I always write this to emphasize that I am not gospel.
 
McPherson writes about running a navy. He analyses commands and commanders from that perspective. Sometimes if he has the luxury of depth of nominally competent command, you see a glimmer in his eyes as if certain commanders need to be given two bottles of rum, a sports cars keys, and a coastal cliff road—it reports differently in the newspaper to a pistol cleaning accident. But, usually, only when there’s a depth of competent replacement.

This is a question of purpose. Are we conducting a full biography of the USN as it was, which includes self-justificatory incompetence as a feature of the people and their organisation’s culture as it was. Or do we hold them to their nominal purpose (or ours) of running an institution that optimally implements state policy. That’s a tension in socially organised people: the organisation is nominally for this purpose, but it’s actual uses reveals a real purpose.

LBJ is most notable not because he is a bad president against the public ideal of presidency. But LBJ is a perfect president against the actuality of the institution: he is the president that the real business of the US state demanded. And to be honest sending US boys thousands of miles away to die to try to prevent Asian boys doing a job that needed doing isn’t that bad of a fuck up. He didn’t almost kill all industrial civilisation on the planet like golden boy did.

If a commander is going to be a grotesque corrupt debaunchee then let him be constrained restricted and with as small an impact as possible.
 

McPherson

Banned
McPherson writes about running a navy. He analyses commands and commanders from that perspective. Sometimes if he has the luxury of depth of nominally competent command, you see a glimmer in his eyes as if certain commanders need to be given two bottles of rum, a sports cars keys, and a coastal cliff road—it reports differently in the newspaper to a pistol cleaning accident. But, usually, only when there’s a depth of competent replacement.
More than air forces, navies are war machines with human beings inserted inside them to gum up the works. It is very hard to find examples of a naval action where everyone is on the ball and things go well mechanically or operationally. Also more than any other military endeavor, it only takes one man to foul up an event chain and lose the naval battle or a major part of it. That man does not have to be the admiral, either, as Stanhope Ring demonstrates. It is hard to to teach unit discipline and flexibility at the same time into a man. It can be done, but one usually hopes it is acquired in childhood and comes with the naval cadet who is screened for "character" before he becomes a plebe at the naval academy. For Stanhope Ring to work out, he had to be flexible enough to follow sage on the spot in the aor advice or be enough of a visionary himself to figure out where his captain goofed and adapt to new information, and then he has to inspire subordinate confidence enough that he can keep his unit together. He could do neither. He was a critical mission fail in the event chain.

Notice that Waldron, by attitude and lack of military courtesy manners, does not help the situation? He had argued his case with Ring in the ready room, carried it onto the flight deck and then he broke unit discipline with his mutiny in the air during flyout. I'm sure Ring knew everything Waldron told him, but Ring chose to follow Mitscher's orders to the letter, long past the fuel gauge indicator that those orders were wrong.

I can be generous with Waldron only up to a point. Those military courtesies are there for a reason. The courtesies exist to allow tempers to be kept in check, for a reasoned discussion to occur at the proper time and to keep strong minded men from killing each other, when their business is the enemy over the horizon. Good manners is the lubricant that holds a civilization together and allows a civilization's war machine to operate with less friction. Call it the Joe Hooker effect. Joe Hooker could not get results out of the Army of the Potomac because he was a conniving son of a bitch who would not follow the courtesies. His fellow officers reciprocated in kind. George Meade was a hot tempered individual who was a lot less easy-going than Joe, but he was very formally correct and treated every officer or soldier, no matter how junior or senior with "military courtesy". The officer corps knew the "Snapping Turtle" was a mean one, but they allowed that he was a "fair one", who treated everybody the same and he was able to get results at Gettysburg. Hooker, on paper, was a better tactician, but Meade could get the human material to move and function. This is why I suggested elsewhere that team building and social lying skills may be more important to a commander than book knowledge or operational art experience in a complex modern military evolution. Spruance may not have had Halsey's bon homme relationship with the sailors or the book knowledge of an Aubrey Fitch or even a Marc Mitscher on how to operate aircraft carriers, but he knew how to manage people, use good manners, do the math and make hard time critical ethical decisions.
This is a question of purpose. Are we conducting a full biography of the USN as it was, which includes self-justificatory incompetence as a feature of the people and their organisation’s culture as it was. Or do we hold them to their nominal purpose (or ours) of running an institution that optimally implements state policy. That’s a tension in socially organised people: the organisation is nominally for this purpose, but it’s actual uses reveals a real purpose.
The USN was there to implement the USG's policy. I can pretty it up for you with Mahan, but as Spruance told Browning when Browning criticized Spruance for relaxing mid-battle by reading a newspaper, the USG hired him, Spruance, to go out and murder people in a crime called war. This was in reference to that specific newspaper article about an inept bank robber who killed a teller during a holdup. If one recalls, Spruance told Browning that the robber reminded Spruance of Browning in that the bank robber was not very good at his chosen career, either, because the robber was going to be executed for bungling the robbery. It was Spruance's polite way of notifying Browning that any illusions Browning had about Spruance, or himself or the situation in which they both found themselves, should be set aside and Browning should wake up and smell the reality.
LBJ is most notable not because he is a bad president against the public ideal of presidency. But LBJ is a perfect president against the actuality of the institution: he is the president that the real business of the US state demanded. And to be honest sending US boys thousands of miles away to die to try to prevent Asian boys doing a job that needed doing isn’t that bad of a fuck up. He didn’t almost kill all industrial civilisation on the planet like golden boy did.
Not a fan of JFK? Well, it was RFK who kept pushing John to the red-line along with McNamara egging on the invade Cuba option. Meanwhile Khrushchev was not helping at his end of the teeter-totter. But that is off topic. I only mentioned LBJ because the man inherited the clowns JFK had as human tools and it seems LBJ might have tried to politically massage/manage those idiots the way a Texas politician would with lard and blackmail. This is one of those eras where an Eisenhower might have been more appropriate. Easy-going Ike was quick to knife you if you diddled him or screwed him over. Counting ballots in the Dry Tortugas or an embassy in Ulan Bator was in your US political future if you interfered with Ike's serenity. If you were an ally, does the Suez Crises come to mind?
If a commander is going to be a grotesque corrupt debaunchee then let him be constrained restricted and with as small an impact as possible.
Like Nixon. Shudder.
 
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I am always pleased to explain my thought process.

The people, who make life and death decisions, are usually volunteers who chose the career path which led to their position to decide who lives and dies. The tendency is, because we are all human and fall short of the expected 100% success ratio, to be charitable, which is why I entitled that section "Charitable Interpretation".

Let me quote a man who fell short of the 100%:

Raymond A. Spruance quotes: A man's judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.'s judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.

A man's judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.

It can be hard to be that self-honest. One realizes that Spruance had to make hard choices during the battle, that he burned pilots like torpedoes and he gambled with the future of the United States every bit as much as Jellico did with Britain at Jutland. And then when the reckless gamble paid off and the appalling cost in lives rolled in, he gets orphan pilots from USS Hornet and USS Yorktown trapping on USS Enterprise who eventually tell him what actually happened out there three hundred twenty kilometers and two hours flying time away from him. Think about what Spruance knows.

1. He ordered a strike aloft and somehow, USS Hornet sent hers off late. Never mind that USS Enterprise was the clown club and right in front of Spruance's eyes, he sees that the air division has functionally collapsed adeck and aloft and he has to send the VS-6 and VB-6 dive bombers off unescorted and hope the fighters and torpedo planes can chase, form up and they all go in together. Spruance has to find out NOW that Miles Browning effed up the air-op order and did not pass an intent along to USS Hornet.

2. Post strike results, Spruance has word of mouth that he has two Japanese flattops de-decked and only possibly a third. He knows that all of the Japanese flattops were congregated now because USS Nautilus told him where they were and how many. (Murphy love that boat. I just wish she had gotten Kaga.). Pilot scuttle-buck is filtering up from the ready rooms that Hornet's strike was sent off to attack a Japanese formation believed to be north of the USS Nautilus' reported one. Except, factor this item; that Spruance has kept a master plot on his own cellophane covered cardboard plotting chart, with grease pencil updates and by his own charted estimate, the reputed IJN task force would be too far away to hit Midway Atoll as hard as Captain Simard has broadcasted. Two flattops could not do it. It had to be three or four and where USS Nautilus said they were. Now he learns that someone over on USS Hornet has sent off half his naval airpower on a wrong line of bearing guess. Someone has wasted 50% of TF-16 striking strength.

3. Then Spruance gets word of how scattered the USS Hornet strike was and of the mid-air mutiny because Johnson's pilots yakked to the Midway ground echelon and of course Simard dutifully reports.

4. Can you imagine the man's RAGE?
But in the end Spruance is known as Spruance of Midway despite killing the japanese navy off Saipan
 
I can be generous with Waldron only up to a point. Those military courtesies are there for a reason.

Oh, they are, no question.

That said, military history also shows that success covers a multitude of sins. I think of John Jarvis at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, which Nelson almost won single-handedly for Jarvis by wearing his ship out of line in defiance of orders and taking two Spanish first rates almost simultaneously. When his flag captain Sir Robert Calder brought up Nelson's disobedience, Jervis shut him down by saying: "It certainly was so, and if you ever commit such a breach of your orders, I will forgive you also."

Waldron failed in his attack, but he did turn out to be right...and his doomed attack at least contributed to Nagumo's delay in arming his strike.
 

McPherson

Banned
NO ICE CREAM FOR YOU, GUYS!

As we join LCDR Oscar E Moosbreger, we find him standing on the strong-back of the USS Moondragon. It is 15 November 1942. Some changes have come to the submarine. After two months layover at Whyalla in drydock, the Australians of the BHP Steel and Shipbuilding Company are just finishing their “magic” according to the prescription set forth by the Allied Intelligence Projects Section, (AIPs) for this new project. The 10.2 cm gun is gone and in its place is a cigar shaped contraption, that looks like some kook's idea of a Emil Kulik salvage bell.

As one might remember when we left him last, LCDR Moosbreger fully expected to face a review board and a possible courts martial for his less than stellar stalk and dispatch of the already crippled HIJMS Kaga. During that badly bungled evolution, the forward torpedo room of the USS Moondragon had flooded and he almost lost the boat. At the time, nobody in the compartment had been able to determine the mechanical casualty that led to the unshipping of the balance seals of the outer doors. At least not until the USS Moondragon returned to Brisbane and LT(s.g.) Robert “Whitey” Whitman (notice how all of these guys earn sobriquets?) aboard the USS Holland had a look at the torpedo tubes. He happily announced:

Of course LTCDR Moosbreger is clueless enough to ask "Whitey" about the inner door seals. “Whitey” tells him happily enough;

It took two cases of whiskey and a future favor promised to get “Whitey” Whitman to write up that the inner door seals had failed due to “normal combat effects and operations use”. Problem solved and courts martial averted for all concerned and lessons learned. Also a serious dent in the officer’s mess fund. No ice cream next patrol!

So a proper patch job is rushed at Brisbane thanks to the USS Holland and Whitey Whitman and the USS Moondragon receives orders to proceed to Whyalla, Australia. No reason is given to Moosbreger, not even a hint, which in MacArthur’s army-run Carpender navy is about normal stupid operating procedure. This is an instant clue that the AIPS are at it again with their monkey business. Moosbreger really wants to return to the regular USN. The AIPS can get you killed.

This assumption, Moosbreger makes, would be the second mistake Moosbreger makes, for the Allied Intelligence Projects Section has nothing to do with this new fiasco in the baking. They are just the expediters for this new foul-up. It is not even their concept of operation. This zany idea comes from the very top, from the fertile deranged minds of Monsieurs Churchill and Roosevelt; who have it in their “visions” of war-making to pull an “Italian Job” on the Japanese.

===============================================

Now what that entails is someone figuring out how to make a small submarine, like the Japanese one the Americans recover at Pearl Harbor, which ONI thinks might have torpedoed USS Oklahoma. Very embarrassing and much classified that little bit of information is. The upshot of the current idea is that someone resurrects the blueprints for an underwater submersible built by a New York City whack-job, named Emil Kulik, that dates all the way back to 1930 and uses that underwater salvage manned teleo-operated contraption as the start point for two separate projects for the United States and Royal Navies.

Mini-subs-1.png


One is of course, fated to be used on the RKMS Tirpitz, is British and relies on scuttling charge laid mines. The other takes more of a Japanese approach. Put a couple of torpedoes on the thing, creep into a naval anchorage, let the fish swim and escape in the confusion.

More or less that is the idea.(^^^)

As Spruance says about the Doolittle Stunt:

This is intelligent warmaking?

The answer is kind of obvious.

=================================================

SWPOA-7-Dec-1942.png


Okay, now let us assemble for the recipe for a disaster.

How-to-bake-a-happy-birthday-cake.png


Mix well and give it all to the USS Moondragon's crew to serve up on 7 December 1942.

South-China-Sea-3.png


=================================================

So: the allied plan is to essentially Pearl Harbor the Imperial Japanese Navy at their moorings and demoralize them, something awful, with what is essentially a propaganda operation which will also boost Allied morale in a war that still looks kind of grim for the “good guys”.

Must the reader be content to miss the uproar that is caused when USS Moondragon shows up at Whyalla and takes over the drydock that is previously occupied by a Bathurst class corvette to be (MMAS Pirie (J189) soon to become famous in 1943 as THE ship in the RAN that invents "the sit-down strike" after her commanding officer, LTCDR Charles Ferry Mills, an unduly harsh disciplinarian and strict class segregationist, who shows disdain for reservist and call to the colors men, holds up men's pay and mail, forces dress blues on shore leave and finally demonstrates he has a yellow streak two kilometers wide as he panics and hides during a RIKKO attack on a small two ship convoy transiting Oro Bay. The coxwain had to fight the ship while 7 men died at their battle station portside Oerlikon fighting off the Japanese Zero that almost blew them up because MILLs turned broadside-too instead of bows-on to present minimum aspect to the strafer.

Yeah, that son of a bitch coward had to be relieved and beached. One wonders if the RAN reservies might have fed him to the sharks; if he had not been dismissed; for he bungled the mail, held up men's pay, screwed up the Pirie's refit, ignored the due complaints process which the rates dutifully followed after Oro Bay, and the other shenanigans he pulled during the Townsville layover?

One might miss out on the fun as the whole crew of the USS Moondragon from captain to torpedoman third goes to the "school of the boat" on the care and feeding of the weird torpedo shaped cargo on the USS Moondragon's strongback. The modifications made to strip out draggy bits so she can be sleek underwater; the enlarged saddle tanks and keel stands applied to her sides and bilges; should one bother with those items? How about the new sneeze box and snort fitted, the very latest thing from the guys at Electric Boat, shipped all the way from Newport News? Or how about the refuel at sea drills with the USS ARGONAUT serving as a tanker?

Did one forget the extensive refresher course that LT(s.g.) Howard Cushman (weapons) and his entire division must pass on torpedoes? LTCDR Moosbreger makes sure that every Mark 20 loaded aboard is stenciled:

What a navy!

====================================================================

SHALL WE HIT THEM FROM THE EAST?

Truk-000.png


Yeah, this happened.

How it happened is a tale...

Guys... You missed a little detail... (Wake Island.)

Comments: (My opinion is not gospel, YMMV.).

1. US heavy weight torpedoes had cam studs that operated to restrict orientation and "spin" in the tubes during launch and also trip-outs and cut features which passage through the tube would trip levers and release same and cut wired tie downs to remove arming safeties and initiate motor startup of the fish. This is WHY someone skinny dived the tube between shots on submarines to make sure the tube was clear of obstructions and debris. Nothing is worse than a wedged hot-run in the tube! Happened to several US boats (Which is why misaligning the fish is a BIG deal and was idiot proofed as much as possible.)

2. British mini-subs are never examined for WHY they are "problematic" in the popular histories.

British-mini-subs-3.png


3. When building these contraptions, the British had rushed development. Some of the faults were obvious, such as with making the pilot of the motorized canoe the actual physical pendulum control to point the nose up so he could surface and see which way he went. That wore the poor diver out. It never occurred to anyone in WWII to build an electric tow sled that would haul the poor diver in a passive swim condition (Less drag, Rupert! And he is fresh delivered to the work site at ranges up to 20 kilometers with the tech of the day.) or provide that sled with a touch/feel binnacle with a corrected magnetic compass steer input control that the diver could use underwater to even know which direction he was headed? Aforesaid sled could even dump a bottom charge under the warship which the larger clumsier "pigs", "Chariots" and X-craft could not do.

IOW, the boffins who dreamed these first efforts at SDVs (^^^) up, did not do their human factors diligence since they really had no operational experience to guide them as to what was workable and what was not.

Neselco would have to use 2 stroke modified MAN diesels in the 1930s to power such V boats and they would have to be better than either the German engines or the Neselco copies. Fairbanks Morse is the preferred type after 1935.

Plan on a 4,000 tonne submerged displacement hull. You will need 2 two-cycle diesel-electric generator set, each combined output of 9,000 HP or ~ 6,700 kilowatts. to drive twin screws on a modified hull. You will need 4 × 120-cell Exide ULS37 batteries to drive 2 × Westinghouse electric motors, 4500 hp (3356 kW) each or combined 9000 hp or 6700 kW through the two screws.

Expected performance? About 24 knots surfaced and 14 knots submerged max using this,

Meet the USS Argonaut now pacing the USS Moondragon as her refueling tanker.

View attachment 536981

McP.

=====================================================

For those of us who have forgotten?

=====================================================

Since in this ATL the length of the torpedo is still 625 cm (20 ft., 6 in.) and the PoDs for both the Mark XIV, XVIII and 20 are based on the length and mass restrictions of the 1930s torpedo tubes, I have yet to figure out how to put an anti-circular run device into that cramped tail control. The solution is to build it into a new airplane type 2-d auto-pilot control to replace the depth control and gyro directional steer control unit, but for now the autopilot with its limiters is still, for story purposes, hung up at Sperry.

Just to refresh memories... (^^^)


Refueling At Sea And DAMN It Is Cold In The Tropics!

The scene is night about 0225 hours and it is windy and rainy and cloud socked this 28 November 1942 on the bridge of the USS Moondragon. The captain has the conn because the boat is about to attempt an evolution, no-one American has ever done before; a cross transfer of fuel at sea from one submarine to another. This idiotic idea, like so many historic firsts on what must be a "

Union Forever!"^1 was the brain-orphan of this idiot;

800px-80-G-302341_Rear_Admiral_Ralph_W._Christie%2C_USN.jpg


Ralph Waldo Christie (30 August 1893 – 19 December 1987) was an admiral in the United States Navy who played a pivotal role in the development of torpedo technologies. During World War II, he commanded submarine operations out of the Australian ports of Brisbane and Fremantle.

U.S. Navy - Vice admiral Ralph W. Christie.


Somewhere out there was supposed to be the recently converted tanker-submarine USS Argonaut with about 100 tonnes of fuel oil for the USS Moondragon to imbibe, so she could make her own suicide run into the target and hopefully get out again. Once out, she would take on additional fuel and return to base, hopefully with a success or at least data, on what the IJN was doing at the target. LTCDR Moosbreger is warm wet and miserable, but at least he has a submarine under him. His four lookouts are, are semi-crucified, lashed to steps on the periscope and mast combs and are trying to find USS Argonaut's dark silhouette in a dark cloud studded night which should mask the tanker boat from Japanese subchasers and magnetic anomaly detector equipped Mavises and Emilys. That is the current plan. Whether USS Argonaut makes it or LTCDR Stephen Barchet has the sense to dead reckon the rendezvous, Moosbreger does not know. Unlike LTCDR Barchet, who has an unwarranted optimistic high opinion of himself, LTCDR Moosbreger, by now, is a realist. He figures Barchet is as untalented as the man who laid on this operation, so it would not surprise LTCDR Moosbreger if the USS Argonaut was NORTH of the target about 1400 kilometers away from where she was supposed to be.

Whether or not LTCDR Oscar Moosbreger is going to be even more unhappy this morning depends on whether recently promoted LT(j.g.) Barry “Barnacles” O. Pulliver (signals) has good news from the four bells radio dump. The last three weeks aboard the boat have been a mixture of boredom, frantic maintenance on the USS Moondragon air-plant and getting to know the Mark 20 Mod 5 electric torpedo and learning how to keep the boat upright, while she carries a one hundred tonne mini-sub on the strong-back. LTCDR Mossbreger knows about the wobbles, now, because going out of Brisbane past the off shore islands and reefs had been his first occasion to experience the "wobbles" as he tried to dodge RAN patrol boats and the poorly charted minefields as he navigating shoal waters west of Moreton island and headed out Brisbane harbor due north on course 000. The cross winds had almost thrust USS Moondragon into the mine-belts just off Fort Bribie. That was what sail effect the XJEM 213 had on the USS Moondragon. The wind should not have had that much sideways push. But it did, and it was constant right rudder and port screw to counteract the shove forces to keep USS Moondragon away from the mines. The same effect was now present as USS Moondragon tried to keep her rendezvous at 0.065918 latitude , and longitude 158.296033, which was about 1 week out from the top secret target.



OIP.E1TVmVu1VPxRRAFwd4ziuwHaLX


"Has Argonaut given us a Yoke signal?" Moosbreger asks Pulliver.

Pulliver finger combs his wet slick brown hair and replies, "Yup. She's about 20 mikety-kellies due east of us and holding."

"DAMN! We're two hours away in these seas and local dawn breaks in four hours." If this front moves off, we'll be in broad daylight for any Joe Samurai with binoculars and a depth charge fetish: he will be able to find us as we lay to for fuel transfer." Moosbreger grouses.

"Surfer weather, for the blind. We'll be okay, Cap." Pulliver optimistically opines. "We'll be loaded and under by 0600 and safer than Carpendar at his golf course, or you can call me, Meyer!"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 0800 Oscar Moosbreger, now inside the submarine inside the Conn, as he currently follows up a nervous sonarman's contact report of screw noises due north of the two submarines as they try to transfer fuel, gets on the 1MC, puts out a call to see how that evolution proceeds. "How's the fuel transfer, going, Meyer? Did Argonaut float over the hose line, yet?"

Pulliver's voice filled with tension and strain, answers tinally over the loudspeaker above Moosbreger's head. "No, sir. Line thrower failed, again, so they are boating it over to us."

Moosbreger curses. "No worries, son. We just have a smear contact due north of us. Kidweller thinks it might be a subchaser practicing... you know... sub-chasing... for grins and giggles this morning. How's the weather look?"

"Clearing to the west, sir." comes the strained reply.

"You get one more try and one hour, and then I pull the plug. Get it done, Mister. GET IT DONE!"

"Aye, aye, sir." is the answer.

What more is there to do or say?

=============================================================

In the USS Moondragon's forward torpedo room, things are not going too well, either.

The Mark 20 torpedo is taken apart in three sections. The cakepan warhead which is a direct design theft of the German G7E torpedo warhead configuration has the the Mark 9 influence exploder completely extracted and the initiator exposed. Two torpedomen, Thomas Ewell and Perry Conaught, function test it by moving a ferrous metal rod across the length of the device. In theory, the permanent magnets inside the initiator will interact with an electric current generated within the exploder. The current which is disturbed and interrupted by the test mass trips a circuit logic circuit that operates the solenoid and causes it to discharge. The solenoid switch will function in turn to drive a hammer into the currently inert firing pin. Both men should hear a click as the hammer functions.

"No click." Ewell comments.

Connaught shrugs his shoulders, "This is the sixth time, we tested this hing. It has to be the current generator. It has to be. Everything else is solid state and idiot proofed. It cannot fail. This is not the Mark 6 which relies on the Earth's magnetic field. The Mark 9 is supposed to be independent of that influence. Damn GE vacuum tubes!

"Well; it does not work." Ewell suggests. "Another Christie brainwave that is garbage." As a Cal Tech graduate, Ewell is not impressed with geniuses named after untalented poets, who graduated from the Massachusetts Idiots Teachery. "We go with plan B." decides Ewell.

"The float whisker?" asks Connaught. He graduated from Georgia Tech.

"Sure, why not? It killed USS Oklahoma. If it worked for the Japanese, it should work for us." Ewell says. "Never trusted German inspired engineering concepts anyway."

Both men move to the torpedo midbody to function test "Plan B", which is a float and wire reel assembly that operates on a hertz horn principle. Literally nothing can go wrong with this "Japanese" concept as it dates all the way back to the Howell torpedo and the Spanish American War!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While our two "heroes" deal with the initiator problems on the disassembled fish's front end, two other yahoos are holding an instant impromptu teacher/pupil session over a long silver and black tinfoil paper-wrapped assembly of what looks like vertically stacked cookies squished together and laid on its side. This is the nickel-cadmium battery that powers the Mark 20 Mod 5 torpedo and it is probably the reason why the Mark 9 initiator does not work, either. That one tonne battery is deader than the proverbial beaten horse and it is simultaneously too hot to touch without gloves.

LTCDR Nathan Southender (RAN) recently trained XJEM 213 mini-submarine driver and certified expert on "The Target" and the pupil in this exercise concludes; "There is a serious danger of fire with this cookie, Mister Cushman. I know how nickel-cadmium batteries work. The Mary Beth Ricardi works off of them. We need to send it out a tube, immediately!"

"Named your mini-boat after the Melbourne fan-dancer, did we, sir?" LT(s.g.) Howard Cushman (weapons officer) responds with a snark. "If she is hot like this battery... and I personally know she is... all she needs to cool down is some refrigeration. So we'll stick the cookie into the refrigerator and we'll trickle current her until we find the ground short, fix that wafer, and then she'll be a good girl, thereafter."

And that is what Cushman, Southender and the two torpedomen; Conaught and Ewell, do. Torpedo # 13412 from the Westinghouse production run, July batch number 2, afternoon shift... has a date with HIJMS Mutsu...

==========================================================

Meanwhile... LT (j.g.) Pulliver, soon to be called ENSIGN Pulliver? You can still call him Meyer, if you want...

==========================================================

Next up? What has Gunther Prien got, that Oscar Moosbreger hasn't?

LUCK!

LUCK... We Ain't Got It And We Sure As Finagle Has A Goat Locker, Ain't Going To Get Any!

Remember our cast of heroes?

The Laundry Machine Does Not Work Either!

XJEM 213

Torpedo # 13412 from the Westinghouse production run, July batch number 2, afternoon shift

[video]

Swish… Swish… Swish…

The USS Moondragon had picked up a yaw and rotation roll that caused a port to starboard roll moment of 12 seconds. The crew found themselves leaning or bracing off in time with the roll. It was quite obvious that the rudder steer and planes steer men were fighting to keep the nose pointed on 060 true. They were losing the struggle. The boat wanted to point east. The danger was that she would sideslip into Kuop Island.

“The boat handles like a pig in the shallows when she runs on the battery.” LTCDR Nathan Southender (RAN) groused at the overhead. “Why not work her in the deep water and make the Aualap passage into the lagoon?” Southender glared off at Howard Cushman who had the conn and was the OOD this watch. “Is Moosbreger so stupid stubborn that he has to have things the hard way, when a few hundred yards to the west of us, is a perfectly good route in that we can just cruise through?”

Cushman shook his head in disgust. “You are supposed to be the Truk lagoon expert. You tell me where the shrimp beds are? Or where the Japanese hydrophone network is not. Or their boom nets will be shallow? Or where their patrol boats will not be?” He waited for a few seconds. “No reply?” He reached for a chart marked “ONI MOA D-649”, unrolled it and pointed at the spread out parchment, which looked like it had been recently hand-drawn and lettered by a six year old child.

“Look here,” Cushman suggested harshly to his RAN superior, “sir.”

Nathan Southender could not quite remember when he had ruffled the American’s feathers, but ever since the incident with the torpedo and the fire which Southender still vehemently denied was his fault, Cushman had been not quite the friend he started as.

Cushman pointed at the spots along the south lagoon shallows. He traced the chart from Ullafauro Passage to Otta Passage. “Look at the 10 meter line, here. Even at the Aualap Passage, the approach is netted and the sediment bottom is soft and quiet. We would ping a sharp return or if they have mics on the floor, they would hear our props pop. Here at Otta passage, it is coral all the way through. Shrimp beds and noisy fish. No sound gear on that floor is possible because the coral would braid the wires. So it is relatively noisy and unguarded. And it is unfortunately a strong sideways current west to east and shallow. So we rock-a-bye-baby our way in and we hope the shrimp and assorted crabs and scallops are love starved and hungry.

Southender pointed out the obvious. But it is only two fathoms worth of depth between Falerssiof Reef and Otta island. That passage is about four hundred yards wide. You can thread a single destroyer or a shallow draft patrol boat through it. What do you expect to do, here, with a sub that draws fourteen feet with the case exposed at medium reserve buoyancy; surface and drive through, bold as you please, right past the picket boat that has to be there?”

Cushman grinned at him. Southender could not believe it. “We have the Mary Ricardi out there on the hull. They’ll see her and then they will turn their guns on us and riddle us. That’s madness.”

=====================================================

Now there needs to be an explanation for the disrupted situation aboard the USS Moondragon. LRCDR Nathan Southender RAN was correct in that he did not “technically” start the fire in the forward torpedo room. That was entirely the exposed torpedo battery unit’s fault. It was in the way of the spanner that slipped out of Southender’s sweaty hand as he tried to tighten down a terminal nut. It was only a small fire and the torpedo-man rate who put it out with his bare hands should have had the sense to use a dry rag, but he did not. It really was not Southender’s fault.

That appears not to have been the way Moosbreger saw it. Moondragon Actual could not do much about how he adjudged it, because Southender had date of rank on him, was an Allied Intelligence Projects section-attached specialist and furthermore technically commanded this patrol and mission, so Southender was not going to be set adrift in a rubber raft with a compass, an oar and rations, and with a course to steer himself to Australia. But then Southender’s orders and seniority only covered the XJEM 213 and the mission. He was not responsible, nor allowed to tell Moondragon Actual how to get into Truk Lagoon. The mission orders which covered that part of the operation were quite clear:

Section IV
b) The transit to the target area and the successful release of the special mission package upon arrival is the sole responsibility of the commanding officer of the carrier vessel, as is the recovery of the special mission package and the return of aforesaid item to base after the completion of the mission.

It was up to Moosbreger to get Southender’s mini-sub to within swimming menace distance of the Japanese fleet anchorage so he could make his “propaganda” attack and tweak the Japanese dragon within the IJN’s own bathtub, the way the Italians had embarrassed the British RN in Alexandria. 18 December 1941. This was a vital mission to the Royal Navy, to the Royal Australian Navy and to the head honchos of Southwest Pacific Ocean Area to bolster Allied morale and prove that the Japanese were not as invincible as seemed.

That was Nathan Southender’s reading of the mission orders, especially that section of the instructions. Southender might not be able to tell Moondragon Actual how to do it, but by the White Ensign, that man was going to get him and his where he needed to go to do what he came here to do.

Somehow Moosbreger, who was off watch and resting up for the really “fun part of this Union Forever” did not agree with this AIPS version of reality. He was well aware that VADM Carpendar had awarded “him” the honor of chauffeuring this mission, because someone on staff had asked RADM Chrsitie; “which useless submarine in our command is the most expendable one for a lunatic suicide mission that Washington wants laid on?”

Somehow USS Moondragon’s name came up.

============================================================

The Japanese patrol boat came alongside and blinker-lighted them in Morse.

あなたは9つの地獄の誰ですか? (Anata wa 9 tsu no jigoku no dare desu ka ?) Who in the nine hells are you?

Here is the reason why LT(j.g.) Barry “Barnacles” O. Pulliver (signals) is on the bridge. “I hope that this message is correct.” He blinkered back.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Japanese_submarine_chaser_PC-30.jpg[/img]

From the US Navy and the JMSDF

●巡視艇30号番、特殊任務から戻る巡視潜水艦34番です。特別セクションに連絡して、実験が成功したことを報告します。(● junshi tei 30 go ban 、 tokushu ninmu kara modoru junshi sensui kan 34 ban desu .tokubetsu section ni renraku shi te 、 jikken ga seikou shi ta koto wo hokoku shi masu .) (Patrol Boat number 30, we are patrol submarine Number 34 that returns from a special mission. Contact Special Section and report that the experiment has succeeded.)

Pulliver waits for the return message, presumably high explosive shells punctuated with autocannon slugs as commas to break up the high explosive sentence and submarine fragments.

The patrol boat, instead, sends this response;

特別セクションは、停泊ポスト14に報告し、そこに停泊し、検査パーティーを待つと言います。(tokubetsu section wa 、 teihaku post 14 ni hokoku shi 、 soko ni teihaku shi 、 kensa party wo matsu to ii masu .)( Special Section says to report to anchorage post 14, berth there, and await the inspection party.)

Pulliver sends that missive down the 1 Mike Charles and he shakes his head in disgust as the lamp operator from the Type 13 sub-chaser flicks its searchlight across the USS Moondragon. Despite the oilskins and Japanese style of floppy head-cover, “Barnacles” has to believe that there are lookouts on that Japanese 400 tonner who can distinguish “marui me no akuma” (round eyed devils) (丸い目の悪魔) from “dotoku teki ni tadashii nihon no senin” (stout morally correct Japanese sailors.) (道徳的に正しい日本の船員). One lookover and the wave-through is given.

“マーフィーは私たちの原因を祝福したか、向こうの仲間は、私たちが見ているお粗末なハリウッド映画よりもダンバーです。” (Murphy wa watashi tachi no genin wo shukufuku shi ta ka、 mukou no nakama wa、watashi tachi ga mi te iru osomatsu na halliwood eiga yori mo dumber desu .) (“Either Murphy has blessed our cause or those fellows over there are dumber than the lousy Hollywood movies we watch show them to be.”)

*(Rest assured reader, that several bars of gold and a safe conduct into Soviet Siberia and a plane trip to America have secured the right of passage of USS Moondragon into Truk Lagoon. Of course the hijinks engaged in this odd arrangement involve Miss Virginia Hall, a dilettante expatriate American of certain supposed pro-Axis leanings. She lives in Vichy France in Paris in the German occupation zone. That amazing tale may be a story told in a future scribing, but for right now, let us just note that Mister Roosevelt is not as dumb as the Japanese news reels making the rounds in Tokyo and Yokohama show him to be.(

(A Woman Of No Importance': American Spy Virginia Hall Finally Gets Her Due : NPR)

The American submarine proceeds into the submarine anchorage area completely unmolested on the surface. Pulliver has a near heart attack when a berthed Japanese submarine challenges with a blinker light. He has no script for that event. With his heart racing, and a lump of moist lead trying to climb out his throat, he looks helplessly at his lookouts, and his lamp operator. He croaks; “Send ess-jay-kay”. It is all he can think to say. SJK. Three letter combo for permission to transit, out of the Lloyds international signals book. The lamp man sends it.

The Japanese submarine responds with QRQ.

The lamp-man asks; “What now, sir?”

“Keep your voice down and ignore it.” snaps Pulliver.

The USS Moondragon serenely cruises through the submarine anchorage and heads for the passage between Fefan and Umman Islands. As soon as the bulks of the two islands hide the USS Moondragon’s silhouette from the moored submarines and merchantmen scattered through which the American boat passed; Pulliver whistled once and motioned the two lookouts and the lamp-man toward the man-hole. “Get below.” Pulliver said into the One Mike Charles; “ Notify the captain, I make it that we are 5,000 meters from the turn west into the Doblen Moen islands passage on this course. Estimated time to turn; 450 seconds, Start your clock and pull the plug, I’m coming below. On the Snort, yoah.”

More to come.
 

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I don't disagree that Hornet was not fit for purpose at Midway. Mitscher has to take some blame for that. That said, Hornet also did not have the combat experience of Yorktown or Enterprise, either. There's just no substitute for that! Carrier warfare was a brand new thing, and the USN (like the Brits and the Japanes) was still trying to figure out how to do it. Her people did do somewhat better in the Solomons.

Today, Drachinifel has Jon Parshall of Shattered Sword fame on as his guest, and I was struck to see Parshall pick up on this theme about Hornet's and Enterprise's struggles at about 9:40 in: "It's difficult for people to sort of get their heads around. At this point in time, the playbook that people are using for carrier operations is mighty thin. This really is the Wild West of naval weapon systems at this point, and it is a book that is literally being written as we go as to how we conduct these sort of battles. So I guess I am not too terribly surprised that both of carriers have as many problems they have just getting their strike packages up."

[Video cued to timestamp of discussion -- though of course the whole thing is worth listening to.]

EDIT: There's some specific discussion of Marc Mitscher and his issues starting at around 16:30, and the consensus that Parshall says that he, Tully, Craig Symonds, and John Lundstrom have reached about the "Flight to Nowhere" fiasco.

Also at 52:00: Some extended thrashing of Richmond Kelly Turner, which @McPherson should appreciate.

 
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At this point in history, one thing is still as true today as ever, Midway was a crushing defeat for Japan at precisely the moment a crushing defeat was called for. Even as a kid, the results always seemed disproportionate, then, as I got introduced to the world of SIGINT, that still did not explain the magnitude of the US victory. "Miracle" seems like an apt descriptor to me...
 
At this point in history, one thing is still as true today as ever, Midway was a crushing defeat for Japan at precisely the moment a crushing defeat was called for. Even as a kid, the results always seemed disproportionate, then, as I got introduced to the world of SIGINT, that still did not explain the magnitude of the US victory. "Miracle" seems like an apt descriptor to me...
Luck is a very hard thing to quantify. Perhaps the Japanese had finally exhausted the sixes they had been throwing since Dec.7 1941.
 
At this point in history, one thing is still as true today as ever, Midway was a crushing defeat for Japan at precisely the moment a crushing defeat was called for. Even as a kid, the results always seemed disproportionate, then, as I got introduced to the world of SIGINT, that still did not explain the magnitude of the US victory. "Miracle" seems like an apt descriptor to me...

Parshall makes a good point in the interview that, if you stack up the air forces at the point of contact...the Japanese were actually significantly outnumbered (as in 360 to 248, if you include the Midway Atoll units, which you really should). Granted, the Japanese squadrons were somewhat more combat experienced and a little better organized, and some of the plane types were modestly superior . . . but just looking at the air combatants, it's not a lopsided setup in Yamamoto's favor, at all.

But having said that, while a U.S. victory may not have been a miracle, there did need to be some luck to turn it into such an overwhelming one. You cannot (so far as I can tell) find another 5 minute spread in the war where U.S. carrier aircraft did so much damage -- and that from just two carriers! Conversely, the only U.S. ships sunk at Midway -- Yorktown and Hammann -- were not even sunk by Nagumo's forces. Just a lucky spread by I-I68 being in the right place at the right time. Without that submarine, Nagumo's defeat looks even more crushing.
 
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Following up on my last thought, you know...if you seriously wargamed Midway ten times (say), I could see a "median" result looking something like this:

POD 1: In the U.S. dive bomber attack of Enterprise's VB-6 and VS-6 at 10:22, Lt. Dick Best takes the entirely reasonable decision to defer to Wade McClusky's erroneous move to have both squadrons dive on IJN Kaga, rather than defy him. Kaga, of course, is utterly immolated under this overwhelming attack, but Nagumo's flagship, Akagi, is left untouched. Meanwhile, Yorktown's dive bombers have turned Soryu into an inferno at the same time. This leaves Nagumo with a body blow -- two of his prized Kido Butai carriers turned into charnel houses, including his second biggest one, Kaga -- but still with enough airpower to mount a hefty counter strike on the Americans.

POD 2: Yorktown's chief damage control officer decides, with a measure of not unreasonable caution, to defer a proposal by Machinist Oscar Meyer to inject CO2 into the avgas lines to purge them after use -- a lesson prompted by the circumstances of Lexington's sinking at Coral Sea. "Let's get this new assignment out of the way first, and then we can take a close look at it." Thus, when the first attack wave from Akagi and Hiryu arrives, Yorktown's damage crews struggle badly to suppress the resulting fires. The ship is still on fire when Nagumo's second wave (composed of about two dozen Kates) arrives in the vicinity. Concluding that the burning carrier they see below them must be the one hit by the first wave, they continue on to the east, finally arriving over TF-16. Despite valiant maneuvering by Spruance's carriers, the B5N's manage to put two torpedoes into Hornet, making her a solid mission kill, but leaving her still afloat with a 10 degree list.

Admiral Fletcher is now left with a sticky decision. He has hit Nagumo hard, but for the moment, he's down to one deck (though a number of Hornet's survivors will limp into Midway's crater strewn runways), and most of Midway Atoll's squadrons have been turned into ocean debris. His orders are to observe the principle of calculated risk. He decides to withdraw a hundred miles to the east, initially taking Hornet under tow until she can get up steam at 10 knots. Yorktown, still ablaze, is reluctantly abandoned, scuttled by torpedoes fired by USS Hammann and USS Anderson. The surviving force will rendezvous with USS Saratoga on June 8. Hornet will undergo emergency repairs at Pearl Harbor, and then spend 9 weeks at Bremerton for complete restoration.

Admiral Nagumo, meanwhile, has an even stickier decision. He's lost two of his four carriers, and over half of his aircraft. Patrols have been unable to locate the American carrier force, which, if his pilots' reports are to be believed, may be down two carriers -- but how many did the Americans start with? The number of planes that had shown up the previous morning suggest a sizable task force. Does he really have the airpower to resume the contest, let alone support an attack on Midway? After desultory patroling and circling -- and another unsuccessful air attack by a couple packets of surviving Midway-based bombers -- Yamamoto orders Nagumo to withdraw. The Battle of Midway is over.

The result *is* an American victory, both in strategic terms, and even tactical terms -- just not an overwhelming one. Yamamoto has once again been denied his nominal strategic objective (Midway), and even his *real* one -- the destruction of all or even most of Nimitz's fleet carriers. Worse, on the tonnage chart, he's on the worst end of the numbers, having lost two fleet carriers, and 130 of his most veteran air crews (along with over 1400 fatalities, three times what Fletcher lost), which he will have a harder time replacing than Nimitz will. Nimitz meanwhile can look forward to parrying any further Japanese thrust at summer's end with no less than four fleet carriers, with Hornet rejoining and Wasp joining PACFLT -- now an even up match for the diminished Kido Butai, and learning fast from its experiences.

A result like this looks more in line with the other carrier battles of 1942. Great intel and a modest advantage in numbers makes a moderate but clear U.S. victory possible, even despite some bungled strike packages on the morning of June 4 -- even, some historians might say, probable.
 
Another improbable possibility, in all scenarios, Hornet's Bombers and Fighters make it to Kido Butai, in time to stop her launching her strike on Yorktown. Or USS DD drives down I-168, preventing her attack on Yorktown.
 
Another improbable possibility, in all scenarios, Hornet's Bombers and Fighters make it to Kido Butai, in time to stop her launching her strike on Yorktown. Or USS DD drives down I-168, preventing her attack on Yorktown.

Oh, absolutely.

There are all sorts of PODs that can get you to save Yorktown. We're talking about a carrier that sustained three separate attacks inflicting heavy damage before she finally sunk. Butterfly just one of those away, and you almost certainly keep your carrier.

Still, in aggregate, the United States came out near the high end of plausible outcomes, if we roll our mythical 20-sided dice a bunch of times. Nimitz had every reason to think he'd had a great night at the casino.
 
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