To my understanding, The initial wave of Japanese planes constituted roughly half of the carrier striking force as Yamamoto wanted half kept back in case of the appearance of the US carriers. Would the inclusion of the other half as part of the first strike put Midway out of commission and therefore not require a 2nd strike on Midway? If so then there is no back and forth between torpedoes and bombs, with the remaining half and would that mean the Japanese carrier force is actually in a better position to counter US carriers than in OTL. No planes and bombs all over to cause secondary explosions, time saved etc
Battle of Midway
- Thread starter Caesars11
- Start date
You'd have had to have launched the second wave anyways, as the carriers were incapable of spotting their full complement in a single strike. And the whole point of holding half the strike package back was in case enemy carriers did show up. You'd probably just end up with the hangars cluttered with aircraft in the middle of being frantically refueled and rearmed when the American strike package arrives overhead, so no real change.
The answer is probably yes...but then you'd have to change IJN doctrine and an order by Yamamoto which directed the fleet to hold back the best half of the attack squadrons in case of finding the US fleet.
Recommend you watch the following Midway video:
which really evaluates the Nagumo decision cycle.
Recommend you watch the following Midway video:
I'm pretty sure this doesn't save either the Soryu or Kaga as both of those ships were hit by multiple 1000lb bombs
Having both waves in the air confounds the problems that they had originally in that they had to recover dozens of aircraft while replenishing their fleet CAP at regular intervals due to the repeated 'uncoordinated' waves of land based and then carrier based groups of attackers not giving them a break.
OTL this recovery of the 1st strike and need to cycle the CAP delayed the launching of any strike on the US carrier (s) - having twice as many aircraft hitting Midway just makes that problem worse.
Also losses in the first wave in aircraft shot down and aircraft damaged IIRC amounted to 20%+ of the 1st wave strike aircraft (about 10% of the fleets availability) and a second strike is likely to suffer losses as well.
The first attack also failed to close Midway, mainly due to the relatively light bombs used, so there is no guarantee that a second wave will be any more successful than the first.
Finally with a second strike having been used - nothing/very little will be available to attack the 3 US Carriers as all of the planes will need to be recovered (probably some reorganization would have to take place in the hangers) and then refueled and rearmed.
So I think they would have been worse off.
Holding back half the aircraft for a possible strike on any US carriers was even in hindsight a sensible precaution.
OTL this recovery of the 1st strike and need to cycle the CAP delayed the launching of any strike on the US carrier (s) - having twice as many aircraft hitting Midway just makes that problem worse.
Also losses in the first wave in aircraft shot down and aircraft damaged IIRC amounted to 20%+ of the 1st wave strike aircraft (about 10% of the fleets availability) and a second strike is likely to suffer losses as well.
The first attack also failed to close Midway, mainly due to the relatively light bombs used, so there is no guarantee that a second wave will be any more successful than the first.
Finally with a second strike having been used - nothing/very little will be available to attack the 3 US Carriers as all of the planes will need to be recovered (probably some reorganization would have to take place in the hangers) and then refueled and rearmed.
So I think they would have been worse off.
Holding back half the aircraft for a possible strike on any US carriers was even in hindsight a sensible precaution.
Cryhavoc has it right. Sending both waves, probably an hour apart leaves Nagumo with no strike force at all, and after recovering the first wave and rearming them, he'd have no time to launch them before he had to recover the second wave. Either way leaves him with decks full of fueled and armed planes when the US dive bombers strike. About the only difference is there would be no bombs and torpedoes lying around on the deck with the change of armaments. But considering all the bombs and torpedoes on the planes sitting on deck, the end result is the same--boom!
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McPherson
Banned
No; it would not matter.
Tomonaga Joichi, strike coordinator, was under strict instructions to leave the American runways intact, and concentrate on bombing beach gun positions and defenses and let the IJN fighters strafe American aircraft which were expected to be in exposed hardstands and easy to destroy. The air garrison was aloft and out of reach or fighting. (Successful intercept. People forget that one. Lousy fighters, raw pilots. Still damaged 14% of the strike and disrupted it.). Damage to targets that did not matter (Commissary blown up, scattered cigarettes everywhere.), was severe. Damage to what needed to be destroyed; such as Marine defenses and the airbase infrastructure? Minimal. Adding another 100 planes would not change the results.
On the American side, radar controlled AAA would have helped. All that 3"/50 was optical and timed fuse. Knocking down a few Kates and Vals would have made the beating Midway did take, less severe.
Having an all Wildcat fighter group would have helped, too. Buffaloes against Zeroes was murder.
Yes - the battle has to not to be a giant USN Ambush on the Kidō Butai - which despite the disparity in the quality of forces in the IJNs favour (which meant for very little in the face of the disparity of intelligence in the USNs favour) they were almost doomed to be on the losing side of.
I think the only thing (in hindsight) that they should have done was upon getting the report on the USN having at least 1 carrier in the theatre was to have manoeuvred west to extend the range (as I understand it Nagumo, due to the given location of the located US carrier being incorrect believed that he was just out of range) - he should have recognised that he was at a serious disadvantage in that the USN knew exactly where he was and would have lost very little by temporarily moving West until his airgroup was reorganized and then turning back to attack a few hours later.
Basically pick his fight rather than accept the one presented to him by the USN even if this means ultimately missing the opportunity to sink said USN Carrier.
But once again I surmise that a massively complex plan and the expectations of his peers and superiors probably 'forced' Nagumo to accept the battle as it was.
There are a couple of things that could have helped the Japanese; turning away from the U.S. carriers rather than toward them would have made it harder on the American attackers without hindering a Japanese counter-attack much (as the Japanese planes had better range), and they could have transferred planes from the damaged Shokaku to Zuikaku, enabling Zuikaku to participate in the battle (it was close run enough that adding one of their best fleet carriers just might have shifted things). It's not clear if they would have taken Midway even if they'd done both of those things, but they weren't really there to take Midway. If the Japanese fleet carriers survived, and they managed to take out Yorktown as OTL plus one or both of the other American carriers with the counter-attack the Japanese would have been able to launch had their carriers survived, that would be the result Yamamoto was really looking for anyway.
I recently learned that the Japanese considered the pilots, crews, and mechanics of their carrier air groups as permanent members of the ship's crew and that to transfer them to another carrier simply was not done. Unlike the Americans who could shift squadrons around at will. Another interesting thing was that shortly after the battle was over, the Saratoga showed up, not only with a full compliment of aircraft for herself, but decks crammed with replacement aircraft for Enterprise and Hornet. If Yamamoto tried to continue the fight, he would have been at a severe disadvantage.
McPherson
Banned
I prefer the Wildcat. It's crowded at Midway and takeoff run, service ceiling, rate of climb?
P-40E 500m/8,900 meters/12 m/s
F4F 350m/10,360/11.7m/s
The P-40 is at a severe disadvantage against a Zero in a vertical fight. Bouncing on intercept, one would prefer the Wildcat which has altitude on the A6M and a better corner turn than the P-40; but both which are terrible against a Zero. The P-40's marginal climb ability over the Wildcat is butkus. The Wildcat also has 20 more minutes time in the air.
McPherson
Banned
Spruance would have bagged 4 instead of 3. The IJN had beached King Kong Hara after Coral Sea and he was the BEST the IJN had at that time. The idiot aboard Zuikaku (Captain Yokokawa Ichibei) had turned in a miserable performance at Coral Sea and he was relieved for cause on 5 June. His replacement, (Captain Nomoto Tameki, First command Chitose) was a carbon copy of Braindead Takagi, so that gives you some idea of his qualifications as an aircraft carrier captain.
P.S> There was a wall of bad weather to the west of Midway. Maybe that was why Nagumo was so far east?
Sara made it to the area of operations on the 8th. When the last oil slick had dispersed. The battle would have to drag out five days or more for the Sara to make any difference. The PoD for the Saras participation reaches back to its refit schedule, and even to the torpedo hit in January. In simple terms the Sara must be present NLT 2 June to get in on the battle.
I wasn't suggesting that Saratoga could have joined the main battle. But The battle ended on June 6th with the sinking of the cruiser Mikuma (Well, Yorktown didn't actually go down until the 7th). But if Yamamoto decided to press on to attack Midway with the main body, Saratoga might well have participated in that.
The P40E has a better performance and heavier armament than the F4F-4 in all respects except rate of turn and range (and obviously the ability to trap) at most altitudes and at lower altitudes a high ROC (the 2 stager Wildcat gaining the advantage as the P40 begins to pant) but principally in speed were it remains faster than both the F4F-4 and A6m up to 8000 m - but my point was that on Midway other than the 7 F4F-3s that were on hand the other fighters were 21 F2A's - so replacing those with P40Es - British F2A pilots fighting alongside Chennault's men in China found that the P40E pissed all over the F2A and available in far greater numbers.
I managed to find a performance comparison of the 3 aircraft
I have always questioned why was it with the 3 CAGs having replaced their -3s with -4s why 3/4s of the fighters on Midway were F2As?
Did the Navy really hate the USMC that much?
It'd be insane. All he'd manage to do is... basically nothing in exchange for probably losing at least one battleship.
Zuikaku was tougher than Hiryu or Soryu, and an extra carrier's worth of zeros defending might have taken out an attacking plane or five (or at least hindered their accuracy a bit). Sure, it's possible that the U.S. could still have ended up taking out all of the fleet carriers, which would obviously have been even worse for the Japanese with one more (better) carrier being lost, but it doesn't strike me as anywhere near the most likely outcome. Especially if the Japanese turn away from the American carriers instead of toward them, the other departure I mention, I think the Japanese successfully fighting off the American attack is far from impossible, and some intermediate possibility where the Japanese either just take damage or lose some but not all of their carriers is more likely than a total wipeout. Between the land-based planes at Midway and the planes on their carriers, the Americans had slightly more aircraft available for the battle; Zuikaku would have shifted the numbers to a slight Japanese edge.
McPherson
Banned
1. Shrug. You might want that trap ability as you shuttle from flattop to island and back again.
2. It was all the US had. You think Buffaloes would have been at Midway if there were even worn out F4Fs to hand down to the Marines?
Also BuAir was still filled with idiots or F5Fs (not carrier qualifiable but still capable of land based work.) would have been present instead of the F2s.