British Victory in the Indian Ocean 1942?

Taranto and one of their attacks on Oran were both at night. But as said, it is one thing to locate a port at night and attack ships at anchor, it is another thing entirely to locate and attack blacked out ships under way at night.

The British did it frequently in the Mediterranean, operating from Malta with Swordfish, Albacores, Wellingtons and Beaufighters, as well as other aircraft.
 

CalBear

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...I would also question the 9 hour flight time.

...

Well this one is pretty simple: 450 miles out, 450 miles back = 900 miles

Aircraft travels at 100-110 mph (plus time to form up, call it 30 minutes)

That makes time in the air somewhere between 8:42:00 - 9:30:00. I rounded it to 9 hours.

I will admit that the 110 MPH is a bit of a stretch for a Swordfish hauling a torpedo, but somewhere around 100 MPH for the entire mission is in the ball park.
 
The IJN first wave at Pearl Harbor did indeed take off in the dark. They arrived at Pearl Harbor after the sun was coming up and it was light out.

They also returned to their carriers after the sun had come up.

Pearl Harbor was also a very large fixed target. The Japanese pilots would have likely gotten there even if they deliberately tried to miss it.

While some pilots at the time may have done work at night, to date, standard night fighting tactics had not been worked out by the IJN airwings.

A night strike is realistically the best bet for Somerville. Go in, cripple or sink two carriers with torpedo attacks, and run. The remaining three carriers would either retreat, or be forced to escort their two cripples.

Taking off at night is relatively easy. Finding and intercepting an enemy strike at night without radar is nearly impossible. Landing back on at night is much, much, harder.

If the British attack at night, even if their take off at sunset is detected, the Japanese will not be able to intercept them nor stop them. As the Japanese reconnaissance aircraft won't be able to find the British carriers at night, having the Japanese counter-strike (if they have decks to take off from) take off before dawn would be rather pointless as all they would have, at absolute best would be a general heading to fly along. The RN carriers OTOH could have sailed off in a completely different direction, to rendezvous with their returning strike.

If Somerville was audacious enough, and the British had their fair share of luck, they could have carried out the attack and been quite successful IMO.
 
Much as we might like to think otherwise due to the decision to strip the RN of its air arm in 1918 Somerville had neither the right aircraft or the numbers necessary to pull off evan a draw like the Coral Sea let alone any sort of victory like Midway. What he could have done is send any submarines he had to the Staights between Malaya, Sumattra and Java in the hope of taking out some of the Japanese carriers as they withdrew. For him to have tried to directly engage the Japanese would have been suicide.
 
Interesting though the posts have been, I'm a bit surprised this being an AH site, how little creativity there's been to have a RN 'victory'!!

A) The RN losses less carriers earlier - therefore more available in the IO in '42. Looking at what happened to the Glorious from an ATL point of view, the idea of it being sunk, could be said to be ASB - 'they'd bound to have recon aircraft up'.

B) A different mix of aircraft, is possible, though difficult without drastically earlier POD.
Hawker, made an unsolicited offer to the FAA of a navalised (Sea) Henley - with wing-guns, as a replacement for the Skua, as FDB - with higher speed and bomb-load - better than the Skua.
FAA decide to leap to the next level, with the Henley ordered, Fulmar orders are reduced, go next the Sea Dante (have used Dante previously so I sticking with it) a navalised version of the Boulton-Paul P.88A (though it does help it the RAF did order it in the first place - but it was thae Treasury who said 'no - so still plausible). Later versions with better engines, might well have taken over the duties of the Sea Henley, given their bomb lifting capabilities in addition to their four-cannon.

Any other ideas.
 
450 mile strike radius? That's a hell of a lot more than I've ever heard about.

One thing I read years ago which stuck with me was that the Japanese had one advantage over the USN late in WW2; their ability to search to 500 miles and strike to 300. The USN could only search to 400 or so miles and strike to 250, mainly due to safety considerations. I'm a bit vague about the strike radius of Stringbags, I have an idea it was about 175 miles.

So the mission profile is to use the Blenhiems contact to get a bit of a fix, but stay out 400+ miles where the IJN search is thin. Then Sommerville has to get to about 200 miles to launch and recover the strike and get back out to 400+ miles again where the IJN search is thin. Bloody tough. On top of this is the handful of hits to be expected on moving targets at night, I think 10% (4 or 5) hits would be considered good in the circumstances.

I think an earlier PoD would be needed for Sommerville to accept the risky and difficult task of a night attack, one which would have to result in Sommerville's fleet being a touch stronger, Nagumo's being a touch weaker and a definite prize to fight for. Which leads me into my own favourite Britwank, a surviving Force Z and longer lasting Singapore/Sumatra.

Force Z doesn't go north to its doom.
It is reinforced by HMS Exeter and HMAS Hobart and becomes the nucleus of ABDA Naval forces in coming weeks.
The fight in Malaya goes a bit better, and the Japanese stall in Jahore in Feb 14.
Force Z/ABDA naval forces intercept the Sumatra invasion convoy and destroy it, leaving the defenders to mop up the Japanese paras.
Force Z ABDA runs like a frightened rabbit to the IO, giving Nagumo the slip for the time being.
Force Z/ABDA joins up with Sommerville's FEF.
Ceylon based Blenhiems get a lucky hit on one of Nagumos carrier, which has a weakened CAP from fighting in Malaya in recent weeks.
Sommerville makes a night attack on Nagumo, strike aircraft get 4 torpedo hits on 3 different ships including a Battle-cruiser and heavy cruiser, but the Belnhiem-damaged carrier is sunk with 2 hits.
Nagumos search plane locate a fleeing Sommerville at about lunchtime and launch a strike.
Much like the RN the IJN strike is diluted by attacks on capital ships and cruisers, and is weaker than usual due to operational losses in recent fighting. The British only lose 2 cruisers and the Hermes.

Hows that for Britwank?
 
The idea that the British could strike at the Japanese fleet would be dependent on a number of factors. First would be the assembly, calibration and operation of the land-based early-warning radars around the Colombo region. This would have given some indication of the direction that an attack was coming as well as leaving, to provide a vector to enable an attack based on a suspected location. An attack without proper intelligence would be somewhat foolish. British forces only located the fleet once by Canadian Canso, and took no action.

It was established RN doctrine that naval air was inferior to land-based air. They self-fulfilled the prophecy by using Skua and Fulmar fighters. Five squadrons of Spitfires V's armed with Claire Chennault's tactics booklet, with operational radar and a proper fighter controller, like Woody, would be nice. This would decimate the incoming raid and reduce the carnage when Beaufort torpedo bombers escorted by Blenheim and Fulmar fighters made the counter-strike. The advantage of using land-based attack is that you can't sink Ceylon. Their tea is too good.
 
Another possibility is that the RAN does not exchange HMAS ALBATROSS to partially defray payment for HMAS HOBART. This would also require another POD that ALBATROSS has been converted to an escort carrier, with a complement of 6-10 Buffalos or Martlets. Although this would represent a miniscule contribution, these aircraft could be useful for a standing CAP over the RN formation.
 
Interesting though the posts have been, I'm a bit surprised this being an AH site, how little creativity there's been to have a RN 'victory'!!

A) The RN losses less carriers earlier - therefore more available in the IO in '42. Looking at what happened to the Glorious from an ATL point of view, the idea of it being sunk, could be said to be ASB - 'they'd bound to have recon aircraft up'.

B) A different mix of aircraft, is possible, though difficult without drastically earlier POD.
Hawker, made an unsolicited offer to the FAA of a navalised (Sea) Henley - with wing-guns, as a replacement for the Skua, as FDB - with higher speed and bomb-load - better than the Skua.
FAA decide to leap to the next level, with the Henley ordered, Fulmar orders are reduced, go next the Sea Dante (have used Dante previously so I sticking with it) a navalised version of the Boulton-Paul P.88A (though it does help it the RAF did order it in the first place - but it was thae Treasury who said 'no - so still plausible). Later versions with better engines, might well have taken over the duties of the Sea Henley, given their bomb lifting capabilities in addition to their four-cannon.

Any other ideas.

I have always thought that the Hawker Henley is one of the most interesting could have beens and I would love to have seen Sea Henleys, could they have been used as Torpedo Bombers as well?
 
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