I think
@CV12Hornet covered it.
I know about Henderson. I know about Clarke.
I know about Henderson. I know about Clarke. I have no respect for Clarke because he has no good idea about what was going on at all.
Here is what is going on. The source of fact is Andrew Boyd; "The Royal Navy In Eastern Waters" Seaforth Publishing; an imprint of Pen and Sword Books, Ltd. (2017)
The interpretation therein (his) is radically different from mine based on his facts. Mine is also taken from Hyperwar and the US Naval Historical Institute.
And of course there is a map. (Source Google generic polar projection map.).
The work is mine. Red is British coverage. Brown is Canadian Coverage. Blue is American coverage.
Now then.
a. The Americans screw up in the Philippine Islands, get Pearl Harbored and are acutely embarrassed when MacArthur and Brereton lose the FEAAF on the ground. But then comes the six month stand at Bataan. American's buy exactly the time envisaged in Rainbow 5. Remember THAT.
b. The British try to rump-roast the Singapore Bastion Defense, lose Force Z to incompetence and are disgraced in the Malay Settlements and run out of Burma.
c. Asiatic Fleet and the Dutch fight a losing fight in the Malay Barrier.
This was expected by American planners.
d. Somerville tried to fight an aircraft carrier battle off Sri Lanka. He was going to use his Fulmars to deliver a night torpedo attack. He failed for multiple reasons, but I will summarize the key ones.
---he miss-estimated Nagumo's arrival as being 1 April 1942 and set his ambush position accordingly. He failed to provide tanker support and could NOT REFUEL at sea. Nagumo showed up on the fifth. Somerville was refueling and had to charge from his protected anchorage to try to catch Nagumo when that man showed up on British reconnaissance on 5 April 1942.
--Somerville miscalculated Japanese strength at 2 or 3 aircraft carriers.
--Somerville expected to find Nagumo by night search; but one little problem. In that region of Earth and at that time of year as the USN savagely criticized him at the NWC from their own experience in the Caribbean and the tropics with RADAR, the atmospherics degrade search ranges of surface and airborne radars SEVERELY. An aircraft carrier sized target will yield a reflected signal that can be theoretically be discriminated, supposedly at ranges at night beyond the Mark 1 eyeball. The Fulmar's ASV (ASR in USN parlance) was expected to generate a bearing and range at about 150 km from a patroller flying at 3,000 meters altitude. The damned ASV radars could only detect Somerville's own ships at about 30 km in the local weather conditions. How the hello were the Fulmars to detect Nagumo or Yamaguchi? The Fulmars did not until they came within VISUAL for the Japanese saw one of them at night and dodged. The Fulmar compounded this error by misreporting Yamaguchi's position by 40 km, and then Somerville boloed it again by not having a strike package warmed up and ready.
The less written about Somerville allowing Hermes, Devonshire and Cornwall to die, the better.
‘Battle of Ceylon’: Japanese Air Raid on 5 April 1942 ...
Incompetent is "charitable".
e. So that is the situation in April 1942. Pound asked King for help. "Could the Americans draw the Japanese away from the Indian Ocean and save the Royal Navy Eastern Fleet?"
f. King did not tell Pound about the Doolittle Raid or the do-or-die stand about to happen in the Coral Sea, or the all-or-nothing fight planned for Midway as soon as PACFLT got wind from FRUMEL that Yamamoto was laying on Operation MI to destroy PACFLT.
The Americans had been laying on aircraft carrier raids, showing the flag, and waving their ensigns in the IJN's faces in February and March in the Caroline and Marshall Islands to turn the IJN EAST; before Pound screamed for help. They knew how important it was to protect the Persian Gulf from Japanese attack. Wilson Brown lays on the
(The Forgotten Revenge for Pearl Harbor – Lae-Salamaua 1942).
This provoked the Port Moresby action (Operation Mo.)... And it set the stage for THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA.
Then of course the bitterness of Midway. It should be noted that the Americans lost a third of their pre-war PACFLT trained pilots to these air operations, the raids and the two naval battles which they won. But the threat to the Indian Ocean and to Australia and to Hawaii was not over yet. So WATCHTOWER. Destroyers which could have been used in the Atlantic were kept in PACFLT to supply the escorts for the fighting expected at Guadalcanal. The PACFLT went in with green pilot replacements and inexperienced marines and then SAVO, Eastern Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz happened. By now four of America's six aircraft carriers were gone, another 800 pilots spent and King went to Pound and asked to borrow an aircraft carrier.
Pound said, "No."
The Eastern Fleet had three new aircraft carriers sent to it after Somerville's defeat hugging the east coast of Africa doing NOTHING. It took Churchill to order the RN to release HMS Victorious to join USS Saratoga.
November 1942 to November 1943. Show the flag, show off the Victorious' fighter director setup which LANTFLT had already leaned via Wasp and the Malta Convoys and in general cross train with the USNAS to learn how to do the deck park and the flight deck yo-yo the USN way, which was the right way to do things. Just until USS Enterprise was back on her keel again and was joined by a few Essexes. (Essex, Yorktown, Hornet, Franklin, etc. ) And all the while the IJN was bloody shirt fixated on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands and the Eastern Fleet was cruising up and down the east coast of Africa and convoying convoys to the Persian Gulf.
And then you know that USS Saratoga after the CPTF was formed was chopped to new duties? Guess where? To the Eastern Fleet. Yup, a USN aircraft carrier was lent to the British in late 1943 and 1944 to firm them up for operations in the eastern Indian Ocean.
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About the KGVs and the fourteen inch guns designed to use 13.5 inch mounts. The 14 inch guns were designed to use CRADLES like USN guns were. The 13.5 inch barrels of WWI era were mounted on slides. Additionally, 15 inch guns would not fit the 14 inch cradles so the mounts would have to be redesigned, that includes barbette weight balancing, all the hoists and handling arrangements and as I pointed out previously.
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I will add this comment. Convoying and protecting the Persian Gulf oil routes and Russian Lend Lease shipping was important, so I do not think one should not minimize the RN contribution to victory by this vital work. Nor can holding the Suez canal by the Desert Army be overlooked as part of the global naval war. But no "historian" who fails to understand the interconnected nature of PACFLT's desperate 1942 fight to keep the IJN on it and off the Eastern Fleet, which was demonstrably incapable of the kind of fighting needed to attrite the IJN while Germany First went forward with Torch which was LANTFLT's contribution to the overall global war at sea and on land should be considered as knowing what is happening or why. The British revisionist historians, like Boyd or Clarke, do not get to claim that the RN in the Indian Ocean was the lynchpin of victory. The real guarantors of "victory" in this case were...
PACFLT and the British Eighth Army. One stopped Yamamoto (Nimitz). The other stopped Rommel.(Montgomery).
McP.