Nagumo surprised during his IO raid

Polmar in Aircraft Carriers (p193)states:

"While the Vals were flying towards Hermes and the Trincomalee bombers were refueling on their carriers 9 RAF twin engined Blenheim bombers attacked the carrier Akagi."

From what i've read elsewhere, the Blenheims were actually RCAF and were undetected until after the bombs were falling.

What would be the effect of a successful attack on Akagi and possibly some of the other carriers if more aircraft had been available?
 
If they had hit the Akagi it would have been one on the handful of times high level bombers had hit ships at sea, but in war shit does happen.

How much damage does a 500lb bomb (about all you could hope for with 9 planes at high level) do to a carrier which is refuelling planes on deck? I'd like to think enough to force it to withdraw. That leaves a cautious Nagumo down a carrier and knowing that he can be hit readily enough, I'd think he'd almost withdraw himself. But where does that leave Sommerville, does he go on the attack somewhere?

As for more planes being available. If you put someone with Malta or similar experience in Ceylon and give him a decent amount of decent planes then a striaght air battle will ensue and the Japanese will get mauled commensurate with the defenders numbers.
 
Damage...

I would say that one 500 pound bomb hitting a carrier that's refueling and rearming aircraft can have a wide range of effects, from minor damage to a sunken carrier. It depends on the sheer luck of jusrt where it hits, and then, how effective damage control is.

A lost or severely damaged carrier this early in the war might result in better damage control procedures.
 
Polmar in Aircraft Carriers (p193)states:​


"While the Vals were flying towards Hermes and the Trincomalee bombers were refueling on their carriers 9 RAF twin engined Blenheim bombers attacked the carrier Akagi."

From what i've read elsewhere, the Blenheims were actually RCAF and were undetected until after the bombs were falling.​

What would be the effect of a successful attack on Akagi and possibly some of the other carriers if more aircraft had been available?​
Better yet the pommy carriers catch him... a strike by a few squadrons of Swordfish and Albacores after dark would have been quite a nasty little suprise for the japanese.
:D
 

Markus

Banned
I would say that one 500 pound bomb hitting a carrier that's refueling and rearming aircraft can have a wide range of effects, from minor damage to a sunken carrier. It depends on the sheer luck of jusrt where it hits, and then, how effective damage control is.

IJN damage control was a desaster. If the bomb ignites the refueling planes it´s the same situation as in Midway: Carriers imitates dry stowage Sherman! Booom and bye, bye!


A lost or severely damaged carrier this early in the war might result in better damage control procedures.
They got a lot better after Midway indeed.

@Riain: I thought the IJN rearmed and refueled in the hangar, not on the deck. They certainly did so at Midway.
 
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If the Akagi bites it, it could lead to rammifications later on in terms of Midway and the Coral Sea. Yamamoto might forego the Coral Sea operation all together, prefering to focus on Midway. We could see an earlier battle of Midway if Nagumo retreats from the Indian Ocean earlier and avoids the Coral Sea.
 
Markus, I think a 500lb bomb dropped from high-level would go through the unarmoured flight deck and into the hangar, so that would be even better/worse.

Perhaps Nagumo would leave the Akagi with an escort and withdraw his other 4 carriers. Then Sommerville could jump on the damaged Akagi and sink her with his Swordfish. Either way I think it would throw out the timings of subsequent battles, for better or worse. Perhaps Coral Sea is fought with 3 or 4 fleet carriers, or Midway with 5 or 6, or the dispostions for either are changed to take into account the possibility of the hit on the Akagi recurring.

Perhaps work on fighter control is stepped up and the Zero replacement is pushed through becuase of the need to carry comprehensive radio equipment. And as a result the 1945 battles are fought with A7M reppu fighters on the remaining carriers.
 

CalBear

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If they had hit the Akagi it would have been one on the handful of times high level bombers had hit ships at sea, but in war shit does happen.

How much damage does a 500lb bomb (about all you could hope for with 9 planes at high level) do to a carrier which is refuelling planes on deck? I'd like to think enough to force it to withdraw. That leaves a cautious Nagumo down a carrier and knowing that he can be hit readily enough, I'd think he'd almost withdraw himself. But where does that leave Sommerville, does he go on the attack somewhere?

As for more planes being available. If you put someone with Malta or similar experience in Ceylon and give him a decent amount of decent planes then a striaght air battle will ensue and the Japanese will get mauled commensurate with the defenders numbers.

A single 1000lb bomb SANK the AKAGI. While some sources indicate a second bomb it the far aft of the Akagi's flight deck, recent scholarship leans toward a single hit, from Lt. Best's SBD. dealing the killing blow.

A single bomb, if it hit the right (wrong?) part of the ship, was capable of crippiling, if not killing, a JApanese carrier.

BTW: based on IJN records and interviews with surviving officers and men by the USSBS post war, the Japanese didn't refuel aircraft on deck, far perferring to take aircraft below to the hanger area, which, unlike American carriers, was fully enclosed.
 
If a 1000lb bomb can sink the Akagi then a 500lb bomb, dropped from high altitiude, should punch into the hangar deck readily enough and cause enough damage to cripple the ship and cause it's withdrawal. That can only be a good thing at the time, but I wonder about the repercussions in later battles.
 

CalBear

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The Japanese DID change a number of proceedures after the Indian Ocean near disaster; these were not enough (as evidenced by both Coral Sea & Midway) to avert surprises.

The Japanese needed radar, something they lacked at the time (there had been some speculation that Akagi we equipped with a primitave radar installation, but recent inspection of the carrier's resting place and photo's of the superstructure make a very strong case for no radar being present on any of the Kido Butai vessels by mid-1942. This put the IJN at a huge disadvantage compared to their USN counterparts (assuming the commanders believed what the radar opertors told them, which wasn't always the case, especially early in the war) when dealing with incoming raids. All you need do is look at the comparitive effectiveness of the Yorktown's CAP to the Kido Butai's at Midway to see the glaring difference that radar, combined with even primitive fighter direction efforts, made in fleet defense.

After radar (or perhaps before) the IJN needed to put radios into their aircraft; the vast majority of Zero's lacked even a simple receiver, much less two way communication, in the early months of the war. This led to some... unusual communication methods; my favorite being the way that surface ships indicated that the had spotted incoming aircraft by firing their main batteries toward them. When American pilots first encountered this, they assumed that the cruisers & battlewagons were trying to shoot them down or to create a wall of water to disrupt the torpedo planes attacks, actually it was the only way the ships had to attract the CAPs attention.
 
Would the IJN make tactical and doctrinal changes after such an important ship was hit from high level by a handful of bombers? Would they dare go within range of high level bombers without taking special precautions, even though the IO hit was a fluke? Perhaps putting more fighters on board carriers, or keeping carriers tightly concentrated to maximise fighter strength. How would Coral Sea and Midway go differently if all the IJN carriers were concentrated enough for mutual support, assuming Akagi was replaced at Midway?
 
I would think the crippling or sinking of the Akagi would have
helped the Japanese for it would have put off the Coral
Sea battle and forced them to make changes to their forces
for Midway.

Imagine the Japanese with the Japanese at Midway with
5 CV and a beefed up screen with all 4 of their fast
battleships and more cruisers against the USN with 4 CV.
The Japanese would have been forced to beef up their
force to deal with a stronger USN so perhaps the Shoho
and Zuiho along with perhaps Yammamoto in the Yamato
might have been nearby. You'd have a Japanese victory
at Midway but a defeat of Japan in the long run for the
same reasons as in OTL.
 

CalBear

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Would the IJN make tactical and doctrinal changes after such an important ship was hit from high level by a handful of bombers? Would they dare go within range of high level bombers without taking special precautions, even though the IO hit was a fluke? Perhaps putting more fighters on board carriers, or keeping carriers tightly concentrated to maximise fighter strength. How would Coral Sea and Midway go differently if all the IJN carriers were concentrated enough for mutual support, assuming Akagi was replaced at Midway?

Coral Sea would have become a mini-Midway if the IJN had concentrated their carriers there. The Americans hit the Shoho with two full decks resulting in 13 bomb hits and 7 torpedo strikes (they sank her a lot). HAd she been in company with Carrier Division 5, the Americans would have found both Shokaku and Zuikaku (who they actually flew past on the way to Shoho) while the Japanese still had no idea of the USN position. As was the next day the two fleets located each other at virtually the same time and tore each other to shreds (Lexington sunk, Yorktown damaged, Shokaku badly damaged & out of the war for five months, Zuikaku undamaged (thanks to a friendly rain squall) but with her airwing demolished).

At Midway, the Kido Butai was operating in a close box formation (8,000 meters separation), something the Japanese had developed after seeing a pre-war photo of several American carriers operating together (ironically the photo was staged, at the time American doctrine called for carriers to operate independently).
 

Markus

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If a 1000lb bomb can sink the Akagi then a 500lb bomb, dropped from high altitiude, should punch into the hangar deck readily enough and cause enough damage to cripple the ship and cause it's withdrawal. That can only be a good thing at the time, but I wonder about the repercussions in later battles.

Only if the hangar deck is full of fuel and ammo. At coral Sea three 1000lb bombs hit Shokaku right in the hangar deck and she was in no danger of sinking at all. No fires or secondary explosions and she withdrew at top speed.
 
The 1st post quotes that the Trincomalee bombers were refueling on (?) their carriers.

What's more, I've read that US carriers detecting an incoming raid would drain the fuel lines and flood the magazines with CO2, or something similar. One carrier, I think it was at Santa Cruz, did this several times in one battle. The source for this, I think, was Bombers Versus Battleships. The Blenhiems were undetected so if the IJN had similar procedures they probably wouldn't have taken place in time to matter.
 

Markus

Banned
Draining the fuel lines was SOP indeed, flooding them with CO² became SOP after USS Lexington was lost at Coral Sea, because fuel vapours spread throughout the ship and exploded.

I don´t know the IJN´s procedures, but they still had armed and fueled planes in the closed(!) hangar deck, that makes the fuel lines the smallest of your problems.
 
True, but the point is that any precautions they did have wouldn't have been taken because of the complete surprise.
 
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