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

[AlanJWhite]

Am I right to understand that's the movement cypher, or not? I understood Hypo was reading that throughout 1942.

I've seen that designation, but never seen it attached to a specific usage, so, would that have been known as the "'maru' code" in Blair? AIUI, that wasn't broken (or read clear) until Jan '43. When it was, Sub Force sinkings did go up, very appreciably.

IJN-39, 40, 152 and 167 were all used for Merchant traffic.... and thus might be termed Maru codes.


IJN-39 was in use prewar and was used for ship movenebts.
It was broken by Hypo from mid 1940 (ie. in peacetime ) but by "soft" methods only.

Unfortunately -39 was lost as a source in mid 41 when the US botched an attempt to steal physical material from a Japanese ship in a US port.
(They got a copy of the code book etc but the intrusion was noticed)
Hence IJN-40 was rapidly introduced

Initially -40 was unreadable by any of the Allies partly because its format had been badly evaluated.
Around September 42 the Japanese made a series of operational errors that allowed the British team at Kalindi to work out the true form of the cipher
and thus create a breaking method that allowed them to read not only current traffic but all the recorded material as well.

AIUI IJN-152 was a very simple code used for broadcast navigational warnings from late 41 but also unreadable at the time.
IJN-167 was based on similar technology but somewhat harder to crack so probably carried similar level material at a similar time.

In any case, perhaps aided by their win on IJN-40, the British at Kalindi cracked these before the end of 42.
They shared all three insights with the USN.

I would think this these three British breakthroughs combined are the Maru Code Blair refers to as being broken in Jan 43.

 

[McPherson]

IJN-39, 40, 152 and 167 were all used for Merchant traffic.... and thus might be termed Maru codes.


IJN-39 was in use prewar and was used for ship movenebts.
It was broken by Hypo from mid 1940 (ie. in peacetime ) but by "soft" methods only.

Unfortunately -39 was lost as a source in mid 41 when the US botched an attempt to steal physical material from a Japanese ship in a US port.
(They got a copy of the code book etc but the intrusion was noticed)
Hence IJN-40 was rapidly introduced

Initially -40 was unreadable by any of the Allies partly because its format had been badly evaluated.
Around September 42 the Japanese made a series of operational errors that allowed the British team at Kalindi to work out the true form of the cipher
and thus create a breaking method that allowed them to read not only current traffic but all the recorded material as well.

AIUI IJN-152 was a very simple code used for broadcast navigational warnings from late 41 but also unreadable at the time.
IJN-167 was based on similar technology but somewhat harder to crack so probably carried similar level material at a similar time.

In any case, perhaps aided by their win on IJN-40, the British at Kalindi cracked these before the end of 42.
They shared all three insights with the USN.

I would think this these three British breakthroughs combined are the Maru Code Blair refers to as being broken in Jan 43.

1. The 41 attempt was made in San Francisco aboard a whale factory ship, the Nishan Maru, that was being port inspected and was bungled by a US Customs officer George Muller and Commander R. P. McCullough of the 12th Naval District who, both, made a spur of the moment bad decision.
2. The Japanese sent a series of message repeats picked up by Pacific stations forwarded as farm work to Kilindini, Kenya. The source of the solution is credited to John MacInnes and Brian Townend who recognized the 19th century set substitution table and column transposition nature (logical as Japanese is written that way.). The reason the USN was having fits was because their codebreakers originally thought the breakouts were based on book phrase tables and a RED cipher machine; like JN-25 was padded and keyed. It was all manual and simple when finally cracked.
3. JN 152 and 167 were the same exact setup. Just different repeats in the set substitutions and all manual. Not hard at all.

 

[McPherson]

Admiral's Row. Holy ground for the United States Navy. Golden Gateway cemetery.

McP.

 

[McPherson]

To resume...

In the first week of March 1942, the Americans first noticed mention of Operation MO in IJN radio traffic. On 5 April 1942, FRUMEL's listening posts intercepted an IJN message directing a carrier (Shoho) and other large warships to proceed to Inoue's area of operations. On 13 April, the British RN section of the defunct FECB in Ceylon deciphered an IJN message passed to them from FRUMEL informing Inoue that IJN CARDIV 5 consisting of the fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, was headed to the 4th Fleet Area originating from Taiwan and routed via the main IJN base at Truk. The British passed the message back to SWPOA, giving their opinion that Port Moresby was the likely target of the next Japanese operation.

By that same 5 April, FRUMEL’s outpost network was intercepting and reading about 85% of the IJNs radioed shore to ship traffic. They sent that message traffic they scavenged back by landline on the Australian telephone network or in exceptional sensitive cases by high speed courier to keep the Japanese from knowing how interested the eavesdroppers were in the IJN yakking. Back at Melbourne, FRUMEL broke into the encryption faster than the Japanese, themselves and now read more than 75% of the texts. It cannot be stated how much of that work was made possible and done by the Australians. Some of the jewels uncovered:

a. Tokyo to Inoue; CARDIV 5, the Zuikaku and Shokaku would arrive in his area, from Formosa via Truk no later than 1 May. Supply tanker support. This confirmed the British work done at Colombo 13 April just about the same time as they had to evacuate due to Nagumo's recent visit.

b. Port Moresby would be seized after Tulagi and the date scheduled was no later than 10 May 1942. Again, the source was reputedly the British, but it appears the Australian section at FRUMEL were the ones responsible for first SWPOA receipt, since the British were quite busy relocating at the time.

c. RDF traffic analysis, an ever useful tool for tracking yakkers on the radio even if one could not read the conversations. For example: the Japanese merchant captains were required to take a local noon position fix and then radio their position to the nearest Japanese naval authorities so that the IJN could traffic manage the merchant fleet and utilize it efficiently as required. Currently the tracks showed a congregate convergent gathering of assorted unknown non IJN ships at Rabaul, that eerily resembled the movements of Japanese merchant ship traffic prior to the Lae and Salamaua invasions.

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

Allied Moves.

Can the Allies Get Their Fractured Act Together?

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the new minted five month old commander of the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean. He had not rearranged his inherited staff from Kimmel or reassigned senior commanders as expected, though he probably should have sent VADM William Pye back to the US mainland into an administrative posting because he was blue-funked and had not climbed out of his Pearl Harbor trauma. Pye was with TF-1 the battleship survivors of Pearl Harbor; operating out of San Francisco as a sort of final coast defense reserve. Then there was VADM Robert Ghormley, who was medically unfit to serve because of acute dental illness. These factors were completely unknown to the CINCPAC and would bedevil him in the near future, but for now, ADM Nimitz had bigger problems.

There was the crisis a-brewing in the SWPOA. His staff was mulling it over as the streams of intelligence from Australian, and American sources, everything from coast watchers, air recon, submarines and troops who were in contact with the Japanese in New Guinea pointed to some new operation pending. Then came the radio intercepts and the decrypts from the IJN message traffic. The staff discussed the deciphered messages and agreed that the Japanese were likely initiating a major operation in the Southwest Pacific in early May with Port Moresby as the probable target. The Australians and GEN MacArthur had sent their opinions to Pearl that Port Moresby must be held as a key base for a planned counteroffensive, against Japanese forces in the Papua / New Guinea area. The Australians amplified their opinion with the further observation that if Port Moresby fell to the Japanese, the current aerial beating they were taking across the Timor and Arufura Seas from the Japanese would become much worse, with the possibility that the Australian military might have to cede the north of the country, to the Japanese by default. (The infamous Brisbane Line was not so outlandish as a possibility to the Curtin government of the time.) . That MacArthur was of a mind to fight in Papua / New Guinea to prevent this from occurring, was plain in his own opinion, but to the CINCPAC staff, that would mean a showdown fight with the IJN on the SLOCs far too early for the USN to risk-especially with the other rumblings that Yamamoto was up to something big in the central Pacific aimed at them. That was their consensus opinion and they told their admiral that such thing.

Nimitz's staff also concluded that the Japanese operation in the SWPOA could include carrier raids, akin to what the USN did against the Marshal Islands and Gilberts aimed at Allied bases in Samoa and at Suva in Fiji. Nimitz heard his staff out, and then he did the unexpected for such a previously cautious officer. Nimitz, after due conference with ADM Ernest King, Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet, decided to contest the Japanese operation by sending all four of the Pacific Fleet's available aircraft carriers to the Coral Sea to meet the Japanese movement head-on. Further intelligence from FRUMEL and from the other sources SWPOA had, mostly Australian and based in large part on stay-behinds and scouts who watched the Japanese, (that is HUMINT from the coast-watchers and submarine landed Australian commandos.), soon filled in the details and targets of the MO and RY plans. It must be noted, that Japanese OP-sec was not very good at this time, as the wealth of information acquired included orders stolen and copied from an airfield, from the base commander’s office no less, located just outside Lae, that contained the concept of operations for MO’s Rikko support. It was not just radio chatter that provided the allies with the details they needed.

On 29 April, Nimitz issued orders that sent his four carriers and their supporting warships towards the Coral Sea. Task Force 17 (TF 17), commanded by RADM Fletcher and consisting of the carrier Yorktown, escorted by three cruisers and four destroyers and supported by a replenishment group of two oilers and two destroyers, was already in the South Pacific, having departed Tongatabu on 27 April headed to the Coral Sea. TF 11, commanded by Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch; consisted of the carrier Lexington with two cruisers and five destroyers, was between Fiji and New Caledonia. TF 16, commanded by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, included the carriers Enterprise and Hornet, had just returned to Pearl Harbor from the Doolittle Raid in the central Pacific. TF16 immediately departed but would not reach the South Pacific in time to participate in the battle. Here was the glitch in the works. The Doolittle Raid timing was off. There was nothing Nimitz could do about the essentially rotten political decision his President had made to stage a propaganda stunt for morale purposes. Halsey had also taken longer than he should have to mount the operation, so there was that, too. All that Nimitz could hope happen was that the Japanese might have a last minute delay or a bollix of their own as had happened at Lae and Salamaua to allow the Americans to get an unexpected carrier punch in, but it was not to be this time.

Pending events, Nimitz placed Fletcher in command of all Allied naval forces in the South Pacific area until Halsey arrived to assume command. Although the Coral Sea area was inside GEN MacArthur's SWPOA boundary and he was technically by American law and custom the theater commander, Fletcher and Halsey were ordered to report to ADM Nimitz alone, while in the Coral Sea area, not to GEN MacArthur. This was going to cause major problems as the battle unfolded, and cooperation between the American army and navy broke down. It would have repercussions at the Battle of Midway and during WATCHTOWER.

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

Japanese Submarines: Ro Ro Your Boats...

On April 18th and 20th, two Japanese submarines, the RO 33 and RO 35, which had sortied from Rabaul four days before, popped up near the planned landing points just south of Walter Bay near Port Moresby on a direct beeline for the RAAF airbase just northeast of Port Moresby city proper. It was a stupid place to make such an attempted landing and the Japanese frogmen who successfully swam in to look the defenses over would so report to the commander of the South Sea Detachment. The western beaches in the vicinity of Boera, about twelve miles up the coast from Fairfax Bay offered a better landing spot for transports that would probably have to beach themselves on a sand bottom because of the shortage of landing barges and disembarkation lighters for the IJA troops to get ashore.

The two Japanese submarines took touristy photos of Rossel Island and the Deboyne Group anchorage in the Louisiade Archipelago on their return trip, made soundings of the Jomard Channel, and they charted the invasion convoy route to Port Moresby from Rabaul in reverse. They performed a proper and professional reconnaissance of it, and did not notice the USS Mudfish trailing them. LT(s.g.) O. E. Hagberg had his orders, which did not include sinking these two snoopers... yet. He was supposed to keep an eye on them, follow them back to Rabaul and report back what he found when he cleared datum. The Japanese subs returned to Rabaul on 23 April and 24 April 1942. The Mudfish made it back to Moresby on 28 April 1942. MacArthur had their report in his hands by 30 April and the allies knew kickoff for MO would be no later than 1 May. The Mudfish even gave them pictures of what they would be up against. It is significant to note that LT Hagberg's Mudfish made her trip almost entirely by snort and was undetected going and coming. THIS little fact was also to have some consequences during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

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

Subs at Play:

As one can see, LT Hagberg has a problem when he tracks the RO 33 south by southwest for approximately 180 km. He looks through his Number Two periscope and finds another sub has rendezvoused with his target. Both unknown subs yak at each other for a bit on a talk between ships (TBS) radio channel and are as bold as you please on the surface, apparently contemptuous of RAAF air or RAN surface patrols out of Port Moresby. The Mudfish has her radio masts up with her snort and she copies this radio chatter since she is close enough, but since Hagberg has no Japanese language speakers aboard; it is all Greek to his officers, crew and him. Like a good picket-sub operator, though, Hagberg does have a radioman signaler who maintains his equipment well, which includes the recording equipment. The radio chatter recording will make its way to MacArthur's Signals Intelligence Service, where the Australian personnel assigned to support the SIS^1 were crucial in data mining it quickly enough for the results to be useful for the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Hagberg ran behind the two Japanese submarines as per USN target trail doctrine; until the Japanese submarines split apart about five kilometers south of DeBoyne Atoll. Hagberg had a decision to make; which one to follow? He chose to follow the new one which had wandered off east on its own to sniff around Rossel Island. Mudfish did likewise. It could have been a mistake, but Hagberg had a bit of luck as the unknown RO turned north and headed for Rabaul, as Hagberg had anticipated. The Mudfish followed.

And took lots of lovely pictures for a full ten hours, before Hagberg turned the Mudfish around and ran back to Port Moresby. And the rest is history. Hagberg earned an unusual Distinguished Service Cross (Army DSC) from MacArthur which sort of torqued off VADM Leary at the time. Curiously, the Navy only thought it was worth a Distinguished Service Medal (DSM).

^1 The Australians really have been screwed over by British and American popular history. FRUMEL was the first warning post to alert CINCPAC about Operation MI, not HYPO. An American, using an American built RED machine (IBM made copy of a Japanese encrypter.) was the final message breaker of the Yamamoto OP-order in Melbourne, but it was the AUSTRALIANS who picked it up from their listening posts and many of them participated in the grunt mathematics involved that tore into the text.

(Edited to make sure the right sub is present to lead the Mudfish into Rabaul. (RO-34 has already been sunk, confound it!), flesh out Hagberg's story and to give proper credit to the Australians for the work they did in our RTL and also will do ITTL in this story.)

 

[phx1138]

IJN-39, 40, 152 and 167 were all used for Merchant traffic.... and thus might be termed Maru codes.


IJN-39 was in use prewar and was used for ship movenebts.
It was broken by Hypo from mid 1940 (ie. in peacetime ) but by "soft" methods only.

Unfortunately -39 was lost as a source in mid 41 when the US botched an attempt to steal physical material from a Japanese ship in a US port.
(They got a copy of the code book etc but the intrusion was noticed)
Hence IJN-40 was rapidly introduced

Initially -40 was unreadable by any of the Allies partly because its format had been badly evaluated.
Around September 42 the Japanese made a series of operational errors that allowed the British team at Kalindi to work out the true form of the cipher
and thus create a breaking method that allowed them to read not only current traffic but all the recorded material as well.

AIUI IJN-152 was a very simple code used for broadcast navigational warnings from late 41 but also unreadable at the time.
IJN-167 was based on similar technology but somewhat harder to crack so probably carried similar level material at a similar time.

In any case, perhaps aided by their win on IJN-40, the British at Kalindi cracked these before the end of 42.
They shared all three insights with the USN.

I would think this these three British breakthroughs combined are the Maru Code Blair refers to as being broken in Jan 43.

1. The 41 attempt was made in San Francisco aboard a whale factory ship, the Nishan Maru, that was being port inspected and was bungled by a US Customs officer George Muller and Commander R. P. McCullough of the 12th Naval District who, both, made a spur of the moment bad decision.
2. The Japanese sent a series of message repeats picked up by Pacific stations forwarded as farm work to Kilindini, Kenya. The source of the solution is credited to John MacInnes and Brian Townend who recognized the 19th century set substitution table and column transposition nature (logical as Japanese is written that way.). The reason the USN was having fits was because their codebreakers originally thought the breakouts were based on book phrase tables and a RED cipher machine; like JN-25 was padded and keyed. It was all manual and simple when finally cracked.
3. JN 152 and 167 were the same exact setup. Just different repeats in the set substitutions and all manual. Not hard at all.

Thx for that.

Given Blair talks about the "'maru' code" being broken prewar & lost '41 thanks to the Customs officer (he doesn't name Muller or McCullough, who he names as ONI, believe it or not, but does name Nisshin Maru {Farago says Nisshin Maru #2, IIRC}), it looks like the JN-39 & -40 systems were the ones meant.

Edit to fix a mistake Matt Murdock wouldn't make...

McKinney's Salmon at Truk ... Gene McKinney's Salmon ...off Japan

How I screwed this up, IDK....

So, retcon: Ken Hurd's Saury off Japan.

 

[McPherson]

Sugar mines. Yup, Uncle Joe's big secret gets stolen. Keep an eye on it.

 

[phx1138]

I started this to put I-168 out of action before Midway. It got a bit out of hand...
====================================================================================
10 April, Don McGregor's Gar arrives off the Bungo Suido. At 01.17 the very next day, McGregor sights a very large, fast oiler (estimated at 12,000 tons) heading for the straight at about 11 knots, at 6600yd. Keeping an eye on his SD radar for aircraft, McGregor tracks her for two hours before being satisfied he has her zigzag worked out and, at 03.41, having closed to 1250yd, he fires four bow torpedoes. Evidently misjudging the target's speed, two miss astern, but two hit, slowing the big oiler. Then an aircraft appears, driving Gar under and dropping four close bombs, which spring minor leaks. Staying close to the cripple, McGregor fires his last two bow tubes, scoring two more hits, bringing the oiler to a stop. A few minutes later, two more aircraft drop a total of eight bombs, only five close, none doing significant damage. After about an hour, the oiler gets underway again, at barely two knots, so McGregor puts two more bow torpedoes into her. She stops, and it takes nearly until dawn, but McGregor watches the fleet oiler Naruto (15,450 tons) sink.

13 April, just past midnight, McGregor picks up a medium-sized freighter at 6800yd, making 9 knots. He trails over an hour, before reaching firing position at 01.23, letting go with three bow torpedoes from 1200yd. One misses astern, but two hits are enough, and Ryujin Maru (6243 grt) goes down.

Just past evening twilight on 14 April, at 19.11, McGregor observes a large passenger freighter, estimated at 9000 tons, leaving the Bungo Suido, following the coast. From an initial range of 7750yd, McGregor attempts to close, but finds the big freighter, turning at least 15 knots and zigzagging radically, a difficult target, and it is 21.58 before he Gar reaches firing position at 1150yd. Given the size and speed of the target, McGregor fires all four stern tubes, only to have a sudden zig cause two to miss; the two hits prove enough, however.

15 April starts with McGregor detecting a large submarine (estimated to be the same size as Gar) at 5100yd, departing Japan, at 00.19. McGregor plots the I-boat's course as it bears southeast, making about 15 knots, and goes to flank speed surfaced, tracking by TBT and sonar, closing to 1400yd by 01.11 and firing a single stern torpedo. It hits aft the point of aim (the conning tower), and I-69 (1,575 tons) disappears. At 02.17, Gar's lookouts report another submarine, at 3000yd; McGregor is surprised both by that and by the fact she appears identical to the other one. He tracks surfaced; the new target's lookouts are no better than the first's, and Gar reaches 1100yd at 02.59 without being detected. McGregor again fires a single stern tube; this torpedo hits as aimed, dead amidships, and I-71 (1,575 tons) blows up. Another contact at 04.02, on sonar at 5700yd, proves to be yet another submarine. (McGregor's patrol report wryly notes, "Commanding Officer wonders if Marx Brothers involved.") Undeterred by the repetivitveness, McGregor tracks on sonar, getting to 2500yd at 04.37, but this submarine's lookouts were evidently more alert, and it dives; McGregor takes a snap shot with three bow tubes, set at 10, 20, and 30 feet, and scores a single hit. It claims I-72 (1575 tons). Soon after daylight, at 05.29, McGregor spots yet another submarine departing, again being about 1600 tons making about 15 knots; his patrol report wonders if the entire Japanese submarine force is sailing in one day. He also detects aircraft patrolling overhead. McGregor contemplates surfacing to pursue, but calculates it's likely more I-boats will be coming, and instead pokes his radio aerial up and sends off a contact report to Radio Pearl. (This results in Bob Rice's Drum intercepting & sinking 1630-ton I-74.) McGregor's guess proves right; before the day is over, he will have detected and reported no less than four more I-boats, including I-75 (1630 tons), sunk later in the day by Pollack, and I-27 (2589 tons), sunk by McNight's Chicolar off Wake. McGregor's busy day doesn't stop there. At 19.37, he picks up a target on sonar, at a range of 6900yd. It turns out to be "the largest ship Commanding Officer has ever seen", as his patrol report records, an oiler estimated at 15,000 tons, doing about 10 knots. McGregor closes to intercept before the oiler reaches the protection of the minefield he suspects offshore, getting to 3500yd before an aircraft forces him to dive at 19.11; he fires four bow tubes. Three hits barely slow the giant ship; McGregor fires all four stern tubes, as well. The oiler stops, catching fire; at 20.39, a tug puts a line on the big oiler and attempts to take her in tow. McGregor fires one bow torpedo into the tug and two more into the oiler, which finally settles and sinks at 21.51. At 22.01, Gar's lookouts spot a medium-sized oiler (about 7000 tons), inbound, at 3800yd, making 9 knots. McGregor plots her zigzagging until 22.43, then fires all four stern tubes; all hit, and fleet oiler San Diego Maru (7269 grt) is sunk. No other single day for the duration will record so many contacts.

Just after morning twilight on 16 April, McGregor picks up a large I-boat on sonar (estimated at 2700 tons), inbound for Japan, at a range of 7450yd. Gambling he can avoid air patrols, he turns up flank speed to close, reaching 4000yd at 05.21, when an aircraft appears abruptly, with almost no warning from Gar's SD radar, forcing McGregor to dive. The I-boat escapes. (Postwar, it is learned this was the 2589-ton I-28, returning to Kure.) At 06.11, McGregor spots a minelayer exiting the straight, patrolling offshore and laying mines; McGregor plots the mine plants, but avoids contact at the risk of encountering mines. At 10.19, he detects another I-boat inbound, sister to the eariler boat, at 8000yd; seeing aircraft nearby on periscope examination, McGregor lets her go by. (Postwar, it is learned this was I-29, returning to Kure.)

17 April is is comparatively quiet, with only a single destroyer sighted departing; the last entry of the day in his patrol report is an ironic, "No submarines sighted all day."

The next day, at 03.37, McGregor spots a medium-sized transport coming into the Bungo Suido, at a range of 8100yd, turning 9 knots. He tracks until past morning twilight, reaching 1500yd at 04.31 and firing his last two stern torpedoes. Both hit, and repair ship Hakkai Maru (5114grt) goes down. At 16.21, he sights three Takao-class heavy cruisers exiting Bungo Suido, at high speed, from 11,000yd. Unable to even imagine gaining a firing position, he puts his radio aerial up and reports their sortie.

When McGregor returns to Pearl Harbor, he is credited with 10 ships for 59,000 tons. (Postwar, it is corrected to 66,788.) It is learned the very large oiler is, in fact, the former whale factory ship Kyokuyo Maru (17,549 grt). In his endorsement, English is mildly critical of his decision not to pursue the departing I-boats; Nimitz quietly lets it be known he agrees with McGregor. Postwar, it is learned the 9000 ton passenger freighter was, in fact, commerce raider Hokoku Maru (10,438 tons).

McGregor's Gar is replaced by Bob Rice's Drum.
====================================================================================
FYI, the AO Naruto is distinct from the ammo ship Naruto Maru. All these sinkings are OTL for name, date, (approximate) location, & tonnage (though Combined Fleet & Wikipedia disagree on it at times...). Eliot Olsen in Grayling got Ryujin Maru OTL, about 140mi further south & a bit further east.

The tincan sighted was Hayashio, which left Kure that day OTL.

For those of you too young to remember, the real Marx Brothers

Rice's patrol coming next. Patrols off Formosa in May after that.

Edit: One other thing, in case anybody's been wondering. The humorous asides, while mine, wouldn't have been entirely unheard of in patrol reports OTL (if not exactly routine, & frowned on by the very-regulation English).

 

[McPherson]

With so Many Gifts, What Is a CINCPAC Supposed to do?

The Japanese Port Moresby Invasion Force, commanded by RADM Abe, Kōsō; included eleven transport Marus from the eighteen ships planned (five of them having been sunk during the disastrous Lae and Salamaua expeditions), carrying a brigade’s worth of soldiers from the IJA's South Seas Detachment, down from the seven thousand planned (Guess why? 1,500 of them drowned when Wilson Brown’s TF 11 bombed those 5 transports.), plus approximately four companies of troops from the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF/500 men). Escorting the transports was the Port Moresby Attack Force with one light cruiser and six destroyers under the command of RADM Kajioka, Sadamichi. Abe's ships departed Rabaul for the 1,600 km (840 nmi; 970 mi) trip to Port Moresby on 4 May and were joined by Kajioka's force the next day. The ships moved at 15 km/h (8 kn; 9.2 mph), or at 4.16 m/s as American submariners would crank it into their torpedo data computers a bit later on. The Japanese, based on RO-33’s reconnaissance and soundings done the week previous, planned to transit the Jomard Channel in the Louisiade Islands to corner the southern tip of New Guinea. IGHQ expected them to arrive at Port Moresby by 10 May. The Allied garrison at Port Moresby numbered exactly five thousand three hundred thirty three men. (The Australians keep good records. ^^^^ See Order of Battle above.). Only half of the 30th Brigade were of the regular line infantry. They were badly equipped, recently recruited and rather undertrained for what they would face in the near future.

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

For the Tulagi leg of the Yoke Operation; there was the imaginatively named Tulagi Invasion Force. It was commended by the luckless RADM Shima, Kiyohide (One will find out in due course how this apple polisher and future victim of Surigao Strait earns the rather sad nickname “不運嶋翻訳無料” or “不運嶋” With the Shima name being an easy pun on the Japanese word for “island”, one immediately senses where, how and why the Australians, noted for their wry senses of humor, the transliterators breaking into his radio messages during the Battle of the Coral Sea, quickly started calling Shima, Kiyohide, “Shipwreck” Shima.). Shipwreck’s Tulagi Invasion Force consisted of a cruiser minelayer, a converted merchant Maru minelayer, two destroyers, six minesweepers (little better than ocean going trawlers), two sub-chasers and a rickety Maru carrying three companies (400 troops of the 3rd Kure SNLF and 600 Korean slave labor troops to build a dock and wharf for the intended seaplane base on Tulagi Island.).

To cover Shipwreck Shima was the close cover force (Close Cover Action Group; CCAG), commanded by RADM Gotō, Aritomo, another apple polisher who would earn his fated reward at the Battle of Cape Esperance. This force was built around the light carrier Shoho. The Shoho had been stripped of her best planes and pilots to make up for the attrition losses incurred by the 1st Air Fleet in the Indian Ocean Raid during April of 1942. Hence Shoho’s paper strength of sixteen fighters and fourteen torpedo bombers was actually, during the Battle of the Coral Sea; four A5M Claude and eight A6M Zero fighters for self-air defense. She carried six B5N2 Kate torpedo/level bombers; mostly to throw a scare into submarines, during this operation. With Shoho was assigned a division of four heavy cruisers and one destroyer. That was a curious screen force for an aircraft carrier, even a light one like Shoho, and leads one to conclude that somebody at IGHQ or maybe the Combined Fleet staff, who parceled out these ships from the central force pool for this cockamamie operation, was smoking hemp.

The proper screen force, under command of RADM Marumo, Kuninori, was instead attached directly to Shipwreck Shima’s invasion convoy. It consisted of two light cruisers, the seaplane tender Kamikawa Maru and three patrol gunboats. Everybody with Shipwreck was supposedly headed for Tulagi, which did not include RADM Abe’s transports. That bunch was supposed to wait north of the Jomard Passage until the Kure “marines” and the Koreans were put ashore on Tulagi. Then the whole Tulagi circus, Shima included, was supposed to join up with Abe; sail around the east end of Papua / New Guinea and (Change in plan!) land the South Sea Detachment west of Port Moresby instead of east as originally intended. The Japanese, contrary to popular opinion, loved to improvise at the last minute, even with such a complicated plan as Operation MO turned out to be. Unfortunately; as RADM Gotō, Aritomo and Shipwreck Shima will demonstrate, (and Hara, too.); the Japanese are often not very good at it.

Unusually, for the Japanese, VADM Inoue was not with the fleet, leading from the front, he was parked at Rabaul, aboard the 5,000 tonne light cruiser, Kashima; a Katori class light cruiser that might have been better employed as a screen ship for Shoho. The Katori cruisers were originally intended as sea cadet training ships: but with the war, were press ganged into new roles as tenders, admiral's command posts and escort squadron leaders. The Kashima lacked the radio facilities to manage a fleet or direct a complex operation as MO would turn out to be. In fact, it would be fair to suggest that VADM Inoue; deaf and blind as a result, could also be short-staffed as the berthing for a proper staff was as minimal as the communications provided. US destroyer leaders had better command facilities.

And let us not forget RADM Hara, Chūichi with the Carrier Strike Force, (SFCAG) composed of the CARDIV 5 fleet aircraft carriers Zuikaku and Shōkaku, This two carriers were provided a scraped up screen force of two heavy cruisers and six destroyers. These ships had never worked together before as a task force. The CARDIV and the screen were just jumbled together and expected to work as if they were a seasoned naval squadron. The strike force was actually commanded by VADM Takagi, Takeo Takagi who flagged off the heavy cruiser Myōkō. RADM Hara, Chūichi flagged on Zuikaku, as tactical commander of the carrier air forces. The SFCAG was to proceed down the northern and eastern side of the Solomon Islands, hook around and enter the Coral Sea south of Guadalcanal. Once in the Coral Sea, the carriers were to provide general aerial cover for the invasion forces, eliminate Allied air power at Port Moresby, and intercept and destroy any Allied naval forces which entered the Coral Sea in response from the east.

In other words, Hara and Takagi were supposed to be parked in position somewhat in the east of the Coral Sea to ambush any Americans who came into the Coral Sea from New Caledonia, while inoue's Rikkos at Rabaul and Lae struck from the north and northwest in a coordinated two axes attack plan.

There is only one problem with this "arms of the gorilla" tactical plan. For the one arm would be the Rikkos out of Lae and Rabaul, there is the problem of distance and timing. Japanese land based air would take hours to get to their targets and would be tracked on the way in. while Hara's carrier air wings were the other arm in the hug them to death naval conception of operations (con-op.). They would be unable to depend on the Rikkos to be where and when expected. Nobody, as of yet, had managed to pull off a perfectly-timed land-based air support of a surface fleet in a naval battle. And aircraft carriers, by their nature, could not be expected to be where the friendly air support was scheduled to find and coordinate with them either. Inoue's con-op would still try for a coordinated massed join-up over the Americans, but as it will prove, it will be the Americans who do it to him, entirely by accident with hilarious, well maybe not hilarious if you are Japanese, results.

The battle was only supposed to happen on the off chance that the "single American aircraft carrier present" (Inoue's estimate of his opposition's strength), dared to try another sucker punch as Wilson Brown had landed 10 March at Lae and Salamaua.

Aircraft are not gorillas, and aircraft carriers are not battleships. There is another problem with Inoue's intended master stroke. It is called the weather gauge or gage.

In layman's terms, the principle of seizing the wind position for maneuver advantage, had been mostly forgotten in the age of steam powered warships. As it was only about three generations since fighting sail, that seems unusual, and as the Japanese are the ones who screwed this idea up during Operation MO, and the specific Japanese admiral who forgot it, was their second best aircraft carrier theoretician; VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi; that makes it especially noticeable.

Winds in the Coral Sea blow from the southeast predominantly. To get the weather gage, a carrier task force admiral wants to position SOUTH and WEST of his enemy; so that he can either chase or run away from his adversary. Aircraft carriers in WW II were wind over deck machines that had to point into the wind to loft their overburdened planes. Even American aircraft carriers with some of the best catapults on earth for the purpose to throw planes into the air at crosswind conditions, had to operate most of the time at flank speed with wind over deck, that is Point Into The Wind.

OOPs.

One is ADM Chester W. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor at Fleet Operations, and one sees his staff lay out Inoue's final-con-op of the IGHQ plan on a tiled room floor naval gaming arena, what the USN calls a master plot, showing with a high degree of certainty what the Japanese expect to do right down to the day, hour and minute for Operation MO...

What does Nimitz say to his staff? "We have them."

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

 

[jlckansas]

With so Many Gifts, What Is a CINCPAC Supposed to do?



OOPs.

One is ADM Chester W. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor at Fleet Operations, and one sees his staff lay out Inoue's final-con-op of the IGHQ plan on a tiled room floor naval gaming arena, what the USN calls a master plot, showing with a high degree of certainty what the Japanese expect to do right down to the day, hour and minute for Operation MO...

What does Nimitz say to his staff? "We have them."

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

I can see in my minds eye, Henry Fonda as Nimitz in "In Harms Way" not "Midway", but with Hal Holbrook as Joe Rochefort in "Midway" wearing the bathrobe.

 

[phx1138]

With so Many Gifts, What Is a CINCPAC Supposed to do?

All very well said. I offer no commentary, because none is really needed. And asking WTF IJN was thinking is implicit.

What does Nimitz say to his staff? "We have them."

Prophetic words, indeed.

I would offer minor objection to Fonda as Nimitz, only to suggest, perhaps, somebody who looks more like him, if possible. (Norman Lloyd crosses my mind, but IDK if he can do it, & he's still a relative beginner at this time.) Should that not obtain...

 

[McPherson]

Took the Wrong Turn at Albuquerque

CARDIV 5 was supposed to bring nine Zeros to Rabaul in a ferry movement transfer from Truk to Rabaul as they entered VADM Inoue’s operation’s area and 4th Fleet command. Rotten weather caused two aborted fly-off transfer attempts made during 2 and 3 May 1942. One Zero crashed into the sea as a result with the loss of the pilot. It might have been considered a bad omen for those among the Japanese who believed in omens, but its practical effect was to still leave eight fighters in the CARDIV 5 flight groups and eight pilots that should not have been there for the Coral Sea fight. It was yet a mixed result, though, as the entire day Takagi wasted positioned 440 km (240 nmi; 280 mi) E/NE of Rabaul trying to perform a ferry mission, he had no business performing in the first place, was a precious day lost in trying to reach his Solomon Islands refueling point.

And here one has to remark briefly, about flank speed runs, aircraft carrier fuel-guzzling and tactical speeds. Aircraft carriers were and are floating fuel tanks thanks to the need to race into the wind needed to fly off aircraft. But consider what that does to the fuel consumption of all the ships with the aircraft carriers? Cruisers can more or less keep pace with the aircraft carriers with just their own onboard fuel because, well, they are cruisers. 15,000km (8,100 nmi; 9,320 mi) at cruise (somewhere between 16 - 24 km/h (8.6 – 13 knots ; 10 - 15 mi/h ) is nothing to these ships. They can go four days at near flank without too much trouble. But there are some ships that cannot keep that kind of pace up in an aircraft carrier centered task force and not de-ballast and run their tanks dry. Destroyers can run at most two to three days, before they either reduce speed or refuel. Then there is the aviation gas bunkerage. The American aircraft carriers never had enough storage for av-gas designed in for their huge air wings. RADM Hara, and his air staff, during the run up to max-tempo operations, seems to have not thought this problem through too clearly for the Japanese fleet aircraft carriers (CVs in USN ship ID symbology.). Takagi, the ex-Japanese submariner, was certainly clueless about how thirsty airplanes are. The likelihood of the aircraft carriers running out of aviation gas in the middle of an operation and thus being unable to operate aircraft at full capacity was a distinct fall-out of the bungled ferry mission and the potential missed refueling rendezvous north of Santa Isabel Island. It was VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi, who had thought this problem through and arranged that tanker rendezvous 160 km (90 nmi; 100 mi) north of Santa Isabel Island on 2 May precisely to meet the SFCAG and top her destroyers and off before Takagi took his motley collection of ships into the Coral Sea to position them behind the “one American aircraft carrier” and ambush it. The SFCAG would be a day late and not in position as expected, when Shipwreck Shima showed up off Tulagi island. That would throw the schedule off with disastrous results.

If VADM Inoue had managed to foresee the tanker support problem and still his subordinates bungled his solution, then someone else (CAPT Ishizaki, Noburu), mismanaged the submarine part of Operation MO on the Japanese end. The 6th Patrol Scouting Group, consisting of I-22, I-24, I-28 and I-29 were sent from Rabaul to form a scouting line about 830 km (450 nmi; 520 mi) southwest on a rough line of bearing of 200 degrees off true north (T); distant and passing through Guadalcanal; but laid out roughly southwest to northeast to give warning. The idea was that they would see the Americans race in from New Caledonia after the Tulagi Island landings, conduct their attack and report before the Americans were in range to bomb Shima’s Tulagi Island landing attempt from “their one aircraft carrier”. Does one get the distinct impression that VADM Inoue intended to use Shipwreck Shima as a staked out goat to lure the American lions into his “trap”? It would be the Japanese thing to do.

Patrol 6 dutifully deployed by 1 May and saw nothing and did nothing for the next week and a half. I-21, another 6th Patrol Scouting Squadron submarine went south to reconnoiter off Noumea, New Caledonia to see what the Americans were about. She was bombed on 2 May and missed by Yorktown aircraft (Dauntless dive bombers), while en-route to her snoop mission further south. It did not occur to her idiotic captain, CDR Kanji, Matsumura, to report to his higher headquarters that he had been bombed by American carrier borne aircraft just at the south boundary of the Coral Sea. As for our friends the RO 33 and RO 35, they returned to Port Moresby to mount a close blockade of the place until it was invaded, which they expected to happen on 10 May. LT Hagberg so wanted to torpedo them, but USS Mudfish was under strict orders. “Do not give the game away.”

LT(s.g.) Henry Glass Munson of the USS Machete had no such orders and no such limit. Somewhere in the middle of the Yves de Merlet, between southeastern New Caledonia and the Isle de Pins the USS Machete caught the I-21, on the surface at night (7-8 May local time about 0235 hours), trolling along doing a recharge. The Japanese lookouts must have been blindfolded and deaf. It was a last quarter moon, still bright, no clouds to obscure or hide anything. The USS Machete prowled semi-submerged on snort at 20 km/h (10 kn; 12.5 m/h) on her diesels no less, leaving a brilliant silver vee of a wake as her snort cut through the water on a flat sea. A standard three torpedo spread fired at 3000 to 3300 meters followed quickly, LT Munson must have been excited to see his first target and conduct his first attack, because he misjudged the I-21’s rate of advance and missed aft with two of the three fish. It did not matter though because the third one went gyro wild and corkscrewed left instead of right as US torpedoes, whose gyros tumbled, usually did. Boom. The I-21 would leave behind debris: a log book, a Buddha idol, some crew mementos and six prisoners to be picked up by the USS Machete, including our CDR Kanji, Matsumura, who would break quickly under interrogation. He told the American questioners all they wanted to hear about Operation MO, at least the part he knew of it.

From the other I-21 prisoners, the Americans also learned about the attempted machine gunning of the survivors of the USMV oil tanker Montebello, who abandoned ship and took to the lifeboats. Fortunately the I-21’s gunners were lousy shots and no-one was killed in the lifeboats, but clearly the intent to murder helpless civilians in defiance of prize rules of war was plainly evident. The Montebello was alone headed for Vancouver, Canada, when the I-21 caught her off the US west coast 23 December 1941 when she prowled there. This happened just north of Morro Bay near Cambria, California. It was a notorious episode that quickly made news headlines across California and showed the Americans on the US mainland just what kind of no-quarter war the Pacific War would be. That being the case, it was most unfortunate for CDR Kanji, Matsumura that his fellow crewmen were so willing to speak about the incident, after they were fished out of the water.^2

^1 I-21 was an energetic and pesky little submarine in OTL history. She participated in two major operations off the east Australian coast including the Sydney Harbor and Newcastle attacks of 31 May - 1 June 1942.^3 She was eventually JANAC credited with about 55,000 tonnes of Allied shipping sunk, and was among the most successful of the Japanese I-boats operating against SWPOA shipping.

^3 There is some evidence, that these Sydney / Newcastle attacks were as much a face-saving attempt by CAPT Ishizaki, Noburu to do something to somehow make up for his part in the Operation MO debacle. It must have worked, because he was promoted to RADM after that subsequent bungled Sydney / Newcastle operation. Somehow, one can only shake one’s head at the IJN’s peculiar actions at this period of the war.

^2 The Geneva protocols do not protect alleged war criminals.

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

Coincident in time with the Japanese submarine raids on Newcastle and Sydney was another operation mounted off the southeast coast of Africa, that seemed to indicate the Japanese had some kind of master strategic vision that was far reaching beyond Operation MO. The idea seemed to fit and many of the allied high command, particularly the RN, bought into the thesis that the Japanese were about to resume offensive operations into the Indian Ocean.

Consider: the British had lost HMS Royal Oak to a German U-boat infiltration attack on 14 October 1939. The Italians damaged HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth in an infiltration attack 18 December 1941 at Alexandria harbor, Egypt. Now the HMS Ramillies had her bottom holed by a Japanese attack at Diego Suarez, Madegascar during the British invasion of the Vichy colony.

The RN reacted badly to the last incident, rushing ASW forces to the Indian Ocean. They even went so far as to advise the Americans to expect the IJN to expand operations to the west of Australia.

That was not what drove the latest apparent Japanese Yoke Operation. It was an illusion, ungrounded in the reality of what the Japanese actually did. (RTL and ITTL).

It was simply a case of the IJN trying to mount a low-cost shock operation TO DIVERT British forces out of the North Atlantic to ease pressure on the German U-boat arm which was suffering its first serious RTL losses at the hands of the RN ASW forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. This was the conclusion the USN reached after the British raised their concerns. In part it might have been the USN's own bias and certain knowledge that the IJN was after PACFlt and that any operation the Japanese mounted against the British was salted noodles and milk gravy on a skittle. Just a quick meal to whet an appetite for the wrong follow up course.

Of course, there might have been a bit of King involved, too.

 

[phx1138]

Looking at my maps, I've realized I boobed badly. Kure is fully 2 days' sailing from the exit to the Bungo Suido at 10 knots...so my last post needs a rewrite.

So, retcon to this:
====================================================================================
10 April, Don McGregor's Gar arrives off the Bungo Suido.

13 April, just past midnight, McGregor picks up a medium-sized freighter at 6800yd, making 9 knots. He trails over an hour, before reaching firing position at 01.23, letting go with three bow torpedoes from 1200yd. One misses astern, but two hits are enough, and Ryujin Maru (6243 grt) goes down.

At 01.17 the next day, McGregor sights a very large, fast oiler (estimated at 12,000 tons) heading for the straight at about 11 knots, at 6600yd. Keeping an eye on his SD radar for aircraft, McGregor tracks her for two hours before being satisfied he has her zigzag worked out and, at 03.41, having closed to 1250yd, he fires four bow torpedoes. Evidently misjudging the target's speed, two miss astern, but two hit, slowing the big oiler. Then an aircraft appears, driving Gar under and dropping four close bombs, which spring minor leaks. Staying close to the cripple, McGregor fires his last two bow tubes, scoring two more hits, bringing the oiler to a stop. A few minutes later, two more aircraft drop a total of eight bombs, only five close, none doing significant damage. After about an hour, the oiler gets underway again, at barely two knots, so McGregor puts two more bow torpedoes into her. She stops, and it takes nearly until dawn, but McGregor watches the fleet oiler Naruto (15,450 tons) sink.

Just past evening twilight on 16 April, at 19.11, McGregor observes a large passenger freighter, estimated at 9000 tons, leaving the Bungo Suido, following the coast. From an initial range of 7750yd, McGregor attempts to close, but finds the big freighter, turning at least 15 knots and zigzagging radically, a difficult target, and it is 21.58 before he Gar reaches firing position at 1150yd. Given the size and speed of the target, McGregor fires all four stern tubes, only to have a sudden zig cause two to miss; the two hits prove enough, however.

17 April starts with McGregor detecting a large submarine (estimated to be the same size as Gar) at 5100yd, departing Japan, at 00.19. McGregor plots the I-boat's course as it bears southeast, making about 15 knots, and goes to flank speed surfaced, tracking by TBT and sonar, closing to 1400yd by 01.11 and firing a single stern torpedo. It hits aft the point of aim (the conning tower), and I-69 (1,575 tons) disappears. At 02.17, Gar's lookouts report another submarine, at 3000yd; McGregor is surprised both by that and by the fact she appears identical to the other one. He tracks surfaced; the new target's lookouts are no better than the first's, and Gar reaches 1100yd at 02.59 without being detected. McGregor again fires a single stern tube; this torpedo hits as aimed, dead amidships, and I-71 (1,575 tons) blows up. Another contact at 04.02, on sonar at 5700yd, proves to be yet another submarine. (McGregor's patrol report wryly notes, "Commanding Officer wonders if Marx Brothers involved.") Undeterred by the repetivitveness, McGregor tracks on sonar, getting to 2500yd at 04.37, but this submarine's lookouts were evidently more alert, and it dives; McGregor takes a snap shot with three bow tubes, set at 10, 20, and 30 feet, and scores a single hit. It claims I-72 (1575 tons). Soon after daylight, at 05.29, McGregor spots yet another submarine departing, again being about 1600 tons making about 15 knots; his patrol report wonders if the entire Japanese submarine force is sailing in one day. He also detects aircraft patrolling overhead. McGregor contemplates surfacing to pursue, but calculates it's likely more I-boats will be coming, and instead pokes his radio aerial up and sends off a contact report to Radio Pearl. (This results in Bob Rice's Drum intercepting & sinking 1630-ton I-74.) McGregor's guess proves right; before the day is over, he will have detected and reported no less than four more I-boats, including I-75 (1630 tons), sunk later in the day by Pollack, and I-27 (2589 tons), sunk by McNight's Chicolar off Wake.

The next day, at 03.37, McGregor spots a medium-sized transport coming into the Bungo Suido, at a range of 8100yd, turning 9 knots. He tracks until past morning twilight, reaching 1500yd at 04.31 and firing his last two stern torpedoes. Both hit, and repair ship Hakkai Maru (5114grt) goes down. At 16.21, he sights three Takao-class heavy cruisers exiting Bungo Suido, at high speed, from 11,000yd. Unable to even imagine gaining a firing position, he puts his radio aerial up and reports their sortie.
Just after morning twilight, McGregor picks up a large I-boat on sonar (estimated at 2700 tons), inbound for Japan, at a range of 7450yd. Gambling he can avoid air patrols, he turns up flank speed to close, reaching 4000yd at 05.21, when an aircraft appears abruptly, with almost no warning from Gar's SD radar, forcing McGregor to dive. The I-boat escapes. (Postwar, it is learned this was the 2589-ton I-28, returning to Kure.) At 06.11, McGregor spots a minelayer exiting the straight, patrolling offshore and laying mines; McGregor plots the mine plants, but avoids contact at the risk of encountering mines. At 10.19, he detects another I-boat inbound, sister to the eariler boat, at 8000yd; seeing aircraft nearby on periscope examination, McGregor lets her go by. (Postwar, it is learned this was I-29, returning to Kure.)

Early on 19 April, McGregor sights a single destroyer sighted departing. At 19.37, he picks up a target on sonar, at a range of 6900yd. It turns out to be "the largest ship Commanding Officer has ever seen", as his patrol report records, an oiler estimated at 15,000 tons, doing about 10 knots. McGregor closes to intercept before the oiler reaches the protection of the minefield he suspects offshore, getting to 3500yd before an aircraft forces him to dive at 19.11; he fires four bow tubes. Three hits barely slow the giant ship; McGregor fires all four stern tubes, as well. The oiler stops, catching fire; at 20.39, a tug puts a line on the big oiler and attempts to take her in tow. McGregor fires one bow torpedo into the tug and two more into the oiler, which finally settles and sinks at 21.51. At 22.01, Gar's lookouts spot a medium-sized oiler (about 7000 tons), inbound, at 3800yd, making 9 knots. McGregor plots her zigzagging until 22.43, then fires all four stern tubes; all hit, and fleet oiler San Diego Maru (7269 grt) is sunk.

When McGregor returns to Pearl Harbor, he is credited with 10 ships for 59,000 tons. (Postwar, it is corrected to 66,788.) It is learned the very large oiler is, in fact, the former whale factory ship Kyokuyo Maru (17,549 grt). In his endorsement, English is mildly critical of his decision not to pursue the departing I-boats; Nimitz quietly lets it be known he agrees with McGregor. Postwar, it is learned the 9000 ton passenger freighter was, in fact, commerce raider Hokoku Maru (10,438 tons).
================================================================
This is, regrettably, less amusing...but it gets the transit times roughly right (I hope!).

Edit: Since I'm less certain Combined Fleet is dead accurate, & since you might want to know...

I'm getting departure dates both from Combined Fleet & from here. (The book link gives different results each time I restarted my browser, or I wouldn't have gotten all of April.)

For time of sunrise, sunset, & twilight, I used this page, & for transit times & distance, this page.

Edit 2:

mismanaged the submarine part of Operation MO on the Japanese end. The 6th Patrol Scouting Group, consisting of I-22, I-24, I-28 and I-29

It could as easily have consisted of I-22 alone, except the others got past McGregor. (Thanks to fair warning from McPherson.)

It did not occur to her idiotic captain, CDR Kanji, Matsumura, to report to his higher headquarters that he had been bombed by American carrier borne aircraft

In his defense, if IJN experience is anything like USN, he may have mistaken them for Japanese as he dived out from under.

The Japanese lookouts must have been blindfolded and deaf. It was a last quarter moon, still bright, no clouds to obscure or hide anything. The USS Machete prowled semi-submerged on snort at 20 km/h (10 kn; 12.5 m/h) on her diesels no less, leaving a brilliant silver vee of a wake as her snort cut through the water on a flat sea.

That's worse than anything I've done to any Japanese lookout anywhere. Who was on duty, Max Carrados? (No, he'd have noticed...)

Munson must have been excited ...because he misjudged the I-21’s rate of advance

Not necessarily. It's easy to do, even with experience. Turn counts don't produce dead-reliable results, when combined with all the other stuff that's involved. And 3000yd is a pretty long shot. (I also have to say, IDK if I'd have used 3 fish on a target where one would do it...)

about a dozen prisoners to be picked up

That frankly surprises me: both that they'd let themselves be taken, & that so many would be able to get clear of a sinking sub. (What's the count? 4 lookouts, OOD, maybe the CO or XO on the bridge, maybe a couple of lucky guys getting out the conn hatch before it goes under, flooding like Niagara... I'd doubt any out the escape trunk.)

 

[corditeman]

A Dozen does seem high...

...Six, max, and some might suicide by deliberately avoiding being taken...

...There is at least one example of this in 'One Of Our Submarines ' by Edward Young

 

[McPherson]

It could as easily have consisted of I-22 alone, except the others got past McGregor. (Thanks to fair warning from McPherson.)

Not my fault. OOB and position data off of Combined Fleet.

In his defense, if IJN experience is anything like USN, he may have mistaken them for Japanese as he dived out from under.

If its mustard brown yellow, with a faded cream underbelly, with a short greenhouse canopy, orange disks on the wings, and a fixed undercarriage, its us, Senzi. If its ALL DARK BLUE with a WHITE STAR on its wings, a long greenhouse canopy and retracted landing gear, its THEM.

That's worse than anything I've done to any Japanese lookout anywhere. Who was on duty, Max Carrados? (No, he'd have noticed...)

These aren't the Marx Brothers, these are the Ritz Brothers.

Not necessarily. It's easy to do, even with experience. Turn counts don't produce dead-reliable results, when combined with all the other stuff that's involved. And 3000yd is a pretty long shot. (I also have to say, IDK if I'd have used 3 fish on a target where one would do it...)

SubLANT trained (See above for this.). Munson may have been calm as ice in training but a first shoot in war?

That frankly surprises me: both that they'd let themselves be taken, & that so many would be able to get clear of a sinking sub. (What's the count? 4 lookouts, OOD, maybe the CO or XO on the bridge, maybe a couple of lucky guys getting out the conn hatch before it goes under, flooding like Niagara... I'd doubt any out the escape trunk.)

Remember that German that went down in the Atlantic? (^^^). No survivors because she was snapped and popped by at least two that hit her in the mid hull. This torpedo hit I-21 astern in the props. She was pranged. Took the I-21 a few seconds to go down. Enough time for enough of the crew topside (six of them) to be blown clear to be picked up and taken prisoner. The Machete fished them out without much resistance. Shock is my explanation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Note: I cut it from twelve to six, but it is six. Got to have enough witnesses to explain the rest of the ITTL plot.

 

[Butchpfd]

Looking at my maps, I've realized I boobed badly. Kure is fully 2 days' sailing from the exit to the Bungo Suido at 10 knots...so my last post needs a rewrite.

So, retcon to this:
==============================================================================================
10 April, Don McGregor's Gar arrives off the Bungo Suido.

13 April, just past midnight, McGregor picks up a medium-sized freighter at 6800yd, making 9 knots. He trails over an hour, before reaching firing position at 01.23, letting go with three bow torpedoes from 1200yd. One misses astern, but two hits are enough, and Ryujin Maru (6243 grt) goes down.

At 01.17 the next day, McGregor sights a very large, fast oiler (estimated at 12,000 tons) heading for the straight at about 11 knots, at 6600yd. Keeping an eye on his SD radar for aircraft, McGregor tracks her for two hours before being satisfied he has her zigzag worked out and, at 03.41, having closed to 1250yd, he fires four bow torpedoes. Evidently misjudging the target's speed, two miss astern, but two hit, slowing the big oiler. Then an aircraft appears, driving Gar under and dropping four close bombs, which spring minor leaks. Staying close to the cripple, McGregor fires his last two bow tubes, scoring two more hits, bringing the oiler to a stop. A few minutes later, two more aircraft drop a total of eight bombs, only five close, none doing significant damage. After about an hour, the oiler gets underway again, at barely two knots, so McGregor puts two more bow torpedoes into her. She stops, and it takes nearly until dawn, but McGregor watches the fleet oiler Naruto (15,450 tons) sink.

Just past evening twilight on 16 April, at 19.11, McGregor observes a large passenger freighter, estimated at 9000 tons, leaving the Bungo Suido, following the coast. From an initial range of 7750yd, McGregor attempts to close, but finds the big freighter, turning at least 15 knots and zigzagging radically, a difficult target, and it is 21.58 before he Gar reaches firing position at 1150yd. Given the size and speed of the target, McGregor fires all four stern tubes, only to have a sudden zig cause two to miss; the two hits prove enough, however.

17 April starts with McGregor detecting a large submarine (estimated to be the same size as Gar) at 5100yd, departing Japan, at 00.19. McGregor plots the I-boat's course as it bears southeast, making about 15 knots, and goes to flank speed surfaced, tracking by TBT and sonar, closing to 1400yd by 01.11 and firing a single stern torpedo. It hits aft the point of aim (the conning tower), and I-69 (1,575 tons) disappears. At 02.17, Gar's lookouts report another submarine, at 3000yd; McGregor is surprised both by that and by the fact she appears identical to the other one. He tracks surfaced; the new target's lookouts are no better than the first's, and Gar reaches 1100yd at 02.59 without being detected. McGregor again fires a single stern tube; this torpedo hits as aimed, dead amidships, and I-71 (1,575 tons) blows up. Another contact at 04.02, on sonar at 5700yd, proves to be yet another submarine. (McGregor's patrol report wryly notes, "Commanding Officer wonders if Marx Brothers involved.") Undeterred by the repetivitveness, McGregor tracks on sonar, getting to 2500yd at 04.37, but this submarine's lookouts were evidently more alert, and it dives; McGregor takes a snap shot with three bow tubes, set at 10, 20, and 30 feet, and scores a single hit. It claims I-72 (1575 tons). Soon after daylight, at 05.29, McGregor spots yet another submarine departing, again being about 1600 tons making about 15 knots; his patrol report wonders if the entire Japanese submarine force is sailing in one day. He also detects aircraft patrolling overhead. McGregor contemplates surfacing to pursue, but calculates it's likely more I-boats will be coming, and instead pokes his radio aerial up and sends off a contact report to Radio Pearl. (This results in Bob Rice's Drum intercepting & sinking 1630-ton I-74.) McGregor's guess proves right; before the day is over, he will have detected and reported no less than four more I-boats, including I-75 (1630 tons), sunk later in the day by Pollack, and I-27 (2589 tons), sunk by McNight's Chicolar off Wake.

The next day, at 03.37, McGregor spots a medium-sized transport coming into the Bungo Suido, at a range of 8100yd, turning 9 knots. He tracks until past morning twilight, reaching 1500yd at 04.31 and firing his last two stern torpedoes. Both hit, and repair ship Hakkai Maru (5114grt) goes down. At 16.21, he sights three Takao-class heavy cruisers exiting Bungo Suido, at high speed, from 11,000yd. Unable to even imagine gaining a firing position, he puts his radio aerial up and reports their sortie.
Just after morning twilight, McGregor picks up a large I-boat on sonar (estimated at 2700 tons), inbound for Japan, at a range of 7450yd. Gambling he can avoid air patrols, he turns up flank speed to close, reaching 4000yd at 05.21, when an aircraft appears abruptly, with almost no warning from Gar's SD radar, forcing McGregor to dive. The I-boat escapes. (Postwar, it is learned this was the 2589-ton I-28, returning to Kure.) At 06.11, McGregor spots a minelayer exiting the straight, patrolling offshore and laying mines; McGregor plots the mine plants, but avoids contact at the risk of encountering mines. At 10.19, he detects another I-boat inbound, sister to the eariler boat, at 8000yd; seeing aircraft nearby on periscope examination, McGregor lets her go by. (Postwar, it is learned this was I-29, returning to Kure.)

Early on 19 April, McGregor sights a single destroyer sighted departing. At 19.37, he picks up a target on sonar, at a range of 6900yd. It turns out to be "the largest ship Commanding Officer has ever seen", as his patrol report records, an oiler estimated at 15,000 tons, doing about 10 knots. McGregor closes to intercept before the oiler reaches the protection of the minefield he suspects offshore, getting to 3500yd before an aircraft forces him to dive at 19.11; he fires four bow tubes. Three hits barely slow the giant ship; McGregor fires all four stern tubes, as well. The oiler stops, catching fire; at 20.39, a tug puts a line on the big oiler and attempts to take her in tow. McGregor fires one bow torpedo into the tug and two more into the oiler, which finally settles and sinks at 21.51. At 22.01, Gar's lookouts spot a medium-sized oiler (about 7000 tons), inbound, at 3800yd, making 9 knots. McGregor plots her zigzagging until 22.43, then fires all four stern tubes; all hit, and fleet oiler San Diego Maru (7269 grt) is sunk.

When McGregor returns to Pearl Harbor, he is credited with 10 ships for 59,000 tons. (Postwar, it is corrected to 66,788.) It is learned the very large oiler is, in fact, the former whale factory ship Kyokuyo Maru (17,549 grt). In his endorsement, English is mildly critical of his decision not to pursue the departing I-boats; Nimitz quietly lets it be known he agrees with McGregor. Postwar, it is learned the 9000 ton passenger freighter was, in fact, commerce raider Hokoku Maru (10,438 tons).
================================================================
This is, regrettably, less amusing...but it gets the transit times roughly right (I hope!).

Edit: Since I'm less certain Combined Fleet is dead accurate, & since you might want to know...

I'm getting departure dates both from Combined Fleet & from here. (The book link gives different results each time I restarted my browser, or I wouldn't have gotten all of April.)

For time of sunrise, sunset, & twilight, I used this page, & for transit times & distance, this page.

Edit 2:

It could as easily have consisted of I-22 alone, except the others got past McGregor. (Thanks to fair warning from McPherson.)

In his defense, if IJN experience is anything like USN, he may have mistaken them for Japanese as he dived out from under.

That's worse than anything I've done to any Japanese lookout anywhere. Who was on duty, Max Carrados? (No, he'd have noticed...)

Not necessarily. It's easy to do, even with experience. Turn counts don't produce dead-reliable results, when combined with all the other stuff that's involved. And 3000yd is a pretty long shot. (I also have to say, IDK if I'd have used 3 fish on a target where one would do it...)

That frankly surprises me: both that they'd let themselves be taken, & that so many would be able to get clear of a sinking sub. (What's the count? 4 lookouts, OOD, maybe the CO or XO on the bridge, maybe a couple of lucky guys getting out the conn hatch before it goes under, flooding like Niagara... I'd doubt any out the escape trunk.)

Then again could have been crewmen allowed up for fresh air, or doing repairs on something topside..

 

[mattep74]

You really like sinking submarines with other submarines dont you ?

 

[phx1138]

Not my fault. OOB and position data off of Combined Fleet.

No, I meant because you already had the OOB posted & them committed, or they wouldn't have gotten out of Home Waters safely; I was working in-TL "past" (so to speak), & you made "changing their past" problematic.

If its mustard brown yellow, with a faded cream underbelly, with a short greenhouse canopy, orange disks on the wings, and a fixed undercarriage, its us, Senzi. If its ALL DARK BLUE with a WHITE STAR on its wings, a long greenhouse canopy and retracted landing gear, its THEM.

Fair 'nuf.

These aren't the Marx Brothers, these are the Ritz Brothers.

It belongs in a farce either way.

SubLANT trained (See above for this.). Munson may have been calm as ice in training but a first shoot in war?

Well... Not impossible. IIRC, Munson's first OTL shot was better, but I won't rely on recall any more...

Remember that German that went down in the Atlantic? (^^^). No survivors because she was snapped and popped by at least two that hit her in the mid hull. This torpedo hit I-21 astern in the props. She was pranged. Took the I-21 a few seconds to go down. Enough time for enough of the crew topside (six of them) to be blown clear to be picked up and taken prisoner. The Machete fished them out without much resistance. Shock is my explanation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Note: I cut it from twelve to six, but it is six. Got to have enough witnesses to explain the rest of the ITTL plot.

Six I can believe.

Then again could have been crewmen allowed up for fresh air, or doing repairs on something topside..

Conceivable, but a bit on the dumb side... Then again, this is an IJN sub...

You really like sinking submarines with other submarines dont you ?

It did happen a fair bit OTL, in PTO. TTL, the torpedoes being better & numbers of boats higher, it's more likely Sub Force will have somebody where there are I-boats to sink, & will sink them... And when they do stupid things (like shelling Los Angeles) & make themselves targets...

Truth be told, I suspect more I-boats were lost to operational casualty than enemy action...

 

[McPherson]

Yankee Doodle came to Sea to Fish in Coral Waters; Some Spotted Char^1 Had Swum Too Far and So Begins the Slaughters…

^1 A domestic Japanese fish

On the morning of 1 May, TF-17 (Fletcher / Yorktown) and TF-11 (Fitch / Lexington) united about 560 km (300 nmi: 350 mi) northwest of New Caledonia at 16°16′S 162°20′E. RADM Fletcher immediately detached TF-11 to refuel its ships from the oiler (AO), Tippecanoe; while TF-17 refueled from the AO Neosho. TF 17 completed refueling the next day, but TF-11 reported difficulties in their evolution; that they would not be finished topping off from the AO Tippecanoe until 4 May two days later than scheduled because of the engineering casualty aboard the AO and time needed for repairs. This misfortune immediately threw the same kind of monkey wrench into the American counter-ambush operation that Takagi’s bungled plane ferry mission had thrown into the Japanese planned ambush. It probably was a cause that would lead to Lexington’s loss. It certainly is the reason why neither the Americans nor the Japanese were able to ambush each other, but instead fought a confused naval air meeting engagement instead.

Now RADM Fletcher, revealing his total inexperience concerning naval aviation operations and against the measured cautious advice of Yorktown’s aviator captain and commander air group (CAG) made a serious mistake. He elected to take TF-17 northwest, independently, towards the Louisiades to attack the Port Moresby Invasion Convoy and ordered TF-11 after it finished fueling to meet TF-44, which was en-route from Sydney and Nouméa to join it at a fixed rendezvous on 4 May once TF-11’s refueling was complete. TF-44 was a joint American / Australian surface action group, an independent naval force chopped to MacArthur's SWPOA command and answerable directly to him, led by the experienced Australian RADM John Crace. The SAG contained the heavy cruisers HMAS Australia (County Class) and USS Chicago (Northampton Class), the light cruiser HMS Hobart (Leander Class) along with three American destroyers. How it was to be used in conjunction with Fitch’s Lexington task force, Fletcher had not spelled out to Fitch. This was Fletcher’s second mistake and again it was a serious one. Fletcher’s third mistake, and it was, on paper, his most serious error during the entire pre-battle phase: was to leave Aubrey Fitch; arguably despite the Halsey lobby’s contention to the contrary, the most experienced and competent AVIATOR American aircraft carrier admiral and air tactician serving in the USN at the time. Along with leaving behind Fitch, Fletcher lost the services of the irascible super-genius, CAPT Frederick Sherman, of the USS Lexington, which compounded that error. It was only the incredible ineptitude of Takagi, Takeo and the over-aggressiveness of Goto, Aritomo and a lot of American luck, inadvertently supplied by the shrewd positioning of American submarines, especially Chapple’s Choppers, a wolfpack of two SUBDIV 53 subs and 201 subs and the USS Modok (LTCDR E. J. MacGregor, 3rd) again of SUBDIV 53 which had been posted independently as a patroller watchdog off San Cristobol Point SE of Mariko Island that saved CV Yorktown from VADM Inoue’s “arms of the gorilla” trap.

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Notes: Too many historians with pseudo-hindsight; until Lundstrom finally rehabilitated Frank Jack Fletcher with more recent knowledge of what Fletcher knew and believed; are quick to condemn the American admiral for splitting his forces in two the way he did before the Battle of the Coral Sea commenced. Exactly what Fletcher thought and planned, even Lundstrom cannot present in Black Shoe Admiral for Fletcher never left a primary record or memoir to explain his actions, but Lundstrom presents an interesting hypothesis. Lundstrom speculates that Fletcher was gambling that he had enough time, where he could race in; that he could punch Abe's invasion convoy hard, much like Wilson Brown had done before to the Japanese at Lae and Salamaua in his 10 March flight over the Owen Stanley Mountains raid. Fletcher could then retreat south before Takagi's task force made it through the San Cristobol Passage. Fletcher plausibly could retire back upon Fitch and Crace at the second rendezvous point; unite with them and position himself near Cairns and Townsville under Allied land-based air-cover. He would dare the Japanese to come at him. It would of necessity give up Tulagi, but it would defend Port Moresby and force the Japanese to fight at an aerial disadvantage; if Fletcher could pull it off.

If true, it still does not explain why Fletcher changed course and intent upon hearing from MacArthur’s SWPOA HQ about Shipwreck Shima’s landings at Tulagi which B-17 aircraft flying reconnaissance discovered on 2-3 May. We have no record of why Fletcher suddenly changed his mind.

*********************************************************************

Tulagi or Too Lag-ee

It Appears to be One Leggee...

You really like sinking submarines with other submarines don't you ?

Yes I do. Wait until I get around to the Weather War and see what happens there.

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

 

[phx1138]

Yankee Doodle came to Sea to Fish in Coral Waters; Some Spotted Char Had Swum Too Far and So Begins the Slaughters…

Another fine piece of work.

I have to agree, I'd love to know what Fletcher was thinking--& not just here.

 

[McPherson]

Father and I Went down to Sea Along with Captain Chapple; And With the Char Who Came Too Far; We Commenced to Grapple.

Shipwreck Shima arrived off Tulagi a few hours ahead of schedule on 3 May 1942. If the element of surprise had remained intact, this would have been all to the good, but as an Australian coast-watcher, Jack Read, perched on Buka Island just off Bougainville had good relations with the local Melanesians, he had eyes out for such a movement in those people. These fishermen had gone out to catch some finback and tuna. They caught those fish, all right, because the Melanesians are good fisherman. But they had also counted all the strange ships which paraded past them and noticed the rising sun flags flapping from the lot of them. The fishermen returned to Buka to tell their tail of the steel canoes and that news was soon on its way to Townsville by 2 May 1942. The SWPAO air command at the top (LTGEN Brett and LTGEN Brereton) may have been clueless about what to do with the information, and MGEN Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, may have meddled too much, but COL Richard H. Carmichael was not a fool, and once he had the information passed down to him, at the RAAF station at Garbutt; just outside Townsville, Australia; sent out a B17R (Captain Harl Pease Jr. pilot / commander), to have a look. Captain Pease overflew Shima, Kiyohide’s straggling convoy north of Giza near Kolombangara and broke radio silence to announce; “Hey! I have about two dozen unknown ships, near Kolombangara, headed south east down the middle of St George’s Sound!” One could ask for a bit more precision from the Army Air Forces; if one was the United States Navy; but it was a clear enough warning of time and place; that the Tulagi Invasion Force was a little bit ahead of schedule and if you were the captains of the Mojar, Mooneye, Mandarinfish and Morsa; the four submarines posted to cover the four possible entry routes at the Tulagi end of Shima’s trip; those captains of Chapple’s Choppers needed to get together in a hurry and map out a new game-plan since the enemy had chosen the very route that the wolf-pack captains had not really expected. Why would anyone be stupid enough to come straight down the middle? That answer would have to wait until after the action in progress. The only immediate question now, was would Shima choose the North Passage or South Passage as he passed by Savo Island? After an infra-phone conference among themselves, the wolf-pack captains reached another consensus: that even that conundrum would not matter, if they massed off the southwest coast of Florida Island and practiced alligator boat tactics to trail the Japanese ships in as they moved on to execute their landings. This was the new consensus plan, with the DIV 53 boats taking up the eastern positions along the ambush line and Chapple in the Mandarinfish and his partner, Blanchard, of the Morsa aligned with him to the west. It was essentially WW I US torpedo boat tactics adapted to shallow water operations for snort-using submarines. These OP-force modified tactics worked out and practiced against Task Force 10 convoy escorts in the Long Island Sound Exercise Area, seemed like a century and a world away, as the real enemy approached at an estimated 12 knots. The Japanese invaders, unlike a simulated freighter convoy and its escorts, would have a speed and armament advantage over Chapple's Choppers. No-one had told Chapple’s Choppers just what kind of air support the invaders would have, or whether there would be any friendly air power to assist to neutralize it. They would have to make do with the garbled information they pirated off the air guard channel and glean what they could with radar, sonar, and huff / duff. Maybe in an environment which was lousy for radio direction finding and for sound propogation, the American lookouts would, for once, see the Japanese first.

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RADM Shima, Kiyohide as dawn broke on 4 May 1942, expected aircraft overhead as he disposed his ships. He had adopted the usual Japanese three layers defense with the auxiliary minelayers as his outpost pickets. The destroyers patrolled inside this line of “expendables”, a deliberate decision to make an enemy trying to close the beachhead, waste his time and weapons on the 250 tonne mine-sweepers. This would free the destroyers up to counterattack the foolish American submariners. It was a standard Japanese counter-attack defense. He had been warned to expect American submarines by Inoue, Shigeyoshi; so this was the expected and accepted remedy to that threat and problem. The diminutive minesweepers were expendable along with their crews. That was their purpose to Shima, Kiyohide .

It was about 0950 local time. The Kamigawa Maru was late getting her floatplanes up. Shima was about to throw an admiral’s tantrum when warning bugles blew on the Okinoshima, Shima’s flagship. He dashed out of the pilot house to see a sight that would have chilled the marrow of the most hot-blooded fanatical Japanese admiral. Coming out of west southwest was a line of greenish black four-engined bombers. They were quite low and in line abreast as if they were making a classic aerial torpedo attack. That was impossible! The Americans had nothing that large that could or would fly so low or slow to drop torpedoes, did they? They were close enough now to drop their loads and the black skinny objects splashed into the water. Then the big bombers pulled up from their drops and overflew the Japanese ships in the allegedly Japanese-controlled anchorage. Shima stood dumbfounded, as the rattle of Japanese AAA erupted around him. He stared transfixed at the wake lines headed straight for him and his ships. A rate, a mere lookout, had to do the unthinkable and knock Shima, Kiyohide flat to the deck as a B-17 roared overhead strafing the Okinoshima, felling a score of exposed topsiders, with fifty caliber bullets, including the heroic lookout, who gave his life for the Emperor by protecting His Admiral. The torpedo aimed at the Okinoshima missed and sand-sharked into the beach and exploded blowing up a Daihatsu packed to the gunwales with Special Naval Landing Troops. Eighty more souls were to be now worshipped as warrior god heroes in a Shinto Shrine.

The B-17s growled their way home.

Fourteen minutes later, through the broken and scattered clouds the unmistakable wheeling over and diving of blue colored and white starred planes plunged down on Shima’s ships. Some of the ships were lit off and trying to move, which made the target practice harder for the Americans, but it sure was horrible to be a Japanese sailor on the receiving end of the Helldivers... More explosions followed.

And it was not over. An hour later it happened again. This time the Japanese ships, those that were not sinking or hulked by bomb hits, made it more difficult for the Americans. The hateful dive bombers’ accuracy was not as good this time as they had to fine adjust their dives as they dove on their targets. Many near misses threw up plumes of tall water alongside the frantically maneuvering moving IJN ships. Okinoshima lurched and shuddered from the shock of underwater explosions. Shima knew that even if his flagship survived, she would need extensive repairs; repairs that would mean much dry-dock time. Kamigawa Maru had taken a bomb on the fantail that had damaged her. The destroyer, Yozuki, had been holed by a near miss. She was in no danger of sinking yet, but until she saw a shipyard, she was not fit for sea-duty at all. In fact, as of now, Shima could not name one ship in his visible sight that had escaped some serious damage.

The bugles blared again? Shima wiped his sweaty eyebrows. At this point, there was actually nothing he, as an admiral, could do. His ships would dodge and the gods of war would roll their dice and men would die. Perhaps enough would survive so that he could complete his mission. At this moment, that was all he could hope. Duty compelled him to at least look at the American attack, so that if he lived through it, somehow survived, he could report mundane technical details to his superiors, about what the Americans did, so that the IJN high command would know what to expect. A steady stream of such radioed reports about his unfolding disaster, was going out, so that this information would not be lost if his command were wiped out as it seemed could be possible. Shima had a stabbing gut-deep suspicion, for a moment, that his men and he were being sacrificed. A sense of betrayal overcame him as he saw the Devastators drop their torpedoes against him. A goat was he. Okinoshima, again, avoided the torpedoes, but the other thrice-damned American fish ran truer than Shima knew Japanese torpedoes did, and more ships died. And then they, the blue-skinned American devil planes, like their predecessors, vanished. And Shima was alone on his ship, surrounded by the frantic work of Japanese sailors putting out fires, tending to the wounded and making emergency repairs.

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Chapple's Choppers attacked in pairs. They made their way inside the anchorage barrier defense fairly easily. Burning Japanese ships were both a blessing and a curse as the Mandarinfish had to weave her way through the disorganized and scattered Japanese target sets. Chapple had thought about a night torpedo and guns attack on the surface after watching through his periscope, the US air power shatter the pristine Japanese anchorage into the ruin he was about to ravage. He reverted to the doctrine that the Americans may have copied from the Dutch for a circumstance such as this and was satisfied to send three fish at the Kamikawa Maru, an impossible to miss object with the bright fire still burning on her stern. It made for a good aim point as it lit up her masts and allowed a good range estimate. Sitting ducks should have some mercy; but she was Japanese and her navy had showed no mercy at Pearl Harbor. "Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind." She broke in three after two fish hit her just ahead of her stack and aft of her seaplane crane. The explosions surprised Chapple along with the snapping of the Kamikawa Maru in three pieces. He did not believe American torpedoes were so blessed powerful.

Others of Chapple’s Choppers, scored variously. Mojar killed herself a destroyer, the Kikuzuki. Mooneye killed the WA-1 and WA-2, the two agile dodger minesweepers that had avoided torpedoes up to this point. Morsa pranged the sub-chaser that chased her, the Tosha Maru, turning her into a floating hulk, and blew up the defunct Tama Maru already hulked by a Dauntless’ bomb from the second dive bomber attack. It could be argued that Chapple’s Choppers were “pumping bullets into a corpse”, but it is war, and the enemy was in front of them; so they attacked and added their own fair share of destruction.

It was an incredible display of power. And yet after Carmichael, Fletcher and Chapple had done their work and torn the Tulagi Invasion Force to rent, burnt, bloody bits; the Japanese beached their hulks, dropped their dead over the side, patched up what could be in men and material and the survivors still went ahead and built their seaplane base. There might not be a seaplane tender, seaplanes, or anything at all to use the Murphy-besotted thing; but if the orders were that a seaplane base was to be built on Tulagi Island, then by the Emperor, a seaplane base would be built.

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