WI: Extra Japanese Carrier (or two) at Midway

What about a different Coral Sea, with the US loosing both carriers and Shokaku and Zuikaku taking no damage and suffering only mild losses to their air wings?

That would put the odds at 6:2

For that to happen, if say on morning May 7th that Shokaku scout opens his bloody eyes and not sees Neosho as a CV, he will not send Hara's strike in a futile trip, when the REAL CV report comes half an hour later Hara could have unleashed all his 78 plane strong strike against Fletcher, to his west, who had no idea Hara was on his flank within perfect striking distance. Trading Shoho for one or possibly BOTH american carriers that day with his own carriers unlocated and never attacked is a small price to pay. How MO sakusen uncovers if this happens though is another matter (IF Hara would linger around to much, he could likely have to face Halsey, a serious problem considering the likely weakened japanese airgroups and Halsey's agressivity). If Shokaku and Zuikaku stays out of trouble though probably this makes it quite likely Nimitz won't fight for Midway though.

There were also possibilities for both Fletcher and Hara to ambush eachother on the fifth or sixth of May, one of Fletcher's searches missed Hara by a few miles, while Hara was caught fueling and unable to strike quickly when solid contact of Fletcher's CVs came. The flip of the coin eh?
 
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For that to happen, if say on morning May 7th that Shokaku scout opens his bloody eyes and not sees Neosho as a CV, he will not send Hara's strike in a futile trip, when the REAL CV report comes half an hour later Hara could have unleashed all his 78 plane strong strike against Fletcher, to his west, who had no idea Hara was on his flank within perfect striking distance. Trading Shoho for one or possibly BOTH american carriers that day with his own carriers unlocated and never attacked is a small price to pay. How MO sakusen uncovers if this happens though is another matter (IF Hara would linger around to much, he could likely have to face Halsey, a serious problem considering the likely weakned japanese airgroups and Halsey's agressivity). If Shokaku and Zuikaku stays out of trouble though probably this makes it quite likely Nimitz won't fight for Midway though.

There were also possibilities for both Fletcher and Hara to ambush eachother on the fifth or sixth of May, one of Fletcher's searches missed Hara by a few miles, while Hara was caught fueling and unable to strike quickly when solid contact of Fletcher's CVs came. The flip of the coin eh?

In that case, the Americans will wait until the USS wasp and USS Saratoga are available in the pacific before they even fight the Japanese.
 
In that case, the Americans will wait until the USS wasp and USS Saratoga are available in the pacific before they even fight the Japanese.

Or possibly they wait for Saratoga and Nimitz still takes the ambush gamble and send it together with Enterprise and Hornet against Nagumo's five or six CV around the 7th or 8th of June, which would still be hanging around Midway. This is exactly what the japanese were expecting. Ouch. And that's how Nimitz would be replaced.:D
 
It would require a POD of 1937 or earlier, but if the Japanese had expanded their aircrew training programme they might have been able to send Zuikaku to Midway without reshuffling the air groups.
 
With enough time would it be possible to change the complement on Midway so they're mostly defensive (ie, more fighters and AA guns), but still offensive enough to pose a threat?
 
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They basically reacted organically - one threat and they all swarm it, two threats and the second gets much less attention, and they can be drawn horribly out of position. That's what happened at Midway - see Shattered Sword.

The comparable USN experience was Santa Cruz, where a robust radar directed CAP was exposed to multiple waves and had more or less collapsed by the time the Junyo dive bomber strike arrived.
 
That is an benefit of having one extra carrier with a fullish air group: Stronger Strikes. However, as Calbear and Saphroneth have said, its the quality of the Japanese protection, especially the CAP; Their CAP can't deal with more than one attack without leaving the carriers unprotected. Their AA fire was not enough to withstand heavy attacks (Neither was the USN's?). Some of the Carriers weren't particularly well armoured either. The first is their doctrine, the second is a lack of combat experience, and the third is a flaw with the actual ships. To solve a lot of the IJN problems, doctrinal change is required, especially with training up pilots.

IJN CAP, even in numbers, proved unable to stop dive bombers. It wasn't so much flaws in communication and direction as it was that stopping massed SBD formations was not easy - a tough bomber hard to engage in a timely fashion. This was shown again and again during the war. OTOH, dive bombers aside from Midway (with Nagumo's inaction leading to disaster) were never able to sink fleet carriers unless fires got out of control. Contrast that to the B5N2/battleship superiority combination, where torpedoed US carriers were likely not to be recovered even if they remained afloat.
 
Edit - just noticed now, after posting, that I'm replying to very old posts.

What the heck else are they going to have been doing?
If the Kido Butai hadn't been preparing a strike when the US carrier aircraft came over the horizon, they'd have been complete fools because - given the timings through the course of the day - to not have a strike available, to not have fuelled up aircraft at the time of the US carrier attack, would mean they'd have not even begun to prepare a strike for the entire day after the Midway strike.

Doctrinally, what Nagumo needed at Midway was some sort of rapid-fire strike doctrine where each carrier launched small waves (6-9 bombers) every half hour or so. Trying to arm all the bombers on all the carriers for some grand strike when the US carriers were known to be aware of Nagumo's position by 0500, and the strike could not depart before 1030 was starkly incompetent - it gave the US carrier five and a half hours to deliver the dive bomber strikes that end Kido Butai.


The numbers just don't work out. The only time slot they could have spent in spotting and launching a strike - any strike - that day is the time slot when they were recovering the Midway strike.
That's simply not correct, IMO. Hiryu was under torpedo attack from 1015 to 1040 and launched at 1054. TB-3 simply did not slow Hiryu's strike preparations down by much - it forced the carrier to run with the wind until the threat was clear. But torpedo bombers could not prevent carriers from spotting and warming up, and the actual launch was only a few minutes, meaning that at most the strike would have launched over the course of a half an hour from the multiple carriers and then assembled and departed.

If they'd done the launch then instead, it would have meant abandoning a good hundred or more aircraft - cutting their strike power neatly in half.
Fuchida's B5N2 launched at 0600 for Pearl Harbor and didn't recover till about 12 or 1pm - six to seven hours in the air. The Midway strike launched at 0400 and was back by 0800 - four hours. It is possible that some of the Midway Strike - some of the damaged aircraft - might have ditched. But certainly not the entire strike.

(All other time slots were interrupted by American air strikes, and usually by the need to send up more fighters.)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe....jpg/1280px-Kaga_and_Zuikaku_Pearl_Harbor.jpg

Looks to me like a picture of Kaga with a large deck park aft and two ready Zeros spotted forward ready for launch.

So, there's either going to be fuelled aircraft on the Japanese carriers below-decks at the time of the US dive bomber strike, or the Japanese have decided that they will not be attacking anyone today.
Yamaguchi should have either counterattacked without orders, or broken radio silence and contacted Yamamoto, who would have ordered him to attack immediately at 0830.
 
from other carriers and units to bolster or cobble up an air group.
First, during Hawaii sakusen, land units were skimmed and the embrionic CVE aircraft and pilots were used to temporarely bolster Kido Butai. After the Hawaii attack apparently some of the personnel got back to their parent units, or got absorbed into the CAGs altogether.

Re - Hawaii. I can't prove it, but the back-up plan of attacking with only Kaga, Zuikaku and Shokaku in case bad weather prevented refueling implies that some of the special shallow running torpedoes were loaded aboard 5th CAR DIV and Nagumo planned, if possible, to switch 1st and 2nd CAR DIV aircrews with 5th CAR aircrews at sea before separation.
 
Thanks for that detail Glenn, don't think i heard it before.

With enough time would it be possible to change the complement on Midway so they're mostly defensive (ie, more fighters and AA guns), but still offensive enough to pose a threat?

I was thinking, to have the IJN pay even more attention to fighters and AA defence AND damage control, have a POD sometime in the war with China, say one of their carriers is hit by chinese aircraft and burns badly. Are there any instances in which chinese aircraft bombed (or got close to) japanese carriers in the 1937-41 timespan?
 
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I was thinking, to have the IJN pay even more attention to fighters and AA defence AND damage control, have a POD sometime in the war with China, say one of their carriers is hit by chinese aircraft and burns badly. Are there any instances in which chinese aircraft bombed (or got close to) japanese carriers in the 1937-41 timespan?

The thing is, Japan KNEW it could NOT win a prolonged war with the US. The only war they could win was a quick knock-out blow. Which is what they tried at Pearl.

If they know they need to totally revamp their fleet to fight a longer war, they wouldn't have attacked the US in the first place.
 
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