WI the U.S. Navy had relieved Wake Island?

I believe that you will find that Marcus was busting our friend Bard's chops with his comment.
Verry possible.

Looking again at the rest of what I said, I should perhaps retract most of it. :winkytongue: Without Doolittle, who I somehow managed not to think of, :( the justification to attack Midway would be near zero. (Might see the same result at Wake as the Kido Butai is more/less compelled to come there to push the Marines off, tho.)
The engagement between two IJN and two USN carriers would have been much more competitive than you think. Even accepting the lower quality (and numbers) of the U.S. fighters compared to later in the war the Japanese carriers demonstrated themselves to be less than robust and saddled with some significant design flaws related to handling battle damage.

There is also the not insignificant fact that the IJN carriers didn't arrive until 12/22. A relief force could have arrived as soon as the 17th, even allowing for the understandable confusion after the Pearl Harbor attacks. That would have permitted the defenders plenty of time to prepare for the second attack.
My recollection of the timing is, Fletcher & Brown would have arrived around the same time Soryu & Hiryu did, absent change to OTL scheduling. That being so, IMO IJN experience would outweigh the deficiencies. It does mean Soryu & Hiryu (like Shokaku & Zuikaku after Coral Sea) would be out of action awhile, which IMO butterflies the Colombo raid (which I also overlooked before :( ).

If you're right & the MDB arrives with 4-5 days in hand (& we presume Fletcher offloads his F2As), Inouye has a real fight on his hands. And we are back to the Midway analog, only in this case, Rochefort's guys aren't as well respected, tho I think Finnegan & Co at Cast could still read JN-25 (&, more important, the callsign cypher) well enough to see it coming.

The real trouble is overcoming Pye's (very understandable) reluctance to hazard the only striking power he had left. Can we justify him proposing reinforcement in the name of national morale? Or can we have FDR pushing for something, & Pye saying, "I've got just the thing."?
 
Hyperion,

Don't put yourself out. Consider the source and don't give him free rent in your head.

The idea that the USN would use Ranger in a combat role is laughable, even by Bard/Blair standards. She was used in combat twice, both times in the Atlantic where her well known design failings wouldn't greatly effect her performance or risk her loss. In the first, she provided air cover and a taxi service during Torch and, in the second, she raided German shipping around Bodo in Norway for two days.

Even when the USN was down to one carrier in the Pacific, they never considered dispatching Ranger there.


Bill
 
Ranger was used in combat twice, both times in the Atlantic...she provided air cover and a taxi service during Torch...
That suggests to me she should (& could) have been used in place of Wasp (?) to ferry to Malta.

To add something else I managed to overlook,:( Wake would make an excellent sub base, just as Midway did OTL, 2000nm closer to Japan than Midway... Even with the abominable Mk14s, this has major effects on the effectiveness of the sub force. It also probably means they aren't withdrawn to Oz (as OTL), which effectively adds at least 25% to Japanese losses for the duration (assuming we change nothing else from OTL); more than half the OTL patrols from Oz were dry, against an average about 30-40% from Pearl, & at Pearl, retrofitting better radars was faster. Also, it means consolidating repair manpower, freeing trained men for sub duty (which increases effectiveness), & reducing turnaround time (which improves effectiveness, too).
 
That suggests to me she should (& could) have been used in place of Wasp (?) to ferry to Malta.


phx,

It didn't suggest the same thing to the USN commanders at the time and they knew far more about Ranger's capabilities than you or I ever will.

Wasp twice flew off fighters to Malta as part of a military force which was fully expected to "fight" it's way to the launch point. Wasp was chosen because it's design could handle more punishment than Ranger and launch more aircraft more rapidly. The missions were expected to encounter significant German and Italian air and naval forces and Churchill fully expected them to be "pounded into bits". The fact that Wasp and the others were able to slip in and away without fighting doesn't mean that the chances of any fighting could be ignored.

Ranger's only two combat missions involved little or any prospect of actual fighting. During Torch, she was part of a group of 4, IIRC, escort carriers which Vichy forces in North Africa could not find let alone threaten. The Norway operation was a two day raid in a remote region against the bored dregs of the German military. You cannot compare those missions to Wasp's two ferry missions to Malta.

Ranger could have never ferried Spitfires to Malta and was never considered for the job.


Bill
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Never is probably a bit too strong. She could have done the job, Wasp was just a much more logical choice for all the reasons already discussed.

Ranger was more or less an experiment in deploying something smaller than the HUGE Lexingtons but more cpable than the Langley. She proved to be too small, but the result of the experiment was the Yorktowns.
phx,

It didn't suggest the same thing to the USN commanders at the time and they knew far more about Ranger's capabilities than you or I ever will.

Wasp twice flew off fighters to Malta as part of a military force which was fully expected to "fight" it's way to the launch point. Wasp was chosen because it's design could handle more punishment than Ranger and launch more aircraft more rapidly. The missions were expected to encounter significant German and Italian air and naval forces and Churchill fully expected them to be "pounded into bits". The fact that Wasp and the others were able to slip in and away without fighting doesn't mean that the chances of any fighting could be ignored.

Ranger's only two combat missions involved little or any prospect of actual fighting. During Torch, she was part of a group of 4, IIRC, escort carriers which Vichy forces in North Africa could not find let alone threaten. The Norway operation was a two day raid in a remote region against the bored dregs of the German military. You cannot compare those missions to Wasp's two ferry missions to Malta.

Ranger could have never ferried Spitfires to Malta and was never considered for the job.


Bill
 

Markus

Banned
That is ASB. Japan had neither the troops nor the shipping to carry that off, regardless of Yamamoto's persistent fantasies (or those of JOs without a clue).

As to what happens if Pye doesn't recall the relief effort, probably you see an early Coral Sea between 2 USN & 2 IJN CVs. Fletcher gets his ass handed to him, loses both his CVs, & if the U.S. is lucky, he's KIA.

I was making fun of Blair152 aka. Bard32.

What happened at Coral Sea was the USN loosing a CV, the IJN loosing a CVL, most of the air group of one CV, while another CV was put out of action for two or three months.

Regarding Ranger, except for an inch or so over the steering box she was having as much armour as a CVE - none at all, deck, belt bulkheads all unprotected. But reaching a launch position a few hundred miles off Mata was hardly as dangerous as sending merchant ship to Malta. The RN used Eagle and Argus on several occasions.
 
Is a carrier battle needed? If Wake was reinforced wouldn't carrier shadow boxing be good enough to hold off the Japanese air forces and surface ships for a few days until they had to withdraw?
 
Top