Recent content by AZRailwhale

Those attack sorties all came in dribs and drabs, NOT the massive strikes the IJN mounted. Plus the Japanese were THE premiere naval attack and fighter pilots in 1942.

Judging from the hits on the RN’s ABH carriers, the Luftwaffe used the elevators as aiming points. I don’t know if they realized the elevators were lightly armored or not, but they made decent aiming points based upon the bomb damage,

Well we absolutely know from history that Best flew when he knew he had damaged lungs from contaminated oxygen in the first attack, so encouraging a “cowboy” attack aid seems like a risk he would take, he had to know the second sortie would be his last attack ever.

The Japanese never accepted that Americans would willingly fight them. And you are wrong, Hosho was carrying Claudes at Midway and Junyo and the other carrier on the Dutch Harbor raid were carrying a mix of Zeros and Claudes.

He had enough radar equipped aircraft that he could have launched a search/strike mission. The only risk would have been operational losses from bad landings. At best he could find the IJN, at worst he could write off a couple of Albacores or Swordfish and burn some a gas. American commanders...

Somerville wasn’t willing to risk launching a search/strike mission. He was under orders to not risk his forces against even a comparable force,

If the Japanese had not completely underestimated the USA, it would never have gone to war. The Japanese never stopped underestimating the USA until it got nuked.

The problem with that is there were no spare Zeros. The second line Japanese carriers were flying Claudes. Claude’s had none of the Zero’s advantages against Wildcats.

Junyo was only three knots slower than Kaga. Being brand new and Kaga having been on continuous operations since Pearl, they both probably had about the same effective speed.

No, FRENCH ports.

Spits couldn't escort bombers much beyond the channel ports.

I believe you are wrong. The early P-38s had the intercooler lines running through the leading edge of the wings for cooling. In operational units they tended to leak causing runaway turbochargers.

The P-38 was originally designed as a limited production fast climbing interceptor. That's why it had such a Rube Goldberg cooling system.

When the P-38s were fighting over Northern Europe, they were green units fighting the cream of the Luftwaffe over its own airfields in its own radar coverage. The Luftwaffe could pick and choose where and when to fight, and the Lightnings still almost got a one-to-one kill ratio. When looked...

The P-38 had a second engine to get a damaged aircraft home. A lot of P-39, P-40 and P-51 pilots got captured or killed by hits to their cooling systems. Radials were far more resistant to damage than water-cooled inlines. That was why the USN refused to operate water-cooled engines over the...