Did IJN floatplanes support their parents?

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stevebillings

Recruit
4
2
Jul 4, 2012
What I mean is, were any ship-borne floatplanes (those based on capital ships like battleships, cruisers, seaplane tenders, etc.) in the Imperial Japanese Navy ever able to defend their mother ships from attacks by enemy aircraft? Were they ever able to be launched before their ship was attacked/sunk?
 
Yep I don't have details to hand but a Catalina was shot down and they did do light strikes.

But to my knowledge they were never part of the strike package of the Kido Butai.

Read about Tone and Chikuma and see what they got up to.
 
The floatplanes on Japanese (and anyone else's) capital ships were scout craft, and seldom very effective against other aircraft. They could perform ASW patrols, but their main purpose was over the horizon scouting.
 
Would be very difficult for a float plane to defend itself against a fighter attack. Just not very fast or maneuverable with poor armament. I believe some IJN float planes did attack ships by strafing them. They also dropped flares at night to spot enemy ships. But, as has been said, they were mostly used for scouting purposes. However, the Japanese radios were notoriously bad due to poor electrical shielding creating interference. They were so bad, some pilots simply removed them from the aircraft to save weight. Hard to scout effectively without a radio. Also read an interesting post about solar flare activity during WWII and the south Pacific, around New Guineau, was hit very hard causing very poor radio communication.
 
I have only seen records of the F1M2 and A6M2-N used for intercept. The performance or armament of the others was poor.

Japanese Seaplane Carriers

WildEagles: Nakajima A6M2-N "Rufe" pt. 3 Yokohama Kokutai

 
I'm not discounting the abilities of floatplanes to carry on the war. I was just wondering if any "scrambled" off their assigned ships to successfully defend (through combat) the ship from allied aircraft attacking or threatening them.
 

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