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Wasp was always front line. The Atlantic Fleet service was higher priority than the Pacificat at the time. She was sunk by what is arguably one of the finest Submarine Torpedo attacks in history. With one 6 torpedo spread, 3 hit Wasp and sunk her; 1 hit the DD O'Brien and sunk her; 1 hit North Carolina, keeping her out of service for 3 months.I always assumed that like USS Wasp(CV-7) that she was deficient in armour and was therefore relegated to theatres where enemy opposition was weakest. I could be wrong here. USS Wasp was even worse than the Ranger, IIRC the armour planned for it was never installed, so its not surprising that she was sunk.
If you examine all the USN carrier losses during the war, they were for the most part lost to torpedo attacks, not aerial attacks.Wasp was always front line. The Atlantic Fleet service was higher priority than the Pacificat at the time. She was sunk by what is arguably one of the finest Submarine Torpedo attacks in history. With one 6 torpedo spread, 3 hit Wasp and sunk her; 1 hit the DD O'Brien and sunk her; 1 hit North Carolina, keeping her out of service for 3 months.
If you examine all the USN carrier losses during the war, they were for the most part lost to torpedo attacks, not aerial attacks.
The USN had a comprehensive damage control policy that employed all hands in a well drilled procedure unlike most other navies.
There are several instances where US Carriers took considerable damage and the ship was thought to be lost, but damage control recovered the ship. The Yorktown is one such example, where she was thought to be lost (the IJN confirmed her loss) but she was recovered only to be lost (again) at Midway.
This is probably not the right place, but there is a new movie out in November about Midway.
Looks like another Pearl Harbour.
Perhaps Hollywood will rewrite the Pearl Harbour script such that it's the Russian navy sailing out from the Southern Kuriles?Quite likely.
Nagumo would have benefited from more carriers. Zuikaku was left behind in Japan to replenish her CAG, demonstrating the downside of the IJN's slow pilot and aircraft replacement.Always believe Nagumo gets the poor end of the stick.
He just got dealt a lot of poor cards.
It's a riot to think that Imperial Japan contemplated invading Australia or even India. I remember reading a German General talking about the Kriegsmarine saying it's impossible to talk to them cos they only think in continents.
The IJA were too busy fighting a war to bother with such patent nonsense. Maybe then the Midway campaign was a way to win without the IJA and the IJN gets all the credit.
From my view, the IJN had a lead and blew it. Had they had all 4 carriers for the Guadalcanal campaign then that could be have been decisive.