US strategy and tactics for Midway if IJN has radar, CIC and radios in the Zeros

[Thumpalumpacus]

Punch through the compartments lining both sides of the hangar deck, and dump it all overboard.

May well have been the better answer, but what Japanese carrier skipper issues that order? Nagumo wasn't built for drastic measures like that, fo sho.

I think the only advantage Japanese radar at Midway would deliver would be for damage-control, and yes, even that is questionable.

 

[Conslaw]

That was the point being made. The Yorktown strike arrived about twenty minutes after the Enterprise torpedo strike. The A6M's had time to get up to SBD altitude. As to forming up an organized and efficient CAP, I think we covered that.
I am so glad you saved me the trouble of looking it up. Did I mention I was the slow kid in class?

The A6Ms had time to get up to SBD altitude after the VT6 attack but it wasn't doctrine to loiter up there per Shattered Sword. They relied on visual signals from the ships below to tell them were to go, and if they were too high, they couldn't see them. The Yorktown airgroup was intact when it pierced the distant Japanese screen, then the SBD's split up and headed north, eventually attacking the Soryu, the most northern carrier. VT3 took the most direct path, attacking the closest ship, the Hiryu, with 2 Wildcats directly in support of the torpedo bombers. Above and some distance back was Thach with (originally 3) two other Wildcats. Thach's group drew a lot of the A6M attention and they defended themselves well using a version of the "Thach Weave" beam defense tactic.

 

[Conslaw]

I can travel between time and space so in my reality, it was Hiryu that was hit first. So technically I am correct.

I will have to remember that I have to speak about your reality time frame. So yes Soryu was hit first.

As pieced together by Parshall and Tully in "Shattered Sword", in the 10:20 AM time frame when the damaging attacks started. In a rough line from Southwest to North East, it went, Kaga, Akagi, Soryu, and Hiryu, with the latter two ships separated from the former two by enough that they were barely in sight of each other. Enterprise's SBDs came up from the Southwest to take out Kaga and Akagi. Yorktown's TBD's attacked Hiryu almost from due East, and Yorktown's SBDs came around to take out Soryu from the North.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The aircraft belowdecks of the three carriers were fueled and armed.

I agree. We need the IJN radar, CIC and Zero pilots to stop the SBDs. Leave the TBDs to the few low level Zeros and AA. As luck has it the USN's torpedoes are rubbish. The IJN knows that dive bombers are the greatest risk to their carriers, and they've just been alerted that several dozen are approaching.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The A6Ms had time to get up to SBD altitude after the VT6 attack but it wasn't doctrine to loiter up there

They're not loitering, they've been vectored by radio by their CIC to intercept incoming wave(s) of HA dive bombers.

 

[GrauGeist]

Again, how does the IJN's radar determine that there are dive-bombers inbound?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Again, how does the IJN's radar determine that there are dive-bombers inbound?

Yorktown's group would clearly be understood as carrier-based, given their approach vector. If this hypothetical Japanese radar could discern altitude as well, "dive-bombers" may well be a logical inference for a formation flying at 12-14k.

If this hypothetical radar could not determine altitude, the safe bet would be to raise CAP level and then dive down upon TBDs if no SBDs are present, no?

 

[Admiral Beez]

Again, how does the IJN's radar determine that there are dive-bombers inbound?

Radar shows several dozen unknown aircraft approaching at medium to high altitude. The IJN CIC will assume they're either level or dive bombers. My bet is they guess they're dive bombers, but either way the IJN knows there's a HA strike inbound and will vector their fighters accordingly.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Radar shows several dozen unknown aircraft approaching at medium to high altitude. The IJN CIC will assume they're either level or dive bombers. My bet is they guess they're dive bombers, but either way the IJN knows there's a HA strike inbound and will vector their fighters accordingly.

A high CAP can dive easier than a low CAP can climb. Guarding against dive-bombers still allows diving in on TBDs. Focusing on TBDs means writing off defense against dive-bombers. The math is pretty clear.

 

[GrauGeist]

I wasn't aware that 1942 Radar technology was so sophisticated...

 

[SaparotRob]

Does it matter what shape the spike is on the screen? Something is up there. Now equipped with radar and radio, some portion of the IJN CAP could be directed to investigate what it is. I'm supposing that this '42 set doesn't have a PIP screen.

 

[SaparotRob]

Again, how does the IJN's radar determine that there are dive-bombers inbound?

Even with crappy radar, wouldn't the Kido Butai assume that some of those returns must be carrier planes?

 

[GrauGeist]

Even with crappy radar, wouldn't the Kido Butai assume that some of those returns must be carrier planes?

Nagumo did not know there were two USN task forces.
Up until the ill-fated Torpedo 8 attack, he had assumed that there were no USN carriers in the area.
Then, it was assumed that he was facing a single USN carrier and elements from Midway.

 

[SaparotRob]

They didn't have radar (or working radios in the Zeros) either. Just getting into the spirit of the thread. I took a couple of hits off Thumpalumpacus's retrospectroscope bong when he was making a beer run.

 

[GrauGeist]

They didn't have radar (or working radios in the Zeros) either. Just getting into the spirit of the thread. I took a couple of hits off Thumpalumpagus's retrospectroscope bong when he was making a beer run.

For some reason, we're trapped at 10:22 a.m. when the SBDs commenced their attack.

Had Nagumo's fleet had radar, they would have detected every single inbound element from Midway as well as the inbound elements from Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet.
In all that confusion, his radar would have ONLY indicated blips heading toward his fleet without any idea as to their altitude, so it would have been Up to them to figure out if they were B-17s at 20,000 feet or SB2Us at 500 feet.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Radar was not a panacea, you have to know how to use it. Fighter Command had been developing a system of command and control since its formation. In fact one of the driving forces behind the creation of the RAF was the air raids on England. A sophisticated system (for the time) was in place when radar appeared. Radar was a tool that slotted into place in an existing system. No other nation had studied the problems of interception to the same extent. The RN air arm benefited from this knowledge.
The USN had a steep learning curve before they began to use Radar properly. Fighters Over the Fleet details some of the problems they had making successful interceptions. The USN surfaces forces had the advantage of radar in the battles around Guadalcanal but still suffered tremendous losses. More sailors died than marines in the land battles
And yes determining altitude was very difficult with the ship borne radars of 1942. I suggest reading Fighters Over the Fleet

 

[PAT303]

Particularly with the Kates, changing bombs out for torpedoes meant something. The Kates couldn't dive-bomb, and I think we all know how useless level-bombing ships is open water is

They achieved nothing anyway, just send them.

They may have, repeat may, used different fuses on the bombs for land and ship targets?

A 500Lb bomb on the deck is going to do something, it'll wipe out AA crews, destroy any aircraft parked on deck, kill all personnel within a few hundred feet. Both the US and RN jury rigged torpedo's and bombs to aircraft like the Catalina and sent them on strikes, I bet if the roles were reversed they would have sent what they had instead of re armed.

 

[Admiral Beez]

They didn't have radar (or working radios in the Zeros) either. Just getting into the spirit of the thread. I took a couple of hits off Thumpalumpagus's retrospectroscope bong when he was making a beer run.

I wasn't aware that 1942 Radar technology was so sophisticated...

We're giving the IJN shipborne radar and aircraft radios equal to the best then in service in the RN, USN and KM (German naval radar was for FC, so limited here), whilst making them early innovators in CIC and fighter coordination (essentially what the RAF had in 1940). We're not inventing radar or radio tech that wasn't in existence in 1942.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

They achieved nothing anyway, just send them.

Here's a picture of the USS Yorktown catching an aerial torpedo amidships port later that day.

Title: Battle of Midway, June 1942
Description: USS Yorktown (CV-5) is hit on the port side, amidships, by a Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo during the mid-afternoon attack by planes from the carrier Hiryu, 4 June 1942. Photographed from USS Pensacola (CA-24). Yorktown is heeling to port and is seen at a different aspect than in other views taken by Pensacola, indicating that this is the second of the two torpedo hits she received. Note very heavy anti-aircraft fire. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.
Catalog #: 80-G-414423

80-G-414423 Battle of Midway, June 1942

USS Yorktown (CV-5) is hit on the port side, amidships, by a Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo during the mid-afternoon attack by planes from the carrier Hiryu, 4 June 1942. Photographed from USS Pensacola (CA-24). Yorktown is heeling to port and is seen at a different aspect than in other views...

www.history.navy.mil

 

[Admiral Beez]

Here's a picture of the USS Yorktown catching an aerial torpedo amidships port later that day.

View attachment 637763

I always think the war photographer has one of the most dangerous jobs.

12 Extraordinary WWII Photographers

Meet some of the men and women who risked it all in order to bring true descriptions of World War II to the masses.

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