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

[PAT303]

But how much metal is thrown downrange and what is the energy?

20mm is more destructive per gallon than 50 cal.

The 20mm hits harder but the Wildcat is a tough plane, the .50's have less individual hitting power but there's more of them and the A6M has a glass jaw

 

[Peter Gunn]

Use the carriers as air cover. Send in A few Kongos and cruisers and destroyers and shell Midway to bejesus under cover of darkness.

Use float planes to drop flares for BDA and direction.

Then retreat before dawn to the carriers for air cover.

A few overflights to assess damage.

Carriers are outside effective Midway strikes and the islands are a mess.

If you lose a cruiser or destroyer then price of doing business.

Can anyone see any flaws? Pretty air tight.

Not sure Kongos and cruisers would be able to approach unspotted, Midway was running it's Catalina's pretty far out on search patterns starting pre-dawn every day. They probably would have spotted this and ID'ed it correctly as a bombardment force seeing as so much heavy metal was in it.

Other than that it seems a reasonably sound plan but...

The IJN's first mistake was letting Kido Butai range ahead of the fleet.
Yamamoto should have closed with Midway Atoll and shelled the island with his battleships and cruisers while his carriers (he had six) provided fleet cover and interdiction.
Instead, allowing the first and second carrier divisions to take the lead against the well defended Atoll was literally letting his arse dangle in the breeze.

Considering how Wake Island put up a ferocious defense despite the odds only a few months prior, they should have learned from that and expected a similar reception and planned accordingly.

This and Baskets case (ha! I crack the wise as well) were never going to happen, it simply wasn't in the IJN mindset. Yammamoto and most of the IJN staff thought the USN was totally cowed, hiding in its base and needed to be enticed out and led to its own destruction. They never considered that the Americans were spoiling for a fight, talk about NOT knowing your enemy.

The IJN was was never going to apply the hammer of brute force, they were into deception and misdirection, and Midway was the last place to try that. Remember, they still considered the Battleship the final arbiter of any naval encounter, which is why KdB was out front and the BB's were dicking around as "distant support" ready to "spring" into action... 200+ miles away, if that makes any sense.

Just reading the battle plan the IJN came up with for Midway leaves you scratching your head, true, there had been only one CV v. CV duel so far but any junior planner could see the best way to take Midway, pretty much how you two described it. The Japanese would find out the hard way how to take an island by force, they'd get lessons on that over and over as the war in the Pacific carried on.

 

[SaparotRob]

Not sure Kongos and cruisers would be able to approach unspotted, Midway was running it's Catalina's pretty far out on search patterns starting pre-dawn every day. They probably would have spotted this and ID'ed it correctly as a bombardment force seeing as so much heavy metal was in it.

Other than that it seems a reasonably sound plan but...


This and Baskets case (ha! I crack the wise as well) were never going to happen, it simply wasn't in the IJN mindset. Yammamoto and most of the IJN staff thought the USN was totally cowed, hiding in its base and needed to be enticed out and led to its own destruction. They never considered that the Americans were spoiling for a fight, talk about NOT knowing your enemy.

The IJN was was never going to apply the hammer of brute force, they were into deception and misdirection, and Midway was the last place to try that. Remember, they still considered the Battleship the final arbiter of any naval encounter, which is why KdB was out front and the BB's were dicking around as "distant support" ready to "spring" into action... 200+ miles away, if that makes any sense.

Just reading the battle plan the IJN came up with for Midway leaves you scratching your head, true, there had been only one CV v. CV duel so far but any junior planner could see the best way to take Midway, pretty much how you two described it. The Japanese would find out the hard way how to take an island by force, they'd get lessons on that over and over as the war in the Pacific carried on.

Yo' Gunn, gimme another couple of posts. I need to add an "agree" as well as a "funny". "Baskets case". How long were you waiting to use that line?

 

[Peter Gunn]

Yo' Gunn, gimme another couple of posts. I need to add an "agree" as well as a "funny". "Baskets case". How long were you waiting to use that line?

Basket

 

[Peter Gunn]

Yo' Gunn, gimme another couple of posts. I need to add an "agree" as well as a "funny". "Baskets case". How long were you waiting to use that line?

Case.

Ha! I cannot tell a lie, I actually wrote the post and was about to hit "Post" when it occurred to me there was a joke there...

 

[SaparotRob]

Dang! I was saving that.

 

[The Basket]

I needed a name for internet.
And there was a wicker basket on the table. And that's where basket came from. True story Bro.

The Kongos would sail in under cover of Zeroes. Then bombard under cloak of darkness. Then egress until daylight when it will have to be CAPped by Zeroes again.

No Catalina going to survive long against a Zero. Going to need 14 inches of shell that only a Kongo can provide. Turn Midway into the Moon and thats all she wrote.

 

[GrauGeist]

I needed a name for internet.
And there was a wicker basket on the table. And that's where basket came from. True story Bro.

The Kongos would sail in under cover of Zeroes. Then bombard under cloak of darkness. Then egress until daylight when it will have to be CAPped by Zeroes again.

No Catalina going to survive long against a Zero. Going to need 14 inches of shell that only a Kongo can provide. Turn Midway into the Moon and thats all she wrote.

Why rely on the Kongos?
You had two Nagato class battleships: Nagato and Mutsu
You also had the Yamato herself, who was equipped with serious basement diggers.
There were also quite a few heavy cruisers in the mix.
Any or all of the above would be able to move in at sundown and commence the mother of all poundings and be off before first light.

 

[SaparotRob]

Were the Kongos faster than the Nagatos?

 

[The Basket]

Kongo was about 5 kts faster that Nagato.

Mutsu was faster as she could move very quickly. Not all in the same direction and not all in one piece but she had explosive speed.

The idea that Kongo was faster in and out of the danger zone so could use the cloak of darkness more tactical. Fuso or Ise also had 14 inch guns so no advantage over Kongo. They were also very slow so you would need JATO rockets strapped to them.

 

[SaparotRob]

Mutsu had explosive speed but not all in the same direction. Classic!

 

[GrauGeist]

Were the Kongos faster than the Nagatos?

The Nagatos (Mutsu and Nagato) were good for about 25 knots.
The Kongos (Kongo, Hiei, Kirishima) were good for about 30 knots.

However, the Kongos had 14 inch guns while the Nagatos had 16 inch guns.

Of course, there was the Yamato, good for 27 knots and had 18 inch guns.

 

[MikeMeech]

The Nagatos (Mutsu and Nagato) were good for about 25 knots.
The Kongos (Kongo, Hiei, Kirishima) were good for about 30 knots.

However, the Kongos had 14 inch guns while the Nagatos had 16 inch guns.

Of course, there was the Yamato, good for 27 knots and had 18 inch guns.

Hi
The information on these ships that was available to the public was contained in the October 1940 edition of 'Ships of the World's Battlefleets' by Talbot-Booth:

Mike

 

[SaparotRob]

Between 16" and 14" naval rifles I doubt there would be much difference to Eastern and Sand Island. Plus Yamato would be there for added coral rearrangement.

 

[The Basket]

A bigger shell has more room for explosive. So yeah but 14 inch shell will do great guns.

Vickers 14 inch naval gun Yo!

British! Oddly Kongo was supposed to have 12 inch gun but that was changed. Kongo may have been obsolete had she kept the 12 inch. And so would Ise and Fuso.

So Rule Britannia.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Why rely on the Kongos?
You had two Nagato class battleships: Nagato and Mutsu
You also had the Yamato herself, who was equipped with serious basement diggers.
There were also quite a few heavy cruisers in the mix.
Any or all of the above would be able to move in at sundown and commence the mother of all poundings and be off before first light.

The fellas at Henderson can attest to the destructive power of two Kongos ... now add a Nagato and/or Yamato into the mix, not to mentions some CAs. That's one sleepless evening there.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Use the carriers as air cover. Send in A few Kongos and cruisers and destroyers and shell Midway to bejesus under cover of darkness.

Japan should have kept everything together, including waiting for Zuikaku and thrown the lot at Midway. Codebreaking can only help the US so far when faced with a single force of seven carriers fielding close to four-hundred aircraft (incl. Zuikaku's renewed CAG), seven battleships, ten heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, fourteen destroyers, thirteen submarines, and thirty-five support/invasion ships.

Did Yamamoto or anyone in senior planning at the IJN not read Von Clausewitz on the concentration of force? Von Clausewitz on War: Six Lessons for the Modern Strategist

 

[Escuadrilla Azul]

One of the few times the Zero seems to have saved its carrier(s) from crippling damage or destruction by air strike is at Ceylon where the A6M encountered Blenheims and Fulmars. Otherwise, the Zeros fail to protect at least eleven IJN carriers from USN air attack: Shōhō at Coral Sea; Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and Hiryū at Midway; Ryūjō at Eastern Solomons; Zuikaku, Zuihō, Chitose and Chiyoda at Leyte Gulf; and Hiyō at Philippine Sea. Only the Fairey Fulmar in the Med (allowing crippling strikes on Illustrious, Formidable and Indomitable) appears to be a worse fleet air defence fighter.

Well, to blame the Zero of the losses of those carriers seems too much, given that there were a multipicity of factors that influence those battle outcomes (lack of radar, unrealiable radios, overagressive attitude of the Zero pilots, insufficient damage control).

Even at Leyte, the plan was that the carriers act as bait to lure the US carriers away from the surface fleet so they can strike at the landing force and the air groups were very much understrenght.

 

[Admiral Beez]

A bigger shell has more room for explosive. So yeah but 14 inch shell will do great guns.

Vickers 14 inch naval gun Yo!

British! Oddly Kongo was supposed to have 12 inch gun but that was changed. Kongo may have been obsolete had she kept the 12 inch. And so would Ise and Fuso.

So Rule Britannia.

I expect the 12" Kongos would have been converted to carriers. The only 12" dreadnought Britain ever made for a foreign market was HMS Agincourt, though Spain's Espana class used British made 12" turrets and guns, shown here as a coastal defence gun.

Interestingly the WW1-era British never took to the 14" gun themselves. It would be interesting to compare the Elswick 14"/45 used on HMS Canada with the Vickers 14"/45 used on the Kongo class. When it comes to 14" guns, the USN's 14"/50 is likely the best until the WW2-era KGV class... and only once the latter got its technical foibles sorted out.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Well, to blame the Zero of the losses of those carriers seems too much, given that there were a multipicity of factors that influence those battle outcomes (lack of radar, unrealiable radios, overagressive attitude of the Zero pilots, insufficient damage control).

Well yes, that's the entire point of this thread. We're giving the the Kido Butai radar, CIC (to coordinate air defence), reliable radios and disciplined team-based pilots. Given these four items I expect the Zero would have done better.