Yeah, I didn’t mean to single out the IJN there, just to point out that the early-war range advantage did not end up as significant as it might have seemed.
So what’s your theory on why the flight to nowhere? I’ve seen two that seem to fit, but one blames Mitscher and the other, Ring.
Naval aerial reconnaissance is another area that the IJN probably had an advantage of the USN early on, but I feel I have to qualify that with the fact that the quality of aerial reconnaissance reports even when they sighted something could be pretty rough for both sides, see for example the full strike launched by the Japanese carrier at Coral Sea on an oiler and a destroyer that had been misidentified as a carrier and a battleship.
But just as an off the cuff example, Mikawa’s squadron of cruisers and 1 destroyer had the Allied ships off of Guadalcanal spotted with their own floatplanes during the afternoon before their run down The Slot, and they were overhead to drop flares to illuminate the Allied ships when the night engagement began in the Battle of Savo Island while the only contribution Allied cruiser floatplanes made to the battle was to be a fire hazard when set ablaze. The two sighting reports of Mikawa’s force moving south as it left Rabaul and Kavien were reasons never entirely clear never relayed to the Allied fleet, nor did McCain order the additional reconnaissance Turner had requested and didn’t inform Turner that it wasn’t being carried out, leading Turner to erroneously believe The Slot had been under aerial surveillance.
Exactly. They were 'wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too early.
I read that Admiral Kimmel had requested many more PBY Catalinas to complete a search grid, but was refused as they were being bookmarked for use in the Atlantic. Those flying boats were great for recon, in fact it was PBY Catalinas of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) that spotted the IJN activity at the Corla Sea that led to that battle.
We disagree on some issues, but as far as I am concerned, you are the SDMB leading expert on Japanese thought in the WW2 period.
If you read The Origins of the Second World War by A.J.P. Taylor, it seems like the Polish leadership were confident they were a world power, and that the fact the Britain backed them totally meant that they could ignore Germany’s requests to negotiate over the Polish Corridor. That over confidence and intransience was one of the causes of WW2 (besides Hitler of course). The book is very interesting, the Author cites information that shows Hitler was not ready or wanted to invade Poland in 1939 (but maybe later, of course).
Yeah, Italy especially had no business at all in joining with Hitler, and would have been far better off being a “friendly neutral” like Spain.
Well, Yamamoto apparently knew it, and the idea was apparently known by other admirals. The idea seems to have been pretty widespread.
Ehh, that’s more of a failing of the British providing air cover to defend the ships than any particular advantage that the “Betty” had. The G4M may have been a great idea, but the “the flying Zippo” would have been easy pickings if there had been adequate air cover over the two ships. The initial hits on the Chicago were also made in darkness, without air cover. The G4M lacked armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. The US had the B-25, a similar aircraft that also had the capability to carry a torpedo, but had both armor and self sealing tanks (though as mentioned before, our torpedoes were next to useless).
This is incorrect. One reason Admiral Phillips felt safe is he didn’t think land-based bommbers could reach him. They could, because the G4M was designed to fly farther than bombers like the B-25.
The attacks on Chicago were also launched from very long distances. I doubt the B-25 could make such an attack.
Ehhh, the article on Force Z is conflicted on the subject. It both says that Phillips requested cover and that he refused it. But whether it was through arrogance or impracticality, my point is that air cover wasn’t there. If it was, the G4M and G3M might not have the distinction of being the first aircraft to sink a ship while underway.
And if you stripped the armor, defensive guns and self sealing tanks out of a B-25, I expect its range would increase an impressive amount. In fact, the range requirement was part of the reason the G4M didn’t have self sealing tanks. There was nothing particularly advanced about the G4M.
Churchill quipped “It’s only fair. We had them last time.”
The B-25s that flew in the Doolittle raid on Tokyo traveled over 2,000 miles, with stripped-down armament and carrying extra fuel supplies.
Amazing how bad it was they had to launch 200 miles early. The margins for the entire mission were really tight.
Yes, but they still had their armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. The latter was specifically excluded from the G4M to provide the requested range.
Doolittle did a lot! At least for morale and “can do” attitude.
Nobody said the G4M was particularly advanced. But like the Zero, it had an advantage over its competitors: range. The IJN wanted a strike plane that could damage the ships of a numerically superior fleet from long range. For this they were willing to accept low survivability. Like the B-26 Marauder, they went with a more costly but lower-drag cigar-shaped fuselage and they filled their plane with fuel tanks. None of this was advanced. But it was advantageous for a limited mission profile. Attacks against Force Z and Chicago were in that profile.
Doolittle basically caused the Battle of Midway. His raid embarrassed the IJN so bad they felt pressured into both expanding the perimeter of the Japanese territory and destroying the USN carriers.
Heh, now that I look it up, the air group that sank Prince of Wales and Repulse was stationed in Saigon. The distance from there to the final resting places of the ships is less than 600 miles. The B-25 could have made that easily. Not certain about the distance the bombers that hit the Chicago flew. There may have been missions where the extra 400 miles of range might have been useful, but the strike against Force Z didn’t seem to require it.
The HMS Indomitable was supposed to be part of that task force, but ran aground before they sailed east.
Yeah, I saw that. Bummer of a navigation error.
That’s a common myth. Yamamoto had already gotten approval for the attack before Doolittle’s raid. Its only effect was convincing the army to provide more troops for occupying Midway and the Aleutians.
Which is something Japan had the planes, training, doctrine, and organization to do from the beginning of the war. The US did not. That the B-25 could in theory do something similar ignores the fact that they didn’t. Because there was no plan, training, doctrine, or organization to do so. The B-25 didn’t even carry torpedoes until 1943 as far as I can tell, and it honestly was a surprise to me that they even ever carried them at all.
In early 1943, the Navy took delivery of an initial 706 B-25s, assigned to the Marine Corps for patrol and anti-submarine duties initially, but then transitioning into an attack aircraft with bombs, torpedoes and radar directed rockets.
Navigating over water, in darkness, to carry out torpedo attacks on moving ships isn’t something you can’t simply do with B-25s just because in theory they are capable of it. The G3M and G4M weren’t just in theory capable of carrying out such missions, they had the organization, training, planning and doctrine to do it already established prior to the outbreak of war between the US and Japan, and in large numbers.
The mere existence of such a threat was something that the USN had to constantly worry about. The IJN did not. As early as February 1942 the USS Lexington had to abandon its mission to raid Rabaul when it was attacked 400 miles from it by G4Ms. The Japanese navy simply didn’t have to worry itself about being attacked (at least effectively) at a range of 400 miles by land-based aircraft early in the war. The USN did, which, for example, effected how US carriers operated throughout the entire Guadalcanal campaign.
The abortive raid on Rabaul by the Lexington ties in sort of neatly with a couple of other points I made earlier, that of Japan probably being better at aerial reconnaissance early in the war and IJN submarine doctrine. Lexington was spotted at 460 miles by Mavis flying boats, which were doing a fairly routine reconnaissance out to 500 miles. Lexington was also only carrying F4Fs because the Saratoga had taken a torpedo in from a Japanese submarine in January and was out of action for almost half a year. Lexington swapped out her fighter group, which was still equipped with F2A Buffalos for Saratoga’s fighter group.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the IJN were far more capable at pretty much every form of night fighting than the USN, that is pretty indisputable.
Again, no real argument there. The IJN had trained and prepared for that sort of thing, and the USN had not.
But this attack shows how bad the G4M’s compromises really were. Against a ship with air cover and without their own escort 17 went in, only one made it home badly damaged, and they failed to strike their target. The Japanese may have found that acceptable, but given that their eventual problem was a shortage of trained pilots it seems like a fatally flawed design. Really, they could have just stayed home after the Mavis’ were shot down. The Lexington was already heading home by then.