Midway

1. Whenever I Read/Hear about the Midway Battle, it always seems there was Little/No fighter cover, and so, many of the Bomber/Torpedo Planes got swatted out of the sky with no chance of success.
Is that true.....if so, what happened to their fighter support.?

2. Has anybody ever hypothesized.....what effect was Halsey's absence on the battle.?
Thank You

 

Two things, first a carrier group had to retain at least a token CAP, so the full compliment of fighters could not escort a air strike. The second issue involves the dispersed nature of American forces (Hornet and Enterprise were in one group, and Yorktown in another), the differing performances of the Fighters, Dive Bombers and Torpedo Planes, plus the relative lack of pilot training/experience of American pilots.

Hornet and Enterprise launched first, with Yorktown launching after the return of her scout bombers. This ensured that all three groups would arrive at differing times and from slightly different tracks. Sadly the TBD Devastator's (Torpedo Bomber's) could not keep pace with the fighters and dive bombers. This coupled with atmospheric conditions (cloud cover) the various elements lost track of one another.

A final element was that when launched, the US carrier groups had only a best guesstimate as to where the target would be, to their credit most groups did find the Japanese carriers. Ironically the confusion of American strikes actually worked in their favor overall, though not for the luckless Torpedo Bomber crews.

 

Yeah.....wow.!
Some great info there.
Thank You

 

Concerning the Enterprise fighters, this is worth a read.
http://www.midway42.org/Midway_AAR/VF-6-1.aspx
Also the parent site has several action reports:
http://www.midway42.org/Midway_AAR/After_Action_Reports.aspx
The parent site www.midway42.org is also worth browsing through.

Several of the USS Enterprise's action reports concerning Midway can be found here:
http://www.cv6.org/ship/logs/default.htm

Reading John Lundstrom's two-book "The First Team" series is a must.

On your 2nd issue, experience was not so much an issue with the pilots, as it was across the board. The USS Yorktown's personnel had overcome the aircraft performance issue, by using a different launch technique - They launched the slow TBDs first, the moderately faster SBDs second, and last was the fighters. Thus, the fighters did not waste precious fuel loitering for the rest of the strike package to take off, and all of the aircraft could rendezvous together. The Enterprise used a similar approach, but for whatever reasons, the SBD launch went well, but the respotting of the F4Fs & TBDs went awry resulting in a long delay launching the fighters and torpedo-bombers. Thus, the SBDs were sent off unescorted. Finally, the new USS Hornet went "by the book" and launched her fighters first, SBDs second, and TBDs last. Thus, the Hornet's fighters wasted a lot of fuel waiting for the rest of the strike to launch and form up. The Hornet's "by the book" launch would have catastrophic consequences for her F4F-4s later on.

The launch times had little bearing on the matter, as the Task Force 17(Hornet & Enterprise) had already broken up into 3 separate groups before the Yorktown joined the party. Since, Spruance did not include a flight course in his attack order, Mitscher, Ring, et al. were operating on the search-strike principal, so the Hornet's air group left on a course of 265 degrees(Waldron would soon break off to find the Japanese on his own, and accidentally pick up the Enterprise fighter as escort) . The unescorted Enterprise SBDs were following a rough intercept course of 231 degrees. Finally, thanks to the deck foul-ups on Enterprise, their TBDs were bringing up the rear on a course of 240 degrees.

The atmospheric conditions posed no major problems with the Enterprise & Hornet formations losing touch with each other...They did that themselves. Further, the cloud cover encountered near the Japanese fleet was seen as a boon for the TBDs, since it was thought that it would help keep them safe from Japanese fighters.

It didn't work out all that well for the Enterprise SBDs either...17 lost, as opposed to 10 of her TBDs.

 

Another fine post...that shreads mine dagnabbit!

 

No one seems to have touched on this, and I haven't seen much speculation on it elsewhere, perhaps because Spruance and Fletcher seem to have done a pretty good job.....but I'll toss out a couple of speculations. Halsey, unlike Spruance or Fletcher, was an aviator and might have exercised more direct control over flight operations, in particular ensuring that Hornet's air group conformed to his direction to attack the sighted Japanese carrier force. If he sought to put maximum combat power on target, he might have included Yorktown's VS-5 in the initial attack. Either of these might have put more SBDs into the morning attack and perhaps hit one more carrier, making a clean sweep and preventing the Japanese strikes on Yorktown.

It's also possible that Halsey's aggressiveness would have led him, perhaps unintentionally, into a surface battle, which Spruance was careful to avoid.

 

Thanks for addressing that. I asked for a "dubious" reason.
My path use to cross with some WWII Buffs at a doctors office, but not anymore.
Anyway, these two guys were both critical of Halsey, and (partially) credited Midways Success to His Absence.

 

you have the human element and physical handicap element....communication and navigation was not ''modern'
physical--- fueling, arming, launching, etc dozens of aircraft and then those aircraft have to rendezvous, with lead planes launched long before last....
human--humans are not perfect and things will go wrong
I think a lot of people think that real military operations are just like map exercises....unit 1 moves to point A in 55 minutes...while unit 2 takes off 20 minutes later, to land at same time...
we have many, many historic operations as proof of this

 

Yorktown gets credit for efficient flight operations, but the key factor was simply that she was launching fewer planes. Her total strike package was 35 planes, comparable to the initial launches of Hornet and Enterprise, 33-35 SBDs plus escort/CAP fighters. Then, as Takao noted, the latter had to wait for the TBDs to be spotted; that was where things started to go downhill.

E and H's flight operations are often compared unfavorably to the Japanese morning strike against Midway, but again we should note that the Japanese were launching only half their planes.

 

An interesting variation would be to assume the absence of Stanhope Ring. John Waldron was senior squadron commander. What would have been the consequences if he had managed to bring Hornet's full strike package down on the Japanese carriers?

15 TBDs of VT-8
10 F4Fs of VF-8
34 SBDs of VB-8 and VS-8

It should also be noted that this might draw in Enterprise's 10 VF-6 fighters that accidentally followed VT-8 in but lost them approaching the target.

One the one hand, more fighter protection...

On the other hand, Hornet's SBD squadrons had only gotten their Dauntlesses in March and VF-8 was extremely raw.

On balance, I don't see much success coming from Hornet's strike package.

 

If the number of aircraft being launched at one time was the key factor in the efficiency in flight ops, do you think Yorktown would have suffered the same issues had Fletcher opted to commit VS-5 in the morning air strikes?

 

Quite likely. She would be subject to the same constraint as the other carriers, not being able to spot or launch all her SBDs and TBDs in a single operation (conveniently for our purposes, all three ships were of the same type).

Hornet initally spotted 41 attack aircraft, six TBDs at the aft end of the flight deck and 35 SBDs ahead of them (some sources say 34). Apparently this was the most that could be spotted and still allow the leading SBDs a sufficient takeoff run in the light wind conditions of the day. It appears to have been calculated fairly precisely; the first squadron carried 500lb bombs while the ones further back were able to carry 1000-pounders. Escort fighters, which needed the shortest takeoff run, were forward of the bombers. The fighters and bombers took off first, then the remaining nine TBDs of VT-8 were brought up and that whole squadron launched together. Staging these nine planes took an inordinately long time, during which the SBDs and F4Fs were burning fuel (we should recall that Hornet and her air group were the least experienced).

Enterprise's operation was similar in concept but different in detail. Her first launch was just SBDs and CAP fighters, after which as I understand it they brought up all fourteen TBDs of VT-6 and the ten F4Fs assigned to strike escort. Staging 24 aircraft, with the TBDs having to be placed all the way aft, took time, which led Spruance to lose patience and dispatch the SBDs on their own.

<note, Enterprise's scheme seems to worked all right for her F4Fs; they had fuel enough to loiter for almost an hour in the vicinity of Kido Butai and get home safely>

If VS-5 was to be included in Yorktown's launch, presumably she would follow the same general plan, so the question would be whether her crews could stage the second increment in significantly less time than her sisters. The Hornet scheme required only nine additional planes to be spotted, which ideally would minimize the time the SBDs and especially the F4Fs spent burning gas.

The time it took for planes actually to take off was not as critical as the time to spot the second launch.

One more point, after the first few TBDs were staged at the end of the flight deck, the spot would cover the aft elevator, so further planes would have to be moved from the midships or forward one.

 

68
Can anyone tell me why the USN never? went after the troops ships and escorts aftet the IJN carriers were sunk?

 

The one thing that could have spoiled the victory was for the Americans to blunder into a surface engagement. The transports would have been particularly hard to get at, with the surface ships of Kido Butai, Kurita's heavy cruisers, and Kondo's covering force between the Americans and them, not to mention Yamamoto's main body. Spruance kept his distance, especially at night, scouted for Japanese ships during the days, and attacked the few he found.

 

Thank you!

67

 

another thing, they did not know the Landing Force's exact location..they had turned back anyway... .....even if they did, still problomatic to find it and attack it...some of the US units were ''lucky'' to find the Japanese carriers...

 

R Leonard's post here debunks the myth about the USN bombers being "lucky" at finding Kido Butai:

http://www.ww2f.com/topic/39943-battle-of-midway-us-torpedo-and-dive-bomber-attacks/

 

Some accounts, including a show I recently saw on the "Military History" channel, tell a dramatic but inaccurate tale of McCluskey at the point of no return, about to give up hope of finding the Japanese, when he catches sight of Arashi and decides to press on, to be rewarded by the sight of Kido Butai shortly thereafter. In fact, as RLeonard and others have noted, McCluskey had already "turned back", but he did it in the form of a dogleg which would enable his planes to search a different swath of ocean on their way home. Arashi and the rest of the Japanese force were actually between the Enterprise dive bombers and their ship.

One bit "luck" pertained to Enterprise's Torpedo 6. While they did not fly quite the same track as McCluskey, they also passed Kido Butai on their outbound course, until they spotted shellbursts and smokescreens from the Japanese fighting off Torpedo 8. This caused them to approach from the southeast, adding to the confusion the torpedo planes' attacks imposed on the Japanese. Sadly of course most of VT-6 were lost.

As the sun set on June 4, Spruance had sunk four Japanese carriers and had only one ship damaged, which might be salvageable. On the other hand, Nagumo's force, including two battleships, was only about a hundred miles away and could cover 200 miles or more in any direction in the hours of darkness - as could other Japanese units in the vicinity. One example of Spruance's concern was leaving a destroyer with the drifting Yorktown, with orders to sink her if the enemy appeared. Spruance, and Fletcher, continued to guided by Nimitz's principle of calculated risk. They had already achieved what they had hoped for; there was little benefit in giving the Japanese a chance to even the balance.