Coral sea and its effect on Nagumo at Midway

I picked up a book today and while skimming the author made an interesting observation that when the first contact alert came out Nagumo failed to act because a similar report in the battle of Coral sea resulted in the attack on the Neosho. This mistake did have a bearing on the battle

 

P/O Amari's initial report - "sight what appears to be ten enemy ships" was not very helpful. Nagumo or his staff naturally demanded that Amari report ship types, but his followon report - "appear to be five cruisers and five destroyers" - was not only unhelpful but positively misleading. As you say, the one carrier battle to date provided an example of the danger in launching on first report; it's only with hindsight that we can call Nagumo's caution a mistake.

In theory he could have ordered an immediate halt to rearming and spotting of all ready aircraft for launch; this would include about 2/3 of the torpedo planes since they could only rearm 1/3 at a time. Spotting would take about 1/2 hour which hopefully would allow for more accurate information to come in - although in this case the second report suggested that the American force had no carriers and therefore should not be a primary target. Japanese planes did have enough endurance to spend some time searching or redirect to another target should new information be received while they were outbound.

He'd also have to launch almost as soon as the aircraft were spotted, to clear the flight decks for Tomonaga's planes to land. This would commit them to attack whatever was out there or jettison their ordnance, since the B5Ns could not land with torpedos attached. The torpedo planes from Akagi and Kaga would be carrying about 1/3 of their ships' total supply of torpedos. Of course there is some value in sinking cruisers and destroyers - or oilers like Neosho for that matter - but not if it means you have no strike planes available when enemy carriers do show up.

Although Yorktown was the carrier attacked six hours later, Amari's initial sighting appears to have been TF16. This was operating in two formations, each comprising a carrier, three cruisers, and 4-5 destroyers, 8-9 ships total; Amari apparently saw one formation and then part of the other, at which time he finally identified a carrier. His numbers were not far off; the problem was his mistaking the carrier in the first formation he saw for a cruiser. That may seem odd to us, used to looking at clear photographs and line drawings, but it's different in a plane, at the edge of visual range, ducking in and out of clouds and trying to avoid detection oneself. I wonder if he might have been confused by the massive island structure and tripod mast? Japanese carriers were true "flattops" with diminutive islands and sometimes none at all. It also appears from the track charts that he was viewing the Americans from their starboard bow, where the silhouette would less clear than on the beam or directly ahead or astern.

 

since the carriers also had a stack of guns next to their towers if one is at the wrong angle it could look just like a cruiser

 

The Japanese were quite bad at identifying ships and their type

 

They weren't alone in that. USN observers also mis ID ships on numerous occasions, usually like the Japanese ascribing them to at least one class bigger. The Germans on the other hand tended to miss ID them in the other direction. Bismarck and Eugen apparently thought PoW and Hood were cruiser until close to the time they opened fire. Likewise Graff Spee Identified her opponents as a light cruiser and 2 destroyers initially.

 

One that comes to mind was the 2nd Naval battle of Guadalcanal. The Japanese didn't initially ID the US battleships as battleships then they mis ID at least SoDak. The latter may have been one reason the SoDak wasn't hit with any torpedoes and very few heavy shells.

 

The Battle Off Samar where Kurita thought he was engaging a fast carrier task force instead of the jeeps of Taffy 3, even though his gun crews were scoring hits in a running fight and thus had to have the target's correct (slow) speed plotted.

 

Possibly.

The Sendai's group reported the enemy as two heavy cruisers and four destroyers, but then they came under heavy fire and broke contact - effectively taking themselves out of the battle. The only destroyer in Sendai's group to launch torpedoes was the Ayanami. Only because she had been sent around the far side of Savo Island, thereby avoiding the initial action and Sendai's turn away. Ayanami launched a broad spread aimed at the center of the US force - IIRC, she might have managed to get a torpedo close to South Dakota, but scored no hits on the battleships.

Then, the Nagara's group ID'd the four US destroyers, leading the formation, as three destroyers and a cruiser. At this point, the Nagara group launched their torpedoes at the four American destroyers, with devastating results. Thus when they encountered the US battleships, there were no torpedoes in the tubes.

So, if the US battleships had been correctly identified in the first place, the Nagara's group possibly would have held on to some or all of their torpedoes in hopes of bigger game.

 

I was thinking more when Kirishima and company engaged SoDak and Washington. Neptunes Inferno had something on it. One speculation I've seen is that once identified as one of the older battleships it threw off their estimation of range, speed, and angle of approach. I'll see what I can find. Certainly I would have expected the Japanese to go for a battleship with their torps if they had one in their sites. That's what the Type 93 was designed for after all.

 

This action is covered fairly thoroughly over at navweaps.com:
http://www.navweaps.com/index_lundgren/Battleship_Action_Guadalcanal.pdf

Seems that the US navy camouflage measures were doing their job that night. The SoDak was mis-identified as a North Carolina class battleship. The SoDak's camo scheme gave the Atago a fit in establishing her speed and course- at first, they though she was steaming parallel, then they thought she was stopped, before finally deciding that she was on a closing course. The Washington was ID'd as an Idaho class battleship, but was awash up to the main deck & sinking by the bow. This was the Washington's Measure 12 camouflage scheme - with the majority of the hull painted dark blue, and her superstructure & a small portion of the bow painted sky grey.

 

actually the SODAk was the one fired on and received some hits. The Washington was not fired on. THe battle wasnt fair since the two Japanesee capital ships were lightly armoured and gunned in comparrison to the US

 

Even less fair, since there was only one Japanese capital ship present that night. Hiei (however you say that) had been knocked out in the Nov 12-13 fight. It's an interesting analogy, Hiei was disabled by ~85 5" and 8" shell hits and SoDak on Nov 14-15 was 'mission killed' by numerous hits almost all 8" and smaller, along with some self-inflicted problems.

 

After mispronouncing it for years ("Hi") I was informed (by my daughter and have since seen it elsewhere) that it is pronounced something like "He ay". The shots that really disabled her were from what I understand 8" rounds that found their way into her engineering spaces. As for Kirishima if you look at the latest analysis of her damage I doubt even Yamato would have survived that many heavy hits at that range. Indeed under 10,000 yards I beleive only the face plates of her turrets would have rejected the US 16" AP rounds and being bigger she would like have been hit by even more.

At one point there was some talk on the IJN board of recording some native Japanese speakers pronouncing the various ship names and other relevant words and posting them on site. Not sure if they did that or not.

 

You mean something like this
Naval ships pronunciation dictionary: pronunciation and words related to Naval ships in Forvo
Gives you an idea, but some of the pronunciations are lacking in quality.

Don't feel to bad I didn't know how to pronounce Hiei correctly until I began watching the anime "Yu Yu Hakusho", where one of the main characters is named Hiei.

 

I had another thought about this. The Japanese routinely operated in several groups, carriers, cruisers, main body, etc. and they might well expect their enemy to do the same. In their pre-Midway war games, their Americans employed separate carrier and battleship forces. So it would not seem unusual to them to receive a scouting report of a surface-only force, five cruisers and five destroyers with no carrier. To them it would suggest that an American carrier force might be somewhere in the area but operating separately, still needing to be located.

We all know that sighting "American ships" was synonymous with sighting "an American carrier force" but Nagumo and staff did not have that luxury. They could accept Amari's "five cruiser and five destroyer" at face value and still consider American carriers not to have been located.

 

It just affirms that while Nagumo wasnt the best choice as an air task force comander, he wasnt as bad as after the fact review would suggest