The Navy Sunk Japan's Top Secret Aircraft Carrier (And She Was Massive)

a reply to: TonyS

But truthfully, how useful is an Air Craft Carrier to a nation who's enemies have tactical nukes in orbit, ready to be launched toward Earth?

Which countries have nukes in orbit? What country are you from, and how would your navy take out an American aircraft carrier?

a reply to: Archivalist

Midway was, in a phrase, strategic overreach.

Japan might, maybe, have been able to capture it--unlikely, but possible. They'd never have been able to hold it. Of course, that wasn't the main thrust of the operation. That was the destruction, hopefully, of the US Navy's remaining operational carriers. They simply didn't have the sealift capability to supply a garrison that far out into the Pacific. Not to mention one so close to the major US base in the Pacific.

Going into the battle, the Japanese thought that the navy had only two available carriers (Hornet and Enterprise), with Lexington (they actually thought it was Saratoga), and Yorktown having been sunk at Coral Sea the previous April, and Saratoga (they thought it was Lexington) having been sunk by a submarine that same month. Ranger and Wasp were in the Atlantic doing useful work with the Royal Navy (Wasp delivering fighters to Malta), and Ranger with Home Fleet, and later off North Africa supporting the landings there.

In reality, there were 3 fully operational US carriers waiting in ambush.

Still, had the Japanese not disregarded the tactic of concentration of forces, the IJN had an enormous advantage in power. Seven aircraft carriers with some of the best pilots and aircraft in the world. Had they not wasted the resources in the Aleutians, capturing Attu, and Kiska, and attacking Dutch Harbor, and utilized some of those resources off of Midway?? Who knows how it turns out...

Or simply waited a month or so, for IJN Shokaku and Zuikaku to be ready for battle.

There are all kinds of what ifs available...

originally posted by: seagull
a reply to: Archivalist

Midway was, in a phrase, strategic overreach.

I don't agree 100% with that. Midway I think from the Japanese standpoint was essential to keep the US on its heels. The loss of Midway would have resulted in a complete redistribution of the Pacific forces and perhaps from the Japanese thinking may have resulted in at least a delay by a year of the US trying to retake the Pacific.

They would have had to completely reinforce Hawaii above and beyond. Yamamoto seems to have understood the US industrial capacity to win the war over the long term and they had no choice but to try to keep pushing forward hoping that the US would not have the taste for fighting a two front war and their gains in the Pacific would be a Fait Accompli with the US keeping Hawaii etc. However, the Aleutians should have been the primary target NOT Midway.

I do agree with you that the IJN with their compromised comms, 'Victory Disease" and really bad intel had very little chance of winning Midway, but had they had remotely decent Damage control, they US would not have been able to press in the pacific and it would have been a draw.

a reply to: FredT

There is some validity to that.

Midway could have been a linchpin in the so-called Ribbon Defense that stretched across the South, Central, and Northern Pacific. If they'd been able to use it, as a base, properly.

Ideally, it would have put tremendous pressure on Pearl Harbor...ideally. In reality, there was no way that the Japanese could have maintained the control of the ocean necessary to keep the atoll supplied. Logistically, Midway would have been at the end of a very, very long chain. Easily snapped by the Submarine force that was slowly, but surely starting to have profound effects upon the Japanese maritime supply lines. ...and for an island nation? Not good. They really didn't ever have the resources necessary to hold Midway, once captured, and once the unrestricted submarine war got on track...they had nothing even resembling the resources. They had trouble in the SW Pacific, and they had huge base there, Rabaul and Truk to base out of...closest thing to Midway was Guam/Saipan, or Wake--none of which were more than minor bases.

...and once the giant that was US industry was fully on a war footing?? No, Midway would have been just another doomed garrison, one that they'd have had no hope of defending.

My humble opinion, of course. Simply too far away from home, and too close to the major US base in the Pacific.

ETA:

I've lived and worked in the Aleutians during every season of the year--winter, and not quite winter.

I've even been on both those islands...they're mostly uninhabited for a very good reason. Miserable places. What little of them that doesn't go straight up, is mud or muskeg. You're wet. Wetter. and there is seemingly no limit to how wet one can get.... Now attacking Dutch Harbor was, as a diversion, not a bad idea--as it did divert some resources away from Midway on the part of the US Navy...a small cruiser force. But the diversion was never taken seriously by Nimitz or his staff, as they had the inside scoop, so to speak...

As places to fight a war, the Aleutians are about as close to the bottom as it's possible to get...I was on fishing boats and it was bloody horrid sometimes, can't imagine being on an airplane battling a Williwaw, or on a troopship during a Siberian Express, and 40 to 50 foot seas. Not to mention that mud and muskeg on the "land".

Attu and Kiska provided nothing but a drain on resources that could be ill afforded to be wasted.

Again, my humble opinion.

What'd you think of that book? Broken Sword. I discovered quite a lot that isn't covered by more better known historians--Samuel Eliot Morison, among 'em.

a reply to: grey580

she still has the infamous record of being the largest vessel ever sank by a submarine and was the largest carrier built until the enterprise if memory serves me(think our new ones are bigger still) ,star and flag OP i had never heard of this before

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: RalagaNarHallas

USS Midway was actually smaller...I stand corrected.

I think it wasn't until the Kittyhawk came on line in the 50's, that Shinano was exceeded.

Darned memory...

Thx for making me check my data...

a reply to: seagull
en.wikipedia.org...
i think we were both wrong lol

As completed, Shinano had a length of 265.8 meters (872 ft 1 in) overall, a beam of 36.3 meters (119 ft 1 in) and a draft of 10.3 meters (33 ft 10 in). She displaced 65,800 metric tons (64,800 long tons) at standard load, 69,151 metric tons (68,059 long tons) at normal load and 73,000 metric tons (72,000 long tons) at full load. Shinano was the heaviest aircraft carrier yet built, a record she held until the 81,000-metric-ton (80,000-long-ton) USS Forrestal was launched in 1954. She was designed for a crew of 2,400 officers and enlisted men.[9][10]

from wiki forrestal was the biggest after her ,but she was one big ship for the time and pretty heavily armed (gun and rocket wise) for a carrier w 16 5 inch guns 145 25mm cannons and some weird kind of rocket battery 12 4.5 inch rockets that fired in 30 round salvos and she did about 27 Knots which was impressive for the time i think?

I can think of hundreds of reasons to have a fleet based around an aircraft carrier as well as auxillary heli-carriers that can accommodate choppers and VTOL jets. I think these smaller carriers are something we should look into more, maybe have 1 or 2 accompanying each regular carrier so that they can diverge to a different location, provide closer support to the fleet (especially with small, fast boats like those seen being used by the Iranian Rev Gaurd/navy & Somoli/Yemeni forces). Being able to launch choppers and fighters while the carrier hangs back I would think is a big advantage.

I thought the US had these but it looks like Japan has them and maybe Spain and some other countries.

theaviationist.com...

the photo at this link does go to show subs are probably the best option for going for a carrier though ,first one is the dallas next to UK carrier and another is a Canadian diesel electric sub that got close to Illustrious

To prove they could have sunk the carrier, Corner Brook’s crew snapped a photo through the periscope—and the Canadian navy helpfully published it.“The picture represents hard evidence that the submarine was well within attack parameters and would have been successful in an attack,” boasted Cmdr. Luc Cassivi, commander of the Canadian submarine division. Corner Brook, a former British submarine displacing only 2,400 tons, is no more capable than Dallas—and probably much less so once crew training is taken into account. American submariners spend far more time at sea than their Canadian counterparts.

i think the link for the photo is broken but does kind of go to show why submariners say there are subs and there are targets .not sure if it was true or not but i think i remember during the cold war we had all our attack subs ping the russian boomers at once to be like hey we could have had you would love to find a link on it if it was real

a reply to: TonyS

What message? I don't think our carrier was a rushed conversion.

a reply to: FredT

Yes, the code-breaking was the deal breaker. There were a slew of contributing factors, but all-in-all it was a decent gamble outside of the fact we were reading their mail.

On "concentration of force," I do not believe people recognize the size of the Pacific. Even today with a much smaller navy, we have several task forces and two entirely separate fleets (3rd, 7th Fleets) operating there. The big issue was not the split between Alaska and Midway forces, but that those forces were themselves split and separated too far for mutual support.

But if your plan is to go "all-in" and occupy Midway and force the American carriers into a pitched battle (which the USN had avoided in favour of hit and run raids to date), a simultaneous action in the Aleutians was not a bad plan. Both represent strategic interest, though Midway moreso. The Americans can't ignore an occupation of either and must come to battle.

Remember, too, that the IJN is aware that the longer the war drags on the worse their odds get. So pushing their line of active defense outward was meant to give them operational breathing room and threaten the line of communications/logistics between SEA/Australia and the US.

But if one side really desires to close and engage in pitched battle, after perhaps tempting the American's to split their fleet as well, but aren't aware of the enemy disposition, and the other side is reading their mail, well...

Also keep in mind that if it weren't for some fortunate timing (both in regards to the dive-bomber squadrons finally finding the fleet behind schedule, resulting in "perfect" timing after the torpedo squadrons, and the refueling/rearmihg of the IJN forces on deck) the day was shaping up to be a pretty bad one for the USN despite knowing exactly what they were heading into.

originally posted by: seagull
Midway was, in a phrase, strategic overreach.

Agreed. They split their forces with the plan still being to draw the United States suface fleet into a decisive engagment that the Japanese hoped ot win.

originally posted by: seagull
a reply to: TonyS

No one knows if the submarine that "stalked" the Reagan was detected, or not. No one is talking, nor should they. So no one knows other than the folks who should know.

If I had to guess, and that's all it is, that submarine was probably boresighted by at least one set of ASW weapons systems. CBG's often have an attack sub around for just such occasions...or so I'm told.

Rumor has it that there may be more than one undersea vessel protecting the battle group. If they detected the Chinese sub they wouldn't say so; why tip your hand to a possible aggressor? Whenever someone crows about getting inside a carrier group's defenses, they never really know how successful they were. Sometimes they are only looking for a knee-jerk reaction from the ignorant press. There are many scripts in play.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

They have to offer battle. And right then. Waiting just allows the Americans time for recapitalization and worse odds. A decisive engagement offers their best chance at buying significant amounts of time to acheive/stabilize their own holdings.
You cannot look at any of these battles as a stand-alone event.
The Japanese have taken Burma, Singapore, the Phillipines, Germany is pushed to the gates of Moscow, is preparing for Stalingrad offensive, the Russian Kharkov offensive has failed, Paulus's counter-offensive is bagging large components of the Red Army, mass surrenders in Ketch, Rommel is rolling up Libya/the Med, Malta appears ready to fall, etc. All this is within the few preceding months in 42. They need a decisive push to close out the war successfully on their terms -- a war they very much appear to be winning. The longer it goes, the worse their odds.
They are also coming off of the Battle of Coral Sea which was a victory on the field, but represented a loss of initiative against Port Moresby and impressed the need to nail down the US fleet.

The iron will never be hotter. They are on the home stretch to closing out the war or buying years with a victory at Midway.

The third British carrier was Couragous, often forgotten because it was sunk early.

The Japenesse carrier was large and fast, but critically, the Japanese were short on pilots. The plan for the the carrier was to not enplane any aircraft on it, but to use it as an emergency landing field for disabled planes. They were about three years too late for that to be effective.

The Japanese always had a liking for operational plans that were way too complex, depending on interactions of separated forces.... And most importantly, on the enemy acting just as the Japanese planned. When the Japanese improvised and had well trained pilots, eg the sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales, they did very well.

a reply to: Arnie123

I read a book written by a well known military expert and referencing lots of other high ranking military experts. They all said that if these missiles do what's claimed then aircraft carriers, used as they are now are indeed obsolete.

a reply to: obixman

Courageous!! That's the one!!

thx.

a reply to: seagull

First, I have no intention of picking a fight with anyone; I have engaged in questioning and speculation. I cant "know" if carriers are obsolete or not, I was merely entertaining the question if perhaps in this day and time they are reaching the end of their usefulness in some circumstances.

And the idea that they are obsolete wasnt mine; I got the question after reading this:
nationalinterest.org...

Its a way too long and technical read but the guy does raise some interesting points.

God bless the Navy; I just hope they are investing wisely.

a reply to: TonyS

War Is Boring, who actually wrote the article, is convinced stealth is a joke, the F-35 is the worst weapon since the French tried to build a machine gun in WWI, carriers are obsolete, the F-15 and F-16 are the only fighters we'll ever need.....

You get the point.

I recently read a somewhat revisionist account of the Pacific theater in WWII
'Fire in the Sky' by Bergerud

the author said the US and IJN carriers decimated each other early (Midway, Coral Sea) and both sides pulled their carriers back so during the heart of the war (1943) they rarely fought each other. later both sides used land-based craft as the fighting drew closer to the Japanese Home Islands. not unusual for aircraft to fly off a carrier, perform its mission, and land on shore.
US built carriers like crazy last two years. IJN couldn't keep up with losses. as mentioned they lost lots of pilots and had trouble replacing them. Bergerud suggests allies emphasized search / rescue and recovered a fair amount if its pilots but the IJN rarely bothered with.

at one point in 1942-1943 the USN had only one operational carrier in the Pacific theater (Enterprise I believe) and had to beg the Brits for one. lots of postwar philosophy based on 'we won't let that happen again'. of course modern ships take years to build so in-war expansion not likely these days.