wdolson
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cavalry
Would it be fair to say the carriers were not at PH because they knew the attack was coming?
quote:
ORIGINAL: Shellshock
The Enterprise was doing her best to get back into Pearl. Her first ETA was Saturday evening, but a storm delayed her. The next time set was 7 AM, 55 minutes before the attack started, but that proved too optimistic as well. She was, however, close enough to Pearl to send her aircraft ahead to land at Ford Island, and some of them were shot down by "friendly fire."
What really crushes the "carriers hustled out of port" myth is the fact that Enterprise was scheduled to be in port on Dec. 6th and 7th, as shown in the Employment Schedule promulgated in August, '41. No orders were ever recieved to change this. The mission to Wake was planned to coincide with the original schedule so that it would not be known that the island had recieved additional air support. The trip was kept secret, even the loading of the planes had a "cover story".
One of the primary reasons the Enterprise was late was not just the storm, but trying to refuel the DDs in rough seas. The US struggled quite a bit with refueling in anything but placid conditions in the first months of the war.
Another factor that hasn't been brought up yet was that the USN learned a heck of a lot in the first six months of the war. The force that faced the KB at Midway knew what they were doing far better than the CVs in December 41.
People can train for combat, but until the actual war happens, all tactics are theoretical. US CVs had never been to war and were an untried force. The crews knew the basics very well, but they didn't know yet what would work and what wouldn't. Various raids on Japanese outposts around the Pacific in the first months of 1942 gave the crews the first hand experience they needed to hone their skills.
Nobody flying in the USN had ever done a live weapons drop in anger. No fighter pilot had ever fired his guns at another plane.
I think it highly likely that if the Lexington or Enterprise had found the KB on Dec 7, they would have flubbed the attack and possibly lost the ships.
The difference in skills could be seen at Midway. Most of the Enterprise and Yorktown pilots were combat vets and they scored big. The Hornet's air group was pretty green and the only squadron that was really combat ready was VT-8 because of Waldron's aggressiveness. When the rubber hit the road, Stanhope Ring, CAG-8 lead VS-8 and VB-8 off in the wrong direction and caused half of VF-8 to be lost due to fuel exhaustion. When it came to strikes on the Hiryu, VS-8 and VB-8 were the two most complete squadrons available, but they scored no hits. They didn't do very well against the damaged cruisers later in the battle either. Hornet's air group made virtually no contribution to the battle except to sacrifice an entire VT squadron to distract the Zeroes.
It wasn't until the Vietnam War that the US realized that most planes shot down were flown by rookies. If a pilot got in 10 missions, their chances of surviving the tour were much higher than they were in the first 10 missions. This is why the Top Gun school exists. It's an attempt in peace time to give pilots as many of those skills from the first 10 missions they can without live fire.
The results of Pearl for the US CVs is probably the best possible outcome for them. They were not ready to take on the KB and they were out of position to even try.
The inexperience at carrier fighting was also evident on both sides at Coral Sea. Both sides launched full deck strikes at the wrong targets. The US did in the Shoho and the Japanese launched everything at the Neosho and Sims. Later the Japanese launched a dusk strike that flew right over the US carriers without finding them. The two opposing carrier TFs almost sighted one another and Japanese aircraft tried to land on US decks by mistake.
The Japanese had their two least experienced carrier groups in the battle and it showed. The Yorktown and Lexington's groups were about average seasoned for the USN at that time, but they were green compared to the 1st string KB flyers on the Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, and Soryu.
Combat experience is a major factor, both individual and institutional. Something that continually grew for the USN as the war went on and dropped for the Japanese. The US did a much better job than Japan of capturing institutional knowledge about combat as the war went on. As a result green air crews knew more and more about what to expect by the time they got into combat and the learning curve was ever flatter.
On Dec 7, 1941, the USN was at the bottom of a learning cliff. People talk about how tough it is to learn this game. The real thing was even tougher.
Bill
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OT: If the carriers had been at Pearl Harbor, would the... - 
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There was no precedent for a carrier vs. carrier engagement prior to the battle of the Coral Sea, so both sides had in fact no experience in that kind of combat a the time of PH. Also see wdolson's post.
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