Nikademus
Posts: 25684
Joined: 5/27/2000
From: Alien spacecraft
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as with many aspects, it depends on the players, and what "rules" they want to put in place when they play. From a "historical" standpoint, the mass transfer of CAG's to landbases was not a normal occurance and was only done when a carrier arrived at port to anchor. Naturally it cant operate aircraft under such circumstances hence the CAG's would transfer to the NAS (Naval air station) located at the same base before the carrier comes into the harbor. After said carrier leaves port the CAG's fly out and meet with the carrier. Note that this is a far cry from say, leaving a carrier in a port and transfering the CAG's only to a different base and operating them from it.
Carrier commanders would frown very heavily on the idea of some theater commander stripping their flattops of CAG's and say, transfering them to a distant or near destant airbase to conduct ops vs having the carrier operate with them.
For the US this was only done at Guadalcanal and only on a limited basis due to the desperate situation there, the shortage of aircraft in the theater and of course battle damage to the carrier in question. But again, the carrier commanders were very leary of this as they suspected, and suspected rightly, that the theater commanders and marine/army types would gleefully take the opportunity to grab a handy source of airpower to use as erstatz land assets for as long as possible. Of course in UV, you have all the power so this isn't an issue :)
The Japanese later did it with their carriers and course payed the price.
So while "possible" from a doctoral standpoint it wouldn't be done, at least to the degree i've experienced it.
I dont object to it either though.......part of wargaming is for players to come up with imaginative new ways to fight, though personally i tend to play 'historically' and restrict my inovativeness to tactics. (getting my a$$ kicked in the process usually :p ) In the end i lump it with the all-fighter carrier TF.....its "possible" in real life, but improbable.
In terms of CAG's among carriers, there is also a difference.
USN Doctorine was designed around CAG's being flexible and interchangable from carrier to carrier, thus if one carrier was damaged or if a CAG got handled roughly, they could be be readily swapped and were.
IJN Doctorine was more rigid. CAG's were assigned to specific carriers and carrier divisions and stayed put, training intensively so that a finer degree of coordination was achieved. There was no mechinism in place for the flexible transfer of whole CAG's between carriers. This had advantages in offensive operations in terms of coordination and cohesion, but if the carrier or CAG got roughly handled , both were essentially out of action till addressed. This was exactly what happened to Shokaku and Zuikaku after Coral Sea.
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