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ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

My understanding from Shattered Sword is that it was the lack of enough torpedo carts that caused the situation. When the order was given to arm the Kates for land attack, all the torpedoes had to be removed. There weren't enough carts to stow them all below, so some were set aside to be loaded onto the carts and sent to the magazine later.

My belief is that the bombs were all on carts, probably for the reasons Chez has mentioned, and because there were enough bomb carts. The quote from Shattered Sword (p.250): "This appalling total of nearly 80,000 pounds of explosives lay scattered everywhere, on aircraft, on bomb carts, or simply shoved against the hanger bulkheads to get them out of the way." Parshall and Tully don't say exactly what was where (they did mention holding racks next to the magazine elevator).

On p.157 they mention that the bomb handlers in the magazine had "let it be known that they had their hands full just getting the bombs out of storage and not to send anything down to them yet." I would assume that as the bomb handlers got things going, later they were probably taking torpedoes down but at the beginning the torpedoes had to go into temporary holding racks. So they weren't just rolling around, but they were in the blast zone when the american bombs exploded.

Apparently there were only six torpedo carts (at least on Akagi), so most of the plane crews had to wait until a cart was available to unload their bombers. Since the torpedoes couldn't go below, they went into the holding racks so that the cart could be used to unload another Kate.

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ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Almost exactly the same thoughts occurred to me when reading some of the exchanges that preceded publication of Shattered Sword. Any added distance Nagumo placed between himself and TF's 16/17 had to be to his benefit insofar as it played to the range advantage of his aircraft. Theoretically he might ultimately have placed himself outside the strike range of the short-legged TBD's.

However, there were two major constraints on Nagumo's available choices.

First, once Tomonaga's Midway strike was launched, KB was presumably committed to the Japanese equivalent of a 'Point Option' course in order to r/v with the returning strike.

Second, for multi-carrier launches and recoveries KB would turn into the wind. That's why it was, broadly speaking, on an easterly course from 0832 to 0917 whilst it recovered Tomonaga's strike.

That left Nagumo with a window of about an hour in which he could run in a westerly direction before the US carrier dive bombers arrived in the vicinity. Assuming, of course, (BIG assumption) that the US airgroups followed the same courses as they took on the day.

My take is that he was unlikely to have evaded all US carrier air by turning west. In particular, a westerly course might well have brought the Enterprise SBD's into contact sooner than was actually the case, given that they approached from the SW. On the other hand the time and place of such interceptions might have left the CAP in a better position to deal with the various threats by which it was confronted.

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What I've always felt Nagumo's actions at Midway proved was that in Confused, High-Pressure, Situations..., and with Limited Intellegence (and much of that in error); people tend to make a lot more "mistakes" than they do looking back with 65 years of hindsight.

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ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

{snip}...

Almost exactly the same thoughts occurred to me when reading some of the exchanges that preceded publication of Shattered Sword. Any added distance Nagumo placed between himself and TF's 16/17 had to be to his benefit insofar as it played to the range advantage of his aircraft.

...

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ORIGINAL: spence
IIRC from Shattered Sword, "control" of the CAP resided with the officer in charge of all flight deck operations on each individual carrier. Since this officer had no means to actually communicate with CAP a/c once they were in the air and was often to busy to do so anyways his "control" basically boiled down to ordering the launching or authorizing the recovery of CAP a/c.

I do not have a particularly good feel for how this officer (I can't remember the IJN title - think it begins with H though) fit into the chain of command on the carrier.

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First, once Tomonaga's Midway strike was launched, KB was presumably committed to the Japanese equivalent of a 'Point Option' course in order to r/v with the returning strike.

Second, for multi-carrier launches and recoveries KB would turn into the wind. That's why it was, broadly speaking, on an easterly course from 0832 to 0917 whilst it recovered Tomonaga's strike

quote:

ORIGINAL: spence
... Nagumo apparently did not trust the position sufficiently to try to find the "sweet spot" range where he could attack and the Americans couldn't. But basically his instinct was to attack and to him, a "cruiser man" IIRC, that meant getting in close ...