Slitherine

quote:

"After the battle, Fuchida collated the hits for a report to Emperor Hirohito. The commander had been orbiting the harbor and observing the attack. The number of hits reported exactly matched the number of hits expected in his pre-battle calculations."

quote:

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

quote:

"After the battle, Fuchida collated the hits for a report to Emperor Hirohito. The commander had been orbiting the harbor and observing the attack. The number of hits reported exactly matched the number of hits expected in his pre-battle calculations."

The same Fuchida, who's notorious misstatements have required significant reconstruction of the historical understanding of the Pacific War?

Quell surprise. Hadn't heard that one.

quote:

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

quote:

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

quote:

"After the battle, Fuchida collated the hits for a report to Emperor Hirohito. The commander had been orbiting the harbor and observing the attack. The number of hits reported exactly matched the number of hits expected in his pre-battle calculations."

The same Fuchida, who's notorious misstatements have required significant reconstruction of the historical understanding of the Pacific War?

Quell surprise. Hadn't heard that one.

This was about the Vals in the second wave - however only one hit the secondary targets which were the cruisers in port. The primary targets were the carriers even if they had been sunk so they could not be easily salvaged if at all.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Ian R

If you hit a carrier, that is already "bottomed" in harbour, and only has a (relatively easily repairable) largely wooden structure above the strength deck, how much more damage is a 500 odd pound bomb going to do?

It's obviously going to have some blast/skockwave effect going off under water, but short of fracturing the hull, if the carrier is already burned out, everything above (and lot of stuff below) the armour deck is going to most likely be replaced anyway.

Incidentally, the USN even salvaged the Oklahoma (in 1943??), but determined that it wasn't worth repairing it - only because they had more than enough old BBs without it. If, say, the Lexington had been bottomed, you can see it coming back with the permanent list corrected, the 8" swapped for more 5"/38 in EBR mounts, the elevators re-built in more useful deck edge spots, etc. They would probably even re-boiler it and sort out the fuel consumption.

I suppose that if your exit plan is to do enough damage to make it all too hard for your opponent to rebuild and come back at you, a little more incremental damage might help, but the exit plan was flawed ab initio.