Slitherine

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As for context I thought the context was "IF KB had hung around for a 3rd strike" and or remained in the area to search for the missing CVs. In that context the Lex does not appear nor does the Enterprise get full strength capable.

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I did not say that my arguments were based on chaos theory - I just said it was trendy to associate chaos theory with the "sh-t happens" perspective - even if these associations are erroneous.

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My argument is not about a chaos theory.

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It is based on the practical limits associated with understanding causes and effect in a complex system. Since you are dealing with an incredibly complex system, in which you cannot , in practice, model all of the causes and effect, how can you accurately predict an outcome?

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YOU do not know the causes YOU cannot predict the outcome with certainty - no one can.

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl

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Oh, you just happened to introduce a wholly irrelevant arena of research as a response to my remark to the effect that '"sh1t happens" is a useless approach to phemonenology,' and in so doing you managed to expound in detail about your notion of chaos theory even though your notion is profoundly wrong.

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It is based on the practical limits associated with understanding causes and effect in a complex system. Since you are dealing with an incredibly complex system, in which you cannot , in practice, model all of the causes and effect, how can you accurately predict an outcome?

The US trap at Midway, and the problem of IJN mission overtasking during the battle, were both Jupiter scale phenomena, not 100m epiphenomenon. Delete the USN CVs and intel (the trap) and the IJN wins at Midway by default. Delete the mission overtasking and the IJN's chances greatly improve.

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Of COURSE I know the causes. You know the causes. Nagumo knew the causes before the battle even began, and it was coldly demonstrated to him in IJN simulations prior to the battle. The difference is that unlike Nagumo, who knew why he was beaten rather quickly after the fact, you are still in the pre-Midway state of denial.

I'll repeat it for you. Mission overtasking.

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Probably the best example of this is the "failure" of the search planes radio.

When one looks at it as a single event, one draws the conclusion that had it not failed, things would have turned out quite differently.

When one widens the scope to look at all radio communications, it becomes quite apparent that radios of that time period failed quite often coupled with the fact that communications were commonly disrupted even when the radios were working correctly.

Suddenly, the radio failure becomes not a triggering event, but actually something that should have been expected and planned for. Knowing this and not accounting for it in the plan resulted in the results, not the actual individual failure.

They should have expected the plane to not have a functional radio and sent more then one to prevent a single point of failure of such a critical nature. It could have just as easy been engine problems or dirty gas or carb icing. The actual cause looses meaning when looking at the overall model.

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First, with respect to the book on disasters, I'm guessing the author says that these disasters were not pure bad-luck because the odds were good that they would happen some time.

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Same goes for Midway. So many little things happened that potentially could have changed the battle. Tone 4 didn't confirm or report a carrier until almost an hour after it first reported seeing ships. The delay was probably due to cloud cover. With an earlier report of a carrier, Nagumo likely would have been able to stop the change to bombs and launched an early strike against the U.S. carriers with the second wave of planes he had on hand.

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Having served in the active duty military, I am a big believer in the "sh1t happens" philosophy. Training, experience, good equipment, and good maintenance can take a lot of chance out of the equation, but nature, physics, and human fallability add a significant component of chance to every battle. With experience and training, you can reduce many of the chance factors, but there's always something new and unexpected that plays its hand.

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Hi, All I know is when I am Japan. I will win Midway.

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If I was going to suppress Midway prior to an invasion I would have a force deemed large enough to defeat all existing USN CV whose where abouts were unknown supporting the effort. Not before I had conducted extensive recon of the area whould I move other forces into the area.

The Japanese had the means to conduct recon. Failing this they should have assumed the enemy was waiting until proven otherwise. Where was the need for a dawn strike on Midway? Before recon had reported back the safe course was to suppose there were enemy CV nearby.

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl
The problem with such speculation is that (a) you can't assume that some other failure would not have occurred. (b) You can't assume that the given failures would not occur.

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(c) I am, frankly, astounded at the consistent "Yeah, well if only the US fought the battle with another hand tied behind its back hopping on one leg chasing a rabbit" altered circumstances that people imagine might have occurred.

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There is absolutely no way in 1942 that the result of such an engagement would have ended as anything other than a decisive destruction of strike force.

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I suppose what you're trying to say (and I'm sure you'll correct me if I've put the wrong words in your mouth) is that the Japanese were operating in a manner in which there was a higher statistical probability of a number of things going wrong than for the Americans.

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That so many individual occurrances fell in favor of the U.S. and against the Japanese, in my mind, is not square in the middle of the bell curve.

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Replayed repeatedly, the Japanese would catch more breaks.

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I see the opponents being fairly evenly matched.

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Somewhat balancing this is the greater experience of the Japanese pilots, their better armaments both with respect to bombs and torpedoes, and the greater range of their aircraft.

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Based on this, I would certainly expect a 4:1 result in favor of the U.S. to occur more often than a 3:1 result for the Japanese.

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I don't think it is unreasonable to say that there was 25% chance that the Japanese would spot the U.S. first, or that the U.S. carriers would be spotted in time to launch the second reserve wave against the U.S. carriers before the U.S. strike arrived over the Japanese.

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Move a few clouds around and the Japanese get a free first strike.

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But there is a statistically significant chance that the Japanese would have won

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The only thing I disagree with, and I disagree with this vehemently, is that the ONLY result could have been a 4:1 exchange or some such lopsided result.

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As stated by someone else, this is hubris on your part with no underlying support. As you said, "you can't assume that some other failure would not have occurred," and these other failures may just have well been on the part of the U.S.

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But every military conflict (just as Mogami says) proves that even best military plan does not survive the first encounter with enemy.

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Add to this that some ideal things happened for US side (like timing of all land/sea air attacks that happen to tire Japanese CAP and, finally, lure them to low level when dive bombers arrived to kill 3 Japanese CVs) while some most unfavorable things happen to Japanese (submarine patrols coming few days later to patrol area - thus failing to see US fleet, search plane mishaps, 1st wave come back while CAP is fighting land based air attacks thus forcing 2nd wave to go below deck and re-arm)...