mdiehl
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Joined: 10/21/2000
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There's much flying around so I'm going to direct my responses generically and if you've been looking for an answer from me to a question I hope I've not forgotten your question.
1. Sources. I typically use four printed sources for a/c range. The only web site source that I used is the USN's web site that gives the combat radius of the F4F as 324 miles. Since I do not carry my sources around with me, I sometimes use a web source (such as the NASM), but I'll revise it if I subsequently discover that the web source is way off from my printed sources.
2. Range. Maybe this belongs in the a/c range thread, but... the ranges of ALL of the a/c (Japanese and US) exceed the actual combat radii by a good margin. Some sources will have the "combat loaded range" which in essence means how far the thing can fly on one tank of gas, armed. If you halve these figures and back off 20-30% you still get ranges that greatly exceed 200 miles. By the way, this applies to Japanese a/c as well as Allied ones. That is, the "ranges" given for a/c like the Aichi D3A are typically 900 miles. That is not a "strike radius" (otherwise you'd have to argue that the strike radius of the SBD was 750 miles), it's just "how far on one tank of gas." IIRC it was Sabre21 who pointed out that these may be "optima." The sources do not cite mfrs manuals or design bureau specs, so these may be optima or they may be "most common expected range." At some point, we can be sure, the people who actuallyd eployed and used the a/c wrote down some observations as to what could really be expected.
3. Why, then, does the "range" even halved less 20-30% exceed the common practice? Answer, because carrier ops are more complex than land based runway ops. Carriers (then, anyhow) did not typically have the launch rate capability of runways, so a/c had to loiter longer to form groups. Carriers tended to move after launching planes, so navigation was unarguably trickier. Naval targets tended to move after strikes were launched at them, so navigation was trickier still. When returning to parent CVs, a/c typically had to spend more time waiting (because it was not always "a good moment" for the CV to land planes, or because there were lots of planes ahead of you in the landing cycle). Thus, while a TF commander might launch a strike at targets at extreme range (for ex in the battle of the Phillippine Sea), if he wanted potentially battle-damaged a/c to get home, he'd give a pilot a good margin for problems.
4. Common practice. It seems fairly typical of both the USN and IJN to launch CV based a/c at FIXED targets (land bases, ships anchored in a port) at ranges up to 250 miles for the IJN (Darwin Raid is the longest ranged attack a Japanese CV ever put up) and up to 200 miles (USN in 1942, increasing as the war progressed and longer-legged a/c became available). In CV vs CV combat, both the IJN and USN made regular practice of waiting to close the range to less than 180 miles. The Pearl Harbor strike is interesting in that the Japanese, despite the risk of detection, chose to close to 180 miles more or less before launching their attack. One reason for a Japanese commander to close the range is the consideration of the fragility of his a/c. Lacking self-sealing tanks, they were far more susceptible to fuel loss than USN a/c.
That, by the way, is why I responded that limiting a/c (at least CV based ones) to two hexes, while offered in jest, was not the worst idea I've heard around here. Assuming that every hex represents 80 nm, a two hex range would be appropriate for both IJN and USN CV based a/c attacking mobile enemy surface units. Axis Fanboys might protest being shortchanged maybe 20 nm, but at no point in the war was the common GAME practice of standing off out of the (hindsight informed) known range of the USN CV based a/c a tactic employed by the IJN. It'd be nice if Matrix could figure out a way to prevent that ahistorical tactic from being used.
5. Collisions. They happened alot. That's my point. And not just in the IJN. If the originally proposed massive bombardment TF comprised of Godzilla, 6 IJN BBs, Xerxes Army, a dozen CAs, and sixty plus DDs tried to get in range to pound Midway, they'd HAPPEN. It's almost a dead certainty. What're you gonna do, establish a Flying Circus of ships and have them steam in a big circle, each in turn opening fire for a few minutes as its distance from Midway approached its nadir? If two CAs (Mikuma and Mogami) can bump avoiding a submarine (not the torpedoes, muind you, just the sub), don't you think jamming 100+ (mostly radarless) ships into a gun line at night is an, err, "complex maneuver?" To believe otherwise is to have an inordinate faith in perfect planning.
6. The Japanese plan at Midway sucked. I may be opposed by 100 people here, fortunately being correct is a fundamentally NON democratic process. I'd staunchly defend the claim that the Earth is a spheroid in the face of 100 Flat-Earthers any day, and that's about how much contempt I have for the "Midway=Luck" devotees. When you consider how much BAD luck the USN had that day, and how much GOOD luck the IJN had in even finding Yorktown at all, invoking "better luck for Japan" is a crazy idea.
7. Beyond that, the Japanese plan was UTTERLY ERROR INTOLERANT. Not only in requiring perfect results from the first strike wave on Midway, but also in assuming that the CVs could simultask three jobs at once. Their recon plan had NO overlap in a/c search routes. They knew, from the get go, that if ANY ONE search plane had problems, disappeared, for example, from an engine failure or whatever, that that a/c's assigned patrol area would go un-explored. That they chose to implement such an error intolerant plan does itself strongly suggest that the only way the Japanese COULD have won at Midway would have been if EVERY element of the Japanese plan were executed without flaw, AND if major elements of the USN plan went awry.
That's why 1/1000 is, IMO, the best approximation of Japanese success at Midway that I am willing to accept. To believe that the Japanese plan was LIKELY to come out otherwise is to believe in perfection in Japanese planning and execution. I am quite sure that the famous Axis Faboys around here believe the IJN was incapable of error, and that is probably why they think Midway had much chance of turning out other than it did.
< Message edited by mdiehl -- 3/31/2004 3:56:17 PM >
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Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.
Didn't we have this conversation already?
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RE: Midway - 
( no insults to fellow salts guys) 
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