Quote:
Originally Posted by Falcon Jun
The key, I think, to this hypothetical aerial fight is the number of fighters the US could've scrambled in the limited time they had left before the Japanese planes made their actual attack. Was there actually enough time left to scramble the fighters? In 1940, How long does the US Army Air Corps take to scramble planes once a raid had been spotted?
At first glance, I personally thought that if the US fighters had bounced the Japanese raid over Pearl, the Japanese didn't have enough escorts to fight their way through. But when I thought about it some more, I realized that the inexperienced sailors, marines and soldiers manning anti-aircraft guns at Pearl would've likely shot down many US fighters as well given the confusion and shock of the attack.
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One variable to be defined is how many pilots were near enough their planes. There was a fourty minute gap between the two attack groups, Yet only a little over a dozen US pursuit planes took off. A significant part of this small response was the large number of pilots who had been at liberty in the bars Saturday night. If the warning comes from the infamous radar spot around 0600 then theres only going to a handfull of pilots availalble. If the Japanese fleet is identified hours earlier from several spottings. Say a stray fishing or other comercial boat on the 5th or 6th, and confirmation by a unspotted reconissance plane late on the 6th, then a majority of the pilots could be rounded up out of the Oahu bars. So at least a hundred planes would have had pilots on hand when the radar intercept occured.
"the Japanese didn't have enough escorts to fight their way through."
The US intercept control was fairly primitive and not well rehearsed. With a hour warning it may not even be functioning. Even if stood up by ten hours warning things like errors in passing our radio frequencys, squadron identification, holding pattern location and related refrence points create confusion. The details of the air defense over Manila on 8, 9, 10 December indicate some of the problems that would be reproduced over Oahu. The one advantage of Oahu over Manilia is the target area is much more concentrated so there is less chance of the US pilots being too disperesed to make interceptions.
As for loss rates for each side: There is a small sample from the actual losses over Oahu. I dont recall the exact numbers but although only fourteen Japanese aircraft were shot down over Oahu (less than 5% of the total) a significant number were too badly damaged to fly off the carriers again within 24 hours. The overall strength of the Japanese air wing was reduced by roughly one third due to battle damage, breakdowns, and accidents. Again the air battle over Manila would provide a usefull sample for estimating possible losses of each side.
Of course ten hours warning by a late evening reconissance report allows the fleet to sortie and momenarily disapper from sight.