Quote:
Originally Posted by von_noobie
5 carriers being located at PH is unlikely, But not impossible, Totally agree. How about i give a possible solution to why 5 carriers may be located there.
USN is pretty much there main strike force until airforce and army is built up, So is it not possible, With full scale war already raging in the Atlantic, And a very real threat from Japan, That the USN decides to conduct a large scale naval exercise using as many ships as they can muster, Including all 5 carriers mentioned in this 'what-if'. Would also mean airgroups still on the ships, Munitions and fuel lines exposed etc, but does not mean the crews would be on full alert.
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Even more unlikely. With most of the Atlantic a war zone, and war about to break out in the Pacific, the USN isn't going to be scheduling any large scale exercises. The annual fleet exercise known as Fleet Problem XXII, scheduled for the Spring of 1941, was canceled for exactly this reason. Even many badly need refits/rebuilds of major ships were postponed in 1941 because of the threat of imminent war. If in the extremely unlikely event the USN considered a fleet exercise necessary for some desperately compelling reason, it would be held in the Caribbean for security reasons. The Atlantic was out of the question because of the U-boat war raging there, and the Pacific, particularly the area around Hawaii, was known to be under observation by Japanese submarines. Some small gunnery exercises were held, in 1941, for battleships and cruisers off the southern California coast with the ships in question temporarily based at San Pedro, but no large scale fleet exercises were held anywhere near Hawaii after 1940. Even shakedown cruises of newly commissioned ships were conducted off the East Coast or in the Caribbean, except for those few vessels built on the West Coast.