Post Midway lessons of air power

Hey all...

I was wondering about US carrier air doctrine after the big failures of torpedo bombers at Midway. Now admittedly we made some mistakes in the employment, but even under the best circumstances at Midway; they were a dismal failure.

I was just wondering. Did US doctrine change after Midway? I know we used torpedo bombers through the rest of the war, and performance went up considerably as the war wore on.

The Japanese were quite successful with their torpedo bombers, and we were quite unsuccessful. Turns out, dive bombers were THE way to take out a carrier. My perception is, the Japanese focused more and more on dive bombers after Midway, and we mostly didn't change our doctrine...am I wrong (please say I am)?

 

Us carrierdoctrine was constantly changing 1942-43 as combat lessons were learned and then integrated into doctrine. We would see the numbers of fighters increase & bombers decrease. The largest question was of single carrier task groups vs. Multi carrier task groups - this would be hotly debated until early 1944.

The Japanese were quite successful with torpedo bombers and dive bombers early in the war. But, this came at the cost of many losses. Which the Japanese training program was hard pressed to make good on. Further, the new pilots lacked the skills of the pilots they replaced. Complicating this problem was the meat grinder campaign in the Solomons, which saw the Japanese, three times, take all the aircraft off one of their carrier divisions and send them south (where they were chewed up with heavy losses), which required even more replacements. This is why there is a lack of major carrier battles in 1943.

Dive bombers were the way to "mission kill" a carrier...Not necessarily sink it. Dive bombers only tended to sink carriers if they caught them with a fully armed and gassed strike package awaiting launch(which was rare, but spectacular when it did happen - thus better remembered). Of course, the American dive bombers had it easier sinking carriers as they could carry a heavier bomb(Dauntless 1000 pounder vs Val 250 kilogram).

As an aside the Avengers were mostly used as bombers late in the war due to a lack of ships worth a torpedo.

 

It's complicated, and I'm sure some of our naval experts will weigh in as well, but blaming doctrine may be too simplistic. For one thing, USN aerial torpedo doctrine was brand new. Recall Ranger was actually commissioned in June 1934 without torpedo stowage or a complement of torpedo aircraft. The reason was dive bombing gained favor such that aerial torpedo development, begun in 1925, was actually cancelled in October 1930 and did not resume until July 1931. The first Mark 13 Mod 0 aerial torpedo was not accepted into service until 1938 with all of 156 procured for training and potential combat. Another 149 Mod 1 were produced in the second half of 1940 and 521 in 1941.

Problematically, the Mod 0 and Mod 1 were extremely unreliable and were quite possibly the worst designed aerial torpedo of all the major combatants. While relatively long-ranged at 5,700 yards, it was slower than most, running normally at 30 knots. It was also unreliable...in a 1942 test of 105 dropped only 33 ran properly. Worse for the VT at Midway, the Mod 0 and Mod 1 had to be dropped no higher than about 50 feet and no faster than 110 knots. They also suffered the same problems with failures of the magnetic and contact exploders as did other USN surface and submarine torpedoes.

However, various modifications, increasing speed for lower range, and adding nose and tail shrouds to improve drop speed and performance, increased and more powerful warheads, and improved exploders meant that by late 1944 the Mark 13 was no longer the worst aerial torpedo, many thought it the best.

The other major problem at Midway was the botched deployment of the strikes. No doctrine existed for a multi-carrier strike. Fighters failed to escort torpedo bombers, torpedo bombers didn't wait for the fighters and dive bombers, the three carriers were unable to match cycle times, and so forth, which contributed to the losses and ineffectiveness of the VT. However, that was not a failure of torpedo doctrine, it was a failure of carrier doctrine, and training. Prewar doctrine viewed carriers as isolated weapons systems and rarely were even two-division carrier strikes practiced...carriers launched and formed strikes independently. At Midway, Fletcher ordered Enterprise and Hornet to launch first reserving Yorktown for a separate attack. The first strike launched at 0700 and the second an hour later. Spruance, acting independently, ordered the Enterprise and Hornet strikes to attack as squadrons formed, rather than waiting to assemble the entire strike, Yorktown's strike attacked as a group, based upon its experience at Coral Sea two months earlier.

So, yes, doctrine did change, slowly, and by 1943 when the new fast carriers began to deploy, doctrine was that a carrier task group operated as a whole when launching a strike. As the Mark 13 improved and with the arrival of the much better TBF/TBM, the emphasis actually shifted to torpedo strikes, since while dive bombing could damage a ship it rarely could sink it. Notably, in the later carrier battles, such as off the Philippines, it was the torpedo bombers that caused the most damage...dive bombers proved less accurate and decisive.

 

Well, to clarify.

The USS Ranger(CV-4) was being built "on the cheap" tonnage wise. Thus, only the necessities were included to keep tonnage down. Catapults were dropped, the Ranger was "slow" for a carrier, and...since dive bombers were seen as the carrier's most potent weapon, only bombers were included as her attack aircraft.(which is reflected in Naval War College war gaming - 1 bomb takes out half the carrier deck, and 2 bombs destroys the flight deck - thus rendering the carrier combat ineffective.

The Ranger would get torpeckers very late in '41 or very early '42(sources differ).

 

Yep. VT-4 was commissioned 10 January 1942, but oddly enough there is no mention of fitting torpedo stowage or handling equipment in the 15-day refit she went under at Norfolk in March 1942. So the overhaul must have occurred before that? I know she was authorized a torpedo aircraft complement in October 1941, so sometime between then and January 1942?

 

Well, a carrier HAS to be able to sink a capital ship and for that, I'd use torpedoes. Trouble is, torpedo planes appear effective only against unarmed merchantmen, or old warships with little anti-aircraft weapons and a structurally fatigued hull. Against a modern warship, you need aerial bombing or gunnery to first beat the hell out of its topside weapons before torpedo planes can close in (sorry, Bismark.)

At Midway, Japanese fighters chopped up the US torpedo planes. The US dive bombers got in only because the torpedo planes forced the fighter escorts down to a low altitude. But it could have been the dive bombers that got chopped up. It was the luck of the dice.

 

Midway was the reverse of Coral Sea, where the SBDs took the most losses.

IIRC, at Midway, the Japanese CAP had enough time to return to altitude to intercept the SBDs. However, the CAP stayed low to shoot down the remaining TBDs as they exited the battle. This was a failure by the Japanese, as the now unladen TBDs were no longer a threat to the Japanese carriers.

The limited 20mm ammunition capacity of the A6M Zero did not help matters.

 

Isn't that the wrong way around. IRRC. Wasn't it an air dropped torpedo that caused critical damage to the Bismarck's rudder and allowed the surface ships to catch her?

 

Same could be said for HMS Prince of Wales. The level bombers were almost totally ineffective against PoW. It was the aerial torpedo hit to her shafts that sealed her fate.

That, being said, aerial torpedoes did have smaller warheads compared to submarine & shipboard torpedoes.

Also, early in the war, larger warships had inadequate AA defenses.

 

Also, another part of the US torpedo bomber problem, was that the US Navy could not find a good replacement for the Martin T4M torpedo bomber of the late 20's. Despite looking at several torpedo carrying aircraft in the early 1930's, the performance of the replacement torpedo bombers was either equal to or less than the T4M. It was not until the Douglas TBD Devastator, that the USN found a torpedo bomber with superior performance. Unfortunately, the progress of aerial advancement in aircraft, rapidly outpaced the TBD.

 

Without the A-bomb would you have invaded Japan????

 

Absent the A-Bomb, yes, the US would have had to.

The firebombing of Japanese cities, while crippling the Japanese economy and war production, had little real effect on the IJA Generals in charge(they willingly sacrificed their own troops, so why should they behave differently when it came to civilian lives). A naval blockade is the same - Japan had already been under a naval blockade for over a year. Sure, it will lead to starvation, just as bombing Japan's transportation net would, but the soldiers will be the last to feel starvation's bite. The troops would be fed by all means possible, by reducing civilian rations. So, the civilians, again, will be the first to die, and many would before the military felt the effects.

 

If I recall correctly the invasion would pay the US Army in all sections ( MIA,KIA,WIA) some 500,000 men alone. ) Tough call for any President.

 

...yes, combat doctrine changes.....we see this in the Linebacker Raids Vietnam...we see this with Israeli Air in the Yom Kippur War ..there were significant losses in those battles.......so, they changed the tactics/strategy
....if you have major problems/losses/etc, it should change

 

Yes, I’ve read before that 500,000 or so Purple Heart medals were made ready by the War Department for the campaign for the Japanese home islands. So many were on hand at the abrupt end to the war that they are still being issued currently.

 

Indeed, the Bismark was the exact reverse of what I was saying (with a mention of it.) But more to my point were the fates of Battleships Musashi, and Yamato. To that you could also toss in Heie and Yorktown.

 

You can toss out Yorktown.

The Japanese carrier doctrine at the time was for 1 carrier to launch dive bombers and the other carrier in the division to launch torpedo bombers for an attack. Dive bombers were all Hiryu had ready, so they were sent off. Like the American doctrine, the dive bombers were to wreck the carrier's deck - to prevent launch & recovery of aircraft. This is what they did - 1 bomb hit square on the first elevator, another hit just aft of the second elevator, and a third hit the island.

The Hiryu torpedo attack did not arrive until 2 hours later. By which time most of the damage to Yorktown had been sufficiently repaired. Although flight ops and refuelling had only just begun.

Hiei was a battered wreck that the Americans were not going to allow to escape, and threw everything airworthy at her to sink be(including B-17s).

The Musashi and Yamato were unknown quantities, but the US figured they would be hard to sink. As it was the Musashi absorbed some 19 torpedoes and many bombs. The American learned from their experience, and when the attacked the Yamato, the torpedo bombers sank her with 10 torpedo hits - concentrating the hits on one side to cause her to campsite.

You also ignore that it was a common tactic to coordinate the attacks so that they come in at the same time, forcing shipboard AA to divide their fire, thereby increasing the chances that both dive bombers and torpedo bombers will face less return fire and to score hits.

 

I ignored certain things, yes. Are you right in the points you made? Probably. Are they relevant to my point? Hardly.

 

Actually, they are relevant to your point.

You ignore the fact that Japanese dive bombers suffered many losses from shipboard AA, and would continue to suffer heavy losses from shipboard AA throughout the war.

You ignore that night Japanese torpedo attack were also successful by themselves.

You should probably amend your point to - dive bombers and torpedo bombers needed to coordinate their attacks to achieve maximum effectiveness and survivability.

Of course, both dive bombers and torpedo bombers needed adequate fighter coverage to achieve their objectives and escape.

 

As @Takao said, Japanese doctrine was for each carrier to launch either her dive bombers or her torpedo/level bombers. Balanced striking forces were made up by carriers or carrier divisions launching different types.

For the morning attack on Midway, Carrier Division 1 (Akagi, Kaga) launched dive bombers and CarDiv 2 (Hiryu, Soryu) launched B5Ns for high-level bombing. CarDiv 1's B5Ns, initially loaded with torpedos, and CarDiv 2's D3A dive bombers were held in readiness to attack American ships, if present. Thus when Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were hit, Hiryu launched dive bombers for a first attack against the American carrier(s) while the B5Ns which had returned from Midway were prepared for a second attack with torpedos.

Hypothetically, if Soryu had not been hit, she and Hiryu would both have launched dive bombers in their first attacks and torpedo planes in their second. Alternatively, if say Akagi had been the one carrier undamaged in the morning attack, the first strike against the American fleet would have been torpedo bombers. In either case, it would be a question of which aircraft were ready to go rather than the doctrinal ideal.

edited a bit