[ARC5] A.R.C. engineer visit to COMAIRPAC, Pearl Harbor Dec 1942

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 11 Sep 2018 at 1:36, Jay Coward via ARC5 wrote:

> The botched Midway battle that turned into a great victory by chance and by
> (my view) the Grace of The Almighty. Jay KE6PPF 

I completely agree.

> It brings to mind a book I recommend to everyone, "The Unknown Battle of
> Midway".  It describes what really happened in that battle. 

ANYONE who is interested in the history of the battle of Midway MUST read the book, "The 
Shattered Sword". I have read it 4 times, so far, and learn something new each time.

The ONLY U.S. airgroup which "did it correctly" was that from the Enterprize. Hornet's air 
groups were completely useless, probably because they were a brand new carrier and never 
had any chance to learn anything or practice it.

> The F4F Wildcats from the USS Hornet that escorted the carrier's SBD dive
> bombers turned back when their fuel got too low to continue.  They were
> unable to find the carrier and all ditched.  You have to wonder what the
> problem was with the homing system they presumably had.  Were they too
> busy talking on the radio to use it? 

>From what I could find out, they were not familiar enough with the ZB system, and didn't trust 
it. In one case, a group of aircraft from one of our carriers were close enough to our carriers 
to see the smoke from them, but thought they were Japanese. bypassed them, and as a 
result had to ditch after their fuel ran out. In fact, these may be the same group you mention 
above.

> The Enterprise F4F Wildcats accidentally followed VT-8, the Hornet's TBD
> torpedo bombers, instead of their own.  Unlike the rest of the Hornet Air
> Group, VT-8 broke off on a different course and found the IJN fleet. But the
> Enterprise F4F's were not on the same frequency as VT-8 and as a result
> circled the IJN fleet until they were too low on fuel to continue, and then
> finally announced they were over the IJN and were breaking off to head home. 

Jim Thatch and two other pilots put his "Thatch Weave" to work and he shot down three 
Japanese Zeros, much to their surprise. And he and his wingmen survived.

On the other hand, the nearly constant attacks on the Japanese fleet by the Americans, from 
every conceivable direction, kept the Japanese so busy avoiding them that they didn't have 
time to prepare nor launch a retaliatory flight. Thus they lost 3 carriers almost at one 
time...mainly due to almost nonexistent, and really amateurish, damage control.

Dick Best: he done real good, Kid. :-)

One very interesting fact that I gleaned from "The Shattered Sword" was that the Japanese 
carriers Soryu and Hiryu could hit a sustained speed of nearly 40 mph.

And in my opinion, the "battle that doomed Japan" was their attack on Pearl Harbor. That got 
our dander up.

Ken


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