The Roundtable
Forum
Official Newsletter of the Battle of Midway Roundtable
5 March 2011
Issue Number: 2011-06
Our 14th Year
~
AROUND THE TABLE ~
MEMBERS’
TOPICS IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Early Japanese Plans for Midway
2. Midway: Japan’s “Bridge Too Far?”
3. Morison History Reissued
4. Japanese Estimates of USN Aircraft Combat Radius
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1. EARLY JAPANESE PLANS FOR MIDWAY
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27 January 2011
From: Ron Martell
Florida
I have yet to read any account of the BOM that refers to the 5 November
1941 Combined Fleet
Operations Order No. 1 as establishing a pre-Pearl Harbor intention to
attack Midway and the Aleutians. Most
accounts seem to imply Yamamoto made up the Midway plan in 1942, and he, rather
than the General Staff, insisted on the Aleutians operation. Parshall and Tully and some others recognize
the Aleutians operation was not simply a diversion.
See Chapter IV [in the link].
This order, issued in the name of the emperor and therefore to be
obeyed, identified targets for the Second Phase of operations, and in part
stated:
“The following
areas will be occupied or destroyed as soon as the operational situation
permits:
a. Eastern New Guinea, New Britain, Fiji and
Samoa areas
b. Aleutians and Midway areas.”
In early April 1942, the IJN General
Staff and Admiral Yamamoto’s staff spent four days arguing which operation
should come first in order to lure the American fleet into a decisive
battle. Yamamoto believed Midway should
come first followed by Fiji and Samoa, and the General Staff believed the
opposite. The question was purely a
matter of timing. Yamamoto forced his
plan and the General Staff in turn wrested his consent to proceeding with the
attacks on Port Moresby and the Aleutians.
If the General Staff had prevailed in early April, the Doolittle Raid on
18 April would in all likelihood have put the Midway attack first to be
executed without delay.
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2. MIDWAY: JAPAN’S “BRIDGE TOO FAR?”
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20 February 2011
From: Robert M. Jones
Texas
Suppose that the enemy's plan had succeeded and he'd taken
Midway. Would Nimitz have necessarily sent out the U.S. fleet? Would the main part of the Japanese plan,
the general fleet action, have worked?
I suggest not. Japanese carrier aircraft (all that they would
have on Midway) would not have the range for round trip attacks on Pearl.
If Nimitz refused to take the bait, the enemy would have been terribly extended
on a base he could not have supplied long term. We could have waited
until his carriers were headed home, and then come out and dealt with whatever
forces were stranded on or around the atoll. In short, I think Yamamoto
made the same mistake Hitler made in Russia, pushed his forces too far beyond
the logistical ability to support them.
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3. MORISON HISTORY REISSUED ( see issues 04 and 05 )
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21 February 2011
From: CAPT Edward C. Flynn, USNR-Ret
Texas
Samuel Eliot Morison was aware that problems might pop up down the road
by writing his history of U.S. naval operations in WW2 so soon after the
war. He addresses this in his preface
to Volume 1: The Battle of the Atlantic:
“No history written during or shortly after
the event it describes can pretend to be completely objective or even
reasonably definitive. Facts that I
know not will come to light; others that I discarded will be brought out and
incorporated in new patterns of interpretation. Nevertheless, I believe that more is to be gained by writing in
contact with the events, when most of the participants are alive, than by
waiting until the ships are broken up and the sailors have departed to wherever
brave fighting men go. Historians in
years to come may shoot this book full of holes; but they can never recapture
the feelings of desperate urgency in our planning and preparations, of the
excitement of battle, of exultation over a difficult operation successfully
concluded, of sorrow for shipmates who did not live to enjoy the victory...”
I think Morison would be the first to commend Jon Parshall, John
Lundstrom and Barrett Tillman for subsequent research and writings and for
their introductions to USNI's volumes 4, 5 and 8 of his History of United
States Naval Operations in World War II.
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4. JAPANESE ESTIMATES OF USN AIRCRAFT COMBAT
RADIUS
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3 March 2011
From: Lu Yu
Iowa
A classic question about the
BOM is why Nagumo didn't choose an immediate launch, or preparation
for launch, of his strike aircraft around 0830 when Tone
#4's report mentioned the presence of one U.S. carrier. One of Senshi Sosho's explanations (Isom
also cites this in Midway Inquest), per Genda's account, is
that the Japanese thought the distance between U.S. carrier and [the
Japanese] force was too long for the Americans to launch a coordinated
attack. They calculated the distance as
210 nautical miles, based on the wrong position reported by Tone #4, and
thought this distance was relatively safe.
They thought that even though SBDs and TBDs might have been able to
attack at that distance, F4Fs couldn't escort due to their short range.
So here are my thoughts and questions about this issue.
(1) What is the combat radius for F4F,
SBD-2/3 and TBD? Various sources give different figures. Lundstrom and Tillman gave the following:
F4F-4 175 miles, TBD 175 miles, SBD 225 miles with 500 pound bomb and 175 miles
with 1000 pound bomb. Were these
figures used in the actual battle? How
rigid are they? It appears that the
Japanese thought the SBD has combat radius greater than 200 nautical miles and
the F4F (perhaps based on F4F-3) less than 200 nautical miles.
(2) The calculated distance by the
Japanese, between their position and the reported U.S. carrier's position is not so accurate. I used a ruler to measure the distance on
the search charts in Shattered Sword and Midway Inquest and got
the following results:
Shattered Sword -- 193 nm at 0728
Midway Inquest -- 199 nm at 0728, 199 nm at 0830, 200 nm at 0920
All these numbers are a little different from 210 nm. Is this a normal error?
Or is there anything wrong in the course track of Kido Butai? Note
that the reported U.S. carrier's
position is fixed ("240 nm and 10 degrees from Midway").
(3) A problem associated with (1)
and (2) is the unit of distance measurement. Most American accounts use "mile" and I assume
"mile" alone means statute mile.
But when Nagumo Report (translated version) is cited, mile is still
used (this occurs even in Shattered Sword and The First Team). Actually, in the original report
(hand-written in Japanese), all these “miles” are nautical miles (kanji: 浬).
The Japanese seldom used statute mile (kanji: 哩) at that time.
This confusion caused by translation could bring an unnecessary error in
distance measuring.
(4) There is a small chance that Genda
and Kusaka used the "distance issue" to cover up their tactical
blunder. That is, when the decision was
made, the "distance issue" didn't have so much weight as claimed by
Genda and Kusuka.
Any ideas on the above issues are warmly welcomed.
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Ed. note: New member Lu is from China and a student at
the University of Iowa.
~ NOW
HEAR THIS! ~
NEWS
& INFO IN THIS ISSUE:
- William Leonard and VF-3/42
- 69th BOM Anniversary Announcements
- Featured Link
- Editor’s Notes
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WILLIAM LEONARD AND
VF-3/42
The urgent
circumstances that barely got the Yorktown into the BOM created a couple
of oddities with regard to its embarked air group. One was the temporary re-designation of VB-5 as “VS-5.” CINCPAC’s air staff evidently thought that
bringing VB-3 aboard would somehow cause confusion—two VB squadrons on the same
carrier—so VB-5 got renamed, to the consternation of VB-5 personnel.
Even more confusing was
the ad-hoc fighter squadron, a merger of Jimmy Thach’s VF-3 with the Yorktown’s
VF-42. Since Thach was the senior
commander present (VF-42’s commander was detached ashore), the combined
squadron went down in history as “VF-3” in the BOM. That rankled VF-42’s personnel, since most of the pilots and
planes and all of the enlisted support came from their squadron. During the Roundtable’s earliest years, Yorktown
veterans (especially the VF-42 vets) were very vocal in pointing out the
reality of the situation. For that
reason the squadron is usually referred to as “VF-3/42” here, although you
probably won’t find a designation like that anywhere else.
But there is more
confusion to be found in the VF-3/42 story, and this may be another of those
circumstances in which the Roundtable deserves some credit for correcting the
historical record. Among the pilots
accompanying Thach to the Yorktown was his executive officer, LCDR
Donald Lovelace, who was tragically killed in a flight deck accident on May
30th. Since VF-42’s senior pilot (and
future Roundtable member) LT William Leonard was the next senior officer, the
assumption down through the years has been that he was assigned as XO to
replace Lovelace. Morison, Lord, and
Prange didn’t go into that much detail in their BOM books, but John Lundstrom’s
The First Team (1984), which focused primarily on the Navy’s
fighter pilots, did state that Leonard was named the squadron XO. That was repeated in 1990 by Robert Cressman
and his coauthors who wrote our most respected BOM reference, A Glorious
Page In Our History (1990).
Additionally, VF-42’s aviation mechanics proudly thought their guy had
received the appointment, renumbering his F4F before the battle to “F-13,” the
squadron XO’s number. (No wonder that
Lundstrom and the Glorious Page authors recorded it as they did.)
It recently came to my
attention that, in fact, it wasn’t quite true.
The article in issue
#4 about Thach stated that Leonard did replace Lovelace as XO, which has
been my understanding from the beginning.
But Bill Vickrey, who was well acquainted with Leonard, said that it didn’t
happen that way, at least not officially.
While Leonard carried out the executive officer’s functions as the
senior pilot after Lovelace, no actual appointment ever occurred. A letter from Leonard to Vickrey stated that
Leonard’s official duty in the squadron was as flight officer, and that
never changed.
Leonard’s son and
Roundtable member Rich Leonard confirmed that for us in a recent e-mail. In fact, his explanation on this matter has
been available on-line for years; you just had to know where to find it. It’s on Chris Hawkinson’s BOM web site, and
you can read it here. Rich amplified that for us last week with
the following message, quoted in part:
“According to what he said, he was named XO, but...you’ll never see
anything of an official documentation of same; just as there were no written
orders actually [transferring] the VF-42 pilot contingent to VF-3.
“After Lovelace was killed, Thach, as I always heard it, told [Yorktown
air group commander Oscar] Pederson that Dad would take over the XO job as
he was next senior; Pederson, pleased for his one time wingman, went along
with that. From a command standpoint,
designating a new XO makes sense. Thach
knew he was flying the escort mission and he needed to leave someone in charge
with the recognized authority to be in charge...
“And, yes, the VF-42 maintenance types struck Dad’s #26 below and
renumbered it as #13, half-way through the squadron numbering sequence...the
XO’s side number in the pre-war way of doing things.”
So our distinguished BOM historians and authors can be excused for
seeming to record Leonard as Lovelace’s literal replacement in the combined
squadron. It just never happened officially,
and the Navy hardly ever did such things without making it official. But that’s consistent with the strange tale
of VF-3/42 at Midway since, as Rich points out, there never even was anything
official about joining the two squadrons together. They simply did it in a hurry without the usual formalities,
because that’s what the frantic circumstances aboard the Yorktown required
at the time.
Many thanks to John
Lundstrom, Rich Leonard, and Bill Vickrey for their input on this topic. —RR
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69th BOM ANNIVERSARY
ANNOUNCEMENTS ( See issue #05 )
Here’s more about the
BOM commemoration at Pensacola on June 3rd.
The event is hosted by the Navy’s Center for Information Dominance (CID), Corry Station. It lasts about two hours, with a reception
afterward. BOM vets are especially
invited, but the ceremony is open to the public, with local and Navy media
coverage.
Corry Station is just two miles from NAS Pensacola, the home of the
National Museum of Naval Aviation. If
there are any Roundtable members who would like to attend the Corry Station
event, a side trip to the NMNA museum is very highly recommended and can help
make for a very full and interesting day.
To attend the Corry
Station commemoration, your RSVP is required by May 30th. See the contact info in your “new issue”
e-mail announcement.
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FEATURED LINK
Thanks to all the members who brought this to the
Roundtable: a sunken TBD, only a few miles off the coast near San Diego, is the
latest and most likely candidate for salvage.
If successful, it will become a major addition to the National Museum of
Naval Aviation, since the last TBD to
survive the war (out of the water, that is) is long gone.
The story is covered in two sequential on-line news
articles, each with a video clip. (Try
to ignore the Vindicators being passed off as Devastators in the videos.)
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EDITOR’S NOTES
~ Re the photo of fighter pilots
on the Hornet featured in the last issue, Bill Vickrey
pointed out that among the 30 pilots pictured, 27 Navy Crosses were
awarded. The figure includes awards
after the BOM.
~ If you are involved in or have the details
about other BOM anniversary events or unit reunions, please pass the word and
you’ll see it publicized here.
