I’ve always wondered what the orders were to the Japanese pilots flying Combat Air Patrol?
Were they all supposed to go after the first targets?
Clearer orders to them (“Half go after the Torpedo planes the other half go after dive bombers.”) might have made a big difference.
The training for the Japanese Navy Pilots was superb.
They had not built up a reserve of trained pilots because their selection methods were so strict and their training program so long.
Their damage control was almost non existent
An interesting thing that I saw in the book “Shattered Sword“ was something I didn’t know… The Japanese did not have radio control for combat air patrol in the way that we had it. They vectored planes in their CAP by having ships in the screen firing their guns to alert the planes in the air.
I thought that was extremely odd, but apparently that’s the way it was.
From reading Shattered Sword, IIRC, it took a lot of time to get from low to high altitude. Pretty much had to choose one or the other early on their patrol?
Were they all supposed to go after the first targets?
Clearer orders to them (“Half go after the Torpedo planes the other half go after dive bombers.”) might have made a big difference.
Indubitably “clearer” orders might have made a big difference - but what you are suggesting is more like prescient orders - orders based on a knowledge of the composition of the American naval air attack and the effectiveness of their own defenses. You can only attack what you know its there, with the forces you have.In retrospect half the zeroes would have been adequate to get the torpedo bombers, and in retrospect a lot of dive bombers showed up when all the Zeroes had been sucked down to attack the torpedo bombers.