Posted on 06/06/2012 9:14:02 AM PDT by Retain Mike
I am sorry I could not get my table to post correctly. The bottom line was 86 Japanese against 27 U.S. Navy ships.
Good summary. And today is D-Day Normandy plus 68 yrs. June 4-6 were powerful days for the brave men in combat.
God bless them and may their souls rest in the peace they so dearly earned.
“500 mph Zero fighters”
< shakes head>
More like 330....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSm055a0394
B-26 former crews remember Midway.
That bombers stall speed was about the same as the maximum speed you could drop their mark 13 torpedoes.
Would have been impossible if not for the code breakers. We owe SO MUCH to those guys.
I did like that you gave time frames of the action (3hrs 23 min. to sink 3 carriers) and the time of the subsequent afternoon attack that got Hiryu.
That perspective is sometimes forgotten in the longer, more detailed, book decsriptions of the battle.
Excellent post: retailing parts of the Midway battle I never knew - the high loss rate among US pilots.
Midway was the last time the obsolete TBD Devastator torpedo bombers saw action. The remaining ones were quickly withdrawn and used for training or simply scrapped.
The only “survivors” today are a handful of wrecks that have been located on the ocean floor.
Ping.
I have read that the Japanese were astonished when several of the pilots of crashing planes deliberately crashed into carriers. Way before they thought of the kamikaze strategy.
I have read that the Japanese were astonished when several of the pilots of crashing planes deliberately crashed into carriers. Way before they thought of the kamikaze strategy.
It certainly wasn’t unknown among the Japanese...but it just as certainly wasn’t regarded as strategy in 1942.
Under Bushido, a warrior was to go into battle prepared for death should it come...if you were crippled, or you had no chance of returning to your base, then it made sense to use yourself (or your plane, in this instance) as a final weapon when you were going to die anyway. To go into battle *intending* to die, on the other hand, was viewed as madness.
The twisting of Bushido into the purposeful death of the Kamikazes had more to do with cynical exploitation of the strong Japanese cultural sense of obligation to one’s “betters”, and the desperate sense among the Japanese that civilization itself (their version of it anyway) was at stake.
All in all the Fairey Swordfish had a rather good war: Taranto, Matapan and a lucky hit on the Bismarck, and then a second careeer as an ASW plane later in the war.
To be fair to the Devastator, the Swordfish was two years more modern than the Devastator despite being a biplane. And it was equally vulnerable to modern fighters.
I think there was a variant that was capable of 370 - 400. They had a stall speed of around 70 though and that made them incredibly maneuverable and their light weight gave them a very good rate of climb. But they were no match for the Lightning or Corsair
Sorry, WW2 aviation geek here.
Most Japanese who may have visited or attended college in the US before the war never made it east of California and the rest based their opinions on Hollywood films. Few if any ever met a mean ass Alabama Bubba or had any inkling of what individual(istic) American warriors or our collective organizational and productive genius, harnessed to unimaginable resources, were capable of.
But they learned.
You are sooooo right. I wrote down kph as mph.
Yep. I couldn’t help mentioning them specifically even if it wasn’t the focus of the narrative.
I did warn everyone this post was probably not ready for prime time. M1903A1 pointed out that I had pick up the Zero speed in kph for my miles per hour comparison. Its top speed was actually 330mph.
Thank you. That is one thing I picked up at the last minute. I finally realized how two dimentional the narrative was. I think the key for me was over 3 hours successfully evading attacks compared to the 6 minutes for disaster to strike.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.