soc.history.war.world-war-ii

In article ,
Rich Rostrom wrote:
>Mark Sieving wrote:
>
>>Naval bombardments never incapacitated Henderson Field on
>>Guadalcanal.
>
>Yabbut Henderson Field was much larger
>facility, well inland and out of sight
>of any bombardment force.
>
And two battleships with special ammo are better than four
heavy cruisers. It's questionable whether the Midway air
facilities would survive.

>However... even if the Japanese had won
>the carrier battle, their air groups would
>have taken further more serious attrition,
>and probably one or two carriers sunk or
>disabled.
>
Isom, in "Midway Inquest", estimated a most likely result
had Nagumo not ordered the rearming of the torpedo bombers
(Isom's pick for decisive mistake). Isom tried making a
model of carrier warfare from the historical results.

He figured all three US carrier sunk, along with Kaga and Soryu,
with Akagi being crippled. Sounds reasonable to me.

This leaves the Japanese with one functioning fleet carrier,
very likely short on bombers. It will take time to get other
carriers to the vicinity, and the Japanese were way short on time.

That means that, while they're likely to keep air superiority,
they aren't going to be providing large quantities of air
support.

I'd still bet on the defenders.

--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
david@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-