soc.history.war.world-war-ii

In article ,
Branek wrote:
>"David Thornley" wrote in message
>news:13t92rvm995nm72@corp.supernews.com...
>>
>> Heck, they likely wouldn't have taken Midway. Midway was very
>> strongly defended.
>
>Assuming the Japanese sank all the US carriers present at Midway, wouldn't
>it have been relatively easy to eliminate Midway's air forces and acheive
>air
>superiority?

Certainly. Then what?

I'd imagine this would clear the way for the battleships to
>shell Midway's
>defenses into submission.
>
Limited linger time and limited ammo, and I don't know if the
battleships were armed with enough high explosive ammo. In
any case, battleships are not particularly accurate in fire support,
and the flat nature of the Midway islands would accentuate that.

The Midway garrison had been told to ask for everything it needed
to defend Midway, and had done so. There was good reason to think
that the defenses would have survived what the Japanese could
throw at them for limited periods.

Morison was of the opinion that the Japanese would have failed.
He considered the Midway defenses to be comparable to the Tarawa
defenses against the USN assault in 1943, and the Japanese had
a lot less to throw at Midway than the USN had against Tarawa.


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