soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:28:35 UTC, Louis C wrote:

> The "limited experience" doesn't change anything. If the USN as an
> institution had identified the problem, training would have
> incorporated the correctives. As things were, the USN - as an
> institution - didn't realize that the problem would be so bad. Maybe
> this counts as institutional failure, maybe not (did other navies do
> better?) but at any rate it doesn't look to me like the kind of things
> a commanding admiral could change.
>

I don't know that I agree with this line of thinking. Launching a max
effort at the time they did toward a target location that was poorly
known at best and using aircraft with entirely different
flying/cruising characteristics, I can't figure out how it could have
come out better coordinated. Maybe if they had delayed the launch to
further close the target...but then that would have allowed the
Japanese to get off an anti-ship strike.

This was a case of "he who strikes first, strikes best".

Cheers,
Jerry

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