soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Mar 11, 10:53 pm, thorn...@visi.com (David Thornley) wrote:
> 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.
> da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/| O-

I don't think that Midway was as fortified as Tarawa was. It had a lot
of artillery, but not as many reinforced concrete emplacements as
Tarawa.

Joe