if carriers were sunk at pearl harbour

[hood]

hi guys
i was wondering how would the usa fought the war at sea if it had lost its carriers at pearl harbour?????
aslo how long before it could get new carriers into service ????

[AA Military Research]

hi guys
i was wondering how would the usa fought the war at sea if it had lost its carriers at pearl harbour?????
aslo how long before it could get new carriers into service ????

Wasp, Ranger and Hornet were on the east coast at the time, although Ranger was not considered survivable in the Pacific. The Brits might have loaned us one as they did later with Victorious.

[Guest]

hi guys
i was wondering how would the usa fought the war at sea if it had lost its carriers at pearl harbour?????
aslo how long before it could get new carriers into service ????

There will be no effective defense of Coral sea, no ambush at Midway, no solomons. The Japanese would likely have the second half of 1942 in which to refit and replenish their fleet aviation and perhaps add 1 more real fleet carrier to their force.

The immediate undoing of the Japanese in the real world had a lot to do with their psychological state as a result of the first 6 month of the war, and it would be hard to speculate what the Japanese psychological state would have been had they completed their notional island defense ring with their carrier force intact. Would they have reverted back to the originally intended multi-layer defense strategy with carrier force as a mobile reserve to plug any penetration by the USN? I don't know. If they do, then I suspect their defensive domain would be costly to crack. If their head continue to be aswim with the victory disease, then they might well jump outside of their originally intended defensive parameter and launch an attack on the Hawaii or some other latter day Midway campaign in an attempt to draw the new US carriers coming online in 1943-1944 into piece meal destruction. In that case anything is possible. The Japanese might succeed and prolong their period of relative security into 1944, or they might suffer a Mega-Midway and loss 6-8 carrier in one shot, who knows?

[MartinJQuinn]

hi guys
i was wondering how would the usa fought the war at sea if it had lost its carriers at pearl harbour?????
aslo how long before it could get new carriers into service ????

Wasp, Ranger and Hornet were on the east coast at the time, although Ranger was not considered survivable in the Pacific. The Brits might have loaned us one as they did later with Victorious.

You forgot the Yorktown, which was in Norfolk about to undergo a refit on 12/7/41. Yorktown was the USN's most experienced carrier with the most experienced airgroup.

Additionally, Sara was on the West Coast undergoing refit. At most, the USN would have lost two flight decks - Enterprise and Lexington. Damaging? Yes. Devastating? No.

[Werner]

Destruction of the oil storage at Pearl would have been much more damaging to the war effort.

[Devin]

Destruction of the oil storage at Pearl would have been much more damaging to the war effort.

Also the dry dock facilities (Yorktown wouldn't have made Midway without them). The most glaring oversight by them, though, was the submarine facilities. The weapons that ultimately beat the Japanese, and they didn't give them a second look.

-Devin

[Lesforan]

How ironic that Japan would initiate the war with a thrust into Southeast Asia looking for oil, while overlooking the oil reserves at Pearl.

They were not capable of seizing these reserves, so maybe they failed to consider them. They were certainly capable of destroying them.

Maybe if they had launched a thrid strike, they would have gotten around to destroying them.

They were obviously fixated on destroying capital ships. Sub facilities and support facilities seemed to have escaped attention (except for Vestal and Oglala, and the drydock holding Pennsylvania: collateral damage).

[bengtsson]

If the US lost two Carriers at Pearl Harbor, that would be a big blow, but not fatal of course. As others rightly pointed out, we had Carriers scattered about and brought together they would have been up to a constant three carrier task force in 42. One thing, is that the US would not loan Wasp to the European theater and most likely the Brits would have offered a flight deck or two at the critical 1942 period. The Royal Navy had a pretty nice carrier force by then. After all, they operated in the Indian Ocean, just some help with more aircraft from the US and they could have been a real ace in the hole for the allies.
We'de have found out how Jap dive bombers made out against the Armoured flightdecks.
As to a Jap theird strike against oil storage. You are right, it would have been a big loss for the USN. But when no Carriers were in harbour, the Japs wanted to get the hell out of there fast in order not to be ambushed by a US carrier air strike. I understand their view point. Being in an era where you know the enemy has carriers and not knowing where there are is a unhappy poition to be in.
Bob B.

[Werner]

.
As to a Jap theird strike against oil storage. You are right, it would have been a big loss for the USN. But when no Carriers were in harbour, the Japs wanted to get the hell out of there fast in order not to be ambushed by a US carrier air strike. I understand their view point. Being in an era where you know the enemy has carriers and not knowing where there are is a unhappy poition to be in.
Bob B.

Especially for those carriers, if you believe Shattered Sword. I wonder if they had an inkling of how hopeless their procedures were from a damage control standpoint.

Akagi, for example, if you believe Shattered Sword's analysis was sunk by a single 1,000 pound light case (GP) bomb hit.

[AA Military Research]

You forgot the Yorktown, which was in Norfolk about to undergo a refit on 12/7/41. Yorktown was the USN's most experienced carrier with the most experienced airgroup.

Additionally, Sara was on the West Coast undergoing refit. At most, the USN would have lost two flight decks - Enterprise and Lexington. Damaging? Yes. Devastating? No.

I did forget them but I was also on the first cuppa with a half awake brain.......

[Gone Asiatic]

Especially for those carriers, if you believe Shattered Sword. I wonder if they had an inkling of how hopeless their procedures were from a damage control standpoint.

Akagi, for example, if you believe Shattered Sword's analysis was sunk by a single 1,000 pound light case (GP) bomb hit.

That was a single bomb hit on a carrier crammed with fueled and armed aircraft and ordnance piled everywhere.

How many bombs hit USS Princeton under similar circumstances?

[Werner]

How many bombs hit USS Princeton under similar circumstances?

I don't think that's a fair example. Nor was I thumbing my nose at the Japanese.

It would be fair to ask "how much of Princeton's fire fighting equipment still worked after the first explosion.

The plain truth is that the fire fighting systems on these Japanese ships were defective in design and totally failed after the first hit. Further, the duty of damage control was the province of experts in damage control and not distributed to the entire crew as in a USN ship. If the DC center is destroyed in a secondary explosion, and all your specialist damage control experts were there at the time, it's game, set, match.

[Guest]

The extreme disregard of safety rules during the rearming and fueling of Akagi's horizontal bomber force contributed greatly to Akagi's demise. Almost certainly Akagi and Kaga and possibly Soryu would have physically survived to be withdrawn from Midway were it not for the piles of ammunition strewn about the hanger deck. But it is true that Japanese carrier damage control, to a considerably high degree than normal surface ship damage control, is lacking redundancy, doctrine and hardware.

[Guest]

How many bombs hit USS Princeton under similar circumstances?

I don't think that's a fair example. Nor was I thumbing my nose at the Japanese.

It would be fair to ask "how much of Princeton's fire fighting equipment still worked after the first explosion.

If the answer to this question absolves Princeton of the unfavorable comparison, then surely this question must also be asked Akagi and the same answer must surely absolve her as well.

[Werner]

Akagi's fire system above the lower hanger was a single ring of cast-iron piping. Below that a tiny CO2 supressor good for 30 seconds or so, whose tanks and valves were at the bottom of the forward elevator pit.

Princeton, a carrier 1/3 to 1/4 her size, had sextuple redundancy in the main firefighting system and many times (how many times is times 0) Akagi's hand portable firepumps and dewatering pumps.

The plain truth of this matter is Akagi and the others (except perhaps Hiryu) were as safe as Titanic; Princeton was protected to the level of a small warship. She did weigh under 15,000 tons, all up, after all.

It's not really a fair comparison. The Ark Royal, for example, was lost because the need for lower hanger deck room brought the uptakes across the ship close to the waterline; the treaty weight restrictions prevented her from having the armor her designers wanted AND casualty diesel electric generators for pumps, so she sank when the uptakes reached the flood boundary and put out her fires, stopping the steam turbogenerators powering the electric pumps. Ships are lost for subtle reasons.

Except for Ark Royal, none of the other five ships was lost to direct enemy action. Their wrecks (to greater of lesser degrees) were scuttled for operational necessity.

[DD-393]

Especially for those carriers, if you believe Shattered Sword. I wonder if they had an inkling of how hopeless their procedures were from a damage control standpoint.

Akagi, for example, if you believe Shattered Sword's analysis was sunk by a single 1,000 pound light case (GP) bomb hit.

Why wouldn't you believe "Shattered Sword"?

[Werner]

Especially for those carriers, if you believe Shattered Sword. I wonder if they had an inkling of how hopeless their procedures were from a damage control standpoint.

Akagi, for example, if you believe Shattered Sword's analysis was sunk by a single 1,000 pound light case (GP) bomb hit.

Why wouldn't you believe "Shattered Sword"?

Because I trust no one in these matters.

[kennylibben]

i bought that book and still haven't read it.... i read the first few pages and it was too technical... i prefer more of a story than a recount.

[Guest]

Why wouldn't you believe "Shattered Sword"?

Because I trust no one in these matters.

Then how do you study history if you trust no one?

[Werner]

I don't study history.