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Aircraft Carrier Defense in the Pacific War: the Carrier Battles of 1942 a Study by Leonard Heinz November 8, 2014

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Aircraft Carrier Defense in the Pacific War: the Carrier Battles of 1942 a Study by Leonard Heinz November 8, 2014 Aircraft Carrier Defense in the Pacific War: The Carrier Battles of 1942 A study by Leonard Heinz November 8, 2014 1 Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 4 Killing Carriers: Ways and Means ..................................................................................... 4 Level Bombing ................................................................................................................... 5 Dive Bombing ..................................................................................................................... 7 Torpedo Bombing ........................................................................................................... 10 Glide Bombing ................................................................................................................. 12 Protecting Carriers ............................................................................................................. 13 Out-ranging ...................................................................................................................... 13 Concentration and Separation ..................................................................................... 15 Maneuver .......................................................................................................................... 16 Armor and Damage Control ......................................................................................... 18 Anti-aircraft Guns ........................................................................................................... 21 Combat Air Patrols ......................................................................................................... 26 Carrier Protection in Action – Early Engagements ..................................................... 30 The Marshalls Raid ......................................................................................................... 30 The Rabaul Raid .............................................................................................................. 32 Indian Ocean Adventure ................................................................................................... 34 Battle of Coral Sea .............................................................................................................. 34 Coral Sea: the USN Experience ..................................................................................... 35 Coral Sea: the IJN Experience ....................................................................................... 42 Battle of Midway ................................................................................................................. 48 Midway: the USN Experience ........................................................................................ 49 Midway: the IJN Experience .......................................................................................... 54 2 Battle of the Eastern Solomons ....................................................................................... 66 Eastern Solomons: the USN Experience ..................................................................... 67 Eastern Solomons: the IJN Experience ....................................................................... 70 Battle of Santa Cruz ........................................................................................................... 72 Santa Cruz: the USN Experience .................................................................................. 73 Santa Cruz: the IJN Experience .................................................................................... 83 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 89 CAP Effectiveness ........................................................................................................... 94 AA Effectiveness .......................................................................................................... 102 Maneuver ....................................................................................................................... 105 Armor and Damage Control ...................................................................................... 106 Out-Ranging .................................................................................................................. 108 Concentration and Separation .................................................................................. 110 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 112 3 Introduction In the years before World War II, aircraft carriers were often thought of as “eggshells armed with hammers,” ships with a very potent offense, but a very weak defense.1 Pre- war thinking on carrier warfare tended to focus in three areas: how to maximize the carrier’s offensive potential, how to devise strategies that would make the best use of carriers before they were sunk or put out of action, and, lastly, how perhaps to make carriers a bit less vulnerable. The major operators of carriers – the British, the Americans, and the Japanese – all developed their own approaches to these issues. This study focuses on the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy, and on how they tried to protect their carriers. Specifically, this study looks at the aerial threats to aircraft carriers in the first year of the Pacific War, and the means used to combat those threats. It examines the material and doctrines of the IJN and the USN, looks at how those doctrines were implemented and with what results, and tries to draw some conclusions about the relative effectiveness of each navy’s approach to carrier protection. Killing Carriers: Ways and Means Why were aircraft carriers thought to be so vulnerable? They were certainly not without advantages. They were fast enough to keep away from most major warships, and their aircraft gave them an offensive weapon that far out-ranged any gun-ship. Tactically, both the Japanese and the Americans envisioned carriers being employed well distant from the gun-line formed by capital ships. Carriers’ vulnerabilities stemmed directly from their offensive powers. They were inherently floating bombs. They needed to be if they were to field a powerful offense. Aircraft needed bombs, torpedoes and gasoline to be effective, and carriers had to 1 Said by Hector Bywater, a British naval commentator and novelist, of the heavily armed and lightly armored heavy cruisers engendered by the 1922 Washington Treaty limiting naval armaments, but perhaps even more appropriately applied to aircraft carriers in the inter-war years. Thomas Hone and Trent Hone, Battle Line: The United States Navy 1919-1939 (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2006). 4 carry large quantities of all of these things; they were, in effect, highly concentrated airfields. Due to the irreducible logic of warship design, IJN and USN carriers were also lightly protected. The carriers needed high speed, great range, and extensive facilities for aircraft. With designers working to the limits of treaties and budgets, armor had to be sacrificed for other qualities that had higher priorities.2 The offensive capabilities of carriers made them vulnerable in another more direct way. In the Pacific War, carriers were the worst enemies of carriers.3 Even the smallest fleet-sized carriers could put 18 dive bombers and 18 torpedo bombers in the air.4 It seemed that just a few hits from the dive bombers could put a carrier out of action; just a few torpedoes could do even worse. It was logical to think that each carrier committed could sink its enemy counterpart, even before the threat of land-based aircraft was considered. That leads to a more detailed look at the air threats that aircraft carriers faced. These came in a variety of forms, and each form of air attack posed its own challenges to defensive efforts. Level Bombing 2 The Royal Navy did take a different tack here, designing their carriers with considerably more armor protection than did the Japanese or the Americans. The result was carriers that were hard to sink but that had very limited aircraft capacities. 3 Carrier aircraft accounted for nine fleet carriers outright (Lexington, Kaga, Akagi, Soryu, Hiryu, Hornet, Hiyo, Zuikaku, and Amagi) and shared one sinking with a submarine (Yorktown). Submarines were the second most potent carrier killer in the Pacific War, accounting for Wasp, Shokaku, Taiho, Shinano, and Unryu. 4 Most USN fleet carriers started the war with air groups that nominally contained 36 dive bombers and 18 torpedo bombers. Because the USN was transitioning from one type of torpedo bomber to another at the start of the war, its torpedo squadrons tended to be understrength. The smallest IJN fleet carriers carried air groups with 18 dive bombers and 18 torpedo bombers, with some carrier air groups fielding as many as 27 dive bombers and 27 torpedo bombers. In this study, the term “fleet carriers” refers to carriers designed to operate as the main carrier striking force. These ships typically displaced more than 15,000 tons. They were far more capable units that the smaller light and escort carriers that the navies of the time operated. In this study, “tons” refers to long tons of 2,240 pounds. 5 First off, carriers would face attacks by level bombers.
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