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Changing Destiny (Kancolle)

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Deidryt said:
I tried to do some research into the issue, but I wasn't able to find any reasons why the USN only encountered these issues during those two pivotal battles.
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It was the first carrier on carrier action of the war. Tactics hadn't been truly tested until then. Midway was an eye-opener for both the Japanese (losing four of their highly valuable fleet carriers) and the USN (oh God how do we carrier).
 
Dirtnap said:
It was the first carrier on carrier action of the war. Tactics hadn't been truly tested until then. Midway was an eye-opener for both the Japanese (losing four of their highly valuable fleet carriers) and the USN (oh God how do we carrier).
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You're miss the point that I was making... Why did it take actual action for the USN to realize it takes over an hour to get an airstrike aloft? If Yorktown was able to learn from Coral Sea, implement changes by Midway, and was able to organize a coordinated strike, how could it be this wasn't addressed earlier in exercises and training?

At Midway, IJN carriers were able to get over a hundred aircraft into the air within 10 minutes... Enterprise and Hornet took over an hour to do the same. Did no one consider that this was taking entirely too much time, during which aircraft were burning fuel? Remember, this is the most basic of functions of a carrier -- getting aircraft aloft.
 
Had the USN gone to fueling/bombing up on the flight deck yet? That would've slowed them down a whole lot.
 
No idea if the USN started fueling / arming on the flight deck yet. My online research hasn't yielded many results since the thought occurred to me while reading this fic. The only thing I was able to turn up was that after Enterprise had launched CAP, VS-6, and VB-6, it took over 20 minutes to remove 4 malfunctioning SBDs from the flight deck, and get the escorting Wildcats and TBDs brought up and spotted for launch.
 
Deidryt said:
@Skywalker_T-65 I've been reading through your works since noticing the link in the JMPer's signature, and I have to say this story is my favorite of them.

So going back a few chapters, with all the improvements that Thompson is introducing into carrier tactics and operation, is he going to touch upon methods by which to launch airstrikes? One of the problems I recall the USN having during Coral Sea and Midway was the sheer amount of time it took to get an airstrike launched... taking over an hour to get the massed attacks launched. Yorktown learned the lessons after Coral Sea, but was unable to teach Enterprise and Hornet before Midway. I tried to do some research into the issue, but I wasn't able to find any reasons why the USN only encountered these issues during those two pivotal battles.

Addressing that should satisfy some of Halsey's desire for more offensive thinking from Thompson's brainstorms.
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Probably he's already solving it since chapter 8, since multicarrier strikes are the first step for swift attacks, he just needs to adopt the japanese doctrine of using deckloads for the strike package instead of launching the entire force. Two carriers launching roughly half their airgroup at the same time are more than twice as fast as one launching its entire force in two deckloads (it takes a while to get the second half of the carrier force from the hangar).
Deidryt said:
If Yorktown was able to learn from Coral Sea, implement changes by Midway, and was able to organize a coordinated strike, how could it be this wasn't addressed earlier in exercises and training?
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To be fair between Coral Sea and Midway there wasn't enough time to spread the knowledge to other carrier groups, the veteran staff members of Yorktown were as miraculous as their DamCom to be able to incorporate the lessons and apply them on a bunch of squadrons coming from the Saratoga just in time for the battle.
 
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@BF110C4 I don't think the issues with launching a full airgroup is something that came up in the course of normal exercises, though. If it was, it should have been picked up in any number of fleet exercises or problems that the USN carriers took part in... so I'm not sure it can just be assumed that it was address just because it was a multi-carrier strike. What little research I was able to dig up seemed to suggest that the problems were on each individual carrier and their flight deck operations, as the different airgroups didn't really coordinate with each other.

Regarding Yorktown and the lessons learned from Coral Sea, what I find most interesting is that in the course of one battle, the Yorktown crew could have determined there was an issue and learned enough to make operations so much smoother for them, and in less than a month, implement those lessons so quickly at Midway. And yet, despite all the training, exercises, and war footing preparations they'd done, these issues were never dealt with before.

It's really because of that -- in how short a time frame issues were discovered and remedied -- that I find the subject fascinating. How were these issues, which are so basic to carrier flight ops, not even explored before?
 
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One thing to remember that a lot of pre war training focused more on scouting then attacking. It wasn't until like 1936 that they actually to look seriously into carrier fleet attacks and not go meh. Mainly because until that time the planes for attacking wasn't there. Even then it was more of a meh good enough approach.


Plus training is a lot different then the real thing...


Then you have the MONEY ISSUES. Remember that the Great Depression was still being felt so they did not spend as much time training as they should cause they couldn't afford it.
 
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Is there any tropes we can add to the TV tropes page?

I have already added Alien Space Bats, the Atoner and Nightmare Fuel, also corrected some of the grammar.
 
@Firefinder12-B Yup... definitely keeping those in mind... and trying to followup on research for those points. Haven't been able to find too much information on how many aircraft were embarked on the carriers immediately before the war... nor what kind of training they were focused on. However, even if the primary focus is completely on scouting and fleet defense, there had to have been times where they needed to practice a full scramble? And during the fleet exercises, where they practiced fleet maneuvers... or demonstrated attacks on Pearl Harbor? And with the experimentation of using carriers as offensive platforms, you'd think something would have come up.

Again, I have no idea why these lessons took so long to be learned... when they seem like such basic items that should have been identified and rectified in training. Trying to do more research on the topic, but information appears to be scant (online at least). But back to the story -- wouldn't carrier skippers love to see their entire airwing into the air in less than an hour? Get a strike fully going within 30-40 minutes?
 
If I had to bet I would say that the reason it didn't come out was because one hour to lauch dozens of planes looks and sounds really efficient until you see the way japanese dealt with the same problems, before that the system was considered efficient enough for a long range strike and the deficiencies in fuel expenditure and operational timing were simply the cost of business.

Multicarrier coordination must have been found wanting long before the war, but solving that kind of problem is less an issue of the Fleet Problems, which was done to detect problematic issues, and more a part of regular training in task forces, which was harder considering that doctrine during the time forced carriers to operate in single carrier strike forces unlike the japanese who operated permanent divisions of two carriers which were ideal to prepare coordinated strikes.
 
Not really enough Time though regardless of butterflies Sara is going in for a badly overdue Modernization in 3 months or less.
That is the Hard Cap for his time on Sara.
 
Typically, Admirals remain with their division or task group... and transfer their flag to another ship during the refit (unless the whole division is down for refit for some reason). Because of the way carriers were organized pre-war, however, each carrier group only had one carrier in it, which basically means when the carrier is down for refit, the division is down for refit.

Of course, this may have changed now that Thompson has been made commander of CarDiv1... though with Lexington and Yorktown out of Pearl (I think?), and Halsey still aboard Enterprise, I'm not sure how the divisions organized right now.
 
Deidryt said:
Typically, Admirals remain with their division or task group... and transfer their flag to another ship during the refit (unless the whole division is down for refit for some reason). Because of the way carriers were organized pre-war, however, each carrier group only had one carrier in it, which basically means when the carrier is down for refit, the division is down for refit.

Of course, this may have changed now that Thompson has been made commander of CarDiv1... though with Lexington and Yorktown out of Pearl (I think?), and Halsey still aboard Enterprise, I'm not sure how the divisions organized right now.
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Yeah, that will be confusing.

Also, for Skywalker, how is the AA gunnery training of the battleships? Is it still bad or is it improving? The battleships only fought the Japanese with water-cooled .50 cal machine guns and 5'/51 inch SP guns that were mostly ineffective.
 
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SquireHarbour said:
Yeah, that will be confusing.

Also, for Skywalker, how is the AA gunnery training of the battleships? Is it still bad or is it improving? The battleships only fought the Japanese with water-cooled .50 cal machine guns and 5'/51 inch SP guns that were mostly ineffective.
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Still far better than the japanese AA, and the problems with the .50 cal and the 1.1' was more about range (and in the case of the Chicago Piano jamming) than about training, while the 5'/51 simply wasn't a true AA gun, once they switched to 20mm, 40mm and 5'/38 the japanese planes fell like flies.
 
BF110C4 said:
Still far better than the japanese AA, and the problems with the .50 cal and the 1.1' was more about range (and in the case of the Chicago Piano jamming) than about training, while the 5'/51 simply wasn't a true AA gun, once they switched to 20mm, 40mm and 5'/38 the japanese planes fell like flies.
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Yeah, once those guns are introduced with the VT fuses and radar guidance the Japanese planes will be dropping like flies.

Compared to Japanese 13mm and 25mm AA guns that had the ballistics all wrong and couldn't scratch most US planes.
 
Deidryt said:
Typically, Admirals remain with their division or task group... and transfer their flag to another ship during the refit (unless the whole division is down for refit for some reason). Because of the way carriers were organized pre-war, however, each carrier group only had one carrier in it, which basically means when the carrier is down for refit, the division is down for refit.

Of course, this may have changed now that Thompson has been made commander of CarDiv1... though with Lexington and Yorktown out of Pearl (I think?), and Halsey still aboard Enterprise, I'm not sure how the divisions organized right now.
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The logic with having CarDiv1 is twofold. One, Lex and Sara are the only carriers pre-war that operated nearly together most of the time, once we had enough to spare. Two, Thompson pulling strings to get his 'test formations' put together after the Fleet Problem, where they were paired up together against Yorktown. Hence, Lex and Sara CarDiv1.

Also, this and this .

Quoteh the Wiki said:
On 1 April 1931, Rear Admiral Joseph M. Reeves took command of Carrier Division 2 (CarDiv 2), becoming the first carrier division commander in the U.S. Navy. Reeves was also designated as Commander Aircraft U.S. Fleet.[7]​ Carrier Division 2 initially consisted of the U.S. Navy's first true fast aircraft carriers, Lexington and Saratoga, as well as former minesweeperGannet which acted as an aircraft tender and guardship for the two carriers.
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While it is true that USN carriers typically operated alone, Lex and Sara are really the exception to the rule. At different times they worked alone (Sara replaced Langley in CarDiv1 alone for instance) but they worked together a lot more than anyone else did. Other than Enterprise and Yorktown who...surprise...

The Wiki says Hi said:
In February 1939, Carrier Division Two, now consisting of Yorktown and Enterprise, participated in the war game Fleet Problem XX.
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Where we are now, CarDiv2 is under Bull Halsey's command.

I wish I had a different source said:
In April 1940, Halsey's ships, as part of Battle Fleet, moved to Hawaii and in June 1940, he was promoted to vice admiral (temporary rank) : appointed commander Carrier Division 2 and commander Aircraft Battle Force.
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Is Yorktown part of CarDiv2? Her page doesn't say, and neither does the CarDiv2 one. She might still be part of it. She might not. I just don't know, so I'm fudging it a bit there.

As for Lex and Yorkie right now, they're out on patrol and training different carriers working together. In other words, they can't reasonably keep all the carriers holed up in Pearl all the time, but Halsey and Thompson pulled the strings they have with Richardson to 'train the other carriers' while they worked to figure out what the hell was going on with the TBS sets. Helped by the fact most people know it started with Sara. This said, Lex and York together is a temporary thing for sure.

Insofar as Sara's refit goes, Thompson would logically be reassigned to Lex for the duration of it. Even if the navy wanted to reassign him to Yorktown or something, he wouldn't go for it. Sara is his closest friend and confidant, and the man is aware she's keeping him sane with all the pressure he's under. Getting him away from her? That would...well.

'course, this presumes he's not in Washington while she's being refit or something.

SquireHarbour said:
Also, for Skywalker, how is the AA gunnery training of the battleships? Is it still bad or is it improving? The battleships only fought the Japanese with water-cooled .50 cal machine guns and 5'/51 inch SP guns that were mostly ineffective.
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It's being worked on.

Skywalker_T-65 said:
"The refit will need to be more extensive, than I thought." Admiral Willson continued, Ari realizing he was marking down changes to her hull. It was hard not to, when she saw him take out a sketch of her deck. "Still, I know that Richardson will support us in the end. The Carriers are support, not the heart of the fleet."
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Thompson lit a fire under the BB Admirals, so they're trying to compensate. In this case, that means working on better AA refits- yay! -and better training in how to use them. Granted, the same issues with training the carriers is present. Namely, budget and time constraints. Utah being down for repairs means that the usual target isn't available. Especially true because historically, from August '40 and until December '40, Utah was being used for anti-aircraft training.

So...they're working on it. Ari, when she goes into refit (technically, she should already be in refit since it started in October '40. But it's slightly delayed right now because of the extra plans), is going to have more guns for sure. Other ships like Cali or Nevada will get what they can, but unless they had a big refit between now (October '40) and Pearl, it's not going to be extensive.
 
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Main issue with the Pearl Harbor attack is that a lot of people still think that it's the Asiatic Fleet that's going to get hammered hard when the Japanese attack, not the Pacific Fleet all the way in Hawaii. :V

That and the improvements to doctrine and technology were introduced a year or so later IRL. The Pacific War Encyclopedia, for example, notes that ammunition expenditure in 1942 for the USN was incredibly low compared to later years. The source's author speculates it was because of slower aircraft and ships hoarding ammunition.
 
Skywalker_T-65 said:
As for Lex and Yorkie right now, they're out on patrol and training different carriers working together. In other words, they can't reasonably keep all the carriers holed up in Pearl all the time, but Halsey and Thompson pulled the strings they have with Richardson to 'train the other carriers' while they worked to figure out what the hell was going on with the TBS sets. Helped by the fact most people know it started with Sara. This said, Lex and York together is a temporary thing for sure.
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Ah... I see... that makes sense. Thanks for the extra bits.

The entire way that carriers were utilized pre-war and early-war made tracking them as divisions difficult; at times, it seemed like the divisions were more administrative or only temporary than anything else. Most of the records of their deployments had them going solo on one assignment or another... such as reinforcing garrisons with additional aircraft or being shuffled around between various refits. Doesn't help the most commonly cited time (Dec. 7th), all the fleet carriers were operating solo.

--addendum--
Also, as an extra note, if Lexington and Saratoga are both assigned to CarDiv1, Thompson is the commanding officer, and Sara needed to put in for refit, he wouldn't need to be reassigned -- he would just need to transfer his flag to remain with his overall command. The only caveat here is if there's another Admiral already on Lex -- not sure if the reorg of CVs into divisions would automatically mean the original admiral of Lex's task force would be reassigned.
 
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