Military History: Which high ranking American officer...

[ladajo]

Radar gunnery was still being worked out by the time of Midway, the primary use of Radar was early warning.

I never said it played a role at Midway.

Though on the other hand the use of optical sightings were pretty much obsolete, or going to be.

The Mark 8 came out in late 1942. Both Mark 3 and 4 were introduced in late 1941.

By the time the Iowas were out they used a Mark 13 3cm radar, Mark 41 Stable Vertical(gyro), two Mark 38 Gun Fire Control Systems, Mark 8 rangekeeper.

Unfortunately the debate you wish to have cannot include many citations of actual ship of the line exchanges, there just weren't that many. Certainly no Iowa vs Yamato scenarios. The Washington and West Virginia each were involved in firing at night to good effect. The Iowa class beat on cruisers and destroyers.

So you wouldn't aim at the bridge?

...that is what were talking about, no?

What I am saying is if you hit the bridge, it is luck, not planned.
Spotting fall of shot is easy even with a crappy radar, and 5 Meter/Yard accuracy is crappy by today's standards. Fall of shot is a function of splash size verses height of eye for the radar.
Radar precision comes as a function of three things: pulse rate (PRR), pulse width (PW), and scan speed. Normally scan speed is not so much an issue given the high pulse rates, and in relative terms, short pulse widths. The issue really tells when you go long range with low pulse rates, and long pulse widths. This is typically found in long range air search or older generic search radars.
PRR determines for one, the theoretical range of a radar. The time between each pulse divided by two, times the speed of light gives you the max range. In practice, there are methods to differentiate between a primary return, and a second or higher zone return, especially on A-scope, but this is difficult, and not widely practiced.
PW determines the the actual range precision the most. If the leading edge of the pulse is nice sharp and clean (not so common on older radars), then you get a nice clean sharp return that is more accurate. The problem is with a wider pulse, you get less resolution. So if you have a wide pulse, you may paint a smaller target, as it gets more energy (or duty cycle) to reflect, but if there are several small targets together, you will only see one big smudge for video. And if they are reflective complex targets like ships tend to be, then you get a even more smeared return.
Scan rate, obviously determines the lateral smearing of a pulse across the target, slow scans mean clean pulse hits, fast scans give more smearing.
Fire control radars employ different types of scan patterns to maintain locks, unlike search radars which mostly employ a classic radial sweep. One of the more common is a spiral or raster pattern. What this actually does is smear your target video even more when in lock.

What I am saying is that given even modern radar technology employed, be it CW Firecontrol or a hybrid track while scan type, such as the widely used Mk92 CAS and its various versions, you do not get so much choice in where you hit the target. As I said before, using radar, you can use the offset functions to "bias" you fall of shot left/right or short/long, and hope for the best. And we have much better stuff today than then.
If you want to selectively target, you are going to use optical, period. I can track a large bug with SPY, but that certainly does not mean I can hit it with a main battery mount.
Modern fire control calculates and tracks Many (with a capital M) variables that it then number crunches for a solution for each round tossed. We do this, because back in the day, you could have a good lock, good solution, and really cool massive fire control gyros, but still miss entirely.
In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, during the Suriago Straits engagement, you had 6 BB's, 4 CA's and 4 CL's along with a 28 DD's. They entered the battle with a chosen limit of firing Main Guns (14 & 16 inch) at 17K to 20K yards due to ammo shortages. The Japanese capitol units were picked up by radar at about 40K. When they reached about 33K the order was given to open up at 26K. All cruisers were ordered to open up when Louisville ranged about 15.6K. Then Main Battel Line opened up at about 22.8K (for the record, 5 of the 6 BB's had been hit or sunk at Pearl, but were now in the game). They were facing Yamashiro and Mogami (of Midway fame). Fuso had already been knocked out of the line by the DD's. West Virginia, Tennessee and California all mounted the Mk8 Fire Control. WV fired 93 rounds of 16inch, Tennessee 69 14inch, and CA 63 rounds of 14inch. Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania mounted the Mk3 fire control. They had difficulty targeting the Japs. Maryland used WV fall of shot splashes as targets, firing 48 rounds of 16inch. MS fired only one full salvo (one glimpse of radar target at 19,790 yds), and PA fired nothing (no radar target). The Cruisers fired over 4200 8inch rounds. Mogami was hit once in the bridge, Yamashiro was not hit in the bridge.

[ladajo]

The reason is the Yorktown had far more experience, From Adm. Fletcher on down. Thats not so much luck as making your own luck because you know what the Fook you're doing.

I took this as your statement that US leadership was better. That is what I differed with.

Nagumo at the time of Midway was THE most experienced carrier strike force admiral in the world. And his ship commanders and air wing commanders the same. Genda, the Kido Butai Air Operations Officer was the the best there was at the time as well.
No one had as much experience, let alone success as these guys when they went to Midway. If you are in doubt, talk to the British about what Kido Butai did in the Indian Ocean, just before they went to Midway. And if you want to dial back the clock more, these guys were all at Pearl as well.

Unfortunately, here in the west, we have yet to fully update our histories for Midway and other events, now that some good research and historical evidence has finally surfaced. It was until within the last ten years that anyone on our side of the pond figured out that Amagai and Fuchida were feeding the bear when they were interrogated, as well as when subsequently writing books and histories, once the ban was lifted in Japan, that they fabricated things for personal and national pride. Fuchida's 1955 book "Midway: The battle that doomed Japan" has been a mainstay in US histories that still persists. These were the same guys that fed the ONI interviews in 1947, as well as the Pacific Strategic Bombing Survey by the Naval Analysis Division in 1946.

[ladajo]

We broke the JN 25 code in March, 1942.
We intercepted about 60% of all traffic. Of that, we were able to analyze a 40%. So of total traffic, 100 * .6 *.4 = 24% got some level of analysis.
Then of any given message we analyzed, we were able to break 10 to 15% of the code groups it contained.
=> 24 * .10 = 2.4% and 24 * .15 = 3.6%.
We were able to see about 2.4 to 3.6% of given traffic.
That does not equate to omniscent knowledge by any means. Absolutely helpful, but not even close to decisive.
Check out Lundstrom's "First South Pacific Campaign" pages 76-77.

The comms desalinization plant failure ruse to confirm Midway as the Japanese target was transmitted on 19 May, the day after the Japanese added a watership to the "MI" occupation forces. The intercept shop (HYPO) in Hawaii, began to suspect the Japanese were up to something around 9 May. They were thinking at the time it could be Hawaii.
As the intel developed, Nimitz was thinking the Japanese would sorty 4 to 5 carriers split into two groups. Thus he came up with the TF 16 and 17 plan, with Yorktown in the mix. He was relying on ambush surprise to make up any qualitative diffence. He had no idea the Japanese were pushing 8 total carriers. Note that Yorktown arrived in Pearl from Coral Sea the same day that Nagumo put to sea with Kido Butai from Japan.
This was not a long planned well thought out US effort.

[MSimon]

Although, even with the force split, had the Japanese had an actual plan for Midway, vice winging it,

And we were really winging it at Guadalcanal. And beat the Japs there too.

i.e. Americans were spectacular at improvising plans and operations and coming out on top.

When I was growing up one of the friends of my family, Mel Tepper, was a veteran of that battle. His hands were crusted with some kind of white crap. Something he picked up there. It was like shaking hands with sandpaper to give him the traditional American greeting. I never flinched. It was an honor to shake hands with that warrior.

This is a really good book on the subject:

Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle

The Japanese fighting man was from superior to vastly superior to the American. Our officers were much better. Mostly. And our command system? Vastly superior. The Japanese Army and Navy were always going in different directions.

One example - the Japanese thought defeating warships was the key to winning the war. The Americans focused on Japanese logistics. i.e. they planned to hammer us into submission. We planned to strangle them.

[MSimon]

During the Guadalcanal fracas the Japanese were picking up our ships optically at typically 2X the range that our radar could. And that was at night.

Their optics/training were also superior to ours.

If you count total ships lost there was rough parity (by class, firepower). What we did do better was destroy their logistics. We could support our troops. Theirs starved.

The balance of power in that battle was Henderson field. The Japanese placed a LOT of emphasis on fighting. They lacked scrapers/graders etc. that would have allowed them to build airfields closer to the battle. They wore out men an eqpt getting them to/from the battle (550 miles from the Japanese main base). Our aircraft could make many sorties per day. Theirs one.

Guadalcanal: Starvation Island

[MSimon]

They only trained a limited number of crew for it. As we say, every marine a rifleman, every sailor a fireman.

Loved the fire fighting training at boot camp (Dago). Nothing like going into a compartment flooded with water and burning oil and putting out the fire with a fire hose. I was picking black soot out of my nose for days though.

My dad was a DC chief on an AOG (USS Escatawpa) during the battle of Okinawa. My general quarters station was as a talker in DC central.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Escatawpa_%28AOG-27%29

My ship's top speed was above 30 knots. His ship 10 knots.

[MSimon]

OK Milan Vego - a little late to the end of the parade.

Operational Warfare at Sea: Theory and Practice

I'm looking at a pdf now "On Naval Power" you have to look it up. I can't find a direct link.