70 Years Ago: Turning Point

I just finished reading Stanley Johnston's Queen of the Flattops again. The first time was about 65 years ago.

Some thoughts:

The courage and professionalism of the officers and men of USS Lexington and her air group were awesome.

The standard narrative that the US was not prepared for war is wrong. These men and their ships and aircraft were ready for war.

The standard narrative also emphasizes the superiority of the Japanese Zero and their pilots. Not exactly. Japanese pilots were superbly trained aviators. But there weren't enough of them for a prolonged war.

The Zero was faster and more maneuverable than the US Navy's Wildcat fighters in early 1942. But the Wildcat was tougher, and Navy pilots were also well trained. Even early in the war, Japan lost more airplanes and aircrew than we did.

Japanese aircraft carriers weren't quite as good as ours, and their damage control measures weren't as effective.

Lexington probably shouldn't have been lost. She was killed by explosions of gasoline vapors. Better liquid loading practices might have kept the avgas tanks from rupturing and more aggressive ventilation of compartments might have avoided explosive concentrations of vapor.

Yorktown was lost at Midway because of the way the electrical system was set up before battle. The forward and aft main switchboards should have been isolated from each other. The forward board was destroyed by a torpedo hit and the ship lost power. The after emergency diesel generator came on and could have provided power to the ship's pumps, but kept tripping off the line because of shorts in the forward board and electrical distribution system. With electrical power, she could have been saved.

But these were lessons quickly learned. Japanese fire fighting proved incapable of saving their carriers time after time.

The one area of clear Japanese superiority was in their torpedoes. Their Long Lance torpedoes have really never been equaled for speed and range. Not only were our torpedoes unreliable, the Bureau of Ordinance refused to believe there was a problem for nearly two years. That was scandalous.

Our communications intelligence was superb.

By mid-1942, it was apparent that Japan had not been prepared to go to war with the United States.