O_O

[Dantoo]

Nope you didn't get the entire complement of D3A1s.  You should have had more hit you but it's always hard to get people to roll up and fly these rides.  Thus it proved to be so once again.

There was a requirement to field 120 Vals; yes 120!!  Now when you add to that the requirement to field 50 Kates you might pause and scratch your head a moment. 

OK now let's make you the planner.  You have a minimum requirement of fairly defenceless dive bombers to send out.  They can't be used for anything else other than attacking. Kates make for lousy CV defence.  Kates make for lousy Kate defence.  Start to see where this going yet?  If you don't, let me help, they are going to be sent out to attack a target.

Now your CIC only had 80 F4Fs and he had to defend 4 targets and attack 4 targets.  That's an average of 10 fighters at each place he needed cover.  He knew that he was going to get something above maybe 45 attackers at each target. That's the essential math.

Please direct your whine to your CIC for not being a miracle worker, after all I hear a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish can be spread across a multitude. Should be easy to cover everything with a few F4Fs.  Even success would be problematical for him because if he was able to pull off a miracle like that there'd still be a mob trying to nail him up to a cross today.


rgds

[Saxman]

You're also forgetting that allotment of 100 Zeros, which YOUR CiC could have dispatched 12 to each strike package along with 12 over each of your four carriers so there was no NEED to Zerg Rush those fairly defenseless bombers. If a dozen Zeros can't defend 30-odd D3As from a handful of F4Fs--which have to rely of durability, firepower, and tactics in this setup--then who gets the blame now? "Start to see where this is going yet? If you don't let me help."

I FULLY expected to be outnumbered by about 3-4 to 1, but at least downing 21 D3As out of 30 gives the defenders the opportunity of keeping the objective at least SOMEWHAT intact and it would have been FUN to put my plan of attack to the test. It is NOT a good @$%&ing time to be stampeded to this ludicrous extreme and have no chance WHATSOEVER in an event that, while objective-based, is STILL supposed to be fun and enjoyable.

[CHAPPY]

always has to be something

[Dantoo]

This is the last response I'll make.

If a dozen Zeros can't defend 30-odd D3As

Stop.  Read the scenario again as a whole and try to work out what the writer of it intended.  

Where do you propose that the remaining (minimum) 140 bombers should go?  You complain that 50 odd is a problem for you now, making a dozen of them into fighters won't bring you more fun will it?  Your squad didn't survive the unescorted Vals as it was.

Sending a dozen fighters and an additional 45-50 strikers on top, to each of the other targets instead, is a better idea just so you are less busy?  Don't care much about the other guys? Why are you so special that you have to miss out?

Midway had 7 hangars and whole host of other targets spread over two Islands.  Please calculate how many Val loads it takes to down just 7 hangars without all the other stuff?  I'll help.  It takes 5 per Hangar if they all hit precisely.  The other objects take about 10 -15 more.  There is bound to be some attrition and a few more than one or two will miss their targets.  Say just for the math, that the defenders kill about 2 each, how many do you need to do the job?

The fact of the matter is a lot of guys had a great time.  That's not always easy to do in early war Japanese carrier planes.  We probably lost more to crashes while recovering to the carrier than at the targets.  Some guys didn't accept the challenge of the long flight back to the recovery cv.  Those that did enjoyed the spectacle at least provided by the landings.

Sorry you didn't have a good time despite your massive kill count.  You should feel no worse than the Zeke squads that had to try to fend off the SBDs diving past them to the carriers.  Weak guns, little ammo, and the toughness of the planes means they had way less chance than you to defend their base.  At the end of it they had nowhere to rearm, just suck it up and fly all the way back to the reserve landing field.  There are plenty squads out there that would have been happy to have F4Fs and a sky full of Vals.  As there are so few fighter slots in this FSO, I'm sure you won't be faced with the same problem next week.  

[Anaxogoras]

[Saxman]

Its easy to justify breaking out a steamroller when you're one of the ones at the wheel. It looks a lot different when you're the pavement.

I'd like a CM opinion on this situation.

[splitatom]

sax be happy there were no escorts so i could have been worst

[Joker312]

Please direct your whine to your CIC for not being a miracle worker, after all I hear a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish can be spread across a multitude. Should be easy to cover everything with a few F4Fs.  Even success would be problematical for him because if he was able to pull off a miracle like that there'd still be a mob trying to nail him up to a cross today.


rgds

LMAO

As the saying goes "You can please some of the prople some of the time, but you cant please all of the people all of the time"

I was 1 of those Val's, never thought I would have so much fun in a Val!

I would have gladly changed places with you though Sax.

You know as well as I that FSO is not totally real life, just meant to be an escape from real life.

[Noir]

Its easy to justify breaking out a steamroller when you're one of the ones at the wheel. It looks a lot different when you're the pavement.

I'd like a CM opinion on this situation.

You make me want to cry  Poor experten had to kill a lot of sitting ducks 

[bongaroo]

We only had 8 F4F's to defend our CV with.  I had 5 kills and 4 assists and was about to have a sixth kill before I was discoed.  Ugh, all my good FSO nights seem to end in disco's.   

[Shifty]

all my good FSO nights seem to end in disco's. 

[VonMessa]

Didn't know you had it in ya, Shifty. 

Have you been giving lessons to Stampf?  He is getting pretty good at that disco thing.       

[Fencer51]

The Order of Battle in the following is correct for Midway, except I reduced the number of PBYs and subbed F4Fs for the Brewster Buffalos.



http://www.51hangar.net/MIDWAY/Midwayv3.html

Stoney was very close in his fighter assignments.  The US had 101 available, but some of those were Buffalo's on Midway.  The Japanese had 105 including 12 on the Zuiho.

A very enjoyable FSO. 

Can anyone imagine a Marine pilot complaining that he was outnumbered by Vals?

[Shifty]

Didn't know you had it in ya, Shifty. 

Have you been giving lessons to Stampf?  He is getting pretty good at that disco thing.       

Yeah for better or for worse, I was 18 when disco fever hit. Somebody had to do it.

[Nefarious]

February 2009?