Secondary concern. The ship's survival or lack thereof is the main issue we're debating here.
How would history have changed if HMSIndomitable had successfully joined Force Z?
- Thread starter HMSIndomitable_92
- Start date
Not on their torpedorun.
Apart from that the attack was with the G3M, the G4M was not in service yet.
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Historically, massed .303s were more than enough to shred an unarmoured Japanese aircraft. The few Ceylon based Hurricanes that managed to shoot down A6Ms reported that their targets 'disintegrated' upon being hit, and those flown against JAAF bombers in Malaya and Burma did not have much trouble flaming those birds, either, although Hurrican drivers were often surprised by the speed of the Japanese land-based multi-engine bombers.
Regarding the 20mm guns, they were quite slow-firing. US Navy pilots like Butch O'Hare discovered that a fast run from the 4-5 o' clock or 7-8 o'clock direction, with shots aimed at the wing roots, was often too much for the 20mm tail gunners to contend with.
They didn't have hits OTL, of course ITTL they may, but I doubt it would be an effective attack.
Well, it would have meant that her air wing would be out of action for any subsequent air attacks.
Um, there were lots of G4M in service in 1941, possibly in the hundreds (can't recall the exact number now). All the details as well as exactly how many were involved in the attack on Force Z ( i seem to recall 34, but my memory might be wrong) are for instance in Osamu Tagaya's Osprey book on the G4M.
According to English Wiki, G4M Batty has been deployed since 2 April 1941.
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The attack on POW and Repulse was primarily was mixed g3m and g4m.
I want to say 48 g3m and 36 g4m but that's off the top of my head. Check a reputable source.
Both of which burned easily when intercepted, and the G3M was considered obsolescent by the time of the Battle of Malaya.
The RN loses a carrier in addition to two capital ships.
In addition to the 130+ twin engine G3M and G4M based near Saigon the IJNAF had 25 A6M flying out of Soc Trang that had beenb moved forward specifically to provide escort to the bomber force, if necessary (there were also 11 A5M Claudes there but they lacked the range to provide any sort of meaningful escort).
The Indomitable, as was the case across the RN, operating an ever changing mixture of aircraft consisting of around 12-15 Albacore or Swordfish and 8-14 Fulmars, perhaps with a few Sea Gladiators replacing Fulmars as the FAA command shuttled its very limited aircraft inventory about to strengthen one ship at the cost of weakening abother. The Fulmar was the "best" FAA fighter available at the time, based on speed and armament, although less maneuverable than the Sea Gladiator (the slightly better Fulmar Firefly had not yet flown, and the vastly better, arrestor hook equipped, Sea Hurricane was not introduced until March of 1942).
It takes very little imagination to same out the result of the engagement between two horribly mismatched forces. Even if the Zeros were never dispatched as escorts, none were IOTL mainly because there was no expectation of any enemy CAP, something that would not be the case if Indomitable had been with Force Z, a dozen or so fighters, with very little in the way of a speed advantage and less than overwhelming firpower, are not going to be enough to stop even 40 Nells and/or Bettys, much less the 88 the Japanese actually dispatched (keep in mind that an additional 40+ more bombers are available if/as needed.
Indomitable is there on December 10th and she becomes a reef on the bottom of the South China Sea.
In addition to the 130+ twin engine G3M and G4M based near Saigon the IJNAF had 25 A6M flying out of Soc Trang that had beenb moved forward specifically to provide escort to the bomber force, if necessary (there were also 11 A5M Claudes there but they lacked the range to provide any sort of meaningful escort).
The Indomitable, as was the case across the RN, operating an ever changing mixture of aircraft consisting of around 12-15 Albacore or Swordfish and 8-14 Fulmars, perhaps with a few Sea Gladiators replacing Fulmars as the FAA command shuttled its very limited aircraft inventory about to strengthen one ship at the cost of weakening abother. The Fulmar was the "best" FAA fighter available at the time, based on speed and armament, although less maneuverable than the Sea Gladiator (the slightly better Fulmar Firefly had not yet flown, and the vastly better, arrestor hook equipped, Sea Hurricane was not introduced until March of 1942).
It takes very little imagination to same out the result of the engagement between two horribly mismatched forces. Even if the Zeros were never dispatched as escorts, none were IOTL mainly because there was no expectation of any enemy CAP, something that would not be the case if Indomitable had been with Force Z, a dozen or so fighters, with very little in the way of a speed advantage and less than overwhelming firpower, are not going to be enough to stop even 40 Nells and/or Bettys, much less the 88 the Japanese actually dispatched (keep in mind that an additional 40+ more bombers are available if/as needed.
Indomitable is there on December 10th and she becomes a reef on the bottom of the South China Sea.
The attack was by a mix of G3 and G4 equipped squadrons. However the planes were at the edge of endurance and were basically restricted to a single straight away attack run. Hence no single attack by all aircraft at once but a series of attacks by squadrons as they arrive. These would be very vulnerable to fighter disruption meaning its unlikely they do much. The RN with radar would vector the fighters on to the torpedo bombers as a priority and they would become ineffective with even a handful of fighters involved. Level bombers might even be left alone as, just like the B-17's found, the chances of a hit were minimal to manoeuvring ships.
Grey Wolf
Donor
That is what I was going to say - a bomb hit on the deck might not damage the carrier's survivability, but if the CAP cannot land, and other aircraft not take off, perhaps except in occasional ones and twos, then you have rendered the carrier a target, not a base, and its aircraft will need to head for land-based airfields or ditch.
I knew for the first time that there was also A6M in Vietnam at that time. Anyway, then the results wouldn't have been much different with or without a HMS Indomitable in Force Z at the time.
There were 3 groups of bombers, Genzan, Kanoya and Mihoro. When the sailing of POW and Repulse was announced Yamamoto sent 36 G4M’s to reinforce the primarily G3M force.
On the day, the first air attack was at 10:00 and was actually on the detached destroyer Tenedos, by G3M’s with 1100 lb bombs, scoring no hits. Tenedos was 140 miles southeast of Force Z at the time, and the Nells mistook her for a battleship.
At 10:15 a scout plane spotted Force Z and radioed their location. All remaining bombers began to converge.
The first wave was at 11:13 and consisted of 8 G3M’s with 550 lb bombs. These focused solely on Repulse and scored 7 misses and one hit which went through the hanger and exploded the Marine mess area but caused no serious damage and relatively few casualties. 5 bombers were damaged by AA and two forced to return to base.
Second wave was at 11:40 by 17 G3M’s with torpedoes. 9 attacked POW and 8 Repulse but one had to pull off from POW and went after Repulse as well. No hits were scored on Repulse but the ultimately fatal one to POW came here from the 8 fired. One plane was shot down by POW and 3 more damaged.
At 12:20 G4M’s of Kanoya Air Group would get involved. 26 attacked and scored 3 more torpedo hits to POW’s starboard side. By this time POW’s AA was basically useless due to the loss of power and list. These hits further damaged her propulsion, amongst other things. This was also the attack where Repulse was hit by a hammer and anvil attack. She took one torpedo after dodging 19 to this point. She would take 3 more within minutes and would start to list heavily before rolling over and sinking at 12:33.
POW now had only one propeller shaft working and with the list could not fire at low flying aircraft. But the last attack at 12:41 was by high level bombers. So she could fire with her 2 working 5.25” turrets. Most bombs missed but one hit amidships and exploded amongst the wounded in Cinema flat, causing heavy casualties. POW soon started to capsize and went down at 13:18.
The G3M attacks were the ones that did the ultimately fatal damage to POW but they are also smaller, and much more likely to be disrupted by fighters being present. The fighters could dive from their interceptions of dive bombers to attack the torpedo bombers. I think it would be reasonable to say that Force Z could escape these unharmed, though bad luck could prevail.
The real danger is the larger attack by G4M’s. This would be the largest and best coordinated one yet, with better aircraft and facing a CAP that had just had to deal with several prior waves and has likely not regained altitude over the fleet. It will, however, be quite possibly facing undamaged ships, with POW’s AA active, moving much faster than OTL and will still have to deal with some fighter cover. I think it is reasonable to say that the ships could escape, but not necessarily unscathed. Depending on the extent of the damage a ship, or perhaps 2 could be lost. I would say losing all three are unlikely. Due to time and fuel constraints I don’t think there will be a second attack. There is no time to get back to base, refuel and rearm and find Force Z again before they are out of range.
So it seems to me that at least one of the ships would escape. More likely at least 2 and possibly all 3. But there would almost certainly be damage, and some of it likely serious. Force Z is, I think, almost certain to be withdrawn at earliest opportunity.
On the day, the first air attack was at 10:00 and was actually on the detached destroyer Tenedos, by G3M’s with 1100 lb bombs, scoring no hits. Tenedos was 140 miles southeast of Force Z at the time, and the Nells mistook her for a battleship.
At 10:15 a scout plane spotted Force Z and radioed their location. All remaining bombers began to converge.
The first wave was at 11:13 and consisted of 8 G3M’s with 550 lb bombs. These focused solely on Repulse and scored 7 misses and one hit which went through the hanger and exploded the Marine mess area but caused no serious damage and relatively few casualties. 5 bombers were damaged by AA and two forced to return to base.
Second wave was at 11:40 by 17 G3M’s with torpedoes. 9 attacked POW and 8 Repulse but one had to pull off from POW and went after Repulse as well. No hits were scored on Repulse but the ultimately fatal one to POW came here from the 8 fired. One plane was shot down by POW and 3 more damaged.
At 12:20 G4M’s of Kanoya Air Group would get involved. 26 attacked and scored 3 more torpedo hits to POW’s starboard side. By this time POW’s AA was basically useless due to the loss of power and list. These hits further damaged her propulsion, amongst other things. This was also the attack where Repulse was hit by a hammer and anvil attack. She took one torpedo after dodging 19 to this point. She would take 3 more within minutes and would start to list heavily before rolling over and sinking at 12:33.
POW now had only one propeller shaft working and with the list could not fire at low flying aircraft. But the last attack at 12:41 was by high level bombers. So she could fire with her 2 working 5.25” turrets. Most bombs missed but one hit amidships and exploded amongst the wounded in Cinema flat, causing heavy casualties. POW soon started to capsize and went down at 13:18.
The G3M attacks were the ones that did the ultimately fatal damage to POW but they are also smaller, and much more likely to be disrupted by fighters being present. The fighters could dive from their interceptions of dive bombers to attack the torpedo bombers. I think it would be reasonable to say that Force Z could escape these unharmed, though bad luck could prevail.
The real danger is the larger attack by G4M’s. This would be the largest and best coordinated one yet, with better aircraft and facing a CAP that had just had to deal with several prior waves and has likely not regained altitude over the fleet. It will, however, be quite possibly facing undamaged ships, with POW’s AA active, moving much faster than OTL and will still have to deal with some fighter cover. I think it is reasonable to say that the ships could escape, but not necessarily unscathed. Depending on the extent of the damage a ship, or perhaps 2 could be lost. I would say losing all three are unlikely. Due to time and fuel constraints I don’t think there will be a second attack. There is no time to get back to base, refuel and rearm and find Force Z again before they are out of range.
So it seems to me that at least one of the ships would escape. More likely at least 2 and possibly all 3. But there would almost certainly be damage, and some of it likely serious. Force Z is, I think, almost certain to be withdrawn at earliest opportunity.
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The PoW's Radar was seriously compromised by the very warm and humid conditions found in the South China Sea region. RAF tech had told Phillips that they needed a week to correct the issues, unfortunately Force Z didn't have a week.
There is also more than a little evidence to indicate that the climate had also degraded the performance of the the ship's 2-pounder ammunition. The rather startling lack of losses suffered by the IJN attackers (only four aircaft actually shot down, although 26 sustained varying degrees of damage) is a testament to the general ineffectiveness of Force Z AAA.
It is also worth mentioning again that the Japanese still had ~40 aircraft that had not yet been deployed, plus of course the 25 A6M.
Didn't the shells for the Pompoms also have serious issues in the humidity?
The problem is Indomitable wasn't scheduled to join the Far Eastern Fleet until Jan 10, 1942. However, had completed earlier, worked up and deployed with Phillips, I think her main value would have been reconnaissance, as @Sekhmet_D points out.
Phillips had asked for three things from the RAF before he sailed, recon on the 9th, additional recon on the 10th and fighter cover for his ships on 10th. The RAF provided NONE of those. Having indigenous recon assets would allowed not only to know where the Japanese were, but also where they were not.
So when Admiral Palliser (his chief of staff, IIRC) radios of "LANDINGS!!!" at Kuantan, Phillips could have sent recon aircraft instead of a destroyer and Prince of Wales' Walrus to see if the Japanese were there instead of keeping his ships in the danger zone longer than they should have been.
A side note or two on Admiral Phillips:
Phillips force was inadequate, and he knew it. On December 8th, he was in Manila asking Tommy Hart to loan him a DesDiv of US destroyers to bolster his forces. The problem was, that once the balloon went up, was he had the ONLY force capable of slowing the Japanese. The Army was incapable and the RAF in Malaya was a joke. He had two capital ships and a handful of destroyers to counter a navy with over a million tons of warships, including 10 capital ships and 9 aircraft carriers. He sailed anyway, and with luck, he and his ships might even survive. That they didn't should come as no surprise to anyone.
He was a staff officer, and he had studied the war so far. He knew torpedo bombers were the greatest threat to his capital ships, he knew fighters were the best defense against torpedo bombers (hence his request for fighter cover on the 10th, which the RAF failed to provide) and he knew he would be operating outside the longest range a torpedo bomber attack had yet taken place. What he didn't know was the Japanese were using long-range land-based bombers AS torpedo bombers. That's a failure of intelligence, not his.
Second, Phillips told the Admiralty he intended to attack the enemy forces off Kota Bharu and eight hours later, he sailed, 1005 on the 8th London time. The Admiralty did not reply to his message, and at 2200 on the 9th London time, when Force Z had been at sea for some 36 hours, there was a staff conference on naval dispositions in the Pacific. Churchill, Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Pound were in attendance. Churchill favored withdrawal, but at the late hour, it was decided to settle things in the morning. It was already too late. If deterrence had failed, why not immediately order him to Ceylon or Australia? That's a failure of the Prime Minister and the Admiralty.
You may recognize the name Henry Leach of Operation Corporate fame. He is the son of John Leach, captain of the Prince of Wales. A quote of his:
I had been appointed to the Prince of Wales, but before I joined her, my father had been made captain, so I ended up in the cruiser Mauritius, which in fact was in dock in Singapore naval base at the time Prince of Wales and Repulse cam out for their final voyage. It had been a very public voyage at every stage, round the Cape, at Mombassa, Colombo, then Singapore. Each stage was scheduled so the world knew, and this was thought to be a deterrent. So this brand new ship, very powerful, very capable, but not yet fully worked up, and Repulse, a marvelous ship, but old, and with an anti-aircraft armament that was frankly laughable, virtually might not have existed, arrived.
And these two ships and a couple of pretty elderly destroyers were to take on the entire Japanese Navy. I would call it arrogance, and a thoroughly misplaced arrogance. I know that my father and the captain of the Repulse regarded their mission as one-way. They didn't think they had an earthly chance, and of course they hadn't.
I had dinner with my father, in Prince of Wales. I suppose it would have been two nights before she finally sailed. We hadn't seen each other for inside a year, so we had lots to talk about. And he obviously didn't like the situation. He asked me what I thought about it. In my youthful arrogance I remember saying, Oh, let em come, lets have a go at them. And he turned a very sad face to me saying, I don't really think you have any idea of the enormity of the odds were up against. And I hadn't. Well, we talked about this and that and he sealed up a letter to my mum saying that I was with him and all that stuff, and that was that.
I've always, been a very poor swimmer, and I was just sploshing about in the pool to keep cool and my father swam over to me and said, "I promised Bill Tennant [captain of the Repulse] I'd give him a drink before we went back on board." I asked if I was included in this, and he said, "Yes, of course." Just before he got out of the pool he made a remark which I thought nothing of at the time, but I recalled subsequently: "I'm just going to do a couple of lengths in the bath; you never know when it may come in handy." They were prophetic words. Later I joined them for a glass of good stuff. I detected even at the time, these two great men were talking at each other across the table, because they did not want to discuss with me the hideousness of the situation. That was the last time I saw my father.
Phillips would have had to have been delusional not to see the situation in the same light as his flag captain and most senior captain. And if he were that delusional, he wouldn't have been in Manila asking for destroyers to shore-up his light forces.
My thoughts,
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The fact that in the first wave 5 of 8 aircraft were damaged and that later POW shot down one and damaged 3 others of a flight of 8 seems to indicate some AA was effective. As is the fact that of the 17 torpedo aircraft and 8 dive bombers that attacked when both ships were in fighting trim, only one serious hit was scored, from an oblique angle torpedo hit.
Also pertinent here are the 16 additional 4.5” guns that Indomitable would bring with her. And perhaps more important is the fact that there are now 3 targets. The Japanese bombers seemed to have operated in groups of 8 or 9 aircraft. When 17 G3M’s attacked they split 8 and 9 between POW and Repulse. It appears it was only when 3 groups were present could they send one to attack the damaged POW and the other two to attack Repulse from 2 sides. With 3 targets the groups are likely going to attack one each. Repulse had been pulling off maneuvers more usual for destroyers so if she continues this she probably avoids the attack on her. It’s not guaranteed on the other two but, especially if some fighters are disrupting the attacks, there is a fair chance they get away unscathed. More likely they take a hit, or maybe two. If that is somewhere like the OTL POW hit then they may go down. If it hits in the middle of their TDS they probably don’t, but will take damage.
After the one G4M pass the only threat remaining is level bombers. These landed two hits IOTL and though the second caused considerable casualties neither did much to endanger the ship on their own account. If they survive the G4M pass without damage that causes a sinking, they likely make it back to Singapore.
As to the extra bombers, AFAIK only the three air groups that participated in the attack trained in low level long range maritime strike. And IIRC there was actually a torpedo shortage, which probably explains why even some G4M’s appear to have been used as level bombers. If that is correct any further bombers sent are likely to be level bombers.
As to the Zeros, they had a fuel limit even lower than the Nells and Betty’s. The strike group travelled over 600 miles to reach force Z and remained in the air for over 12 hours. With external fuel tanks the Zero would have just been able to do that with an experienced pilot shepherding it’s fuel (at regular cruise it was more like 10 hours).
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