You are in charge of the fleet at Midway in place of Nagumo...

You are in charge of the fleet at Midway in place of Nagumo. You have only the information he had (not metaknowledge allowed). What decisions do you make that differ from his, and is there any way you could actually win?

I surrender the entire fleet to the Americans and defect, so post-war I can take control of the government as an official and have American support doing it.

commit seppuku

I'd banzai the shit out of these filthy gaijins!
No, seriously I wouldn't be in Midway in the first place, for the same price (fight and die) I would sail to America and try to Nanking as much cities as possible.

Given the poor state of Jap intel and the lack of any idea as to what the fuck was going on, there isn't much I would do differently at the battle.

However, at the operational planning stage, if I could have some influence there, all I'd do is try to plan on the assumption that the US knows we will attack, and that the US will see us coming (not that they've broken our codes, just assume they have good recon).

I'd then do everything I could to stop the retarded dispatch of much of the fleet to the fucking Aleutian islands for absolutely no fucking reason, and concentrate as much as possible on getting the entire combined fleet to stage a pitched battle with the USN.

At this point in the war, the IJN has massive heavy gun superiority, and even air superiority, at least numerically. If I could secure the whole of the combined fleet for the operation, I'd simply extend the submarine cordon around Hawaii, send more of them to hunt and shadow the USN fleet if I could, while deploying my fleet for the engagement with the battleships and heavy cruisers (which at this point, the USN has little answer to) in as forward a position as possible. Then initiate the air assault, and force the USN CAGs to fight closer to their ships, as they'd need to keep the torpedo bombers focusing on our battleships, and couldn't afford to use them to attack the carriers, which would allow my fighters and dive bombers more operational freedom to both attack the island, and attack the carriers, without worrying about our own carriers' decks getting fucked. Then simply use as much of the light cruisers and destroyer forces, dispersed as widely as possible, to chase down the carriers and destroy them, assuming the battleships don't enter engagement range first.

Throughout the war the IJN was always too conservative with their battleship deployments. Yes, carriers were the wave of the future, but battleships were still devastatingly powerful, and the Japs always underutilised them.

Battleships wouldn't have done them any good here unless they could get within range, and Fletcher made a point of keeping his ships far enough away that couldn't happen.

I think the key is

1. Ryujo and Junyo are used at Midway, not the Aleutians

2. The ships must be split into pairs like American carriers groups. The two additional carriers simply mean that after losing three, the Japanese have 3 more left. I estimate that means 2 American carriers sunk, at most, before they are lost too, as those 3 have fewer aircraft and are easier to sink than the Yorktowns.

But if you split them into 3 pairs, that makes the American task of actually finding each pair of carriers more difficult. So the first surprise attack may take out the northern Ryujo/Junyo group, then the other four take out the Yorktown.

At that point things become very ahistorical - it then depends on who finds the other more quickly. The Japanese scouting is crap so let's assume the Americans find, say, Kaga and Akagi before they find Enterprise and Hornet. So those two get sunk. So, then, Soryu and Hiryu attack TF16.

The question now is, can Soryu and Hiryu sink the two American carriers? It took 4 Japanese carriers just to sink the Hornet; but maybe they do. Let's give them that. Let's say they sink the Hornet.

Could they still be sunk by the Enterprise?

The answer to that, determines who wins.

You'd be dodging salty katanas for the rest of your life

>can Soryu and Hiryu sink the two American carriers?
Kamikaze attacks rather than conventional strikes.
>14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank.
And that is in 1944/45, they would be far superior in 1942.

>14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank.
Not him, but the vast majority of those are ships that are a lot more fragile than CVs. I wouldn't be counting on kamikazies to be a near certain death sentence.

Kamikaze wasn't a thing in 1942, and would also basically doom Japan even if they won the battle using it because they'd have almost no carrier pilots left.

Katanas with salt on them can't be very sharp, so I think he'll be okay.

>a lot more fragile than CV
Yorktown was cripples by 3 500lb bombs, Lexington by two and Hornet by two and one D3A, early war USN carriers aren't exactly that stellar in survivability.
>Kamikaze wasn't a thing in 1942
I wasn't in charge of the fleet at Midway either, somehow that is what the tread is about though.
>because they'd have almost no carrier pilots left.
Kamikazes are easier and much quicker to train than proper pilots, loss of pilots would mean less in 42/43 if kamikazes are used.

Even a blunt sword is still a metal bat.

>Battleships wouldn't have done them any good here unless they could get within range, and Fletcher made a point of keeping his ships far enough away that couldn't happen.

The thing is, the battleships don't even need to actually engage the carriers in order to be effective.

What they need to do is simply move to engage them at full steam and in a concentrated force (to maximise overlap on the AA), which would lead to one of two results:

1. The US carriers are forced to withdraw, putting them beyond the range at which they can attack the Jap carriers as they assault the island.

2. The US carriers don't withdraw or don't withdraw fast enough, and them and their cruisers are exposed to the massive Jap battleship detachment, which only ends one way.

Some of the battleships will no doubt be lost, as such an operation would be costly, but as long as they either secured the island, or destroyed the US carriers, it would be worth it, as the longer the war goes on, the less and less useful they will become (and the Japs even knew this to some degree).

All the IJN needed to do at Midway was to get their troops on the ground. If they could do that, they take the airfield, the supplies, the fuel, everything, and cut 1/3 of the US airpower at the battle out of existence. At this point, assuming the battleships have managed to survive and have either withdrawn, or are still in pursuit of the USN carriers, the IJN carriers are now free to engage at will, without having to worry about the heavy attacks coming from the island.

The goal for any battleship and cruiser deployments would not have been to actually destroy the enemy ships, though that would be a bonus, bot to sail in such a way as to force them out of range of the objective. As the carriers MUST keep out of range of the battleship guns, and as such can be forced to withdraw, allowing the Jap marines and a detachment of the carriers (Ryujo and Junyo would probably have been enough) to secure the island.

What kind of stupid fucking question is this. Let's break this down:

You're putting someone in place of the admiral, but they don't have any access to information that the admiral didn't already know. Which means that what you're actually doing is replacing the admiral with some fuckwit who has no idea what he's doing. Of course he's going to do much worse.

Just THINK for 10 seconds before posting

>replacing the admiral with some fuckwit who has no idea what he's doing
Stop repeating yourself.

>Yamamoto had no idea what he was doing

>my greatest advantage over the Americans in superiority in carriers
>so I'll break them up into small groups and send them all over the pacific

give me 1 reason why the aleutians were in any way valuable enough to justify splitting the fleet

Political support from the IJA to make Midway possible

Midway was only such a spectacular loss because the ambushing forces were, in turn, ambushed themselves

>political support from the IJA
That's actually interesting, user, got any further reading for that?

>Midway was only such a spectacular loss
Because they had no carriers to counter attack once Hiryu had been sunk.
If they had four or more extra carriers they could of gotten away with a draw.

>1. Ryujo and Junyo are used at Midway, not the Aleutians
Ryujo and Junyo would have slowed the entire tempo of the operation. Having them present as part of the Kidou Butai would have made the Japs less effective, not more.

> The ships must be split into pairs like American carriers groups.
This requires not just a different planning for Midway, but an entire new doctrine and training for that doctrine.

> It took 4 Japanese carriers just to sink the Hornet
What are you talking about? USS Hornet was not lost at Midway, CV-5 was. And it only took a tiny strike force from Hiryu to sink it twice.

>sink it twice
What did he mean by this?

The Japanese doctrine was not so inflexible as to be incapable of operating in pairs; Shokaku and Zuikaku did this almoat their entire careers.

They simply had it in their mind that concentrating all the carriers in one place meant something. It didnt. Two groups of half that number still equals the same number of carriers, same number of aircraft, but much less vulnerable to a sudden catastrophic attack.

It required air strikes from all four Japanese carriers at Santa Cruz to sink the Hornet, is what I mean. They were a pain in the ass to sink, especially if they werent alone. At Midway, Hiryu basically duelled Yorktown (which was alone) and lost almost all its planes in the process, and didnt actually sink it, requiring a coup de grace from a sub.

Japanese carriers always operated in pairs. What they would not do was have these pairs form separate task forces which would somehow coordinate and attack same targets. If they had 3 carrier pairs, they would operate together, same with 2 carrier pairs.

>They simply had it in their mind that concentrating all the carriers in one place meant something. It didnt. Two groups of half that number still equals the same number of carriers, same number of aircraft, but much less vulnerable to a sudden catastrophic attack.
You are right about the concentration of carriers not meaning anything but you are wrong as to the rationale. Concentrating their carriers allowed the Japs to coordinate and mass strike groups in ways that USN simply couldn't match. However, it was proven in 1942 that you didn't need a strike force of 100 aircraft to sink a boat. A tenth of that amount was enough as CAP of the time of either side was incapable of stopping enemy strikes.

>I would sail to America and try to Nanking as much cities as possible.
>entire invasion force is wiped out within hours by rifles hidden behind every blade of grass

You know that quote was just made up as some masturbatory line, right?