Author Topic: Rolling Thunder  (Read 43377 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline JCA-CrystalCity

  • Global Moderator
  • ****
  • Posts: 39956
  • Platoon - not just a movie, a baseball obsession
Re: Rolling Thunder
« Reply #525: January 20, 2019, 02:59:36 PM »
His commands were listed on the back of his headstone.    I remember Leyte Gulf and Guadacanal  ...   I forget the rest.    :old:

EDIT:   Old guy moment   ....   Midway just popped into my mind.
The wiki on Midway actually is pretty interesting. Pointed out a few things about the order of battle and the gaps in each command I had not heard before.  Japanese could have sortied Ziukaku had they combined its air contingent with Shokaku's but the Japanese doctrine was to keep air squadrons with particular carriers.  Yorktown, OTOH, used several squadrons from Saratoga, which was unable to join the other carriers in time from the West Coast. US moved squadrons around among its carriers. Japanese used its destroyers and cruiser more as pickets because of the lack of radar, while the USN used its escorts more as anti-aircraft support.

Kinkaid commanded the cruiser / destroyer screen for the enterprise and hornet at Midway when Spruance was bumped up to replace Halsey.  Mitscher was the captain on either the hornet or enterprise (his promotion to rear admiral came while he was on the way to Midway). 

Surigao Straight, of course, had a lot of the battleships that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor.  Last battle between battleships.