Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.
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Did they have radar in the Philippines? If so, maybe they were relying on that to warn them of incoming strikes...
(I thought I read somewhere that they got part of the US bomber force into the air in the Philippines, had them circling but couldn't decide what to do with them, and had to bring them back down to refuel, at which point an Imperial Japanese attack arrived and wiped them out... I may be mistaken though?)
They didn't radar in the Philippines from what I remember it was still pretty raw in the US armed forces.
They had it but were still feeling their way around it.
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This close to the 7th of December, there is no way the Japanese will delay by more than a few days. Even cancellation of any of their invasion plans, with the possible exception of the Pearl Harbour raid, is out of the question. Any politician or senior officer, army or navy, who suggested such a thing was at an extremely high risk of assassination by junior army officers, because the Japanese government had lost political control of the army to extremists within the officer corps. Remember that the war with China was started by the Kwantung Army, not the Japanese government.
They did have radar in the Philippines but did not manage to get the airborne fighters to intercept the inbound strikes.
How well did the USA develop radar interception skillsets before pearl harbour?
Basically they did not! Cerainly not outside of the continental USA at that time. It is only just a year since the Battle of Britain OTL and the USA are still trying to understand the relevance of that campaign to their air defence, ITTL there is not really any driver to change that!
The Navy had CXAM sets on the carriers from fall 1940, and by Feb 20 1942 demonstrated that they were well capable of controlling intercepts where Lexington defeated a Betty raid. But that's kind of by definition a simple case - the carrier is the target of the threat, the detector of the threat, the fighter command team, and the fighter airfield all at once. Having the radar team and fighter command team in close proximity so information flows cleanly where it needs to go is the key to air defence,
The Army Air Force was in the process - the USAFFE had 7 radar sets on 7 Dec but only two of them were operational. But it wasn't yet a practiced and coordinated machine for getting information from the radar operators to both Interceptor Command and the raid targets in near-real-time as Dowding had managed to bed in for RAF Fighter Command more than a year previously.
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So basically US aircraft until they develop the skills and techniques needed in coordination for aircraft interception are like amateur boxer fighting a professional boxer they can get an occasional lucky hit in but they are going to get pummelled until they can pick up the same skills that the RAF Fighter Command had developed by the time of the battle of Britian.
There was only 1 squadron of A6ms (total of 25 aircraft) operating out of FIC (at least initially I’m not sure if they moved during the campaign?)
Their task was to cover the troop carriers and fleet units.
The main opposition in terms of fighters was the KI27 and KI43
So it’s more likely they end up with a Oscar KI43 to study
I was thinking more from the (almost inevitable) attack by the Kido Butai that will come, probably in late February or early March, covering both the OTL Bombing of Darwin and the later Indian Ocean Raid.
A6Ms were navy, K127 and K143 were army.
Malaya was an army campaign, with the navy covering the sea lanes.
Any A6M pilot wouldn't be ordered to help out the army, and wouldn't go over army territory anyway.
Any that strayed would stand a good chance of being shot at by the Army (I was going to say own side, but as this is IJN and IJA that isn't true).
That's exactly the point I was making - the A6ms were not concerned with the land campaign only covering the IJN assets
That's why its more likely that a KI43 Oscar of the IJAAF is captured.
Its possible - depends on what that looks like?
I think the Indian Ocean raid and the Bombing of Darwin will more than likely depend on the status of Singapore and Malay when it comes down to it. If Singapore and Malay are still holding or have beaten back the Japanese then they may be retasked to go after that area
Radar doesn't matter.
Sorry, that's facetious. Radar isn't enough. You can't just put up a Radar set and call it good. You've got to... Well, pull a Dowding. You've got to develop a system that's able to receive radar data; then discriminate, interpret, and analyse it; then communicate that information to airfields and aircraft such that your pilots are able to make timely interceptions.
The mere presence of Radar does not an Integrated Air Defence System make. I've seen it asserted that the German lack of an IADS is what caused the Luftwaffe to not prioritise the British Radar Network as much as they should have during the BoB. They had Radar, but they had failed to develop an IADS, so Radar didn't actually do very much for them. Their failure to conceptualise of an IADS meant that they couldn't conceive of the British having one; and so did not understand how much impact Radar had on British effectiveness.
As GarethC put it, Carrier Raids are easy, from a C3I perspective. You've got one Radar location and one 'Airfield'. This immediately takes away much of the complexity in the processing and analysing your Radar data.
Even more conviently (this does make things a lot easier) the two are co-located, and they're the big shiny lure the bogies are gunning for. Which means that if you've got an incoming contact at 5,000 feet along bearing 207, then all you (nominally) need to do to ensure an intercept is to send fighters to 5,000 feet and along bearing 207. And your communication process should be reasonably fast, given that the Radar operators and the Pilots may literally be within shouting distance of each other.
The moment your Airfield and Radar aren't co-located, every potential interception becomes a trigonometry problem.
Sorry, that's facetious. Radar isn't enough. You can't just put up a Radar set and call it good. You've got to... Well, pull a Dowding. You've got to develop a system that's able to receive radar data; then discriminate, interpret, and analyse it; then communicate that information to airfields and aircraft such that your pilots are able to make timely interceptions.
The mere presence of Radar does not an Integrated Air Defence System make. I've seen it asserted that the German lack of an IADS is what caused the Luftwaffe to not prioritise the British Radar Network as much as they should have during the BoB. They had Radar, but they had failed to develop an IADS, so Radar didn't actually do very much for them. Their failure to conceptualise of an IADS meant that they couldn't conceive of the British having one; and so did not understand how much impact Radar had on British effectiveness.
As GarethC put it, Carrier Raids are easy, from a C3I perspective. You've got one Radar location and one 'Airfield'. This immediately takes away much of the complexity in the processing and analysing your Radar data.
Even more conviently (this does make things a lot easier) the two are co-located, and they're the big shiny lure the bogies are gunning for. Which means that if you've got an incoming contact at 5,000 feet along bearing 207, then all you (nominally) need to do to ensure an intercept is to send fighters to 5,000 feet and along bearing 207. And your communication process should be reasonably fast, given that the Radar operators and the Pilots may literally be within shouting distance of each other.
The moment your Airfield and Radar aren't co-located, every potential interception becomes a trigonometry problem.
Let me rephrase. I meant that, as soon as the Kido Butai has returned to Japan and re-equipped, they'll be sent south to launch a mass raid at Malaya/Singapore to try to break the British resistance, probably somewhere (in time) between the OTL raid on Darwin and the OTL Indian Ocean Raid.
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