"Pete" wrote in message
...

"Paul F Austin" wrote

Much too short sighted. You want to kill all of the Japanese CVs.
Otherwise,
a few hours later, the deck is patched and they're back in operation.

A few hours later, you have gone to Pearl, and notified HQ of the deal.

At the
worst, all six would be back in business for the battles of 1942. Since
the
Japanese CVs weren't armored to speak of, a GBU-10 with a Mk-84 warhead
should be the basic CV ship-killer. Two F-15Es should nail all six CVs
with
one bomb per and an extra pair as backup and coup d'gras. I'd nail all
CVs
and then pull back to maximum endurance loiter and observe Japanese
damage
control efforts.

Remember, 1/2 the attack force is already on the way. You need to slow
them
down as much as possible.

At Bingo, either donate the remaining ordnance to the CVs
in best shape or retire to one of the undamaged fields on Oahu and try
and
talk the duty officer out of twenty thousand pounds of kerosene to go
back
and finish the job. But that wouldn't be likely to succeed.

This is tough, because a single bomb is really marginal against a large
ship.

Which is why I thought 16 MK-82 vs 8 MK-84. Smaller warhead, yes, but more
hits.

The real question is, can 2 Strike Eagles sink all 6 carriers? Maybe,
maybe
not. There are only two of you, with limited ordnance. Slow them down as
much as possible until you can shake things up at Pearl.

Let's be clear. Pearl is out of the picture. There's nothing two USAF
"rocket planes" can do to change the outcome there. You aren't going to
divert the first strike and you aren't going to go up through the duty
officer chain and back down in time to set Condition Zebra. You can stop the
launch of the second strike, prevent recovery of any of the aircraft already
lauched and possibly destroy the Japanese carrier force on the first day of
the war. That's worth shooting for even if you exchange the antique
battleline in Pearl to do it.

500 pound bombs aren't ship killers for ships that size. 2000 pound bombs
may be. After thinking about it, a hard target penetrator fuzed to go off
after exiting below the keel may be the most lethal way of attacking large
ships. The explosive fill makes a torpedo look small and there's a fair
chance of breaking the ship's back.