"The Blue Max" wrote in message
s.com...

"Keith Willshaw" wrote

The operative word is "effective".


B-25's were very effective in the Solomons

Not at 400 miles against CVs, they weren't.


400 miles is beyond the range of a V-1, at 200 miles they'd
be very effective. Consider the Battle of the Bismarck Sea of early March
1943.

USAAF B-17's and B-25s along with Australian Beauforts and Beaufighters took
part in coordinated and repeated attacks on a Japanese convoy headed from
Rabaul to reinforce their forces based at Lae, with P-38s and P-40s flying
top cover.

Out of the original convoy of eight destroyers and eight cargo vessels that
had
departed Rabaul, all the transports and four of the destroyers were sunk or
beached.

How many CVs did it consist of? Not much else is going to catch them.


The Ranger, Yorktown and Wasp as of Dec 7 1941

2 years earlier than I'm thinking.


They didnt evaporate in the meantime and a **** load of CVE's
were built in the meantime.

I'm not suggesting this woudl have happened. I'm just interested in what
it
would have taken to ensure any such raid would fail. My guess is a minimum
of 6 CVs plus a lot of land-based air, which would be a useful deduction
from the PTO from the IJN's perspective.

V-1s make more sense than a conventional raid because your CVs don't have
to
loiter waiting for the strike force to return. They just launch and
retreat.
Any hits on New York get you lots of victory points.



And almost certainly lose both carriers. The Doolittle raid was possible
because the Japanese didnt have effective Ocean surveillance aircraft
equipped with radar. The USA did have such assets in 1943, moreover
they had bases in Iceland and Greenland.

Keith