Your claim that I lied OR that you 'showed the lie" is a blatant falsehood.  Your apperantly paranoid obsession that anyone who disarees with you is either a liar, a criminal or a mental defective is taking the  fun out of what is otherwise an enjoyable debate.  Please try and get a grip and argue FACTS instead of invective!!

I argued fact. You lied. I showed it. Get over it. Now let us proceed.

   I only use wiki for entertainment NEVER for useful information.  In fact I'm hesitant to use ANY internet source due to the difficulty of establishing credibility.

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This I dispute. Not that you would admit it, but its evident in the superficial way you reply to points using arguments [Battle of Eastern Solomons specifically] that you only find in WIKI and not anywhere else.

Not endurance, but cruising range at full load is the critical factor.  Launch and formating time is required of both carrier and land based. a/c.  In any event, your logic is flawed by three FACTS which you ignore.  One: The A20 was not (as of Eastern Solomons) an effective anti warship system. 

Endurance is TIME in the air at best economical speed and burden which is the usual book range quoted, but which I factor mentally in quarter divisions for land based air and divide in thirds for carrier based air and then arbitrarily rate at 75% of that to get an actual useful minutes aloft under burden radius at best cruising velocity. You think I take book numbers at face value without adjusting for real world expected performance like you do?

And what makes you think the Havoc was not effective as an anti-ship weapon?

A-20 C was designed to carry a torpedo and was so used by the British and AUSTRALIANS.

Formation, mid level attacks were ineffective.  Individual low level attacks were only slightly more effective, and suicidally dangerous.  Two: The carriers had the advantage of MOBILITY.  The land based a/c had to FIND the ships before they could attack.  The land base was a known location allowing the carriers to choose time of attack.  Three: In the absence of effective, escort with sufficient range (P38s) any attempt at low level attack against a force with a CAP would only result in the slaughter of the A20s or B25s.  I notice that you made no comment about P38s in your response.  Face it, Herald.  At this point in time, land based attack by US a/c against a carrier task force was not a viable tactic.  The Japanese tried it using torpedoes, and their record of success wasn't very impressive against anyone with a viable CAP.
 

a. The Italians were doing it with Marchettis in the Mediterranean WITH TORPEDOES. They could do it and we couldn't?

I made no mention of the P-38 because at the time in the ACTUAL history there was Marine and Navy aviation present at Cactus.  The P-38s in the Pacific region at the time were diverted to the Aleutians for some lunatic reason around August 1942. [Wonder why?]The P-38s in the South Pacific showed up around December 1942 in Papua New Guinea not the Solomons, a little late to take on the Tokyo Express. Should they have been there at Guadalcanal? Yes. Along with the Havoc or the better Mitchell they should have been at Cactus, but they weren't; so that is the history. Could they have been? Requires us stripping the Australians of the aircraft they received in new Guinea. August was impossible, but October was do-able.......IN TIME for Santa Cruz.

h77p://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p38_18.html

The limited number of Lightnings available during late 1942 and early 1943 had to be used to make up attrition in the 39th Fighter Squadron and to equip only a single squadron in each of the 8th and 49th Fighter Groups of the Fifth Air Force in New Guinea, and of the 18th and 347th Fighter Groups of the Thirteenth Air Force on Guadalcanal.

ONE but not the other could be done. We attempted both fronts and thus we lacked the means to fight a land based air OFFENSE on the axis of decision when the Navy could have used the cover for their badly outnumbered carriers..

Eastern Solomons stopped the first major Japanese attempt to counter invade Guadalcanal.  That was Fletcher's objective.

Actually that was Ghormley's objective.

School time.  Basics.  Victory and defeat can be assessed

Larry wrong some more.

You whole logic structure attacking Halsey's decision is invalid.  It is all based on OUR knowledge, ex post facto, that Ozawa was on a decoy mission.  Halsey didn't know that.  As far as he could know, Ozawa's carriers were a target of opportunity that had to be attacked as quickly as possible to keep them from escaping, as they'd escaped Spruance at P.S.  He had to assume that they were there to launch a strike, then flee north.  He could not just wait for Ozawa to come to him, because he had no reason to think that would happen.  The reason the Japanese decoy was so effective was that NO USN aviation admiral would believe that the Japanese would willingly sacrifice CARRIERS.

a. Spruance saw this happen from Honolulu and so advised..

b. Nimitz reacted VIOLENTLY to it as well. Again ?Turkey trots to Water? was not just a polite inquiry..

c. Sherman and Lee, both pointed this possibility out in radio traffic to Halsey at the time in MID BATTLE.  

You comment about Halsey's 'pre battle orders' is in error.  Kincaid's belief that Halsey had withdrawn surface warships from his carrier escorts to form a battle line came from 'overhearing' a preparatory order Halsey transmitted to his own forces at about 1512 hours.  This order was then amplified by TBS instructions that the battleship TF was to be form ONLY on his further order.  Kincaid was advised of the intercept and ASSUMED that the preparatory order had been exicuted.  So did Nimitz as Pearl, which resulted in the infamous 'the world wonders' message.  For a good account of this you can check out Clark Reynolds THE FAST CARRIERS.  The battleship TF was only formed much later, when Halsey was actually striking Ozawa's carriers, to be sent forward to finish off cripples.  It was NOT formed at the time of the message Kincaid's people evesdropped on.

Wrong.

h77p://www.battle-of-leyte-gulf.com/Article/BLG_Summary.pdf

I will agree that the Japanese plan was as very good.  But it did NOT depend on anyone's stupidity.  That obsession of yours is showing again.  It depended on American underestimation of the Japanese willingness to ruthlessly sacrifice what was, after all, the backbone of their fleet.  Win or lose, the IJN would be finished as anything like a balanced naval force.  It had nothing to do with counting on stupidity.  THEY didn't consider Halsey stupid, and in any rate, didn't know it would be Halsey rather than Spruance in command.  They offered up a decoy that they KNEW would HAVE to draw a response.  Mitscher (who was pretty much a man without a job under Halsey) would have reacted the same way. 

a. You just got through saying that Mitscher was an idiot. I tend to agree that he was an idiot, but I just like the irony of hoisting you on your own petard, Larry. COMMON stupidity shared is still stupidity. But here's the kicker, Larry, Mitscher heard out his own staff on this subject and agreed with them. But Mitscher knew Navy politics as well........?if he wants my opinion, he'll ask for it.? was his comment to his chief as he went back to sleep.

b. The Japanese knew Halsey was in command of the Third Fleet as it was so reported in the American press.

c. The Japanese played upon Halsey's well known [to them] recklessness and tactical ineptitude.. They had seen that stupidity first hand at First Guadalcanal when Halsey failed to let Scott command in favor of the clueless Callaghan or post the surface squadron to the west of Savo Island to have a clear battle-space for gunnery.  

They REMEMBERED that.

In questioning Spruance's tactics at the Philippine Sea, I am hardly alone.  Nimitz and King both did at the time.  Since then, your hero, Samuel Eliot Morison (and it is, indeed, spelled with one 'r' unless the printers have been making the same mistake, consistantly, for the last fifty years) as well as many other writers have been highly critical, on the same basis as my own comments.  Spruance could have moved west under cover of night and been within range to meet Ozawa's forces with immediate counter strikes, and doing so would NOT have involved any increased risk to the invasion forces.

Your fantasy is not based on knowledge of Spruance's FUEL STATE. He worried about his destroyers. Besides he already had decided not to uncover the invasion fleet or the troops ashore from his own carrier air forces, w