INCORRECT, Acasta shows how the Glorious could have escaped and how Sprague at Samar DID escape. An attacker with cripples on his hands has to detach forces and reduce speed with part or all of his force to rescue damaged ships and men in the water. One torpedo hit reduced Scharnhorst to 21 knots. A better handled Glorious presumably with her Swordfish launched and hunting, could have made such a cripple and forced a disengagement before Glorious was ever in gun range. AIRPOWER is a frightening thing to ground troops or surface ships, when the enemy has it, and you don't. It hobbles your movement.and frees his.

 

Herald

 

I would not claim that the IJN did not care about the US CV's...it was as much by luck that they were absent that December morning...a week or so sooner or a day later and several of them would have been sitting in port with the BB's....

 

I don't know Herald, looks to me like Halsey won Guadalcanal and then the Solomons Campaign...unless you want to claim he WASN'T in Command in the South Pacific or that we lost in our advance from Guadalcanal thru the Solomons.  I'd call them victories, the Japanese sure acknowledged them as DEFEATS.

(Having trouble posting from my MAC - trying the PC)

 

In Winton's "Carrier Glorious", the German action report shows that Marschall held the Battlecruisers on their original heading for a while after spotting the enemy. He did this to allow the ships to raise steam for a high speed run. Once this was done, he turned toward Glorious. Making 26 knots and accelerating eventually to around 29 knots, Scharnhorst began firing at 28,000 yards making the first hit on the third salvo at about 14 miles.

By the time Glorious saw S&G the game was up. With cold boilers and no time to bring them on line, there was no chance to escape. The Carrier was doomed from the moment she was spotted by the German Group.

Halsey. I give him credit for the early actions in the war. His early raids in the South Pacific were good for moral, though of little real impact. The Doolittle raid could have gone better, but it accomplished the goals set for it.  Most accounts of the Guadalcanal action indicate that Halsey was a welcome boost when he relieved Ghormley. His willingness to mix it up and go in harms way was a sharp contrast to Ghormley and Fletcher too. 

If you've ever read Spruance's bio, you'd find that he was aghast at the lack of structure and discipline within Halsey's staff when Spruance took over the fleet before Midway. Halsey was no great thinker, that much is certain. 

His main focus seems to have been to attack the enemy whenever and wherever he found them. In 42, some of that was needed. Of course disaster was always a possibility with that approach. Halsey slipped in and back out of Pearl right after the attack and went looking for the Japanese fleet with Enterprise. Had he found them, he probably would have been destroyed and one of our few carriers lost. It's a good thing that he didn't find them, but he was a fighter.

Most agree that, eventually, the war just got to big and too complex for The bull.

Fletcher-Midway us the example.

 

Cactus Air Force, Marines, and Army won the island. The FLEET won the naval battle by dying for it. Halsey was an actual command cypher; as in a big fat ZERO.

 

CHARACTER and INTELLIGENCE matters.

 

That idiot, Halsey, had neither.

 

Read. 

 

A disordered mind produces chaos. Halsey was not only disordered in his mind, but also incredibly stupid and vain. 

 

Herald

 

More than a command zero...he actually visited Guadalcanal, unlike Ghormley...he was an active commander, and I notice you neglect to mention the advance up the Solomons Chain.

 

That is not to say that Halsey was a GREAT commander, but rather to dispute he was  BAD commander...he may not have been Grant, but neither was he McClellan, put him in the Meade category, OK, but not spectacular.

Brawling is not how you use airpower. The metaphor  in boxing is jab, jab, jab. Cut him up, and then knock him out  This was actually a lot of what Fletcher tried to do, as a fleet commander and makes him a good admiral. Geiger, Woods, Mulcahy, all tried to do the same.at Guadalcanal.