Like the indomitable Thomas Main who had his arm shot off and, after insisting on waiting for his turn at the surgeon's, had his shattered arm amputated "near the shoulder, during which, with great composure, smiling, and with a steady clear voice, he sang the whole of Rule Britannia"

Given CarDiv 2's exposed position, protected only by a collection of destroyers and their own abysmal AA, I think the planned Albacore night strike had a very real chance of devastating the two carriers. Would have required a lot of luck to find and hit them, but luck favours the bold

She also carried the excellent Mk37 fire control system. The RN were granted a total of 42 of these systems, adapted to British ballistics. Four of these were adapted to the 5.25" and assigned to HMS Vanguard, while the rest were adapted to 4.5" to equip destroyers and the new fleet carriers.

They tried. The Type XXI was their first attempt to build u-boats in sections in order to speed up construction, but by this stage of the war it was far too late to build up the experience and efficiency required for this kind of mass production, so it never really worked well for them

Reminds of the uniform scene from the recent "All Quiet on the Western Front" - a remarkably evocative scene in an otherwise unremarkable movie

youtu.be/KiPEXEBjsRM?...

In hindsight, had the night attack gone through, beating a hasty retreat throughout the night could have carried him beyond the range of the Japanese force, which would probably have been reluctant to chase after him, but this remains speculation.

Super interesting nonetheless!

Given Somerville's serious lack of fighters (only 33 total), his force would have been very hard pressed to repel a daytime attack, even with the excellent British radars and fighter direction, and he only avoided detection through Japanese incompetence.

Parts of it - Somerville's scouts only located the two carriers of CarDiv2, which were trailing 30nm behind the main force on the afternoon of the 5th. A lucky night attack could well have sunk both carriers of this exposed force, but that still left the three carriers of the unlocated main force.

Except Somerville went to the other extreme, and risked his entire fleet against a force that was far stronger than he expected. Only poor reconnaissance from both sides prevented what would have been the first carrier battle in history, where Somerville's two carriers would have been far outmatched

Alan Moorhead pointed out at the time that to some extent surface naval warfare in WW2 was a bit of a throwback and aberration because Cunningham was rampaging around on HMS Come And Have A Go If You Think You’re Hard Enough like Cochrane with a hangover in a way nobody expected possible.

They did indeed bring chocolate, from local Norwegian manufacturer Freia (which is still in business) and Cloetta in Denmark - each man had a daily ration of 40g