Drachinifel - naval history

1. Drachinifel does not report that if Somerville had gotten into a surface battle with Nagumo, his chances of survival were ZERO. Kido Butai was well drilled in gun and torpedo tactics. Somerville's ragtag hastily thrown together fleet was not trained for it. Somerville's only chance was with his flattops and their air wings. Besides, I have a very low opinion of D. W. Boyd, who I consider "unacceptable" as an aircraft carrier ops commander.  I have little use for Somerville as a naval tactician, either. He completely bungled the merge and timing of his attempted strikes.    
2. The British traitor, Lord Sempell, passed along a lot of Royal Navy experience with their own multi-flight-deck aircraft carriers, especially HMS Furious, to the Japanese that led to Kaga's rebuild and then Akagi's refit.   
3. The Akagi's port island arrangement was an attempt to solve the air traffic control stacking problem. The Japanese had found that one could not operate more than two aircraft carriers together without the landing circuit loops becoming entangled and mutual interference in traps occurring. Their solution was to have a clockwise landing circuit with a port island in addition to the standard anti-clockwise circuit of a starboard island carrier. The loops would this be kept separate. The American solution was to stagger the aircraft carrier divisions and to have a parking and holding orbit for the trail division of flattops wait while the van division launched or landed their birds. Then the trail division launched or landed theirs. It took three times longer than the Japanese system, BUT, no US carrier died using it, due to the air traffic control chaos and mistakes the Japanese made during their fleet air defense at Midway.  Cycling their CAPS, the Japanese lost stack discipline and their CAP fighters ignored altitude assignment and coverage arcs as they plonked down to refuel/rearm or launched to rejoin the battle in progress over their flight decks. This still happened during the 20-30 minute interlude between the American torpedo plane massacre and the arrival of the American dive bombers. Eighty years later Americans are still at a loss for why that happened, but Parshall and Tully suspect that the opposite air loops setup, and scattering of the Japanese flattops out of the rhomboid formation the opposite loops system required, combined with the split air traffic control port and starboard management and the frankly primitive fighter director comms by cruiser guns firing blank charges in the direction of the threat axis, and signal rockets and blinker lights flashing from Japanese aircraft carriers at aircraft overhead confused and befuddled the Zero pilots. Few Japanese fighters carried radios; this being restricted to the flight leads in their three plane elements. Ship to plane chatter and vice versa was restricted to air traffic controllers and these flight lead pilots. Those pilots tended to ignore Japanese ATCs.        
4. Whilst the one in the belly, Richard Best dropped on Akagi, burned her down, Ensign Frederick Thomas managed an Akagi rudder jam mission kill that still would have doomed Akagi to a forced scuttle.