"Pete" wrote in message
...

"Bob Urz" wrote

Although i agree the nukes are a "finisher", i was thinking more along
the lines of conventional weapons to make it more interesting.
Would a agm-65 be usable in this situation? laser guided bombs
certainly would.

At this point, all we need to do is kill the flight deck, and disable as
many unlaunched planes as we can.
AGM-65 is probably too small to be effective.
F-15E can carry 8x500 lb (GBU-12 or MK-82). Use those. 2 ea holes in the
flight deck would take it out of action.


Much too short sighted. You want to kill all of the Japanese CVs. Otherwise,
a few hours later, the deck is patched and they're back in operation. At the
worst, all six would be back in business for the battles of 1942. Since the
Japanese CVs weren't armored to speak of, a GBU-10 with a Mk-84 warhead
should be the basic CV ship-killer. Two F-15Es should nail all six CVs with
one bomb per and an extra pair as backup and coup d'gras. I'd nail all CVs
and then pull back to maximum endurance loiter and observe Japanese damage
control efforts. At Bingo, either donate the remaining ordnance to the CVs
in best shape or retire to one of the undamaged fields on Oahu and try and
talk the duty officer out of twenty thousand pounds of kerosene to go back
and finish the job. But that wouldn't be likely to succeed.

This is tough, because a single bomb is really marginal against a large
ship. If the magazines were the aimpoint (with Google handy so that the WSO
could look it up for each ship) then the chances of sinking with a single
bomb goes up. Otherwise, a hit aft could put all four screws and possibly
rudders out of service. The ships killed at Midway were caught with all
manner of munitions and avgas available to help things along because of the
conflict between finishing off the Midway garrison and killing the US
carriers. It's unlikely that the Pearl Harbor strike would be that sloppy.