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one type of bomber on those carriers designated for the attack. At one time he considered sending two or three carriers loaded with only fighters and B5N Kates with torpedoes. When the problems with launching torpedoes in shallow water appeared insurmountable, he considered leaving home all the B5N Kates and loading up a few carriers with just D3A Val dive bombers.
    Both concepts would require shuffling aircraft and aircrew between carriers, a violation of normal Japanese practice. Aircraft and aircrew were considered a part of the carriers’ complement under the command of the ship’s commanding officer, and not an independent command as in the American practice. This was a decided handicap. Later in the war, in cases where Japanese air groups were decimated, as happened to Zuikaku and Shokaku at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the entire carrier had to be withdrawn from operations until a new air group could be assembled and trained. The American practice of independent air groups that could be assigned to any carrier was much more flexible and effective. For example, Saratoga’s air group was shifted to Yorktown in the days just before the Battle of Midway, and it was operationally effective in a matter of days. 2
    There were transfers from the light carrier air groups to fill out the fleet carrier complements, particularly to obtain sufficient A6M Zero pilots, but a wholesale transfer of B5N Kate or D3A Val complements from one carrier to another had never been previously done, and would likely have generated an instinctive rejection from most senior aviators.
    If the B5N Kate aircrews were all concentrated on a few carriers for the attack and then lost at Pearl Harbor, all the surviving carriers would have to carry on the war with an unbalanced air complement. Without B5N Kates, the remaining carriers would not have a killing capability against battleships.
    An attack on Pearl Harbor with just the D3A Vals would have lacked killing power against battleships, but could have destroyed carriers and cruisers. This was acceptable to Genda, who considered the carriers the main objective, but would not satisfy Yamamoto.
    It is not surprising that both concepts were rejected.
    Deck Capacity
    With 30 knots of wind across the deck, about 250 feet of deck run was required to launch a fighter, more for the heavily-laden bombers. With carrier flight decks 750 to 850 feet long, 500 to 600 feet were available to stage the aircraft to be launched in one “go.” 3
    The first deckload of aircraft would launch and immediately form up and depart to the target. The aircraft remaining in the hangars would be lifted to the flight deck and positioned aft, and then have their engines started for warm-up, a process lengthy enough to eliminate thoughts of having the first group loiter awaiting the second launch so the attack could proceed in a single wave. 4 Spotting the deck took approximately 40 minutes, limited by the cycle times of the elevators, with Kaga’s the slowest. Engine warm-up took 20 minutes. With these restrictions, the second wave was expected to launch about one hour after the first. 5
    Doctrine
    In 1941 Japanese doctrine had carriers operating in two-ship divisions. Search missions and local patrols would be carried out by battleship and cruiser float planes as much as possible, augmented by carrier aircraft when necessary, reserving the carrier aircraft for offensive missions. The practice was to spot on deck some fighters for CAP and strike escort duties, along with the entire ship’s complement of one type of bomber. One carrier would launch its entire complement of D3A Vals and the other its complement of B5N Kates, whereupon they would join into a single combined-arms strike. This allowed unit integrity, with each bomber type under its own commander from its own ship operating with the men they knew and with whom they had trained. Their attacks would have a greater cohesion than if each carrier launched mixed groups of