Talk:Max Leslie

Say what?
"He also flew with his squadron off Enterprise while escorting Hornet". VB -3 served as escort? How, exactly? TREKphiler  hit me ♠  16:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The term escort is not meant that he escorted the B-25s on their mission. The Enterprise was an escort for the Hornet on the mission. The Hornet's deck was full of B-25s. Without pushing them over the side the Hornet was unable to conduct operations of its own planes. The Enterprise was fully capable of performing normal carrier operations. VB-3 was assigned to the Enterprise so Leslie escorted the Hornet.

Max Leslie did not have to rely on the luck McClusky had of running across a Japanese destroyer to find the carriers. The Yorktown pilots were the most proficient of all the American pilots there that day. Leslie and all the Yorktown squadrons flew the correct course to reach the Japanese carriers. At this point in the war the Japanese were far more proficient in carrier operations and in particular regarding combining multiple carrier wings into one coordinated force. There was no coordination of the strike forces between the American carriers. Yorktown was only wing to coordinate its squadrons into one strike force. Except for VT-8 the entire Hornet wing missed the battle and Americans are very lucky McClusky came across that destroyer. The Enterprise kept McClusky orbiting while waiting on fighters and torpedo planes to take off so that they about ran his planes out of fuel. Leslie's SBDS lost 4 of their bombs in route due to faulty wiring of electric arming switches. US was very lucky at Midway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.7.100.125 (talk) 18:00, 1 August 2014 (UTC)