Unescorted warships

[Bubblehead1980]

During my upgrade to RSRD noticed in some of the task force files with the various warship movements, quite a few esp in early war are unescorted. Lurker was pretty accurate given the sources he used and when look at combinedfleet website, a lot of times CA's, CL's seem to have made a lot of transits solo. I'm assuming high speed was seen as their assurance against sub attack in those days. I can see IJN not protecting merchants initially as they didnt place value on merchants, and their own submarine doctrine was to gun for warships, assumed initially allies would do the same, but hard to believe they left important ships unescorted, at any point.

What struck in the game was while creating ultra messages for tracking down Shokaku after Coral Sea "wounded bear", it had no escort. Combinedfleet was a little confusing as it states it may have had two DD's escorting that detached when it joined with other DD's in the philippine sea.

I've added DD's to escort wounded bear as find it absurd such an important vessel would be prowling open ocean , especially when damaged alone.

Also upped skill level on many, far too many were easy kills set to competent. Loners usually travel at higher speeds as well. One example is the four heavy cruisers of CruDiv 6 at Coral Sea, they depart truk unescorted heading to join with invasion coverng force(Shoho) .Join and cover Shoho then after shoho is sunk, they split into two groups of two CA's , unescorted.Their high speed would make it difficult, esp in the time before SJ radar to intercept so guess answers my question but still makes me wonder if and why they'd leave such valuable ships unescorted. Again, noticed CA's and CL's throughout the war in RSRD when transiting are often not escorted.

Guess just looking for those familiar with the subject to weigh in.

[Barkerov]

I actually ran into a pair of unescorted CL's last night. They were headed into Rabaul on the 7th May 1942 so its around the same time you're talking about.
They weren't going fast though, only 10 knots which struck me as very stupid.

[Armistead]

I still remember this in RSRD, I was in the Bungo I believe and already had a lil damage, night thankfully and got a lone contact, I believe it was going 19kts. Turned out to be the Shokaku and it dawned on me this was "Wounded Bear", just had never caught it in the mission. I had to flank on the surface and shoot at about 5000 yards 6 M14's on slow speed, but I got a few hits and stopped it on the surface.. I remember having only forwards left, so went to the other side waiting for the load and I only had a few left, 2 or 3. I fired on the surface about 3000 yards and waited, bam.....circle runner.....wasn't long I was getting death moans and I knew it would soon be over...then bam ....I sunk the carrier as I died.....good times.

I also think for some large TF, I believe Midway, when they leave, they transit through the Bungo in one long line with no escorts, it's a field day to catch them there.