Origin of the Combat Model

Some readers have expressed befuddlement over the origin of the combat model. That the battle accounts are the basis, providing the necessary statistics, is so fundamental to the structure of the book that it was explained already in the Introduction. My suspicion is that by the time the reader reached the combat model itself, the reader had forgotten what was said in the Introduction. Should perhaps have been repeated. Samuel Eliot Morison says in one of his books that a writer should not assume any knowledge on the part of the reader but should assume that the reader is both interested and intelligent. Morison says nothing about the reader being forgetful.

As the book says in the Introduction, the combat model is based on the battle accounts. That's why the battle accounts are there. That's also why the battle accounts are written the way they are, as a sequence of air operations with all relevant numbers clearly presented. Armed with the statistics provided by the battle accounts, it is then straightforward to assign average/typical hit percentages etc. Exactly what hit percentages to use is still somewhat subjective. That is why the model is described in detail so the reader can understand exactly what's going on. Special care was taken to make the description of the model mathematically unambiguous, enabling it to be transposed into a spreadsheet, should the reader wish to experiment with different percentages.

That the battle accounts serve as a basis for the combat model is why Operation Pedestal is there. It's the only RN multi-carrier operations that could provide useful statistics. The book would also be amiss without any battle involving the RN. The Pearl Harbor and the Indian Ocean raids are not included as neither provides relevant statistics.