We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
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We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
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Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#2This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear.
It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you're too politicized to integrate the lessons. Admiral Yamamoto didn't have to worry about upsetting US Navy top brass. He was able to benefit from our lessons, even if we weren't.
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#3This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you'…
Japan also learned plenty of things from Taranto [1].
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#4This sounds very familiar. You should look up the millennium challenge to see this play out again in modern times.
https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#5This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you'…
In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the attack on Midway island starts.
Don't know whether such a wargaming episode happened in reality.
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#6Lets remind us our dates.
July 4, 1898, the Newlands Resolution was a joint resolution by the United States Congress to annex the independent Republic of Hawaii. In 1900, Congress occupied the Territory of Hawaii, despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians.
Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai'i, an occupied territory.
August 21, 1959 is when they were forcibly turned into a state, after 60 years of occupation.
Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.
Edit: both posts are at -4. And indeed it's sad to see close minded nationalism take and keep hold. The world is bigger than from Hawai'i to Maine, and the USA is often the aggressor. I liken to consider myself a citizen of the earth, and not any one nation.
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#7This sounds very familiar. You should look up the millennium challenge to see this play out again in modern times. https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
The Millennium Challenge was a farce but _the Millennium Challenge was completely right_.
The point of the millenium challenge was to see if modern advances in C3 could allow a numerically inferior force to the one used in Desert Storm could invade Iraq successfully.
What they discovered was against a tenacious and unconventional enemy willing to use elite troops in daring and near suicidal ways then America would take unacceptable losses.
But.....
That's not the enemy they were going to face. They were going to face the Iraqi army. So whislt on the face of it the "reset" was ludicrous it was also appropriate.
And, I was a critic of the US military's strategy for the Invasion of Iraq, I thought the force ratios were insufficient and I was wrong. The Millennium Challenge did indeed show that C3 advances were sufficient to allow the lower force ratios to succeed.
(Of course the Millennium Challenge did have other failures in the limits of what it was testing. The occupation of Iraq was botched from the opening days as whilst the force numbers were sufficient to beat the Iraq army they were not sufficient to occupy the country in a way that stopped it descending into chaos)
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#8This is a good article, and the story is certainly emotionally appealing, with the maverick who goes against the prevailing wisdom being proven correct in the end.
I wonder how this sort of story would look when put into the context of a large scale investigation into military strategy and dissenting voices. When these contrarians pop up are they usually right? Maybe there are heaps of them and 9 out of 10 times conventional military strategy is the better option?
Modern military history seems to have so many examples of leaders being wrong, including 'successful' ones, it's hard to extract a clear narrative in many cases.
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#9This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you'…
In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the a…
Yes, it did. See Shattered Sword by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. (One additional feature often seen in the story is the part where the umpire "resurrects" the two Japanese carriers which were "sunk" in the attack---that part is usually overplayed, since it would be a waste of time to continue the game without the two carriers and there were still questions to be answered.)
Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
#10This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you'…
In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the a…
I mean, if you know the adversaries plan, it's pretty easy to come up with something that wrecks it, which is what it sounds like that officer did. What the Japanese didn't know was that the Americans also knew the plan.