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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

#61

Post by fighterpilot »

sthnblllII wrote: post #54

FDR goaded Japan into that attack by cutting off their oil and suppressed intelligence about the impending attack to ensure a decisive entry into WWII over the opposition of 90% of the American public. Having political leadership so opposed to the will of the people is a state US 'democracy' seems perpetually unable to end, re Iraq, Vietnam, WWI, WWII etc. Hearing US lecture governments that fight on behalf of their…

Do you have a cite for the suppression of US intelligence prior to the attack? The mainstream history sources I've read have suggested no such thing and led me to believe the US really was caught with their pants down. The Japanese sent an envoy to alert the US after the attack started, but while trying to maintain plausible deniability that they tried to make contact beforehand.

Also why would you pin the fundamental blame on FDR cutting off the oil? Japan was running a pretty brutal occupation of China at the time. Continuing to supply oil would be supporting that occupation. It's true though that part of Japan's motive for the attack was that oil was running out.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#62

Post by jabl »

greggyb wrote: post #58
jabl wrote: post #31

Well, in retrospect it's easy to say that air power is the future and battleships are obsolete. But with the information available at the time, I don't think it really was that clear back in 1932. Back then, no capital ship had been sunk let alone been severely damaged(?) by aircraft. Aircraft, and in particular naval aircraft, at the time were flimsy biplanes, with monoplanes slowly entering the scene. Sinking a bat…

> I mean, put yourself into the hypothetical supreme naval planner of, say, the US or Japan at the time. Are you really going to gamble your entire nations (or empires, if you will) capability to project force overseas on the notion that air power is the future and battleships are obsolete? Per the fine article, Japan did devote their preparations to air superiority and carried out exactly the attack forewarned by th…

They didn't completely rely on that though, as they, for instance, ordered the Yamato class battleships in 1937, at great expense and years after the wargames mentioned.

The IJN seems to have been quite obsessed with their Kantai Kessen doctrine, where battleship fleets would slug it out in one decisive battle.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#63

Post by vajrabum »

pmontra wrote: post #15

In other wargames: You might remember that the Ronald Reagan was sunk by a Swedish stealth submarine in 2005 [1] and that there is little hope to save the Baltic and Taiwan if Russia and China decide to occupy them [2]. [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-games-swedish-ste... [2] https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-t...

Submariners have long had a saying that there are two kinds of ships, submarines and targets.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#64

Post by jgeada »

It is as if people keep thinking of the military as this altruistic organization staffed by pure self-sacrificing people willing to put it all on the line for the defense of country. Sure, that is somewhat true of the troops. But the generals and leaders are political beasts that know the true purpose is to call coddle the status quo & divert gargantuan sums of money into private pockets with as few questions as possible.

This is why when real wars happen and the stakes actually suddenly matter there tends to be a large upheaval at the top to discard the political animals. When was it the last time you heard of a US general being fired for incompetence when a procurement projects they led goes totally off the rails (as they almost always do), blowing any notion of budget, time & preparedness ?

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#65

Post by Lammy »

IMO the use of aircraft isn't even the most interesting part of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Having an aircraft carrier isn't very useful if you can't load it with enough fuel to get to a target and back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#66

Post by mjlee »

First Sea Lord (Head of the Royal Navy) Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson described submarines as "Underhanded, unfair and damned un-English". He also suggest that enemy submariners be tried as pirates and hanged if caught.

Thankfully (for the RN...) reason prevailed and submarines were in service for the First World War. The pirates association lives on today though - RN submarines returning from deployment still fly the Jolly Roger.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#67

Post by fighterpilot »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #51
fmajid wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/21/usa.julianborg... General Van Riper used low-tech but effective techniques like using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders in a way that could not be intercepted by US ELINT/COMINT or blocked by jamming. We are lucky Saddam did not have inventive Marine generals, because any general smart enough to be effective would have been eliminated as a potential threat to his r…

> because any general smart enough to be effective would have been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime. Saved our asses in the European theater, in WWII. Hitler was an insecure micromanager. His generals represented generations of military expertise. They were really good. There's a number of places where Germany could have won the war, but were short-circuited by der dumkopf fuhrer

I'm not sure about that. His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. Hitler knew they needed to secure the oil in the Caucasus but the generals were myopically focused on an Eastern advance and on securing useless symbolic military wins that contributed nothing towards the oil effort. It's because they weren't capable of understanding the dire economic need for oil and were too zoned in on their domain of expertise (military engagement). Hitler for all his faults was one of the few who knew that the only important stratetic objective at that point was oil. He failed to get a number of his generals on that same understanding, and in some cases these generals sabotaged the oil effort.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#68

Post by ghaff »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #47
jabl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits were enough to doom the ships. Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age the USN dem…

The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. This video series from th…

You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack of essentially any success early on was a bit unlucky. But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a case of everything going right at a couple points for the US. Probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer to Japan than Hawaii was.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#69

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

fighterpilot wrote: post #67
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because any general smart enough to be effective would have been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime. Saved our asses in the European theater, in WWII. Hitler was an insecure micromanager. His generals represented generations of military expertise. They were really good. There's a number of places where Germany could have won the war, but were short-circuited by der dumkopf fuhrer

I'm not sure about that. His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. Hitler knew they needed to secure the oil in the Caucasus but the generals were myopically focused on an Eastern advance and on securing useless symbolic military wins that contributed nothing towards the oil effort. It's because they weren't capable of understanding the dire economic need for oil and were too zoned in on t…

That makes sense. I remember reading about that, but I guess it didn't sink in.

Oil was very important to a mechanized army.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#70

Post by fighterpilot »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #69
fighterpilot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that. His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. Hitler knew they needed to secure the oil in the Caucasus but the generals were myopically focused on an Eastern advance and on securing useless symbolic military wins that contributed nothing towards the oil effort. It's because they weren't capable of understanding the dire economic need for oil and were too zoned in on t…

That makes sense. I remember reading about that, but I guess it didn't sink in. Oil was very important to a mechanized army.

Exactly. Most people think the Eastern front was an act of lunacy. In reality it was an act of utter necessity. Hitler's only chance of potentially winning WW2 (if there ever was a real chance) was to capture more oil in Eastern Europe. They were running on the fumes of synthetic oil created from coal at that point.

Stalin knew Hitler's objectives well because of how hard Hitler was pushing for oil in negotiations before they became foes, and strategically positioned Russia's army in a way to block Hitler's advance specifically to key oil locations, while leaving other locations relatively weaker.

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