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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

#91

Post by fighterpilot »

NoNameProvided wrote: post #74
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…

> and in some cases these generals sabotaged the oil effort. This sounds interesting, do you have any sources about this? > His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. My limited understanding of the eastern front is that: a, Hitler ordered the initial attack despite the warning of his generals b, forbid any (even tactical) retreat when the tides turned which eventually led to the destructio…

Anything about Operation Barbarossa is good. There's a few YouTube videos on the channel TIK discussing the oil objective on the Eastern front that are basic and densely packed.

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

#92

Post by graycat »

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…

As I studied Midway, the conclusion I came to was that the Japanese made a big mistake: They had two attacks for two quite different goals going at once, and the two conflicted and were one too many.

The two attacks were (1) attacking the ground installations on Midway island and (2) defending against the US aircraft carriers.

For (1), the main goal of the whole operation was to take Midway island, but early in that operation the goal was to destroy the ability of US planes on Midway to attack the Japanese ships. The Japanese kept worrying about attacks on their ships from US planes on Midway.

For (2) the Japanese had tried to determine where the US carriers were but the effort failed, and, net, the Japanese didn't know where the US carriers were. The Japanese considered the possibility that the US carriers really were about ready to find and attack the Japanese ships.

Then, net, handling both (1) and (2) was too much and led to (A) having the Japanese airplanes busy with (1) and unable to respond to (2) and (B) giving too little attention to (2) until too late. In particular, the Japanese had to wait, wait too long, wait on their airplanes returning from their attack on Midway and have their decks full of those returning airplanes. Also they had to wait, wait too long, wait to rearm their planes with torpedoes for attacking US ships instead of bombs for attacking Midway ground targets.

Basically, either (1) for the island or (2) for the US ships was a long term effort, from getting ready, launching the planes, managing their fighter cover for their ships, recovering the planes, getting the planes below decks, refueled, rearmed, and ready for launching again. The Japanese were able to do well at all that for either (1) or (2) but not for both in the time available. The Japanese underestimated the challenge and threat of trying to do both at essentially the same time.

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

#93

Post by Gravityloss »

rjsw wrote: post #25
TwoNineA wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans also got lucky that George Best and Wade McClusky were able to hit the carriers knowning that most attempts in the battle so far have utterly failed.

I read a suggestion recently that there was a higher probability of sinking IJN carriers during the Indian Ocean raid [1] than at Midway. Any attacks on them would have been done by radar equipped aircraft at night with no Zeros flying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid

This was a very good read. So many communication problems. Ships or aircraft were spotted or encrypted messages were deciphered - but information was not relayed for various reasons.

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

#94

Post by whoooooo123 »

GuardianCaveman wrote: post #33
duckfang wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you look up some reading on the subject, and try to shy away from the US propaganda. No Choice but War: The United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqmp3br Beyond Pearl Harbor: A Pacific History And you'll find out that there was continual and worsening relations with Japan due to US imperialism. Hawai'i was only one such territory colonize…

The Japanese started planning their revenge on the US since commander perry forced them to open trade. The US has a history of creating cassus belli like mexican war and Vietnam etc but what you link to is propaganda. And WW2 we had a clear cassus belli for Japan. Japan not only did things more evil than any other force on the planet I’ve ever read about in history as listed in the rape of Nanking but never faced any…

> commander perry forced them to open trade

Tangential: if anyone is interested in learning more about this, I recommend the YouTube channel History Buffs' review of the film The Last Samurai

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

#95

Post by finiteseries »

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...

From what I understand, the US doesn’t realistically intend to defend or recover either of them, let alone with CSGs, let alone with their own CSGs. The umbrella was/is? organized around deterrence, allies, and ultimately retaliation.

Carriers were/are? more for the vast supply lines going towards the areas where e.g. Swedish/Japanese stealth submarines would be bottling up Russian/Chinese assets near their coasts.

China in particular has thousands and thousands of miles of neck extending into and out of the Indian Ocean.

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

#96

Post by protomyth »

jabl wrote: post #62
greggyb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

To be fair, some American Admirals believe in battleships fleets slugging it out. I cannot remember which battle, but it was basically caused by an American Admiral moving his BBs for just such a battle.

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

#97

Post by protomyth »

fatbird wrote: post #60
tpmx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1]: > Key Point: Why are we still building aircraft carriers when even Sweden can sink them? Oi. Still a fair question, though.

Because they're the greatest peacetime weapons system ever invented. Until hot war breaks out, which seems increasingly unlikely under the umbrella of nuclear weapons and MAD, they are the premier force projection tool around--in essence, the best bluff a superpower can make, and crucially, it's worked since WW2. That said, while incidents like Sweden "sinking" a carrier have happened and embarassed the Navy, carrier…

I thought the assumption was the the US attack subs would clear the area before a carrier would get there.

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

#98

Post by jeltz »

monocasa wrote: post #42
Marazan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ta…

I was under the impression that the Millennium Challenge's red team was playing as Iran, not Iraq. A "tenacious and unconventional enemy willing to use elite troops in daring and near suicidal ways" particularly known for their use of speedboats blended with more traditional military material is the Revolutionary Guard's MO.

Yeah, the descriptions I have read of the red team fits Iran much better than Iraq. Simulating an attack against the Iraqi navy seems rather pointless.

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

#99

Post by daveevad »

enriquto wrote: post #72
kevmo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the most expensive War Games in history -- the USA got annihilated, and there were a lot of hurt feelings. The Lt. Gen. quit in the middle of the games, because he kept winning and they kept changing the rules to force a USA victory. Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated elec…

This story is absolutely bonkers. If the wikipedia page is true, this paints a very ridiculous state of US high brass. I refuse to believe that a major military nation may engage in such petty stupidity. Thus my conclusion is that the whole summary of the events is carefully crafted to misled future enemies of their true capabilities.

> Thus my conclusion is that the whole summary of the events is carefully crafted to misled future enemies of their true capabilities.

Thus you have discounted the strategy that disclosing exactly what happened misleads future enemies the most.

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

#100

Post by jimnotgym »

NoNameProvided wrote: post #74
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…

> and in some cases these generals sabotaged the oil effort. This sounds interesting, do you have any sources about this? > His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. My limited understanding of the eastern front is that: a, Hitler ordered the initial attack despite the warning of his generals b, forbid any (even tactical) retreat when the tides turned which eventually led to the destructio…

> despite the warning of his generals

The problem here being that his generals warned against all of his other attacks earlier in the war which were amazingy succesful. I suppose he felt that he knew better by the time of the Eastern front.

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