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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

#101

Post by CamperBob2 »

senko wrote: post #59
CamperBob2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One complication is that sinking a US carrier would likely trigger nuclear retaliation. Even if the enemy is in a good position to do so, that will make them think twice.

Would it, tho? Answering a conventional strike in international waters with a nuclear one (and at different target instead of the original attacker, since you can't really nuke a sub) is crossing the Rubicon, there's no going back from that.

Yes. Sinking an aircraft carrier would likely kill several thousand personnel at once. If that doesn't lead to the use of tactical nukes, nothing will.

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

#102

Post by trasz »

GuardianCaveman wrote: post #30

My uncle flew Cobra helicopters in Vietnam and the us developed a new anti air system and he was supposed to fly against it to demo its effectiveness. I don’t recall the story well but he flew nap of the earth and in a certain manner he knew would counter the aa system and embarrassed the hell out of the bluefor test team and engineers who said he cheated. A friend in the army did an excercise at Bragg where Special…

There's plenty of cases like this. One that comes to mind is AIM-4 Falcon: afaik they delivered 30 thousands of those missiles, despite the fact that it essentially didn't work.

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

#103

Post by ansible »

jabl wrote: post #22
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.

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…

> ... with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, ...

The conventional narrative of the battle is that the torpedo bombers (coming in low as part of their standard attack pattern), drew off the IJN figher cover, using up their fuel and ammo. When the dive bombers attacked the IJN fleet, the figher cover wasn't in a position to stop them effectively.

The price paid for this "distraction" (which wasn't planned as such) was steep, the losses among the torpedo bomber squadrons was severe.

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

#104

Post by Perceval »

nostrademons wrote: post #14
jacksonkmarley wrote: post #8

This 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 conv…

Taken from the universe of all ideas, a random contrarian idea is usually wrong. Taken from the universe of contrarian ideas pushed by domain experts and backed up by successful experiments, they're usually right. Paul Graham recently wrote an essay on this: http://paulgraham.com/newideas.html Ernest King (the red team commander in the second wargame) wasn't a random newbie: he eventually served as Chief of Naval Ope…

> a successful wargame is about as strong evidence as you can get

Having direct experience with wargames, I have to disagree with this. Wargames are weak evidence that too often lead people to draw unwarranted conclusions from an n of 1. The adjudication of moves by blue and red teams by the white cell is more arbitrary than not, and white cell adjudicators will often rule in ways that continue to present dilemmas for the players for the purpose of extending the experiential utility of the game. Those adjudication decisions are not strictly (nor could they be) representative of reality.

Doing a well-run wargame is very difficult, and doing a sufficient number of them simultaneously in order to test a hypothesis (with an n greater than even 1-2) is almost never done.

Wargames are more experiential and exploratory, they do not generate anything close to evidence.

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

#105

Post by ansible »

onepointsixC wrote: post #87
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…

Midway had it's fortunate moments, but IJN didn't have much of a chance from the get go due to the absurd USN ship production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M

Yes. By the end of the war, the USA had more carriers than then entire IJN surface fleet. Never mind all the cruisers, destroyers and such. And the fuel to run them.

The Japanese had absolutely no chance to win the war.

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

#106

Post by fatbird »

protomyth wrote: post #97
fatbird wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IIRC, the embarassment of the Swedish incident was that US attack subs didn't catch the Swedish sub, which lay dormant on the seafloor until it could pop up and blast the carrier in the props.

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

#107

Post by willhslade »

snakke wrote: post #71
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…

Your hunch is correct. There is a quote from a british naval officer that roughly says that -if they were right [on aircraft carriers being the next best thing and battleships being obsolete] they'd win the war. If they were wrong, they'd lose the empire.- The exact quote escapes my google-fu sadly. I'm quite postive I've seen it in either one of Indy Neidell and his team's WW2 week-by-week episode[0] or one of the m…

Just to play devils advocate isn't this happening right now with the US army's dependence on aircraft carriers vs the Chinese and Russian supersonic missiles?

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

#108

Post by walshemj »

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.

The US "Mark 14 torpedo" was far far worse

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

#109

Post by cpleppert »

fighterpilot wrote: post #61
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 fundamenta…

>>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.

See chapter 8 of The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars. War between Japan and the United States was a certainty to FDR's advisors if an oil embargo was imposed.

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

#110

Post by lostlogin »

duckfang wrote: post #19
monoideism wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai'i, an occupied territory. With the end objective of occupying themselves, like they occupied so many countries during WWII. > Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force. Yes, because those settlements had no military value, so they focused on targets of military importance. W…

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…

> But really, all nations have similar horrific stories.

And the acts of Japan during that period stand out, even within a context of ‘everyone is bad.’

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