Day of Infamy -- SC Forum Thoughts and Opinions.

[JerseyJohn]

-- Appraisal Generals and Admirals copied from the Favorite General Thread.

Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was made the skapegoat for the U. S. Navy at Pearl Harbor. He was only given fragments of the overall situation and never had the resources to properly patrol the waters around his command. He'd spent most of his time planning for an open sea battle pitting his own carriers and BBs against the Imperial Navy and had no reason to suspect he'd have to deal with anything else. Then as now the view is that the Japanese attack succeeded due to American incompetance. Too little credit is given to Japanese Admiral Nagumo for navigating such a large strike force through so long a rough weather voyage and for also managing to move without being detected by U. S. Naval elements at Midway. This more than anything else led Kimmel to believe the fleet was save.

Similar appraisal of Lt. General Short, an old style cavalry commander. There's no reason to assume he had any understanding of carrier warfare. He knew that Hawaii was beyond the reach of Japanese landbased bombers and proceeded to guard against what he had every reason to believe was the primary danger, sabotage of his aircraft. He treated as a ground attack problem, as he was trained to do. As with Kimmel, Washington offered little in the way of real information; he was on his own.

Lt. General Wainright, commander of the American troops in the Phillipines, succeeding MacArthur as overall commander. He led a skilfull withdrawl and defense of the Battan penninsula and a dogged, prolonged holding action at the island fortress of Corregador. His command was doomed from the start and he was left, along with his ill supplied troops, to foot the bill.

-- To MacArthur's credit, he requested to remain in the Phillipines and requested only that his wife and son be evacuated. FDR himself insisted he escape to receive a new command.

-- copied from the favorite general Thread.

I think the events leading up to the attack and alternate actions that could have been made by either the U. S. or Japan are still well worth discussing, despite all the attention that's been focused on them during the past twenty years, but I'll leave it off here as it's already fairly long.

[ December 07, 2003, 08:57 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Les the Sarge 9-1]

Being we are all wargamers though, I think in most cases, the only thing interesting about history, is could we have done better.

And naturally, how can we present it in a wargame in such a fashion, that it will be any fun to game out.

The US hung out Kimmel to dry and Short was just unable to know his decisions were worthless in a new form of war.

In a wargame, the right choice is trash the fleet and trash the oil and checkmate I win.

No oil would massively compromise the US for a long time, and being a super powerful industrial nation won't make getting oil to Pearl any easier.

The Japanese could have finished the job, but they too were just learning the full weight of worth of carrier tactics. They blinked and it cost them sooner than later.

[JerseyJohn]

Good point and damn true.

Nagumo left the oil tanks, the sub-pens, and the dry docks untouched. They were all targets assigned to subsequent strikes. Had the Japanese pushed it to the limit they may have had four times the aircraft losses, but might well have delivered the decisive blow Yammamoto had hoped for.

As an added bonus, the Enterprise and several other ships were returning to port as the strike force was leaving the vicinity. Considering the Japanese had subs operating in the area the failure to report any of that is a telling comment on the basic shodiness of most Japanese operations. Fine execution coupled with terrible reconaisance. Japanese subs would fail later in this same capacity at Midway.

[jon_j_rambo]

The Japs of that generation were stupid. What we're they thinking? The battleships sunk were old & outdated, the carriers were untouched, & they pissed us off.

Later in the war, the U.S. Military made very bad moves with the island hopping. So many died because of bad strategy.

[Edwin P.]

The Japanese were smart and able to launch a strike force that achieved total surprise. They made a bad decision in deciding to attack the US and not following up the strike on Pearl Harbor; however, they choose to avoid the risk of further losses, much like the US avoid the risk of further losses by not advancing to Baghdad during the first Gulf War.

The fact that the carriers were not there was a calculated risk that they had to accept.

[jon_j_rambo]

The Japs were stupid waking the Sleeping Bear. Their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor did nothing but seal their destruction. The Battleships on Battleship Row were old. They could have taken over Hawaii & half of California on day one of the war...it still wouldn't have mattered. From a military standpoint, Pearl Harbor was a loss for the Japs. From a strategic standpoint, Pearl Harbor was diaster. From a Human Being standpoint, is was evil.

Rambo salutes the Americans of Decemeber 7, 1941.

[jon_j_rambo]

By the way, what the Hell were those German Demons thinking...Himmler, Goering, Hitler, Heydrich, Eichman, etc. How pointless, how'd did they get all those suckers to follow them straight to Hell? I don't get it.

What's funny is the way the leaders of the master race finished up things on planet Earth. Himmler, puts on a Sargent's uniform, then takes poison. Goering got a nice "poison mint" at Numerburg. Hitler got a nice "poison pill" in the bunker. At least go out in combat. I wonder what was the last thoughts they had? Any remorse? Or the Devil doesn't pray?

Rambo

John 3:16

[Panzer39]

Well Japan also doomed Germany along with themselves by bombing Pearl. Had they not brought the USA into open conflict with the Axis who knows how the war would have turned out.

[Blashy]

The Japs made there most crucial mistake right then and there.

They did not send the second raid as was planned.

2nd raid was total destruction of the port.

1st raid was to destroy enemy defenses, thats why only a FEW ships were hit. That's right they did very little damage on their 1st run, they just destroyed the defenses. The 2nd run was to wipe out everything (port, oil wells, infrastructure).

The General in charge made that decision alone, no one agreed with it. So I say he's an idiot. And I'm happy for it.

[ December 07, 2003, 10:30 PM: Message edited by: Blashy ]

[JerseyJohn]

The Japanese commander who made the decision was Vice-Admiral Nagumo, like most naval leaders of the time a Battleship commander. True, he missed the whole point of the attack in not launching the follow up and destroying the sub pens, the (oil) tank farms and the dry docks; had he done so Pearl Harbor would have been out of commission for about a year!

Vice-Admiral Nagumo

It's also amazed me that the attack wasn't followed by an invasion force. The troops sent to the Phillipines would have been better used in taking the Hawaiian Islands. The reason was political, the Japanese considered the move but decided if they did that they couldn't later have a negotiated settlement with the United States. So, from the start the Japanese entered the war looking for a way to hit the United States but to also have the two countries be at peace after Japan had taken it's objectives of the Phillipines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies and Malaisia, leaving them free to finsish taking China at their leisure.

To say the Japanese action was stupid is, of course oversimplified. U. S. oil and mineral embargoes after their occupation of French Indochina (Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam) left them with only two choices: conquer territories that possessed the resources being embargoes, or give in the the United States demands of pulling out of SE Asia and China -- which were not reasonable, FDR pushed them into a corner with no way out.

I think they could have taken the Dutch East Indies without an American DoW. Britain would have declared war on them, but could not have stopped their tide alone, so they'd have been doing them a favor, handing Malaisia to them as a gift.

The Japanese were afraid that if they did as I indicated they'd have had the Phillipines sitting on their lifeline and didn't want to risk U. S. involvement without first sinking the United States Pacific Fleet.

Getting back to Pearl Harbor, the strike force left without finishing the job precisely because the carriers were not in port and Nagumo feared they might find his task force while his air craft were off on the attack. Considering the large number of submarines Japan deployed in the area it's strange that they weren't used as a screen, north of the Islands, to cover Nagumo's force instead of being sent ineffectually to the south of the islands, where they wound up being of no use to anyone.

[ December 07, 2003, 11:08 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[SeaMonkey]

Okay JJ I'll bite. Reminds me of the thread in the General forum you brought to my attention, "What if there hadn't been WW1", very interesting discussion. After reading, it definitely added credibility to your "Brest-Litvosk Aftermath" campaign. What's most interesting about this thread is what could the US have done differently in the handling of diplomatic relations with Japan to avoid Pearl Harbor? Almost seems like we backed them up against the wall from their perspective. The Nipponese felt assured of our military reaction if they sought their needed natural resources from the DEI and/or Indonesia, especially in light of our reaction to their Chinese incursions.

The embargos were slowly strangling their burgeoning economy which the western powers had instigated to bring them into 20th Century. As far as the follow up to the Pearl Harbor raid I agree that further attacks would have delayed our rebound(dry docks), but also could have done us a favor as we wouldn't have been able to refloat those obsolete BBs. The subpens is another matter, that would have been critical, we all know the legacy of our sub fleet in the initial months of WW2. As far as oil storage, I believe that's always been overblown as I know we all have heard about floating storage(tankers). So I guess that leaves the potential invasion of the HIs. To this I must bring up the dismal record of the Japanese supply system(maritime fleet). Totally lacking in floating assets to sustain any type of invasion, much less an occupation especially in the vicinity of Hawaii. So I guess that takes us right back to history, there's relatively little the Japanese could do to keep them from having a major can of whipass opened up on them, other than not attacking at all.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey

"...there's relatively little the Japanese could do to keep them from having a major can of whipass opened up on them, other than not attacking at all."

Yes, no matter I turn it over, it always comes out the same, that the moment the United States entered the war, Japan was doomed!

Their best bet was the sub-pens; if they could have crippled the sub base they might actually have been able to bring the Indonessian oil, rubber and tin back to their home islands.

The oil tanks do seem a bit overplayed except they'd have dropped all U. S. naval activity to zero in the Pacific for quite a few months. If they'd had brains to enough to follow it up with the placement of their subs to interdict west coast tankers the U. S. would have been forced to set up convoys on both oceans, which might have given them, cumulatively, a two year window to solidify their conquests. In other words, we don't start Guadalcanal till mid-1943. Our surviving carriers don't fight at the Coral Sea or Midway because they need to reach the West Coast, with the rest of the fleet for their refueling needs till the Hawaiian situation becomes fixed.

The dry docks, once raised, those obsolete BBs were very useful in shore bombardments, leaving the new BBs free to guard against the Japanese naval strikes which never materialized.

Regarding the General Forum, I actually started a Thread there on the world that would have developed if Germany had accepted the 1918 Anglo-French Peace Treaty and there wasn't a single response! Nothing, zilch! As a group they've got some interest in history there, but mostly they like things like movie reviews and new products being developed by the Trojan Comapany. If it's something that demands more than a gut reaction the field narrows to the usual two or three posters and I guess they were busy this weekend. Anyway, that WW I Thread went reasonably far so I guess I should look at the positive instead of the negative.

I didn't want to post that one here as it wasn't really an SC type subject. The General Forum isn't a good alternative, I guess.

In case anyone is interested in the subject or would like to post in the Thread, this is a link to it.

<General Forum Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Thread>

I made a disgruntled remark there and it turns out most of their history buffs are off to a new CM site this weekend, so probably the Thread was only a case of bad timing.

[ December 08, 2003, 12:27 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[SeaMonkey]

Your right JJ, they could have opened a couple of years grace period if they would have had a decent sub doctrine. It wasn't as if we weren't showing them the example of "How to use Subs". I don't know about them BBs, we could hash this out on and on(but I'm overmatched here). Those welders puttin those thangs back together could have built a few storage tanks instead, but they were useful as artillery platforms (AAA later after refits). Air power was the true decimator of navies, everyone was just a little slow to acknowledge the fact. You know what we need....yep! A good Pacific PC game to test these theories out. Anyone out there listening...how about you ...Gary Grigsby.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey

I remember Grigsby in his Pacific War designer's notes explaining his Japanese victory conditions as being the only ones he could think of because, in reality, they really had no chance at it! What an admission for a game designer to come out with!

Now I see your point about those old BBs, just canabalise the hulks into something more useful. Sure, that would have worked, especially as we already had the Iowa Class BBs built and were starting on the New Jersey Class, both monsters packing advanced 16" guns (roughly equal to the old tech 18.1 of Japan's supergiant 65,000 ton Yamato and Musasshi.

Agreed that, in truth, only the carrier stregnth counted in the Pacific. It was a little different in the Atlantic due to generally more severe weather, but even there, BBs and BCs without carrier support were sacrificial lambs.

[xwormwood]

Originally posted by jon_j_rambo:

Hitler got a nice "poison pill" in the bunker.

Rambo

John 3:16

He used a pistol, not a pill.

[boninza]

he used both