WW II Historical Thread, Discussion, Pics, Videos

[TerraN_EmpirE]

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

I read in a book about flattops, some forty years ago, that the crews were told on Dec. 5 that war with Japan was imminent.

Further reading in this thread suggests strongly that the book was wrong.
I especially likes the remarks by chuck on the Nomohan/ Khalkin Gol "incident". I do wonder how aware were the governments in Berlin, London and Paris of this war at the time.

Delft after the Russian navy was basically vaporized in the Ruso Japanese was there were really only two big players in the Pacific ocean. The USN And the IJN. From 1906 till the date that lives in infamy, every one was expecting a clash of these two titans. In fact the Pearl harbor attack was a direct action intended to counter what has to be the most poorly secured war plan in history. Plan Orange, which was a joint US Army Navy plan to hunt down and sink the Japanese navy. So were sailor told to expect a possible war with Japan? YES. Absolutely, but like the coming War between Japan and China or the war between Russia and the USA That every one expected in the Cold war. It was always preparatory until that Sunday morning on December 7th when Plan Orange was shredded and a whole new battle plan had to be written.

 

[Jeff Head]

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

The Kito butai (the Japanese fast carrier strike force) didn't have the fuel to stay near Hawaii to search and destroy carrier task forces whose whereabouts Nagumo knew absolutely nothing about. Those carriers could have been on the way to west coast, or to wake island. The search area would have been enormous and the chance of finding anything without a priori knowledge of where the targets are would be near zero.

Because Pearl Harbor got so much press and movie play it seems now it was the main focus of Japanese strategy in 1941. That was not the case. The main focus of Japanese naval and overall strategy was the thrust south to seize hongkong, French Indochina, Malaya, Singapore, and Dutch East Indies. The Pearl Harbor attack was actually just a flank screening operation for the main Japanese naval effort.

Yes. Given its resource and fuel situation, Japan, which was already at war, had to go south for the resources...and it knew it if did, that the US was going to come into the fight.

So the Pearl Harbor attack was hoped to be a stunning action, essentially enough of a blow to check the US Pacific fleet to allow the Japanese time to do that and hold off America while the Japanese Navy and Army took the brunt of the fight south to those other areas.

Japan, short of making the attacks she did to the south, would have otherwise had to scale back her war operations they significantly. But without a military defeat to cause that, there was simply no way their own culture and pride were going to allow them to do that, particularly if all that terriritory and resource was right there...in their mind...for the taking.

So they went ahead.

Now, the US also underestimated Japan. I am saying that through the lense of my father and his retelling of those days as a combat Naval Officer in the Pacific. Far too many people, even in the combat command chain, thought we totally outclassed the Japanese, that in essence their ability to hurt us was negligable, and that if we ever did go into the fight, it would be over pretty qucikly in terms of at Sea conflicts. Those attitudes had to be weeded out, either through attrition (which happened) or through recognition at the flag rank and ensuring that people who thought that way were moved aside. It took (even with the vistory at Midway) a good year to get that done to the point where you had an cadre of combat officers up and down the chain with an attitude that the Japanese were mortal foes who had to be respected, and were going to have to be defeated unconditionally.

And the Japanese certianly underestimated the United States and its capacity, once aroused, to be able to produce the wherwithall to carry on major war effoerts both in Europe and in the Pacific, and how rapidly it could gen that up. The US/Allied plans called for the effort in the Pacific to be the secondary effort until the Nazis were defeated...but things in the Pacific, particularly after Midway and Guadalcanal, turned and major strides were able to be made long before the Nazis were defeated. And once the production capacity of the US was being maximized...there was simply no way for Japan or Germany to turn it off. (The Germans probably had the best outside chance to do so with their missile technology and a potential atomic bomb themselves...but their research went the wrong direction in that regard, and they were SOL).

So a literal avalanche of men and material came at the Japanese, along with better tactics (like pulling our best pilots back after so long so they could effectively train others instead of having them fight until they died).

 

[Jeff Head]

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

It sounds then that the correct course of action for the Japanese; post the first wave of attacks in which the main Harbour and its facilities were disabled, would have been to have searched the surrounding waters for Isolated Carrier detachments and to attack while they were not at full combat readiness.

I know, easy to say in hindsight, but surely a senior naval officer should have had more than an inkling of foresight?

As Chuck said, they simply did not have the resource to conduct Search and Destroy operations...or even enough to follow up on their intial raids at Pearl Harbor.

And, had they done so, the only group they could have conceivably found at the time would have been the Entrprise group..which was being appraised of the situation and itself would have been in a positioned to not be surprised.

If they had the fuel/resource, the time, and the inclination (which I believe at that point the commander, Yamamaoto did not have), the large Japanese carrier force could certainly have been capable to finding and the Enterprise and engaging her...but they would have also risked losing carriers themselves in the process, and they were not willing to do that because they needed them for other planned operations.

As it was, they didn't...and history proceeded forward as we know.

As regards, Yamamoto, irresepctive of whatever failings, he was a brilliant commander and a very dangerous foe and opponent. The United States recognized this...and ultimately went to great lengths to find him personally and elimiante him. And they did.

After Japan was defeated at Guadalcanal, Yamamoto decided to personally make visits to bases in the South Pacific and boost moral. Of course the US had broken the Japanese code and intercepted messages stating his intentions, plans, and schedule. Upon being informed, the order to "Get Yamamoto," came from President Roosevelt himself.

So, on April 18, 1943, a group of sixteen P-38 Lightnings ambushed Yamamoto in his Mitsubishi G4M fast transport and the six AGM Zeroes that were escorting him. His transport was shot down and his body was discoivered in the wreckage the next day in the jungle north of Buin, Papua New Guinea. The autopsy reveladed that it was not the crash that killed him. The P-38 that shot him down with .50 caliber machine gun fire had actually scored two direct hits on the Admiral. One to the shoulder, and the other to his jaw that exited above his eye. The head shot with a .50 caliber bulltet most certainly killed him instantly.

Admiral Yamamoto salutes troops in Rabaul, April 18, 1943,
just before the Admiral departed on his fateful, final flight
​

 

[bd popeye]

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

Except the carrier Akagi has her island on the wrong side.

Sorry, can't resist. This is the carrier thread, after all.

USS Yorktown (CVS-10 an USN Essex class carrier was used in much of the films carrier scenes. I still feel the basic premiss of the story is correct.

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[chuck731]

Re: Aircraft Carriers II

USS Yorktown (CVS-10 an USN Essex class carrier was used in much of the films carrier scenes. I still feel the basic premiss of the story is correct.

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Yes, but even when they weren't recycling stock footages of the Yorktown as the Akagi, they still put the Island on the wrong side in the model they made of the ship, which was extensively shown in the sequence where the Japanese strike takes off prior to dawn. The akagi island set otherwise looked pretty accurate, except it is on the wrong side. tisk, tisk.



Also, the model of USS Nevada had the wrong number of barrels on her B and Y turret, thus turning her into either the Arizona or the Pennnsilvania. Also they gave the USS west Virginia a ram bow, when she had the clipper bow distinctive to the big 5 battleships.

Sorry, I notice this sort of things.

It is of course vastly better than the later atrocious "pearl Harbor", in which the Japanese appearently traveled through a time warp to attacked a row of Spruance class destroyers in the Pearl Harbor.

 

[bd popeye]

Yes, I'm aware of some of the films discrepancies.

It is of course vastly better than the later atrocious "Pearl Harbor", in which the Japanese appearently traveled through a time warp to attacked a row of Spruance class destroyers in the Pearl Harbor.

Agree 100%..I did not see the film in a theater but I did rent it..I could not stomach much of the incredible inaccuracies. But of course with that explosion master Micheal Bay as the director.. wadda you expect?

 

[shen]

What resources were technically feasible for the Japanese to exploit in Siberia? What would've been the point of a northern thrust into the vast space of Sibera,when all the resources the Japanese needed, oil, rubber, were all found in south, in the Western controlled colonies.

 

[chuck731]

What resources were technically feasible for the Japanese to exploit in Siberia? What would've been the point of a northern thrust into the vast space of Sibera,when all the resources the Japanese needed, oil, rubber, were all found in south, in the Western controlled colonies.

Siberia had vast amounts of coal, oil, gas, aluminum, iron, magnese, copper, nickel, chromium, lumber, potential for hydro-electric power. Siberia may not have rubber, but it is the full house as far as mineral resources for wareffort goes, much more so than even the european controlled east indies.

Post war accounts of high level soviet military and civilian officials admit if Japan had launched a concerted attack against Soviet Siberia in autume of 1941 at the same time the Germans launched the attack on Moscow, it was game over for the Soviet Union. The it seems Japan would have a relatively long lure in which to exploit what it can seize in siberia without disruption from the western powers.

Even when Japan eventually find herself at war with the US, she would have been much stronger than she was, because not only did she have the full resources of Siberia, those can all be conveyed to centers of Japanese industry in Manchuria and Japan proper along interior lines of communication, immune to interdiction by the US navy.

During WWII, it is easy to overestimate how much resources from the east Indies actually helped Japan. These resources can only reach Japan along numerous highly exposed exterior lines of sea lane communication. The US ran a very effective submarine interdiction campaign against these sea lanes, much more effective than Germany's Uboat campaign against Britain. By 1943 successful shippments were already scarce and Japanese merchant fleet was decimated and continuing to suffer losses far above replacement rate. Some estimate suggests US interdiction campaign cut Japanese war production by 2/3.

Even the disposition of Japanese navy was dictated by the fact that Japanese fleet can not be fuelled if it stationed itself in Japan proper, and must operate as much as possible out of Singapore so crude oil from Dutch East Indies can be sent directly to Japanese warships instead of being sunk on tankers while on the way to be refined in Japan and distributed to the fleet.

But according to postwar interviews with Kwantung army officers, the battle at Nomonhan left such an impression on the Japanese army about the unpreparedness of the Japanese army to face Soviet forces, that Kwantung army advised against an attack on Russia even while Germany were inflicting some of the heaviest defeats ever absorbed by any army upon the red army before Kiev and Slomansk.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

It is of course vastly better than the later atrocious "pearl Harbor", in which the Japanese appearently traveled through a time warp to attacked a row of Spruance class destroyers in the Pearl Harbor

might have been the same time warp the USS Nimitz took in the Final Countdown.

 

[SampanViking]

What resources were technically feasible for the Japanese to exploit in Siberia? What would've been the point of a northern thrust into the vast space of Sibera,when all the resources the Japanese needed, oil, rubber, were all found in south, in the Western controlled colonies.

I think the biggest problem for the Japanese to go into Siberia at that time, were largely the same as exists today. It is vast, the environment is hostile and it is largely entirely undeveloped.
It may have the resources in abundance, but the cost and time of finding and building the infrastructure to extract them; especially under fire from the Soviets, would have been prohibitive, especially when fat juicy colonies beckoned to the south with better communications and the infrastructure and industrial facilities already built.

The Japanese were at war and needed resources to feed their war effort right away and not five years down the road.