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Post by Gatewood on May 20, 2012 15:54:44 GMT -6
Part 2, Pearl Harbor:
Prior to 1940 Pearl Harbor was a relatively minor naval base, with only one cruiser division and a few submarine squadrons permanently based there. Since 1923 the U.S. navy had conducted a series of "Fleet Problems", in which various large scale operations were conducted. Fleet Problem XXI, in 1940, dealt with defense of the Hawaiian Islands and caused the bulk of the fleet to congregate in that area, and, at the conclusion, president Roosevelt ordered the fleet to remain in Hawaii. This was supposedly to serve as a threat and deterrent to Japan, but many argue that it had the opposite effect and resulted in Japan's preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor. Many senior naval commanders and others, both at that time and subsequently, argued that the fleet was more "exposed" in Hawaii than it was on the west coast, which was true, but I would contend that Roosevelt understood what many of his admirals seemed no to - that the purpose of a fleet was to be "exposed", or, to quote the old movie title, "To go in harm's way". He understood that, if we were not willing to expose our ships to possible harm, then we might as well not have built them in the first place. In particular, Admiral Richardson, who, at that time was the fleet's commander, argued for a return to the west coast, but his reasons are largely misunderstood. He agreed that Pearl Harbor was a better base for the fleet, from a strategic/tactical perspective, but had great reservations about the logistical capabilities of the location for fleet maintenance, supply, etc., and especially for liberty opportunities for the men. This latter might sound strange, being as they were stationed in "paradise", but, at the time, there was really very little for them to do and there was a lack of facilities for supporting them. In addition, whereas many of their wifes and families lived within close proximity on the west coast, or they could take leave, get on a train and be at home anywhere within the United States within a couple of days, they could not do that in Hawaii, and, as indicated, that was a great cause of concern for Admiral Richardson, caused him to argue with Roosevelt, and ultimately led to his removal. However, Admiral Block, who had preceded Richardson as fleet commander and later commanded the 14th Naval District, which included Pearl Harbor, subsequently stated that he felt that basing the fleet at Pearl turned out to be the right move simply because it caused the support facilities there to have been built up much more rapidly than they otherwise would have been and served us in good stead once the war began.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was not the unmitigated disaster that it is generally perceived as being, and really had almost negligible impact on the conduct of the war. As Admiral Block also said, "The Japanese did us a favor by getting rid of a bunch of obsolete equipment", and, as I indicated in my previous post, U.S. plans had already evolved away from a large battleship type confrontation with the Japanese. In that sense it is worth noting that, subsequent to Pearl Harbor, the surviving and repaired battleships were relegated to patrolling and "protecting" the west coast for a considerable period of time, the primary reason being that they were fuel hogs that made it impractical to utilize them further west until the great fleet trains of later in the war were developed. In particular, although the somewhat confined waters of the Solomons were not really conducive to battleship operations, a couple of the old battleships could have probably been put to great use and made a significant difference, but the U.S. just simply didn't have the logistical capabilities for maintaining them in those forward areas. In that sense, it is now somewhat generally recognized the the Japanese made a big mistake in concentrating on the ships at Pearl rather than the base facilities, particularly the oil tank farm. If those had been significantly damaged, the ships would have become almost incidental and forced to withdraw to the west coast, and major offensive operations delayed by as much as a couple of years.
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Post by Gatewood on May 20, 2012 17:15:11 GMT -6
Part 3, the Philippines:
As indicated in part #1, after their acquisition as a result of the Spanish American War, the Philippines figured prominently in subsequent U.S. planning. This caused somewhat of a dilemma in that, while the U.S. deemed them indispensable to the projection of might into the western Pacific, they were also perceived to be essentially indefensible, primarily due to the several thousand miles of total coastline. It is important to note that the islands had little of value in the nature of raw materials, etc., and their sole military significance was their location, which, as Quincannon noted, was on the flank of any Japanese movement to the Southwest to the Dutch East Indies and Malaysia, which were rich in the natural resources that the Japanese needed and lacked. In short, the U.S. didn't particularly want them, other than as a base for thwarting Japanese movements, and the Japanese didn't particularly want them but couldn't afford to let the U.S. retain control, for the same reason. As a result, they figured prominently in both nation's war plans.
As indicated, the U.S. considered the islands to be largely indefensible, and, as a result, the plans for years had been, in the event of an invasion, to withdraw onto the Bataan peninsula and the island of Corrigador, which controlled Manila Bay, and await "rescue" by the Pacific Fleet. However, as indicated previously, it had begun to be recognized that the fleet steaming across the Pacific was impractical, and it would be necessary for the Philippines to stand on their own. As a result, the last few years of the 1930s and 1940/41 saw rapid expansion of U.S. facilities and capabilities and of the Philippine defense force, and it began to be perceived that the islands could, in fact, be defended. At the same time, with the development of the B17 heavy bomber, the what now seems amazingly naive theory developed that only a couple of squadrons of B17s based in the Philippines would be able to control the entire region and counteract any Japanese aggression in the area. As a result, the perceived primary military significance of the islands became the B17 bases, which were not located on Bataan. The plans therefore began to evolve along the lines that, not only could the Philippines be defended, but they must be defended. This resulted in still greater commitment of U.S. resources, with the result that, whereas the U.S. principal presence had only recently been projected forward to Hawaii, if the war had been delayed a couple of more years, the bulk of U.S. capabilities would have probably moved all of the way forward to the Philippines. As it was, the war was not delayed a couple of years, with the result that the U.S. was still in a state of preparation and not yet ready to totally convert to a new plan. As a result, while plans were evolving, the official plan in place still called for withdrawal to Bataan. However, given the circumstances, that was largely impractical and left preparations in a state of limbo. One result of this is that General MacArthur chose to try to "defend" Luzon rather than withdrawing onto Bataan. For this he has been much criticized for not adhering to the plan, but I personally feel that this criticism is unjust, stemmed primarily from those who did not fully understand the overall situation, and that MacArthur was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position.
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Post by quincannon on May 20, 2012 17:18:05 GMT -6
Hard to argue with a fine presentation such as this Gatewood.
I would only question one apect of what you have layed out. The old BB's in the Solomons. I agree they were fuel hogs. I agree they would have been useful. I just don't think they would have been survivable.
Washington, North Carolina and South Dakota were the only three present for the Guadalcanal Campaign. North Carolina was quickly scratched by the same torpedo spread that got Wasp. Washington and South Dakota engaged on 14 November 42 and SD was very badly damaged. As long as these three were screaning carriers I think they could make their best contribution. When you consider the close in work though they were very vulnerable to submarine attack, and their triple A was not up to later standards either. All this said which of the old battleships could have survived in their 1942 configuration in those waters? None that I can think of that were available. Only when Tennessee, California, and West Virginia emerged from the yards in late 43 and 44 could any of the old BB's provide anything but targets. Those three were fully modern in all aspects except speed thereafter, but in 42 all you had were Colorado, Maryland, and a couple of old wrecks like Pennsylvania and Nevada.
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Post by Gatewood on May 20, 2012 19:11:11 GMT -6
Quincannon,
I wasn't advocating that we should have utilized some of the old battleships in the Solomons, just trying to make the point that, even though we still had some available after Pearl Harbor that could have possibly had some use in places like the Solomons, we didn't utilize them as such simply because we did not have the capability of maintaining them in a forward area. As such, the loss/damage of the BBs at Pearl was ultimately of little consequence and not the disaster that it is generally perceived as being.
You are correct that the Solomons would not have been an ideal spot for their deployment, for the reasons that you listed, but I can't help but wonder if we would not have been better served if we could have utilized them there rather than trying to place the Atlantas, for example, in the "battle line", a use for which they were totally unsuited. Unfortunately many of our early war admirals came of age in the big gun navy and tended to see all ships, particularly heavy cruisers but sometimes even destroyers, as mini battleships that should be deployed in line ahead formations to slug it out with their opposites. This resulted in disaster after disaster around Guadalcanal as we tried to fight surface actions with ships that were over matched for the role.
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Post by lew on May 20, 2012 19:55:13 GMT -6
I think we can all agree that the The Fighting Wee-Vee, USS West Virginia-was the greatest Battleship ever.
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Post by jon287 on May 20, 2012 20:11:08 GMT -6
Good website on the Japanese Navy in ww2. www.combinedfleet.com/kaigun.htmJust in case you guys want to argue tonnage or firepower. Interesting conversation. Sorry to interrupt, Jon
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Post by wild on May 20, 2012 21:08:55 GMT -6
Very informative post by Gatewood. I would say this about Pearl as a base and putting the fleet in harm's way.There is putting the fleet in harm's way and there is presenting it as a sitting target.Chance saved the carriers.Base commanders were scapegoated yes? The point suggesting the Japs should have gone for the base facilities?If you attack the fleet you also stand a good chance of taking out the crews.Trained crews and carriers take much longer to replace than oil depots.And burning battle wagons and carriers are so much more like a defeat than burning oil and dining halls.On balance I think the admiral was correct.
In reply to DC's contradiction of firebombing Jap cities.Firebombing per se was a tactic and policy of bomber command.HE alone would not cause the uncontrolable conflagrations which overwhelmed the civil defences and caused such devastation.It was also a terror weapon.
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 20, 2012 21:46:52 GMT -6
Yamamoto had long warned and worried before the war in texts that exist about Japanese cities being bombed because they were wood and paper. See Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, page 127. It required no incendiaries to set off huge fires, although they made it worse. He could hardly have been the only one to be alarmed at the thought. The number of stone buildings or brick was miniscule. Europe was built of stone and brick mostly.
The policy was burning enemy cities to the ground and attacking civilians, both initiated by Japan in China from the early 1930's and Germany in Europe before the US entered the war, as it initiated bombing civilians from the air in 1914. They had no cause to complain - or leg to stand on - when it came upon them. We did this to force deployment of munitions workers to city protection and it sort of worked. But in reality, those governments just kept food to the necessary and let the others starve. Honor for them to do so.
But we need to ask Ireland to emote for the ages on what is good and honorable, terror or not, because, you know, Ireland. When the world wants to know what is good, all heads turn to Ireland.
In Japan, which abandoned the naval treaty and like Germany was building illegal ships fast before the war and had its factories going wide open, Yamamoto knew that the US produced 12 times as much steel - and better steel - every year than Japan and this with the Depression still in force. He knew he had to win quick if they were to win at all. On the other hand, he caved to building the useless Yamatos and took one for a flag ship. Issue of image. He also had little in the way of strategic plans tied to logistics going on.
If the fuel tanks had been hit and burned, there were insufficient tankers and nothing much to protect them to assure the unhit ships could actually reach California or Australia from Pearl. It was a stupid choice by the Japanese. Not one bomb that could hypothetically have set off uncontrollable fires hit the tank farm. Ships in harbor lost men, but the Arizona's explosion was most of the dead. There were no carriers, so that was an issue. Trained crews were in the pipeline.
With the exception of Savo Island, all Yamamoto's wins were due to surprise attacks with no war announcement, and great material superiority. Despite all that he was losing by Midway because he could not believe that Americans were smart enough to break code, as the Germans refused to believe for two wars that the British could, despite overpowering evidence. The Japanese were short ships and fuel by 1942 and there were no sufficient replacements in the pipeline which was soon bombed out anyway.
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Post by quincannon on May 20, 2012 22:19:26 GMT -6
Larry: That's why I have a framed print of her passing ynder the Brooklyn Bridge hanging above my desk. The Big Five were beautiful ships in their original configuration.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 21, 2012 3:49:10 GMT -6
Whilst both the U.S. and Japan were battling it out on Guadalcanal, Yamamoto launched an attack on the Aleutian Island.
In June 1942 a force of two small aircraft carriers (Ryujo and Junyo), five cruisers (including the Cruiser Abukuma), twelve destroyers, six submarines, and four troop transports, along with supporting auxiliary ships under the command of Vice-Admiral Boshiro Hosogaya attacked the radio base at Dutch Harbour and landed troops on both the Islands of Kiska and Attu.
After the battle of the Komandorski Islands the Japanses abandoned all missions to re-supply the forces stationed on the Islands by surface vessel, but continued to send supplies by Submarine. Attu Island was re-captured by the U.S. in May 1943, the 7th Infantry Division suffered 549 men killed and over a 1000 wounded in a 19 day battle, the Japanese commander Col. Yamasaki fearing the end was near, led his men on a Banzai charge (one of the largest ever in the Pacific) which resulted in hand to hand fighting and the death of Yamasaki.
Kiska fell in August the same year when the 7th ID along with Canadian units (The Devils Brigade) landed to find the Island abandoned.
Ian.
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Post by wild on May 21, 2012 6:36:16 GMT -6
DARK CLOUD There was no such thing as precision bombing in WWII absent a single drop dive bomber. That was a fib, and only the ignorant pretend otherwise Strictly speaking you are incorrect yet again with your exaggeration "absent a single dive bomber".Heavy British bombers were used in the precision role. I trust the "fibbing "remark was not addressed to me? Precision bombing was doctrine with the USSAF in Europe as opposed to it's "bomb and burn"[Le May]policy with Japan. Whether or not it was successful is not the issue.
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Post by quincannon on May 21, 2012 7:24:47 GMT -6
Ramblings and other disconnected BS:
Richard: Doctrine yes. Reality No. If one considers it precision to be able to hit the country the target is in rather than the target itself precision, then it was precision. The "fib" was the fib of telling everybody who would listen at the time that we were destroying enemy industrial capacity when in truth we were in the earth moving business. The "fib" was the USAAF lying to itself that all that time they put into a flawed doctrine of daylight precision bombing was worth it.
Ian 1st Special Service Force was joint Canadian-US intended for Norway, a side trip to The Aleutians, then on to Italy and Southern France, disbanded in 1945 with the Americans going on to form the 474th Infantry Regiment with some add ons from ranger remnants and the 99th Infantry Battalion (Sep)
The Aleutians were the opening act of Midway intended to divert and confuse.
Failure to be able to resupply. What good is the ring of the defensive perimeter if you can't supply it due to the fact you have a third rate unbalanced navy?
Richard again: The objective is to win wars not be nice. If firebombing was what would do that faster so be it. We did not bomb Pearl Harbor. They did.
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Post by Gatewood on May 21, 2012 7:34:23 GMT -6
RE: U.S. vs Japanese cruiser design and the surface actions in the Solomons.
Several posters have touched on the inadequacies of early war U.S. ships and the consequences paid in the waters of the Solomons. Since those were pricipally cruiser actions, I will limit my discussion to that.
With the exception of the Omahas, which, as Quincannon noted, were obsolete, the remaining U.S. cruisers were, all-in-all, of very good design and, in most respects, the most modern and capable in the world. The problem was that, within the 10,000 ton pre-war cruiser treaty limitations, it was imposible to build a ship sufficiently armored to withstand 8" (heavy cruiser) or even 6" (light cruiser) fire. The Japanese (and Gemans) simply fudged a little and built cruisers more in the 12,000 ton range, but the U.S. was so conciencious about staying within the treaty limitations that they overcompensated to the low side, with the result that all of the 1930s heavy cruiser designs ended up being in the 9,200 ton range. This 3000 ton or 30% difference primarily manifested itself in armor thickness, with the result that the U.S. cruisers were at a distinct disadvantge when exchanging blows.
Another factor was that pre-war Japanese planning and training emphasized night action to a much higher degree than did the U.S. Most of the surface actions in the Solomons were in fact fought at night (as the aggressors, the Japanese could largely choose the time and place), giving the Japanese another advantage. Along with and as part of this emphasis on night action, the Japanese had also placed much greater emphasis on the use of torpedos by surface ships, particulalry destroyers but also by both light and heavy cruisers. The Japanese also had superior optical range finders and sights, particulalry for night use. All of these Japanese advantages were most pronounced in relatively short range situations.
On the other hand, the U.S. ships were optimized more for longer range, strictly gun actions. Although a number of U.S. cruiser designs had initially included torpedo mounts, these had been remove prior to the war under the theory that they would be a hazard in gun actions (don't want a bunch of your own torpedos exploding on deck as a result of being hit by a shell you know). In retrospect, they probably got it half right and should have eliminated the torpedos from the heavy cruisers but left them on the light cruisers. On the other hand, U.S. gunnery was very good, being aided by very sophisticated (for the time) electro-mechanical computers for acquiring and remaining on target. The Japanese had nothing similar and relied on optical plotting and manual adjustments, just as it had been done for hundreds of years. Similarly, by late 1942, many of the U.S. ships had been equipped with what (again for the times) was very good radar that allowed for effective gunnery at much greater ranges than what the Japanese were capable of with optical control. Finally, the U.S. had excellent shells, while the Japanese suffered from a large portion of duds and defectives. All of this lent itself to long range gun action, where the U.S. ships could bring the Japanese under fire while remaining out of effective gun, and particulalry torpedo, range of the Japanese.
Unfortunately, most of the early war U.S. surface flotilla leaders did not understand or trust all of that new fangled radar stuff and were loath to fire at anyting that they could not see with their own two eyes. As a result, despite subordiantes pleading for permission to open fire at longer range, they time and time again alowed the range to close to the point that U.S. advantages were mitigated and those of the Japanese maxamized. This resulted in much of the carnage that the U.S. suffered and could probably have been avoided.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 21, 2012 7:41:36 GMT -6
The Japanses also scored four victories against the allies in early 1942,
Battle of Makassar Strait February 4th 1942 Battle of Badung Strait February 18th 1942 Battle of the Java Sea February 27th 1942 Indian Ocean raid March 31st 1942
It was all downhill after then for the IJN.
Chuck I guess William Holden had not yet joined the 1st special service when they landed with the 7th ID, it must have been when they got to Italy.
Ian.
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Post by quincannon on May 21, 2012 7:54:27 GMT -6
Gatewood: When you write your book send me a copy. Good stuff. Can't argue as you are right on the money.
Interesting to note that near the end of 42 and into the begining of 43 most if not all of the slower firing 8" gun cruisers were withdrawn from the Guadalcanal Campaign and their place taken by the remaining Brooklyns and the new Clevelands with the rapid fire 6" 47 Cal guns. As Gatewood points out this was close in stuff and the 6" overwhelmed with fire at short range. We never fixed the problem with the slow firing *" until the Des Moines class came into service in the late 1940's post war.
Ian: William Holden - Yes I saw the movie. Robert T. Frederick (the Holden character) was a most unusual fellow. Read about his love affair with the Queen of Greece sometime. Very interesting fellow.
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