jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008
From: Somewhere Texas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BamaD
OK I will go with that, Midway broke the will of the Imperial Navy.
The key to the victory was, as you know, the much malined intelligence services.
Yup, the navy in Pearl were reading japanese intercepts and getting maybe one word in 10....
Midway was a guess, calculated and with good evidence, but a guess none the less.
The real cock up (to use the brit phrase) was Wake Island. After the first strikes, a relief force had been dispatched by the Pacific fleet consisting of the Enterprise, Lexington, and two transports with a total of three regiments of marines.
However, during a bombing raid, the radio shack took a direct hit and went off the air, so the relief force was recalled due to the belief that Wake had fallen.
Thus the question becomes:
If the relief force would have not been recalled and the reinforcements of men and aircraft would have been delivered, how would the first few months of the war gone?
The Japanese had no aircraft carriers at the Wake, depending on the bombers from their Marshal island bases for air cover.
The troops, the only troops that could be assigned to Wake was 2 battalions of Imperial Marines.
The Japanese also had no battle ships with the invasion fleet, just two heavy cruisers, which were outgunned by the four that had been dispatched from San Diego after the Pearl attack.
IF Wake had remained in American hands, it would have been perfect for the placement of the B17E's that were being ferried to Hickim by the Air Corps, thus the Marshals would have been untenable for the Japanese, they would not have had the forces for the Solomon campaign or the New Guinea operations, because of the existence of the forces at Wake.
Not getting the carriers at Pearl was one problem for the Japanese, even though it would have been temporary, Saratoga was nearing completion of refit in San Francisco, Wasp and two other carriers were in the Atlantic and via the Panama Canal arrived in Pearl a week after the attack.
This is not counting the fact that the Navy could have dispatched five Battleships from the Atlantic to the Pacific, after Nimitz arrived in Pearl, which he turned down. (why he never adaquately explained, since in essence, the Brits had the German navy bottled up with the exception of uboats.)
Then there were two new carriers that were launched within months of Pearl Harbor, those should have gone to the Pacific, but were held in the Atlantic, by order of FDR, who considered Germany the bigger threat.
Among other problems were the fact that FDR refused to allow the extra oilers and destroyers to return to the Pacific after Pearl Harbor keeping them instead for escort duty in the Atlantic.
Give you a few other Political points to consider:
1) for every DD or DE launched, one out of four went to the Pacific.
2) For every Gato class sub launched, 1 out of three was kept in the atlantic in the first year of the war.
Midway was considered the first "victory" of the Pacific war for the navy, however, by the time of midway, US subs had accounted for 3 cruisers, one small carrier, and over 95000 tons of Imperial shipping even with fucked up torpedoes that either did not explode or exploded early!
Now add to that the simple fact that except for very rare occasions, the Japanese never adopted the convoy system, American subs would patrol off the major ports of Japan and had a buffet of targets.
One more thing that you might want to look at.
Google Pappy Gunn.
That man took the manual for the B25 and used it for toilet paper. Did the same thing with the one for the A20.
He put so many fifty cal machine guns in the noses of those two types of bombers that when the pilot pressed the firing button, they threatened to stall the airplanes!!!
The concentrated fire would chew through the hulls of Japanese transports and destroyers like paper.
Then there were the real unsung heroes of the Pacific, the PT crews.
They were so feared by the Japanese destroyer crews in the Solomons that the PT crews were to be executed on sight if captured.
You see, I had one great uncle who flew in the Flying tigers, three in the marines and two in the navy in the Pacific and one on my dad's side that told me stories about how Patton's 7th armored crews stole bigger anti tank guns from the brits to put on Shermans (and one crew who tried unsuccessfully to mount a german 88 on one.)
The two navy uncles were at Pearl on the 7th. Assigned to the USS Nevada (which almost made it out of the harbor) and listening to them talk, the Nevada had she cleared the harbor would have blasted the entire Japanese navy to pieces.
Of the crew of the Arizona, there are three that were related to my grandmother, nephews.
There is not much about Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific that I have not heard first hand. I can point out every mistake in the movie Tora Tora Tora (if you watch really close, you can see three very modern Fletcher class destroyers complete with missiles.)
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Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?
You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.
Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
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