PDF DOWNLOAD --> Admiral Isoroku Yamamato, A Case for the Value of Professional Reading

The Canadian Air Force Journal ^ | Summer 2008 | Major Gerry Madigan, CD1, MA (Retired)

[wizkid]

Sometimes better articles on the net are in PDF download formats. This is one of them from the Canadian Air Force Journal. Here is the link if you want to inspect it first before trying:

http://airforceapp.forces.gc.ca/CFAWC/eLibrary/Journal/Vol1-2008/Iss2-Summer/Sections/03-Admiral_Isoroku_Yamamoto_e.pdf

It is 815 kilobytes so it is not enormous in size.

For any student of military history, the Admiral is a fascinating character. One who showed brilliance at Peal Harbor and a certain ineptitude at Midway. It is hard to find detailed information on the internet about this man. Most articles are simply rehashes of the same set of summarized information. Part of the problem is that he is Japanese so most of the best information regarding him has not been translated into English.

Currently, I am re-reading (re-reading because it is such a fine work of history) one of these sources, Shattered Sword. Its author is an American who went to Japan so he could document the battle using Japanese sources.

Shattered Sword

In any case, there are a lot of military history freeper buffs who may enjoy this article.

It would be great to get your thoughts on the Admiral and hear of any family stories that you may have of the Battle of Midway. My grandfather was at the Battle of the Coral Sea but he did not like to speak about it.

[X Fretensis]

It was USS Yorktown, CV-5 that was badly damaged by aircraft from the one surviving Japanese Carrier. Later she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sunk. My dad was on the Yorktown during the battle of Midway.

[blueunicorn6]

We could not give our Officers IQ tests. We were, however, required to give them two physical fitness tests a year. The results of these physical fitness tests were then entered on the written evaluations. The assumption was that if you were a person who trained hard for the physical fitness test, then you would also work hard to improve yourself in all other area. Careers were made or broken on this assumption. What is it now, thirteen years in Afghanistan? I think we should have an IQ test for Officers. Higher ranks would require higher IQs.

[Fred Hayek]

We sunk four carriers (Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu), but lost the Yorktown.
We lost the Lexington at Coral Sea, and the Yorktown took heavy damage. Hasty repairs were performed at Pearl and the Yorktown was sent out to Midway.

[spokeshave]

The Japanese fighters which were flown by some of the best pilots in the world,

Yes...but the US recovered a Zero fighter that crash landed on one of the Aleutian islands.

Engineers flew it and discovered the two fatal flaws...

1. No self sealing fuel tanks.

2. Poor rate of climb.

The came up with a new fighter that was a Zero killer.

[yarddog]

I think they already knew about the lack of self sealing fuel tanks and the Zero actually had a good rate of climb.

The one great weakness was that it could only turn in one direction. It was not an ambiturner. Actually it could turn both ways but was really slow in one direction. After learning that, American pilots had only to turn in that direction to escape a Zero.

[spokeshave]

Yeas....you are correct about the turning effect of the Zero....I guess the Zero has a radial engine.

[gaijin]

He was an America-phile and studied at Harvard, building lots of real relationships with Americans through his love of card games and most forms of gambling.

His thesis focused on the US oil industry.

He owned a convertible and “for research” he drove all over the American countryside, Oklahoma and Texas, looking at derricks and drilling operations.

He writes of one formative experience:

He and the highway traffic were idled as a group of large boulders were being cleared away from the road, something that would take 50 Japanese very much time in doing manually.

He watched in awe as the group of 3 Americans did it easily in 10 minutes, using very heavy machinery that made short work of the task.

He noted with dread if his Japan ever had to fight the USA, with such men and tools.

GREAT LESSON.

[wizkid]

You raise a lot of valid points.

...but one would think if Yamamoto truly understood the importance of carriers, he would have made sure that the carriers were in port during the attack. The Japanese certainly seemed to have the intelligence assets in Hawaii to do this.

He staked his reputation on Pearl Harbor to the point of threatening to resign if the attack did not proceed when the general staff opposed it so he had the pull to make the carriers the top priority.

It just seems like when you look at his complete record that Yamamoto was almost as obsessed with the "final climactic battle" as the rest of the Japanese high command and that maybe he was not as much of an aircraft carrier visionary as he is purported to be.

[ealgeone]

Sometimes you gotta hit when you can. Japan was geared up for war, the fleet had sailed across the pacific; sometimes you play the hand you’re dealt in Yamamato’s case.

[Riley]

Funny coincidence, speaking of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. I just watched a terrific Korean movie tonight on Netflix, ‘My Way’, about a Korean who was compelled to serve in the Japanese, Soviet and German armies. Finally captured by us in Normandy in 1944. True story, albeit a bit dramatized.

[wizkid]

The biggest problem we had with zeros early on was with our tactics not with our planes. The US pilots often made the mistake of playing to the zeros strengths and getting into low speed turning fights. When we fought based on our strengths many of our planes at the start of the war were more than a match for the zero.

Take the P40 for example, it had a superb kill ratio against the zero when flown properly. Here is a good take on this subject:

P-40 vs. Zero

I just read an interesting article about the P-40, and some of it was written by a 14th. Air Force pilot who said a few things I had not heard before. The standard diving attack was mentioned, and was said to be effective, as the Flying Tigers proved earlier. This pilot said maintaining an airspeed of over 250 m.p.h. was the best way to even up the fight between a 40 and a Zero or Oscar. The Zero's agility of course was legendary at low speeds, but above 250 those large ailerons became a liability, and a roll at high speeds was extremely difficult due to the stick forces. A 40 would out-roll a Zero at high speeds, and a good 40 pilot could use this to great effect if the Zero pilot fell for it. Another factor mentioned was that for every successive Zero model, the contemporary 40 version was faster. A6M2 vs. P-40C, A6M3 vs. P-40E and F, A6M5 vs. P-40N. In each case, the pilot said the 40 had at least a 30 m.p.h. speed advantage. So, the 40 pilot could always break the engagement off. The P-40 of course had an even greater advantage in diving speeds, with well over 400 m.p.h. attainable with no risk of damage to the robust airframe. Early Zero's couldn't hit 350 without the risk of damage. The 14th. Air Force pilot also indicated that himself and many of his fellow pilots preferred the 40 to the P-51, as the high altitude capabilities of the 51 were not a factor in their theater. Seems like the more I read about the old P-40, the more I find out that it truly was by no means a second rate fighter. Most Japanese pilots had a great deal of respect for a competent pilot in a 40, but I have wondered what opinion the Luftwaffe pilots had of the Tomahawk.

[wizkid]

Yes, I know that the timing for the attack was tight but do not recall all the reasons why. I believe that the Japanese were desperate to attack the Dutch and British in South Asia to get at oil and they may have had weather constraints since the Japanese had to sail from the North to surprise the US.

but....

If the goal was to knock the US out of the war for an extended period of time or completely then you would have to go after the carriers, the subs and the fuel not the battleships, otherwise the attack was somewhat pointless. You were essentially just stirring up a US hornets nest and leaving the US with a lot of firepower to strike back at you almost immediately.

It is just hard for me to reconcile that someone who was purported to be such a brilliant admiral particularly in regards to his understanding of the importance of aircraft carriers could miss this.

...but hindsight is 20/20 and it was a complicated situation.

[elcid1970]

Real question: when the second wave returned to the Jap carriers reporting that no American carriers were in Pearl Harbor during the attack, did Nagumo and Yamamoto and Fuchida each say to themselves,

“We have royally f***ed ourselves!!”

Wait - Yamamoto is alledged to have remarked about awaking a sleeping giant & filling it with a terrible resolve. Too bad we never got to interview him after the war.

[elteemike]

Excerpts from: “Reflections on Pearl Harbor ” by Admiral Chester Nimitz.

“Sunday, December 7th, 1941—Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington, D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He told Admiral Nimitz about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat—you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war.

On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked.

As the boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, “Well Admiral sir, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?”

Admiral Nimitz’s reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice.

Admiral Nimitz said, “The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?”

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, “What do you mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?”

Nimitz explained:

Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk—we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America . And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is on top of the ground in storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.

That’s why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, or God was taking care of America.”

[DesertRhino]

http://www.chuckhawks.com/p40.htm

You’ll like this article. He recounts an instance in Italy where 22 P-40s encountered 40 109s. Half the German force was shot down for a loss of one. Checkertails.
The Russians also had great success with the P-40 and P-39.
The P-40 was also great in North Africa.

The key to P-40 success was that the fight needed to happen below 16,000 ft. This was Africa, Pacific, and Russian front, but not in Europe where it was unable to compete.

[wizkid]

The shambolic nature of the American attacks at Midway certainly disconcerted the Japanese. On one hand, they admired the almost suicidal tenacity of the US bomber and torpedo pilots who risked annihilation by attacking in an uncoordinated fashion many times without fighter escort. On the other, they thought that they could beat off these attacks and eventually defeat the Americans with their superior coordination.

The Shattered Sword did a good job portraying this and going into great detail regarding some of these doomed US attacks that are not very well known. These include attacks on the Japanese fleet by B17 bombers, Marauder bombers rigged to hold torpedoes and, incredibly, torpedo laden Catalina flying boats. Here is an article that describes some of these attacks:

Naval History Blog - Nimitz and the Battle of Miday

From Midway he learned that the B-17s sent against the invasion force found and attacked it 570 miles out. They reported having hit two battleships or heavy cruisers and two transports—news that the CinCPac staff received with a certain amount of skepticism. In the early evening, four Catalina amphibians took off from Midway for a moonlight torpedo attack on the invasion force.

Here is a good rendering of the Marauder squadron attack on the Akagi:

Shot Across the Bow

I believe that some Japanese sailors even sent up a cheer to the Marauders in respect for their gallantry in the face of suicidal odds. Here is a good article about it:

The Pacific War Org - The Charge of the B-26 Marauders at Miday

[Domangart]

I had a bad book that stated that Japan would attack at Pearl Harbor. It was printed in 1934.

[Axenolith]

Hans-Joachim Marseille (Luftwaffe) went after 16 (P-40’s) at once and got 6, 3 of which were piloted by allied aces. He was a prodigy though, his best day was 17 kills in 3 sorties, always in the Me-109.

It’s an interesting speculation as to whether or not he would have neared or bested Eric Hartmann if he hadn’t died while parachuting out of a mechanical failure in September of 42. He had 158 or so kills then and Hartmann ended the war with 352. I read once that Hartmann got some harsh Russian treatment when he jokingly related how Marseille actually had more than him because they “counted 1 western front aircraft kill as equal to 3 Russian”.

[GeronL]

Japan was using Pearl Harbor for pilot bombing-attack training for at least that long before the actual attack, they had a full size mock-up apparently. None of this was a big secret.

[fredhead]

During war games in 1938, the American Navy “hostile” forces led by Admiral Harry E. Yarnell “attacked” Pearl Harbor just as the Japanese did three years later.

We showed them how to do it.