The Battle of Midway Ruined the War Against ISIS

The Fiscal Times via Yahoo! Finance ^ | June 9, 2015 5:30 AM | Andrew L. Peek

[Pan_Yan]

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First, the history. Although by 1944 the war’s outcome was never in doubt, if all efforts failed the Soviet Army would eventually have crushed the Reich by itself. Victory at that point was a national and industrial effort, and would belong to the countries with the most steel plants and masses of citizens under arms.

Midway was different. It was not a national effort but instead a battle of individuals, a rickety shootout by a few highly trained people under extremely confused conditions, and — incredibly — the underdog won. There’s no reason the United States, with a second-string commander, green troops and two-and-a-half aircraft carriers, should have been able to defeat the Japanese with their four carriers and the most experienced planes, pilots and admirals in the world.

Had Japan annihilated the rest of the Pacific Fleet carriers, it would have taken Midway. With land-based planes on Midway, it would have taken Hawaii. With Hawaii…well, who knows? Maybe San Francisco, maybe Alaska. Maybe pause in the Pacific and knock out the British in India. And then maybe peace, under a new Pax Japania.

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In the long run, the Battle of Midway and other boldface WWII names like D-Day and the Bulge have perhaps warped America’s national memory of conflict. War in the public consciousness — the right wars, anyway — became a mostly clean duel of professionals, what we are pleased to call the “American way of war,” rather than the extended contests of national will and resources they more accurately resemble.

World War II erased every memory of the groaning exertion of the Civil War, which was something similar to what the Soviets were fighting against the Nazis.

[X Fretensis]

pretty much. That and the Lend Lease program provided the Soviets with the tools to defeat the Germans.

[MasterGunner01]

Other than for training on the East Coast by older boats, all new construction boats went to the Pacific Theater of Operations where the boats deployed from Pearl Harbor (ComSubPac) or Australia (ComSubSouWestPac). The Gato, Balao, and Tench class boats became the killers of the Imperial Navy and merchant marine in the Pacific War.

The Germans lost the Battle of the Atlantic — trying to strangle the flow of war materials to the UK and Russia. Of 1,158 boats built, Germany lost 781 submarines and 30,000 of 40,000 submariners.

American submarines accomplished with the Japanese Empire what the Germans failed to do in the Atlantic Theater of Operations and with with lesser forces deployed. The US Navy sent 288 submarines of all types against Japan. The US Navy submarine force represented 1.6% of US Navy personnel. The US Navy lost 52 boats with a casualty rate of 22% killed — highest of all the US military branches. It destroyed 2/3 of the Japanese merchant fleet and 1/3 of the IJN afloat on 7 December 1941. American submariners won their war in the Pacific Theater.

[central_va]

Jap sonar sucked.

In the Atlantic if the Germans had stoppled building the type VII and IX, and went straight to the type XXI, which they could have done, we would have lost that battle.

[MasterGunner01]

Like so many things the Germans did, when it came to submarines, the Type XXI came into service in too few numbers and too late in the war to affect the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic.

[MasterGunner01]

Unlike the Allied response to the Battle of the Atlantic where all sorts of technology was arrayed against the U-boats: long range patrol bombers (seaplane and land based); blimps for convoy escort; hunter-killer groups of “Jeep” carriers and destroyer escorts; convoys; HF direction finding; state of the art radar and sonar; improved ASW weapons like homing torpedoes, Hedge Hogs, and redesigned depth charges - Japan never got its ASW act together at any time during the Pacific War. Japanese radar and sonar sucked; the IJN had no equivalents to the CVE/De hunter-killer groups; Japan did not have the types and numbers of long range ASW aircraft. Their ASW efforts can best be described as amateurish.

[central_va]

Ironic since their basic destroyer design was the best of all belligerents. If they had taken sonar/radar seriously from the beginning the war would have been much more difficult for us. The very last sets they were making were almost as good as ours but that was in 1945!

[central_va]

The type XXI was a game changer. It was available in 1943.

[MasterGunner01]

I have never understood why the Japanese never got their act together in the ASW arena. The war was nearly over when they started to get serious and it was literally “a bridge too far”.

The IJN also never figured out how to employ their submarines as aggressively as the USN did from 8 December 1941 onwards. The Japanese blazed tactical and technological trails in many ways at the start of the Pacific War. But, they allowed the US to catch up and surpass them as they appeared to flounder.

[MasterGunner01]

Very true the Type XXI was a game changer; so was the Messerschmidt Me-262. However, decisions were made (in addition to the Allied bombing of the Reich) that rendered these new weapons too few and too late to change the European War outcome. The Germans had a lot of other promising designs that would have caused the Allies much trouble, but these super weapons were too few and too late.