Posted on 08/06/2015 6:27:35 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Big Mistake. A good example of a tactical victory and a strategic defeat.
I shock some people when I tell that that Pearl Harbor was the best of a bad situation. Consider these IFs:
1) If the ships had been moored at the alternate anchorage at Lahaina Roads, they would have sunk in much deeper water, making salvage much more difficult, if not impossible. Sunk at Pearl Harbor, the depth was around 40' with all ships superstructure above water, save the Oklahoma. Six months later, all but two were back in action.
2) Even if the radar warning or the destroyers depth charge report had been acted on immediately, we couldn't have gotten enough aircraft in the air in time. If the ships had enough warning to get out to deeper, open water, it would have been a repeat of the Repulse/Prince of Wales disaster.
3) If the attack had wiped out the oil tanks, we would have had to pull the fleet back to the States.
4) If the Japanese typist had been faster at translating the final reply, the U.S. would have received the declaration (or words to that effect) minutes before the attack and the "Sneak Attack" charge that galvanized America could not have been made. (Japs cut the timing too close.)
One other point. The final idiocy was Hitler's declaration of war a few days later. I was just eight years old then and clearly remember everyone, even the America Firsters, were blind with rage against the Japanese. It is my belief that if he had stayed out, we would have said Hitler was Europe's problem and expended all our efforts into crushing Japan.
I agree with you as to Hitler’s stupidity in declaring war. Some of his general’s stated he never grasped the meaning of America’s productive capacity.
You have some more reading to do, Sarge. The last WWII mission wasn't a B-29 atomic strike. And it may have done as much to end the war as the two A-bomb missions did. AND it helped keep the Soviets from occupying parts of Japan.
The Last Mission: The Secret History of World War II's Final Battl
The real hard underlying truth is that the two bombs prevented the Japanese people from being virtually annihilated and reduced to the same status of today’s North Korea.
One has only to read the Japanese accounts of the dire circumstances of the home islands population. They were on the verge of starvation. Rations were drastically reduced with no food being imported. They were eating acorns when they could find them. Pulling up ditch weeds for food. Their young men were already dying in untold numbers. The losses of another million or more would have left with with a stunted postwar population with little chance of recovery for generations.
And the Japanese War Council was telling them to gather rocks, to sharpen sticks and farm tools to fend off the coming invaders. This across the land that had been devastated by the huge regular convenional bombing raids that did far greater damage with their incendiary loads. Their industrial base was crumbled into dust. An American naval blockade would have denied them fuel, food, and raw materials. Totally cut off from the rest of the world and winter coming on, a winter that would have killed many, many more. Freezing, starvation and disease was what was in store for them.
The Japanese should mark August 6 as the day that ended the insane war set upon them by their Emperor and his General Staff. Every post war advance and their economic rebirth with the attendant improvement in their health and living standard stems from those two bombs. They weren’t the last bombs but they signaled the end,
My advice for the Japanese is to kneel and bow to the rising sun in the east on August 6 and thank whatever god they worship for the mercy extended to them by the USA.
Not quite. The view of the Japanese military hardliners was that the atomic bombing [pico-dan] of Japanese cities had driven the divine emperor insane, and that their obligation girito protect his honor was to kill the emperor to prevent the dissemination of his 15 August gyokuon-hōsō Imperial Rescript of Surrender, which they viewed would dishonor him, and then die themselves in battle.
As an example into their mindset: if President Obama were to unilaterally surrender to the Iranians and agree to have the United States submit to a Sharia law, what do you think the reaction of most Americans, and hopefully most of our military, would be?
Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.
-- Fleet Admiral William Frederick *Bull* Halsey, Jr., Remark in December 1941, after the attack of Pearl Harbor, as quoted in Roger Parkinson, Attack on Pearl Harbour. (1973), p. 117
Oooo, that looks GOOD!
Pretty much the same observations made by tactician Minoru Genda, except that his evaluation was made before the attack was made.
It's excellent. I got my copy for $.98, paperback, in a closeout bin. The author is both a pretty fair historian, and, imo, understands what a combat aircrew [or tank crew, or submarine crew, or infantry squad] is all about.
Compliance. Because tolerance. (/sarc barely off)
I believe the same with Yamamoto. Both knew the results of taking on a technological and industrial giant. I look on them as the first Kamikazes.
Given that the Japanese resistance got exponentially more rabid as we got closer and closer to the homeland, there is no rational way to believe they would ever surrender without a nuclear attack.
Oh some, even many, to be sure. But as many as the three to nine per cent who actively supported and prosecuted the *Revolutionary War* to separate us from the British. I think so; at least that.
From my limited, sinful, fleshly perspective, it's a good thing we were able to end the war when we did.
But I'm not sure He works like that, and I'm not sure the uses of critical masses of U235 and Pu239 were His idea.
Remembering that they still had more than 5,000 effective military aircraft and enough fuel reserves to send them out on one-way bombing missions. As well as fast, light coastal vessels that could accomplish much the same thing in the event of any D-day crush of landing craft, especially at night. And at least enough hand grenades and mortar rounds that every *civilian* man, woman and child over the age of five years would have one.
Right title, right link, wrong illustration.
I don't reckon He arranged the human central nervous system to be such an efficient receptor for organophosphate acetylcholinesterase inhibitors either.
Perhaps Lord Kali or Shiva had a bit more to do with that end of things. Or for those who follow the Asatruist pantheon, Loki [or Hveðrungr.]
Thank you.
I learned something new today.
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summarized from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Atomic_bombings_and_final_attacks
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August 6th-Hiroshima was bombed
August 9th-Nagasaki was bombed
August 9th & 10th-B29s attack an oil target and a factory in Tokyo
August 10th-Japanese began negotiations about the terms of surrender
August 13th-B29s drop copies of the Japanese conditional offer to surrender over Japanese cities
August 14th-828 B29s and 186 fighters attack Iwakuni, Osaka, Tokoyama, Kumagaya, and Isesaki
These were the last attacks conducted against Japan by heavy bombers
August 15th-at noon, Hirohito made a radio broadcast announcing surrender
There was once a writeup at “http://www.webwizpro.com/1945InvasionofJapan.html";, no longer there, which detailed what an invasion of Japan would likely have looked like.
It was a long litany of melted anti-aircraft gun barrels, swarms of kamakazi torpedo boats, cave-emplaced artillery, and millions of civilians with pointy sticks.
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