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In a cold and calculating way it's a good thing that the Pacific Fleet was so crippled in the Pearl Harbor attack. If it survived mostly intact it would have been ordered to steam toward the Philippines as per Case Orange. And there is no doubt that every single ship would have gone down with all hands aboard somewhere in the deep waters of the Pacific. At least with Pearl Harbor most of the men were able to escape the ships and later have them repaired.
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Jul 4, 2013 19:42
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Well, it would be ~10 BB with ~2-3 fleet carriers with significant land based air support.
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Jul 4, 2013 19:46
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MacArthur wanted China to get involved in Korea so he could use nukes. MacArthur was a shitbag. Read "The Coldest Winter" for a better narrative as to why.
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Jul 4, 2013 19:47
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Baloogan posted:Well, it would be ~10 BB with ~2-3 fleet carriers with significant land based air support. Against the circa 1941 Kido Butai. It would have been a disaster.
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Jul 4, 2013 19:53
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Baloogan posted:MacArthur thought (and was told) that he would receive reinforcements in the Philippines. Also the way to attack amphibious landings is to walk over to them and shoot them enough that you push them off the island that you are on. The Japanese spent 3 years learning that without sufficiently superior forces that's actually the wrong move. The way to defeat amphibious landings is to use your interior lines to concentrate force faster than the attacker then destroy them. If you can't get that concentration of force for some reason then you need to dig in somewhere that needs to be attacked and hope that the nature of amphibious attacks means that the attackers don't have the logistical capacity to deploy the firepower necessary to dig you back out.
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Jul 4, 2013 20:03
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Alchenar posted:The Japanese spent 3 years learning that without sufficiently superior forces that's actually the wrong move. Given how thinly spread the Japanese army was across the pacific even slowing down the conquest of the Phillipines by a couple of weeks would have massive consequences. Singapore might hold for example without the extra division of reinforcements brought over by the Japanese from the Philippines.
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Jul 4, 2013 20:23
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:In a cold and calculating way it's a good thing that the Pacific Fleet was so crippled in the Pearl Harbor attack. If it survived mostly intact it would have been ordered to steam toward the Philippines as per Case Orange. And there is no doubt that every single ship would have gone down with all hands aboard somewhere in the deep waters of the Pacific. At least with Pearl Harbor most of the men were able to escape the ships and later have them repaired. No, no it wouldn't. Not at all. Emphatically not. This is a popular misconception about Plan Orange (which had been replaced by Plan Rainbow 5 by late 1941 anyway). The "Through Ticket to Manila" strategy had been dead and buried since the early 1930s. In actual fact the Pacific Fleet was restricted by Washington to a defensive posture in the eastern Pacific (protecting a strategic line that basically ran Midway-Johnston-Palmyra). Admiral Kimmel had a plan to try and lure the Japanese fleet into a battle off Wake Island so he could force a surface action with his battleships (and parts of that plan bear remarkable similarity to American deployments at Midway), and was almost able to bring about a small-scale version of this when Nagumo sent two carriers to support the second (successful) landing attempt. Frank Fletcher and the Saratoga's Task Force 14 plus a relief convoy were en route to Wake and might've been able to catch the Japanese by surprise, but Kimmel was relieved in the middle of the operation and his replacement called the whole thing off.
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Jul 4, 2013 20:27
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Well then, turns out I learned something new.
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Jul 4, 2013 20:52
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:In a cold and calculating way it's a good thing that the Pacific Fleet was so crippled in the Pearl Harbor attack. If it survived mostly intact it would have been ordered to steam toward the Philippines as per Case Orange. And there is no doubt that every single ship would have gone down with all hands aboard somewhere in the deep waters of the Pacific. At least with Pearl Harbor most of the men were able to escape the ships and later have them repaired. I've heard this line of reasoning before and I'm not entirely convinced by it. Why? The Pearl Harbor attack was largely successful because it was an attack against unprepared, (mostly) stationary targets. For obvious reasons, this made the Japanese attack far easier. It also allowed the Japanese to use air-dropped weapons with far better effect on target. For one, torpedo plane accuracy drops rapidly against maneuvering targets that are shooting back. For example, look at the abysmally low hit rates during Midway or the Channel Dash. What about Prince of Wales, Repulse, or Hermes, you say? Those were sunk by Japanese aircraft while at sea! Yes yes, they were. But in all those cases, these ships were either under-escorted or woefully under-armed (e.g. Hermes had no aircraft and thus no CAP). Survival rates for task forces go up dramatically when they can maneuver and shoot back. Though they paled in comparison to task forces protected by the US Navy's Big Blue Blanket air defense system later in the war, early-war US task forces were still not easy pickings for Japanese aviators. Secondly, with the US fleet at sea rather than in Pearl, the Kido Butai would have lost the ability to use their 'Kates' as level bombers. In all the other post-Pearl engagements, the IJN always uses their 'Kates' as torpedo aircraft rather than using some as level bombers like they did at Pearl. Why? Level bombing is woefully ineffective against warships maneuvering at speed. Plenty of historical examples illustrate this. Now, why are these two factors important? If you look at the US Navy's losses at Pearl Harbor, particularly the catastrophic losses like Arizona or Utah, torpedo bombers or the 16 inch AP bombs from level-bombing 'Kates' are the near-universal culprits. And as we've seen, the effectiveness of those weapons drops dramatically the moment you put the battleship squadron at sea, surround it with escorts and let it shoot back.
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Jul 5, 2013 00:15
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Alchenar posted:The Japanese spent 3 years learning that without sufficiently superior forces that's actually the wrong move. I guess what I should have said was "The doctrine at the time to combat amphibious landings was..."
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Jul 5, 2013 00:21
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People here (as in, my country) basically take everything the US ever said and spring some conspiracy/paranoia thing over it. The main theory regarding Pearl Harbor is that the Americans knew, but they let it happen so they could enter the war. How bullshit is this theory?
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Jul 5, 2013 04:06
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Azran posted:People here (as in, my country) basically take everything the US ever said and spring some conspiracy/paranoia thing over it. The main theory regarding Pearl Harbor is that the Americans knew, but they let it happen so they could enter the war. Grade A, certified 100% pure bullshit. If anything, Roosevelt was the one trying to provoke an incident with Japan in the Fear East (read up on the USS Isabel's activities in early December. She was sent into the South China Sea to poke around Japanese-controlled waters in the hopes that she'd be attacked in a Panay 2.0 incident, giving the U.S. a causus belli to declare war. The Pacific Fleet had been the centerpiece of American war planning against Japan for almost four decades. Why would they suddenly decide to sacrifice it in a way that left it unable to fulfill its wartime role? Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 04:16
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Azran posted:People here (as in, my country) basically take everything the US ever said and spring some conspiracy/paranoia thing over it. The main theory regarding Pearl Harbor is that the Americans knew, but they let it happen so they could enter the war. At least as bullshit as 9/11 was an inside job.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:22
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I have it on good authority that the Pearl Harbor attack was a false flag operation planned and enacted by one Barack Hussein Obama.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:41
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Azran posted:People here (as in, my country) basically take everything the US ever said and spring some conspiracy/paranoia thing over it. The main theory regarding Pearl Harbor is that the Americans knew, but they let it happen so they could enter the war. Were you to travel back in time to December 6th and told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor and cripple the US Pacific fleet the very next day, they would probably laugh you out of the room. Nobody in their right mind thought an attack like that was even plausible, as it was believed that it would be impossible for a Japanese fleet (Or indeed any fleet) to travel so far from their home port while remaining undetected. Even if a fleet did manage to make it that far without running out of fuel, Pearl Harbor itself was believed to be an invulnerable fortress, thanks to both newly-installed radar installations that could warn of an incoming attack and the shallow waters of the harbor itself, which was believed to be torpedo-proof. What the US didn't know, of course, was that the Japanese had managed to eliminate two of their defenses-new techniques allowed them to refuel their ships from dedicated tankers while underway, and the addition of wooden fins on their air-dropped torpedoes allowed them to run shallow enough to be used in in the waters of Pearl. While the Japanese didn't have anything to counter the US's land-based radar installations, by sheer luck they didn't have to, thanks to rookie technicians that mistook the incoming raid for an expected flight of B-17s from the mainland. Funnily enough, the US had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and knew several several hours before the attack that Japan was planning to attack somewhere, which most people believed would be the Philippines. However, thanks to a clerical mistake that filed the message under standard traffic instead of the priority message that it was, Pearl Harbor wasn't informed until several days afterwards that the Japanese were likely to attack US-held assets in the Pacific.  Edit: It's been a while since I've read up on the attack and some of the information above may be slightly inaccurate, so feel free to correct me.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:18
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I think part of the implausibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor was that people didn't quite know what a carrier was capable of yet. The Americans still operated their carriers as single units instead of as a Japanese Carrier Division, where a deck-load of fighters from one carrier would join with a deck-load of bombers from another carrier so a whole formation could form up that much sooner. Even then, even the Japanese considered carriers to be about scouts and harassment: They would harry surface forces on their way to the Decisive Battle so that their side would have more Battleships than the other guy, but it was still the Battleships that would do the heavy lifting. Of course, people learned right quick just what the carrier was capable of, but even by the Battle of Midway the USN was still operating carriers somewhat singly.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:48
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Nah, that sounds about right. As of Dec. 6th, the Japanese and the US were still in the middle of diplomatic talks as well. The notion that the diplomatic talks were a façade designed to lull the US into a false sense of security would have been outlandish, even bizarre to US officials. And yet that appears to have been the case.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:49
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sullat posted:Nah, that sounds about right. As of Dec. 6th, the Japanese and the US were still in the middle of diplomatic talks as well. The notion that the diplomatic talks were a façade designed to lull the US into a false sense of security would have been outlandish, even bizarre to US officials. And yet that appears to have been the case. The kicker, of course, is that Japan actually planned on delivering an ultimatum to the US at 1 PM Washington time, just before the first bombers would be hitting Pearl. Because of delays in transcribing the document, however (US Codebreakers were actually able to intercept it, print it out, and read it faster than the the Japanese embassy was), the Japanese ambassador wasn't able to deliver it until well after the attack had begun.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:03
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Azran posted:People here (as in, my country) basically take everything the US ever said and spring some conspiracy/paranoia thing over it. The main theory regarding Pearl Harbor is that the Americans knew, but they let it happen so they could enter the war. Aside from the arguments already presented, I have to point out that an attack that was successfully repelled would still be plenty of reason for America to declare war. Roosevelt was nowhere near crazy enough to gamble the entire fleet when a carefully routed telegram saying something like "intelligence sources say Japanese carriers have been practicing air attacks on harbors, make all necessary preparations for air defense against carrier aircraft which may attack without warning" would have probably saved a lot of lives. I read one of the bestsellers about Pearl after a friend insisted it was really impressive. The author had a lot of rhetoric but couldn't connect all the dots. He showed fairly convincingly that a) the necessary intelligence to predict the Pearl Harbor attack was out there, and b) Roosevelt and other US leaders were looking for ways to involve the US in the war. The author just asserted that the failure to use the available intelligence must have been caused by a desire not to do so, and hence it was all Roosevelt's fault. There's no proof and not much logic. Re battle at sea, the big worry in my mind is less the Kido Butai and more scads of Japanese cruisers whose torpedo capabilities were totally unknown to us. The performance of the USN in the surface actions around the Solomons in 1943 does not inspire confidence in the battle fleet's ability to defeat the IJN in fleet action.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:16
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zoux posted:Someone once told me that the Soviet Army was worried that its troops lacked combat experience, so it was a way to season them, but that always seemed to me like a dumbass reason to get involved in a huge rear end war. I don't think that holds up much. Outside a few VDV and Spetsnaz units, the soviet war in Afghanistan was a pretty half-assed affair; Category B troops with old equipment like BMP-1s and T-62s made up the bulk of the intervention.
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Jul 5, 2013 13:05
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Oxford Comma posted:MacArthur wanted China to get involved in Korea so he could use nukes. That MacArthur desired Chinese involvement runs contrary to all other sources I've read. The most only serious narrative I've found is that MacArthur did not consider the Chinese interested enough in Korea to actually get involved militarily. Once they did he sought to expand the war, to the Chinese mainland, but this is post-facto. I would like to read The Coldest Winter but I would very seriously like to know what evidence Halberstam presents that MacArthur 'wanted China to get involved'. This clashes with the aforementioned arguments presented by James on MacArthur's desire to deploy the atom bomb. Azran posted:People here (as in, my country) basically take everything the US ever said and spring some conspiracy/paranoia thing over it. The main theory regarding Pearl Harbor is that the Americans knew, but they let it happen so they could enter the war. What country is this, that I may further develop my stereotypes about its people?
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Jul 5, 2013 15:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:What country is this, that I may further develop my stereotypes about its people? I'd rather develop the stereotypes about the US. Cowardly- germany and japan both declared war on the US. The US was in a reactive war rather than a country with a sense of moral standards. This can be seen historically in the way they have treated the rest of the world. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 5, 2013 16:16
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General China posted:I'd rather develop the stereotypes about the US. Cowardly- germany and japan both declared war on the US. The US was in a reactive war rather than a country with a sense of moral standards. This can be seen historically in the way they have treated the rest of the world. nah brah we just think (incorrectly) that the rest of the world can handle its own poo poo without our help.
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Jul 5, 2013 16:29
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I don't think it is fair to call anyone in the thirties a coward with the whole 1st World War thing in living memory. Especially countries that fought in it.
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Jul 5, 2013 16:32
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General China posted:The US was in a reactive war rather than a country with a sense of moral standards. This sentence is glorious. Also can we somehow restrict this guy from posting in this thread
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Jul 5, 2013 16:32
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bewbies posted:This sentence is glorious. NO DON'T DIDN'T YOU READ MY WARNING?! Also General China what uni do you go to or are you still in school?
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Jul 5, 2013 17:39
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:That MacArthur desired Chinese involvement runs contrary to all other sources I've read. The most only serious narrative I've found is that MacArthur did not consider the Chinese interested enough in Korea to actually get involved militarily. Once they did he sought to expand the war, to the Chinese mainland, but this is post-facto. I would like to read The Coldest Winter but I would very seriously like to know what evidence Halberstam presents that MacArthur 'wanted China to get involved'. Halberstam doesn't present that. Halberstam presents that MacArthur was dead certain that the Chinese wouldn't get involved, partly because he didn't want to hear anything to the contrary and was so surrounded by sycophants who put the best possible spin on any intelligence to keep their boss happy. An entire company of Chinese troops who'd moved south of the Yalu and got wiped out were portrayed as just a few Chinese volunteers fighting in an NK unit, that sort of thing. What evidence wasn't filtered out by his shitheaded staff by the time it got to him was interpreted as just plain wrong, the product of peons who didn't understand the Asiatic mindset like Mac himself did.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:53
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Rodrigo Diaz, would you mind mentioning some titles that deal with the Pearl Harbor attack and debunk the "Roosevelt did it on purpose theory"? Mentioned it at my university after the professor said the US allowed the attack to happen, and got laughed at.  I'd love to have some concrete evidence to support my claims.I don't know why I bother - Argentinian people think Pearl Harbor, The Twin Towers and the JFK assassination were all inside-jobs. Same with the Lincoln assassination. VVV Yeah, I guess I'll ask around. Spanish or English, a source is a source. Thanks a lot though.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:09
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Ajaja requete bien. I am not a strong WWII scholar, so I cannot recommend anything, really. You're better off asking VVG or bewbies. If you're asking me in the hopes I know some Spanish-language sources I must disappoint you even further because the Spanish authors I read are all for the Middle Ages. Lincoln, though? That is hilarious.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:29
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I read through the whole thread but it took me a while, I might have forgotten big parts of it so excuse me if this has already been asked. Also, military history is not my area of expertise, I hope this is not a stupid question. My favorite alt-hist fantasy is what if the Polish had not turned the tide at the 1920 Battle of Warsaw. Did the Red Army have sufficient resources to power through to Germany, did they have good enough supply lines to keep moving west, would they have significantly affected the outcome of the German revolution? "Lenin’s aim was to infiltrate the borderlands, set up communist governments there, as well as in Poland, and reach Germany where he expected a socialist (communist) revolution to break out." Source (the wiki page is surprisingly thoroughly sourced). Could the red army have succeeded in crossing Poland and linking up with the German communists, if so would this have had a big impact? E: trimming the quote SaltyJesus fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 19:12
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SaltyJesus posted:"Lenin’s aim was to infiltrate the borderlands, set up communist governments there, as well as in Poland, and reach Germany where he expected a socialist (communist) revolution to break out." Source (the wiki page is surprisingly thoroughly sourced). Could the red army have succeeded in crossing Poland and linking up with the German communists, if so would this have had a big impact? Given that most of the uprisings were over by 1920, the big one was in Bavaria not like Prussia, and having foreign troops enter one's soil always tends to do a number on socialist internationalism...
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Jul 5, 2013 19:41
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Stupid question, gotcha. I'll go back to just reading then.
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Jul 5, 2013 19:52
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No, the battle of Warsaw was in 1920 by which time the freikorps had pretty successfully smashed the power of the left in Germany. Additionally after taking Warsaw the red army would still have over 300 more miles to push through with makhno's black army and Wrangl's army of whites threatening their supply lines.
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Jul 5, 2013 19:54
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Phanatic posted:Halberstam doesn't present that. Halberstam presents that MacArthur was dead certain that the Chinese wouldn't get involved, partly because he didn't want to hear anything to the contrary and was so surrounded by sycophants who put the best possible spin on any intelligence to keep their boss happy. An entire company of Chinese troops who'd moved south of the Yalu and got wiped out were portrayed as just a few Chinese volunteers fighting in an NK unit, that sort of thing. What evidence wasn't filtered out by his shitheaded staff by the time it got to him was interpreted as just plain wrong, the product of peons who didn't understand the Asiatic mindset like Mac himself did. Asiatic mindset? Might want to rephrase that there buddy. I think I know what you're getting at, but seriously. Also that is basically the narrative presented on MacArthur since the 60s at the latest so it's good to hear that Halberstam concurs. My favorite book on the subject so far has been Stanley Sandler's No Victors, No Vanquished but that seems drier than Coldest Winter.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:17
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Asiatic mindset? Might want to rephrase that there buddy. I think I know what you're getting at, but seriously. The "asiatic mindset" thing was Phanatic paraphrasing MacArthur. He'd talk about it and his unique understanding of it all the time, and use that as an excuse to discount advice or intel from other sources that disagreed with him.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:24
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Asiatic mindset? Might want to rephrase that there buddy. I think I know what you're getting at, but seriously. I'm plainly intending that in MacArthur's grandiose voice. Not suggesting that's an actual thing, but it was the way he thought.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:26
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Phanatic posted:I'm plainly intending that in MacArthur's grandiose voice. Not suggesting that's an actual thing, but it was the way he thought. Ah, of course. Not firing on all cylinders today, my mistake.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:38
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Oxford Comma posted:MacArthur wanted China to get involved in Korea so he could use nukes. The hilarious thing is when Eisenhower took office, his strategy to get peace on the peninsula was to threaten the Chinese with the use of nuclear weapons, and it worked. MacArthur was indeed a shitbag, but no one ever points the finger at Ike for taking the same exact stance.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:39
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VikingSkull posted:The hilarious thing is when Eisenhower took office, his strategy to get peace on the peninsula was to threaten the Chinese with the use of nuclear weapons, and it worked. Same methods maybe, but not the same stance. MacArthur was all for expanding the war and wanted to cross the Yalu. Ike wanted to end the war and the atomic stick was one way to do that. Though both were right-on in their analysis that the Chinese were the ones running the show, even though the North Koreans apparently had had enough of being shelled, bombed, and generally attritted and wanted to end the war.
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Jul 5, 2013 21:52
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Zorak of Michigan posted:The performance of the USN in the surface actions around the Solomons in 1943 does not inspire confidence in the battle fleet's ability to defeat the IJN in fleet action. Both the USN and the IJN made their fair share of mistakes in the Solomons.
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Jul 5, 2013 21:56
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