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Unluckyimmortal posted:Not only that but he threw his uniform cap on the floor and stomped on it, then sulked for an hour before ordering his force to assist Taffy 3. Go take a wander round GiP some day.
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Nov 18, 2013 21:36
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So how big an impact did resistance forces have on the course of the war? From what I can tell(at least in Southeast Asia), they were to a large degree more effective at wasting enemy resources to fix the inconveniences and hunting down the insurgents than doing any real damage. Of course, the situation might be different here(insurgents going into the jungle might as well have vanished off the face of the earth and not a whole lot of fighting went on after the Japanese took the area). Xlorp posted:Any chance it was a deliberate needle by the communications officer? Halsey can't have been the first to figure out how badly he'd screwed the pooch. Might be a very good chance, he could easily foist that off as a trivial mistake, and as comms, he should be pretty well aware of how screwed said pooch is, short of actually being someone directing the conflict. Pulling a sulk like that is heinously unprofessional in a military leader though.
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Nov 18, 2013 21:47
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Man thank christ we had Ike, Marshall and Nimitz, I shudder to think of the alt histories without them. e: and King too
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Nov 18, 2013 21:51
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Was the Battle of Leyte Gulf the one where an American ship closed so close to a larger Japanese ship that it couldn't be fired upon, but also didn't have the firepower to sink the Japanese ship? I remember reading something about a smaller vessel shredding the superstructure of a large Japanese ship from very close range, not certain which battle it was.
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Nov 18, 2013 22:13
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was the Battle of Leyte Gulf the one where an American ship closed so close to a larger Japanese ship that it couldn't be fired upon, but also didn't have the firepower to sink the Japanese ship? I remember reading something about a smaller vessel shredding the superstructure of a large Japanese ship from very close range, not certain which battle it was. Yes, that was the USS Samuel B. Roberts. The Destroyer Escort that went toe to toe with a Heavy Cruiser and won. Part of Taffy 3. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 22:18
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was the Battle of Leyte Gulf the one where an American ship closed so close to a larger Japanese ship that it couldn't be fired upon, but also didn't have the firepower to sink the Japanese ship? I remember reading something about a smaller vessel shredding the superstructure of a large Japanese ship from very close range, not certain which battle it was. The USS Samuel B. Roberts. It was a destroyer escort that went toe to toe with with the heavy cruiser Chōkai. It wasn't able to sink it but it did severely damage it's bow and do a great deal of damage. They engaged for about an hour before one of the escort carriers got a lucky hit on the Chōkai's torpedoes. It then went off to pick a fight with the heavy cruiser Chikuma and managed to damage it before the battleship Kongō put three 14 inch shells in it. Considering each of those Japanese ships had much bigger guns, much heavier armor and were designed for surface warfare, that's a hell of a feat.
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Nov 18, 2013 22:26
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Man thank christ we had Ike, Marshall and Nimitz, I shudder to think of the alt histories without them. King hated the Brits and did everything he could to get more ressources into the pacific, which was very much the secondary theater. Not exactly the most rational of leaders. He did send the Yorktown to assist the Brits though, no doubt sniggering at the burn. People should also remember that pretty much everyone in these stories operates on maybe 4-6 hours of sleep a night plus the enormous pressure that high-level command brings with it. I mean I don't know I would have reacted if I was running a battle against three enemy forces at once and had to conduct an amphibious landing and then suddenly get a message from my CO going "Hey man where are your battleships, the world wonders!  ".
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Nov 18, 2013 22:28
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Sorry this is coming so late after the fact but I've transcribed all this poo poo now and i'm not going to chuck it out.Koramei posted:Mea culpa on the hand thing but none of that really contradicts what I said. Draw cuts are only useful in certain circumstances, and slicing through hard materials like bone is pretty much a no-go. Someone writhing around with their achilles cut is still dangerous, but less so than if they were mobile. This is why, for example, Roman legionaries were trained to slice the hamstrings in the legs of their enemies as Vegetius related. But don't just take my word for it. Let's consider Swinney and Crawford's article 'The Medical Realities of Historical Wounds' in Spada 2. Of the examples they bring, this historical one, an account by the 16th century surgeon William Clowe: quote:The cure of a certaine man, that was thrust through his body with a sword, which did enter first under the cartilage or gristle, called of the Anatomists Mucronata Cartilago [just under the breastbone] and the point of the sword passed through his body and so out the backe, in such manner that he which wounded the man did run his way, and did leave the sword sticking in his bodie: so the wounded man did with his owne hands pull out the sword, whom after I cured as as shall be here declared. The authors go on to add, 'Clowes would not have been surprised by the patient's lack of incapacitation.' Speaking of his own experience, one of the authors (I cannot tell whom) notes later in the article, quote:Surprisingly, even penetrating trauma to the heart is often not instantaneously fatal. In my capacity as an ER physician I have met a number of patients with penetrating trauma to or through the heart who remained active and conscious for a minute or more after the injury, have made it to the Emergency Room alive, and with the benefit of modern surgery, have survived their injuries. Although the survivors are not the majority of all individuals with penetrating trauma to the heart, it is clear that with adequate resolve a person so wounded in a swordfight might attempt one or more desperate attacks in the moments immediately after sustaining such an ultimately fatal injury. It is important to consider why incapacitation is so important, and highlights the rapier's deficiency: quote:Because of the rapier's reliance on thrusting, unless the swordsman's defense with the rapier was flawless, once past the point of the somewhat unwieldy rapier, even an opponent unskilled with a sword could quickly turn the matter from a swordfight into an equally deadly wrestling match-- effectively neutralizing much of the advantage of the trained rapier man. So why this emphasis on thrusting over everything else? Well, as I have pointed out above, thrusts to the body are often fatal, and thrusts are more efficient and in some ways harder to parry. By far the greatest culprit, however, is a misreading of Vegetius that one can see in Machiavelli's Arte Della Guerra, and DiGrassi's His True Arte of Defence. Vegetius contended (quite erroneously!) that a thrust 2" into the flesh was fatal, and that the Romans were taught not to cut (as in an overhand swing) because it left much of the body exposed. The men of the Renaissance, being consummate fellaters of all things Roman, took Vegetius as unimpeachable truth, and so here we are. a travelling HEGEL posted:Nah, you can do that. Look at half the guys in the engraving I posted. They've dropped the pikes and gone either to their swords (which I wouldn't have done, still too big--but then again my eyesight is so bad that if I stand at the butt end of a pike the point is blurry) or their cinquedeas or something (which would have been my choice). I think you're overestimating the importance of having a short sword. Consider this Wallhausen plate:  The swords here all seem long, and except for the sword of the man on the right in No. 4, standard size for medieval arming swords. And, indeed, Bad War shows a halberdier on the right with a long grip for use in two hands. Heck, look at this extended version of Bad War (click for huge):  You can see what is clearly a cut-and-thrust sword being raised high near the middle of the drawing, and the proportions of sword of the man with the scale cap, visible in both pictures, make me think it also has a blade length similar to a medieval arming sword. There's also a bec-de-corbin lurking on the right side of the image, which is interesting. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 22:28
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Of course thrusting weapons aren't as good at cutting; they're still good at thrusting. And thrusting is fine at incapacitating. About the only severed tendons that will guarantee someone out of a fight are in the wrist, which a thin thrusting sword won't have trouble with- someone writhing around with their knee or ankle slit is still dangerous.
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ArchangeI posted:King hated the Brits and did everything he could to get more ressources into the pacific, which was very much the secondary theater. Not exactly the most rational of leaders. He did send the Yorktown to assist the Brits though, no doubt sniggering at the burn. True but I would argue that the Pacific was the right place to be putting those resources and assets. Uboats are never going to be able to end the war on their own, and while carriers are great at an ASW role in the Atlantic, they have a better role in the Pacific, killing enemy carriers. If there was a need for capital ships before D-Day in the Atlantic, the Royal navy should have been able to handle it. ArchangeI posted:People should also remember that pretty much everyone in these stories operates on maybe 4-6 hours of sleep a night plus the enormous pressure that high-level command brings with it. I mean I don't know I would have reacted if I was running a battle against three enemy forces at once and had to conduct an amphibious landing and then suddenly get a message from my CO going "Hey man where are your battleships, the world wonders! This would be a decent defense of Halsey if the night before he hadn't received information that Kurita was coming back through the strait and that Ozawa's force was a decoy. Halsey saw the glory in sending the IJN carriers to the bottom and went after it with everything he had. It is a miracle for him that the battle off Samar didn't end in disaster or he would have been shitcanned so fast.
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Nov 18, 2013 22:45
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Raskolnikov38 posted:For anyone wondering about these two, Kurita's first flagship was sunk under him on the way to the the Philippines by American submarines. He transferred his flag from the sunk cruiser to Yamato and then stayed awake for the rest of the battle due to being shaken the gently caress up from that and near constant air attacks. Also not having a recognition book for CVEs is the least of his problems there as none of his sub-commanders can tell the difference between a DE and a heavy cruiser (about 300 feet and 13000 tons for you at home). I thought that this was actually due to the CVE/CV fuckup. Since they thought the CVEs were about twice the length they actually wore, they thought everything was more or less twice as big, as well as further away and faster. The gunners corrected for the distance errors, but it may not have percolated up to Kurita. Also if you're wondering why they didn't check the radar, the answer is that Japanese radar of WW2 was poo poo. VikingSkull posted:In the Battle of Surigao Strait, the Japanese Southern Force was a small and outdated screening fleet, tasked with passing through the Strait and linking up with Center Force. However two things worked against them. First was a strict order of radio silence, so they did not know Center Force had just taken a slight mauling and was not where they should have been. Second was that's precisely where 7th Fleet had set up a screen, in the mouth of Leyte Gulf. This part you can read elsewhere about as it's pretty incredible, featuring the last battleship on battleship action in history, as well as the last time a fleet "crossed the T" on an opponent. I'm not sure where you're getting that part about the strict radio silence from. There were several transmissions by Kurita (many of which were intercepted by Nishimura's force) and a few status updates by Nishimura. The Southern Force was also at least partially a decoy mission anyway. ArchangeI posted:Actually, if you consider Battleships to be the decisive weapon in a sea battle - and nothing until December 7th, 1941 seriously put that into doubt - then pouring your limited ressources into the biggest and best battleships human ingenuity can build makes sense. Japan could never win a war of attrition, so they went for a limited number of ships that could hope to stand up to two or three enemy ships. The idea behind the Yamato class was that any challenger would be too big to fit through the Panama Canal. If the US had known their true size earlier we might have put more priority on getting the Montana class built and then who knows what they would have done with them, or if they'd have built fewer aircraft carriers. The Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 specified the construction of 18 aircraft carriers and 7 battleships, which is a very fortunate ratio. Remember that Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet, and even Taranto is a few months away. Nevertheless Congress is going all in on aircraft carriers: "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces."
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Nov 18, 2013 22:52
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Raskolnikov38 posted:This would be a decent defense of Halsey if the night before he hadn't received information that Kurita was coming back through the strait and that Ozawa's force was a decoy. Halsey saw the glory in sending the IJN carriers to the bottom and went after it with everything he had. It is a miracle for him that the battle off Samar didn't end in disaster or he would have been shitcanned so fast. Yeah, that's the thing. Halsey knew that the Japanese were sending everything to Leyte, and he had already been engaged with the Yamato and company. His main objective was to provide defense for the landings. Staying at the San Bernardino Strait was a no-brainer, because he could screen against the battleships and his air arm could defend against any carrier strikes that might come. However, he chose glory over his mission, and almost fell into a (rather obvious) trap. wdarkk posted:I'm not sure where you're getting that part about the strict radio silence from. There were several transmissions by Kurita (many of which were intercepted by Nishimura's force) and a few status updates by Nishimura. The Southern Force was also at least partially a decoy mission anyway. Wikipedia, which might be where I went wrong. That being said I don't think the Southern Force would have done what it did had they had a complete picture of what Kurita was doing at the time. Lack of complete communication can be inserted for radio silence, I guess. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 22:54
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I think you're overestimating the importance of having a short sword. But my further point is that it appears that a bunch of people have switched to swords-that-look-like-rapiers by at least the 1630s, more than a hundred years after "Bad War" was printed. Whether this was the optimal choice, if made in a vacuum, isn't the point. Edit: The big version of "Bad War" is the prettiest thing I've seen today, and everyone should click on it. Although, at that size you kind of can't see my favorite part, which is the way the discoloration/spatter, whether deliberate or not, adds to the feeling of the scene. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 23:01
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wdarkk posted:The idea behind the Yamato class was that any challenger would be too big to fit through the Panama Canal. If the US had known their true size earlier we might have put more priority on getting the Montana class built and then who knows what they would have done with them, or if they'd have built fewer aircraft carriers. Remember that the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 specified the construction of 18 aircraft carriers and 7 battleships, which is a very fortunate ratio. Remember that Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet, and even Taranto is a few months away. Nevertheless Congress is going all in on aircraft carriers: "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces."
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Nov 18, 2013 23:02
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:There's also a bec-de-corbin lurking on the right side of the image, which is interesting.
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Nov 18, 2013 23:42
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Well, the guy was obviously thinking about ganking a guy in armor. Speaking of which, Monro reports the use of morningstars, but only in a defensive context. He also calls them by the German word, which is interesting. I read somewhere, recently, that morningstar was a euphemism for something other than the spiked club. I think it might have been a mine or bomb of some kind, but I really don't know. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
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Nov 18, 2013 23:46
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I read somewhere, recently, that morningstar was a euphemism for something other than the spiked club. I think it might have been a mine or bomb of some kind, but I really don't know. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
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Nov 18, 2013 23:51
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While we like to pretend we were all resistance fighters in the Netherlands our resistance was pretty much useless. It was not uncommon for British agents to communicate a safe landing space with Dutch resistance forces only to find himself surrounded by Germans casually waiting when he landed. There were a few groups somewhat good at what they did (there was one that literally hid Jews in the same building as the German headquarters in Utrecht, and was successful in this during the whole war) but even our most successful groups never managed to complete for example more then 20 assassinations. People sure as hell managed to glorify themselves though and in pretty much all circles but those of the professional historians specialized in it the myth still continues. One of the biggest resistance newspapers was actually run by Germans too. 'Fun' fact: Dutch administration was so complete and cooperative that we have like one of the highest percentages in caught and murdered Jews by the Germans. I don't know about other countries but we even had Jewish organisations cooperating till their end.
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Nov 18, 2013 23:54
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wdarkk posted:The Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 specified the construction of 18 aircraft carriers and 7 battleships, which is a very fortunate ratio. I do not remember where I saw it and I cannot find it now, but a few months ago I read a "historical concept" by a Naval War College student that was a pretty interesting study. It was basically a counter-proposal to the plan from the 1940 Naval Act. Instead of structuring a fleet around the fleet carrier and using their planes as the fleet's primary weapon, he suggested building only light carriers and air groups that were primarily interceptors, then using battleships as the core of the fleet. The advantages were: * Reliance on big gun surface ships would eliminate the need to keep your opponent at range, which would make supporting landings and other range-constrained operations pretty simple. * Carriers were in general extremely vulnerable to both air and surface attacks, enough so that their vulnerability more or less dictated deployment/positioning. * Naval aircraft were really expensive, and good pilots even moreso. Big shells, not so much * By 1943 American battleships and light cruisers were extremely effective anti-air platforms. That coupled with a air group of interceptors could probably protect such a fleet very effectively. The main capability loss was close air support, which the big guns could help to offset but couldn't totally replace. I don't really remember how convincing it was but I did think it was interesting.
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Nov 19, 2013 00:16
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Sounds like someone just has a really huge hard on for Battleships. Don't get me wrong, we've all been there, but I don't see that ending well.
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Nov 19, 2013 00:20
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bewbies posted:I do not remember where I saw it and I cannot find it now, but a few months ago I read a "historical concept" by a Naval War College student that was a pretty interesting study. I'm picturing every torpedoman in Japan getting a spontaneous erection.
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Nov 19, 2013 00:52
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Sounds like someone just has a really huge hard on for Battleships. Don't get me wrong, we've all been there, but I don't see that ending well. Besides, the US Navy sunk how many ships at extended range because of the air arm of fleet carriers? loving lots, and at ranges way past what a battleship could do. Imagine how badly Leyte would have been bungled had Halsey been relying on battleships. Dear God....
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Nov 19, 2013 00:56
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VikingSkull posted:Besides, the US Navy sunk how many ships at extended range because of the air arm of fleet carriers? loving lots, and at ranges way past what a battleship could do. On the plus side, we might have actually gotten to see how Yamato vs Montana would shake out. Probably Montana by a good margin unless someone with torpedoes shows up.
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Nov 19, 2013 00:58
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Like Jutland, with the Yamato running away at every opportunity, until it gets sunk late war without firing a shot. Basically what happened, honestly. The Japanese babied the hell out of Yamato, I doubt there would have been a decisive clash, same as Jutland. The Japanese were really timid in most clashes where they didn't have overwhelming carrier support. Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 01:00
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space pope posted:I know precious little about Pacific resistance groups, any good books on the subject? Freddie Spencer Chapman spent two years behind Japanese lines in Malaysia, fighting alongside the resistance. The Jungle Is Neutral is one of the best war memoirs I've ever read.
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Nov 19, 2013 01:04
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Xlorp posted:Any chance it was a deliberate needle by the communications officer? Halsey can't have been the first to figure out how badly he'd screwed the pooch. Sources I've read always portray leaving in the padding as a genuine mistake due to stress / lack of sleep, but the choice of "the world wonders" as a passage from the Charge of the Light Brigade was definitely intentional
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Nov 19, 2013 02:08
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This battleship focus plan is pretty silly, because it ignores that the planes are not just a carrier's offensive arm, but also its eyes and ears. A battleship force would be sailing essentially blind against a carrier force that is tracking its every movement, and thus able to engage at will.
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Nov 19, 2013 02:25
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Why were the Germans unable to capture Leningrad toward the end of 1941? Was it because all of the major resources were transferred to Operation Typhoon? That seems to always be a huge underrated turning point during the war. Obviously the Germans would have lost the war in the end anyway but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple A-bombs got dropped on Germany beforehand.
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Nov 19, 2013 02:25
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Someone else will have to go into more detail but it was pretty much that and that the Finns wouldn't actually help take Leningrad or stop the soviets getting supplies in by lake.
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Nov 19, 2013 02:35
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Why were the Germans unable to capture Leningrad toward the end of 1941? Was it because all of the major resources were transferred to Operation Typhoon? That seems to always be a huge underrated turning point during the war. Obviously the Germans would have lost the war in the end anyway but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple A-bombs got dropped on Germany beforehand. Leningrad was strongly defended and static warfare was not something in which the Germans had a great advantage. I'm not sure having the Finns helping more directly would have been that much of an advantage, in fact it might have provoked an earlier offensive to knock Finland out.
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Nov 19, 2013 03:14
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The German armies around Leningrad had some of their strength diverted to more important objectives around Moscow and further south in Ukraine, so they didn't really have the staying power for a protracted fight in urban terrain. This was especially the case because the Finns were obviously disinterested to participate and the Soviet defenders could have concentrated their efforts against the Germans to their south. Eventually Soviet force concentrations east of the city, such as the Volkhov front, became sufficiently threatening that the German army was overextended. They couldn't commit to an all-out attack on Leningrad itself without exposing themselves to a counteroffensive in the east. In fact I believe they were going to make an attempt to assault Leningrad in the summer of '42 but had to call it off because the Soviets simultaneously launched a concerted attempt to relieve the city. On the other hand, because of Leningrad's location on the Karelian isthmus it didn't require a huge commitment to isolate the city from the rest of the USSR. Operations around Leningrad don't seem to have had much effect on what was going in the rest of the theater. In additional, the Nazis' long-term plan for Leningrad was actually to destroy the city and exterminate the population, so it might even have been an inconvenience to take the city as it would have obliged the German army to deal with the population rather than simply starving them out in a siege.
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Nov 19, 2013 03:39
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EvanSchenck posted:The German armies around Leningrad had some of their strength diverted to more important objectives around Moscow and further south in Ukraine, so they didn't really have the staying power for a protracted fight in urban terrain. One of the points repeatedly made by David Glantz in his Barbarossa book was that the more successful each German Army Group was, the more their combat power kept getting diluted by splitting off forces into secondary objectives and/or other fronts altogether. The AGN got as far as it did was itself a rather grand accomplishment considering they were trying to pull encirclements with only one Panzer Group (Army?)
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Nov 19, 2013 03:51
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Fangz posted:This battleship focus plan is pretty silly, because it ignores that the planes are not just a carrier's offensive arm, but also its eyes and ears. A battleship force would be sailing essentially blind against a carrier force that is tracking its every movement, and thus able to engage at will. I think the point is you're replacing the big CV with wonderfully expendable CVEs. There would still be birds in the air, but instead of trying to send out wings of bombers you'd spot the enemy and then send in the battlewagons. The big thing I see happening is what would be the Japanese CAP, no longer obliged to play defense, going in and providing cover for the bombers. I think you're right in that the big thing the Japanese can do here is control the range. Just keep launching planes and scooting away from the American fleet, collect the planes, send it out again. Maybe their attack wings would get hosed, but they're not really risking the carriers while they put the American battlewagons at risk.
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Nov 19, 2013 04:30
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The most famous story about bumper messages during WWII came from Wake Island. Senior Commander W. S. Cunningham had been asked what supplies Wake Island needed. He sent a long list of desperately needed material. The bumper text for the day was "send us", added to the front and "more japs" added in the back. Someone put the two back together and it was sent to the press. After the battle Cunningham was asked if he really sent "Send us more Japs" and he explained that no one had been foolish enough to request additional enemy soldiers. The officer at his interrogation replied "Anyhow, it was dammed good propaganda"
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Nov 19, 2013 04:32
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Darth Brooks posted:The most famous story about bumper messages during WWII came from Wake Island. I like the bit of Allied counter-intel that led to Midway. Basically, they had broken Japanese codes, but not the code names. So they could read that there was an attack coming at "Base Delta"* but they weren't certain which Allied base was Base Delta. But they knew that the Japanese had broken an Allied code but that the Japanese didn't know that the Allies knew that the Japanese had broken that code. So they used said broken code to send a similar messages ("Send more water" I think it was) from the bases most likely to be attacked. Then the Japanese went "good news for the attack, Base Delta needs more water!" And thus the Americans were able to match up Base Delta with Midway and send a few carriers to wait for the Japanese to hit the island, and then bomb them as they refueled and rearmed. *Greek letter selected at random. You get the point though.
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Nov 19, 2013 04:43
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The Finns were very very wise to not bother making an effort to take Leningrad. Stalin was pretty drat lenient on them while talking terms.
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Nov 19, 2013 04:54
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the JJ posted:I like the bit of Allied counter-intel that led to Midway. Basically, they had broken Japanese codes, but not the code names. So they could read that there was an attack coming at "Base Delta"* but they weren't certain which Allied base was Base Delta. But they knew that the Japanese had broken an Allied code but that the Japanese didn't know that the Allies knew that the Japanese had broken that code. So they used said broken code to send a similar messages ("Send more water" I think it was) from the bases most likely to be attacked. Then the Japanese went "good news for the attack, Base Delta needs more water!" And thus the Americans were able to match up Base Delta with Midway and send a few carriers to wait for the Japanese to hit the island, and then bomb them as they refueled and rearmed. "AF is short of water." The unspoken thing is that the navy must have been sending out a number of different messages for different possible targets. E: actually, they had a pretty good idea. From http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/battle_midway.shtml quote:In the spring of 1942, Japanese intercepts began to make references to a pending operation in which the objective was designated as "AF." Rochefort and Captain Edwin Layton, Nimitz's Fleet Intelligence Officer, believed "AF" might be Midway since they had seen "A" designators assigned to locations in the Hawaiian Islands. Based on the information available, logic dictated that Midway would be the most probable place for the Japanese Navy to make its next move. Nimitz however, could not rely on educated guesses. Darth Brooks fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 05:10
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As a humorous note, the Japanese invasion transports carried a distillation plant or two with them because of that message.
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Nov 19, 2013 05:44
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Shattered Sword has an interesting account of how even if the Japanese won the battle of Midway, the invasion force would have gotten absolutely wrecked if they actually tried an amphibious assault. Because of the island layout and equipped with only light weapons, they would have had to advance some hundreds of yards in water up to their necks, assaulting a force that was dug in and equipped with light tanks.
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Nov 19, 2013 05:55
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I was pretty surprised when I found out a while ago that the US had thousands of troops stationed on that potage stamp of an island. I just figured there were like a couple hundred support personnel and a bunch of pilots.
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Nov 19, 2013 06:13
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Unluckyimmortal posted:Not only that but he threw his uniform cap on the floor and stomped on it, then sulked for an hour before ordering his force to assist Taffy 3. One thing to keep in mind about the situation is that the communications between 3rd Fleet and 7th Fleet took up to several hours to code, send, decode, and read. Halsey knew there was a risk in leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded, but when he made that decision he was under the impression that Center Fleet had already been crippled and was retreating. Meanwhile, Halsey had already sent multiple messages to Admiral Kinkaid of the 7th Fleet informing him that TF 34 was with the main body of 3rd Fleet, having decided the previous day (Not entirely unreasonably) that dividing his force while moving to engage what he believed to be the most powerful element of the Japanese fleet was more dangerous than the possibility of a few damaged Japanese ships sailing through the Strait (Once again, being under the impression that he had sunk and/or crippled a much larger percentage of Center Fleet than he actually had). So, in the middle of a frantic battle amongst the final remnants of the once-legendary Kido Butai, not only has he just received word that his fellow commander was not aware that Halsey had left the San Bernardino Strait uncovered, but that the force he had believed to be a crippled husk was instead a major threat to the landings at Leyte. Now, as soon as he had received word of enemy ships approaching Leyte Halsey had ordered his most powerful carrier force to launch a strike against the Japanese, but he hadn't actually been informed of the composition of the attacking Japanese force until an hour later. So for Halsey, what could have been a decisive action to destroy the last major elements of the Japanese Fleet has just turned into a potential disaster, and in the midst of all this he receives the message from Nimitz, which had been sent as this: quote:TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS in which Nimitz was simply attempting to confirm the position of TF 34, but was handed to Halsey in the following form: quote:Where is, repeat, where is Task Force Thirty Four? The world wonders. Which may as well read GREAT JOB IDIOT YOU DONE hosed UP. Which was true, but Halsey was already well aware of that, and had already been doing everything in his power to rectify his mistake. Yes, the fast battleships weren't diverted until later in the battle (When they were literally minutes away from engaging what was left of the Japanese forces) but even if Halsey had turned them around immediately upon receiving word of action in the Gulf it would have been too late. Another thing to keep in mind is that while Ozawa's carriers were sent as a diversion, it wasn't entirely toothless. Ozawa still had access to two partially-converted battleships after his carriers were destroyed, in addition to several cruisers and destroyers. If anything, Halsey's decision to detach his battleships to move to the Strait was the worst one he made that day, as Ozawa's remaining ships easily outgunned the remaining carrier escorts. So, while saying "He sulked while Taffy 3 was getting killed" is technically accurate, it's not exactly like there was much he could have done to help them at that time.
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Nov 19, 2013 06:14
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