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Wait, weren't battleships near Singapore few days ago? Were they part of this invasion??
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Aug 19, 2017 20:15
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 16:27 |
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From TFR's Cold War thread via the A/T Military History thread: https://twitter.com/ussindymovie/status/898946704543580160
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Aug 19, 2017 21:44
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Befitting after it helped ravage Grey's merchant fleet a few days ago.
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Aug 20, 2017 02:14
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40991326 Here's another article on the USS Indianapolis being found. I can't find any info on whether the IJN, if they came across floating American sailors, would bother taking prisoners or not. Or whether we would. Anyone know how that works?
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Aug 20, 2017 16:57
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As in many things, it varied on a case-by-case basis, based on both circumstances, ship and captain involved. In a general sense both sides tended to ignore survivors from the other, though the IJN tended to be significantly worse when it did happen. Still there were always exceptions, like Inazuma and Ikazuchi rescuing so many survivors after the Second Battle of the Java Sea that their combat performance was impaired.
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Aug 20, 2017 19:25
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Lord Koth posted:As in many things, it varied on a case-by-case basis, based on both circumstances, ship and captain involved. In a general sense both sides tended to ignore survivors from the other, though the IJN tended to be significantly worse when it did happen. Still there were always exceptions, like Inazuma and Ikazuchi rescuing so many survivors after the Second Battle of the Java Sea that their combat performance was impaired. Was that motivated by particularly deep animosity or was that the case in other wars as well?
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Aug 20, 2017 20:23
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   We runs some smaller ships against the enemy force near Singapore.  Two AA ships? What else are the protecting?   I do a quick check on the main Chinese army. We're not attacking here!   Those ships seem to have decided to bugger off home now.  At least we still have the trickle of kills.
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Aug 20, 2017 20:57
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Hanging around to pick up survivors requires staying in the area while moving slowly for extended periods. Unless you've comprehensively won the field it's a pretty dangerous activity.
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Aug 20, 2017 21:11
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Flavius Belisarius posted:Was that motivated by particularly deep animosity or was that the case in other wars as well? The Japanese and US really didn't like eachother
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Aug 20, 2017 21:13
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goatface posted:Hanging around to pick up survivors requires staying in the area while moving slowly for extended periods. Unless you've comprehensively won the field it's a pretty dangerous activity. There are plenty of accounts of allied escorts being extremely loathe to stop for survivors from the convoys they were escorting, because of this. I don't think any survivors ever got intentionally abandoned, but it's a HUGE concern. If they're from the other side? War is hell.
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Aug 20, 2017 21:16
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German U-boats at first stopped and picked up survivors from the ships they sunk, especially if there were many of them, but after a while they stopped. Why? Well... quote:On 12 September 1942, RMS Laconia carrying some 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers and prisoners of war (POWs), was torpedoed and sunk by the German U-boat submarine U-156 off the coast of West Africa. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the U-boat commander, Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations. U-156 broadcast their humanitarian intent on open radio channels to all Allied forces in the area, and were joined by the crews of several other U-boats in the vicinity.
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Aug 20, 2017 21:23
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quote:1,619 died (mostly Italian prisoners). somehow it's always italy that gets the shaft
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Aug 20, 2017 21:44
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The Japanese and US really didn't like eachother There are a number of accounts of the Japanese doing some very bad things to downed airmen, stranded sailors and such. Much less their treatment of POWs. No, there weren't a lot of Japanese POWs taken but contemporary accounts mostly attributed that to futile last stands and such. Sure bad poo poo happens in war but on the US side it's wasn't extensive or, you know, organized.
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Aug 21, 2017 05:07
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Murgos posted:There are a number of accounts of the Japanese doing some very bad things to downed airmen, stranded sailors and such. Much less their treatment of POWs. We got to talking about that poo poo in the Ask/Tell MilHist thread, the US had extensive problems taking Japanese POWs to the point they promised leave from the front and ice cream to anyone who would comply. The problem for the US was that, not only was the fighting especially fierce (like Ger vs Rus), but when you have instances of "surrendering soldier pulls out grenade and kills your buddy", you don't take chances after a while.
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Aug 21, 2017 05:23
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If I recall correctly, it was something of a circular issue. Plenty of Japanese would rather commit suicide, whether directly or in suicidal actions that violated any standard of warfare, or go down with the ship, rather than surrender - both due to ingrained beliefs regarding dishonor that many commanders drilled into their men*, as well as stories as to how horribly Allied troops would treat them if they were captured. For Allied troops, combine that perception with the jingoistic fervor whipped up regarding Pearl Harbor and the bias against Asians in general, along with the aggressiveness encouraged of Marines in general (who have ALWAYS been the most problematic portion of the military in regards to non-combat issues), and you have a recipe for a gargantuan mess. Like, it wasn't unheard of that even if an advance unit did take prisoners, the next unit along the trail would just shoot them to remove the inconvenience of dealing with them. That part about "rewards for taking enemy prisoners" was at least in part for that reason. I mean, there really are documented cases of skulls and other body parts being mailed back to the States as trophies. Just try and imagine whether the mindset of a person willing to do that would particularly be entertaining notions of surrender. *: Seriously, just read the tales of what training was commonly like in both the IJA and IJN. It was a huge source of the issues, both doctrinally as well as on the humanistic level. Constant beatings of new recruits, to the point of serious injury, were extremely common and promoted by many commanders - many of course who'd been trained the same way. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Aug 21, 2017 |
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Aug 21, 2017 05:44
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Bad anecdote time: My pops worked with a lot of ww2 vets back in the 70s. One of them had fought on several islands in the Pacific. Now I couldnt tell you where or when this particular incident occurred, but they were under direct orders to take no prisoners. Sure enough coworker and another guy find a Japanese soldier with his hands up and march him back to camp. Their NCO loses his poo poo, tells them to leave camp again and come back without the prisoner. So they took the guy a ways outside the camp, and flipped a coin to see who had to do it. Coworker said he was incredibly relieved to "win" that coin toss and keep a little bit more of his humanity.
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Aug 21, 2017 07:05
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Lakedaimon posted:Bad anecdote time: whelp thread ruined. thanks a loving lot.
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Aug 21, 2017 07:51
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Well, poo poo.
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Aug 21, 2017 13:18
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And that, children, is why gambling is bad.
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Aug 21, 2017 13:25
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War is Hell, etc etc. Just like there's no clean Wehrmacht, there's no clean anyone in such a conflict.
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Aug 21, 2017 13:32
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I think that was an interesting human anecdote. Its shocking US officers would explicitly order warcrimes. RA Rx fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Aug 21, 2017 |
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Aug 21, 2017 14:33
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RA Rx posted:I think that was an interesting human anecdote. Graduating from West Point or Annapolis doesn't magically guarantee that you're a morally pure person or anything. Stories like Lakedaimon's are definitely shocking but they should by no means be surprising, especially after the national experience of Vietnam two-ish decades later.
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Aug 21, 2017 14:37
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Drone posted:Graduating from West Point or Annapolis doesn't magically guarantee that you're a morally pure person or anything. Stories like Lakedaimon's are definitely shocking but they should by no means be surprising, especially after the national experience of Vietnam two-ish decades later. Yeah, it's a third hand account, so I'm taking it with a lot of salt (organized war crimes in an entire operation), but bad things did happen on all sides.
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Aug 21, 2017 14:41
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Murgos posted:There are a number of accounts of the Japanese doing some very bad things to downed airmen, stranded sailors and such. Much less their treatment of POWs. Reminds me of an anecdote, I think it was from Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan: in April 1945, a Japanese Navy Pilot engaged some US fighters above some city in Japan (not occupied territory).His plane took a hit and a fire started inside the cockpit. His flightsuit and face got burned, but he still managed to climb out, open his parachute and descend safely to the ground. He was promptly beaten to death by a mob that assumed that he was an enemy pilot. Afterwards the pilot corps added large hinomarus to their suits in order to hopefully avoid a repeat of the incident.
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Aug 21, 2017 15:18
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RA Rx posted:Yeah, it's a third hand account, so I'm taking it with a lot of salt (organized war crimes in an entire operation), but bad things did happen on all sides. Yup. I don't have a lick of proof that any of it ever happened. And who knows what the scale was - did a sergeant simply say that his squad or platoon was not to take prisoners? Maybe a lieutenant/captain over the company? Or was it the whole division? The whole invasion? Who knows. I'm certainly not trying to prove any points or make a sweeping generalization about anything. Another coworker was a guy nicknamed Smitty who served about the USS Montpelier as an aircraft spotter. I think I may have posted his stories in Grey's previous Allied thread for this game. One day at work when my dad was relatively new, he spotted some nasty scars running up and down Smitty's arm. My dad asked if that had happened there at the plant, and he just said that it was when he was in the Navy. Dad asked if he got a Purple Heart for it, and Smitty said they saved those for the guys that actually got hurt. Said that for him the war was almost entirely sailing out to an island all night, shelling it in the morning, then sailing back to a rear area to take on more ammunition and then repeating again and again. Turns out the scars were from a kamikaze strike on the ship. Said that aircraft spotting was pretty easy - if they were heading right for you, then they were hostile. Off one of the islands (I think Saipan), he was just watching the battle, and he could actually see the troops fighting their way up one of the mountains, especially the flamethrower teams clearing out any cave. They fired a flamethrower into a cave, and the whole top of the mountain exploded. Said it was the loudest thing he ever heard, and they must have hit a major ammunition dump.
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Aug 21, 2017 18:57
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RA Rx posted:I think that was an interesting human anecdote. I'm pretty sure Curtis LeMay was a US officer, so I'm not sure why it would be shocking
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Aug 21, 2017 19:56
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I've read of more but can't find actual citations in ten minutes:quote:On 4 March 1943, during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, General George Kenney ordered Allied patrol boats and aircraft to attack Japanese rescue vessels, as well as the survivors from the sunken vessels on life rafts and swimming or floating in the sea. This was later justified on the grounds that rescued servicemen would have been rapidly landed at their military destination and promptly returned to active service.[75] These orders violated the Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances.[76] quote:In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre, a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight.[26] Major-General Raymond Hufft (US Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"[27] Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner ... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans ... however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."[28]
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Aug 22, 2017 01:56
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I don't think that you can gloss over the retaliatory nature of many of these actions. Marines in the Pacific for example. You have to realize that when the war started most of the Marines (like 80% of the corps) filled out 1st Division and went off to Guadalcanal. On the second or third day on the island, before any major actions had been fought, a Japanese sailor surrendered and told the Marines that there was a unit a little ways up the coast that also wanted to surrender because they were starving. So, the Marines sent a large patrol to check it out. Of course it was a trap and only three Marines got away by swimming through the coral reef. They reported back that they had observed Japanese offIcers using their swords to butcher the wounded. A few days later was the first major engagement. A night action where the Japanese, 900 strong, banzai charged the Marine line with fixed bayonets. They were practically wiped out to a man. When the corpsman went to go help the Japanese wounded several of them attacked and killed the people trying to render them first aid. So yeah, after that you just aren't going to believe that the Japanese are sincere about surrendering or that trying to save wounded isn't just going to end up with you and your buddies dead. These types of things would be repeated again and again. Men lost on patrol being found butchered with obvious signs of torture and etc... Many of those Marines went on to serve as cadres for filling out the new divisions being formed passing on the knowledge they had just learned at such a high cost and institutionalizing it. Does that make it acceptable? Of course not, but I haven't of too many of those 'old breed' being at all apologetic or being shunned by their peers or rebuked by the civilian population either.
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Aug 22, 2017 04:27
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There's also the story of Dudley "Mush" Morton's order to machine-gun survivors in the water from a Japanese troop-ship that his submarine had sunk.
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Aug 22, 2017 05:05
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There may also be a difference between a guy coming out of a foxhole with his hands up and a soldier shooting him because he's got his finger on the trigger and he's amped up and scared, versus premeditated situations like taking a prisoner, deciding you can't keep him, and shooting him in cold blood. Neither is okay, but one is worse than the other.
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Aug 22, 2017 05:08
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  The AA ships run into Singapore harbour.   We lose a plane on the ground.  I have no idea where we got those air to air kills. 
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Aug 22, 2017 05:09
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I'm.. Confused as to how the Allies can launch a raid of Singapore harbor with ships in daylight. Maybe you should be trying to hire some of thier captains!
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Aug 22, 2017 05:14
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Those poor patrol boats would have got the shock of their life seeing allied cruisers sailing into Singapore harbour when the front line is five thousand kilometres away.
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Aug 22, 2017 05:16
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But where is the IJAAF? The world wonders...
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Aug 22, 2017 12:37
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Technically since its boats it's the responsibility of the IJNAS
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Aug 22, 2017 14:57
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Doesn't Singapore have massive artillery batteries? Historically Singapore had 15" guns and 9.2" guns defending it from the ocean. Why didn't they do anything?
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Aug 22, 2017 15:10
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Technically since its boats it's the responsibility of the IJNAS Lol if you don't have any aircraft anywhere in the vicinity of Singapore at all times.
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Aug 22, 2017 15:17
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Saint Celestine posted:Doesn't Singapore have massive artillery batteries? If I'm not mistaken those things go poof because they're land units that are included in the surrender part of the land combat mechanics.
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Aug 22, 2017 15:40
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wedgekree posted:I'm.. Confused as to how the Allies can launch a raid of Singapore harbor with ships in daylight. Grey is just assuming USN ships will collide with merchantmen in the strait.
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Aug 22, 2017 16:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:If I'm not mistaken those things go poof because they're land units that are included in the surrender part of the land combat mechanics. WitP.txt
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Aug 22, 2017 17:22
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