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Also, Yamamoto thought that the thick black smoke sighted over Pearl was the fuel burning...when in fact it was just Battleship Row going down. There has been much speculation about what would have happened if Yamamoto had launched one more wave of attackers. Instead, he chose caution...no doubt aided by the fact that he knew that they had missed the carriers.
Was Yamamoto even @ Pearl? I see lots of online references to his planning the attack, & lobbying for the plan, & training, & etc. But as C-in-C of the IJ Combined Fleet in 1939, I thought he was confined to a HQ, or @ least his flagship, well away from the front lines. Was he @ Pearl, or with the Budo Kitai?
Was Yamamoto even @ Pearl? I see lots of online references to his planning the attack, & lobbying for the plan, & training, & etc. But as C-in-C of the IJ Combined Fleet in 1939, I thought he was confined to a HQ, or @ least his flagship, well away from the front lines. Was he @ Pearl, or with the Budo Kitai?
My bad..*blush*..it was of course Adm. Nagumo who was in command of the Japanese force. The rest of the post is accurate. The remark about Nagumo thinking the black smoke was the fuel bunkers is anecdotal.
Can you explain to me how the US came into the oriental picture and what was going on prior to Pearl Harbor ?
How/why was the US involved in those areas before the war; what specifically caused the Japanese to view us as such a threat ?
I wanted to take this question back one further step. Obviously, the Spanish-American War brought the US politically and territorially into the Philippines and Guam, but that was preceded by the Open Door Policy with China.
In the 19th Century, the newly industrializing powers wanted a piece of the Chinese market. These markets would keep the home front work force gainfully employed and bring prosperity to their businesses. Even though the Chinese were mostly poor, if only 10% had disposable income of any sort, 10% of 400 million (population guesstimate) was enough to interest everyone. This was an especially strong motivator after the British locked up the large but poor Indian market.
The China of the time was internally chaotic, and externally weak. The US policy was to leave China open to the trade of every nation (the Open Door) while the Europeans were more inclined to carve the country into exclusionary spheres of influence and colonies similar to their behavior in Africa. Having outposts in the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii allowed the US Navy to protect the trading interests of the United States, and to give real weight, not just lip service to the Open Door Policy.
This brings us to why the US opposed the carve up and acquisition of China by Japan in the 1930s. The US didn't want the Japanese to block us from a market we had had our eye on for 60 years.
So, how/why did the US come into the oriental picture? They were looking for lucrative markets for their industrial products and didn't want to be squeezed out by the Europeans and then the Japanese who wanted the same, but were prepared to do it in a way the US thought was unfair.
There has been much speculation about what would have happened if Yamamoto had launched one more wave of attackers. Instead, he chose caution...no doubt aided by the fact that he knew that they had missed the carriers.
I don't think a third wave would have accomplished much. It might have "sank" another battleships or two, but unless the sinking was truly catastrophic, the battle ships were going to be salvageable. Likewise, the US could afford to write off the lighter ships in the area. Repair yards could be hit, but the US had an enormous capacity to repair damage, especially when skilled workers and material was brought in from the west coast.
In addition to the threat posed by US carriers, early war IJN carrier aviation was extremely lethal, but also extremely fragile. There were only about 350 IJN carrier pilots. Training such pilots took years and the pre war Japanese training rate was 30 carrier pilots per year and only 100 pilots per year in total.
Even the other naval training programs produced few numbers of pilots (however expertly trained). Thus, even the loss of small numbers of carrier pilots and aircrew could really dull the IJN carrier aviation sword.
Japan had occupied Korea starting in 1910 and continuing to the end of World War II. August 15th is celebrated as National Liberation Day, a national holiday in Korea. The rest of us know it as V-J Day.
I have a Korean friend who one time was boasting of the brave Korean freedom fighters who, in her telling, all but forced Japan out of their country. She seemed completely unaware of what happened on August 15, 1945 to cause Japan to vacate Korea. I mean no disrespect to the brave Korean freedom fighters (really, I don't; they fought courageously against impossible odds), but the fact remains (which my friend seemed very reluctant to admit) that the only thing that liberated Korea was the fact that America defeated Japan.
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Originally Posted by john3232
The Zero fighter for example was an excellent plane in the hands of an experienced J-Naval flyer. The problem was within two years the US had Lockheed P-38 Lightning, Chance Vought F4U Corsair and the Grumman F6F Hellcat. All excellent planes but more than anything it was the sheer number of US planes over the skies of the Pacific which the Japanese couldn't combat.
Another problem that Japan had was entirely self-imposed. That is, their pilot training program was brutal, and was specifically designed to weed out all but the absolute very best. Thus, what they got was a relative handful of extraordinarily talented pilots, instead of what they could have gotten: a much larger pool of "merely" capable pilots. They did not understand that in an industrialized war of attrition, quantity will win out over quality, every time.
So...did they completely miss the fuel/oil depots, submarine pen and repair yards? If yes, what went wrong to cause that?
And how could they not know the carriers weren't there? Did they have to cross their fingers and hope, or did they have bad information?
It's easy to miss what you're not aiming at. The primary targets of the Japanese raid were the aircraft carriers, the battleships, the heavy cruisers, and the air bases. I believe it was in that order, but I could be mistaken on that. In any event, the mundane logistical support stuff like fuel depots and repair yards were considered beneath the dignity of a Bushido-infused warrior of the Rising Sun.
As for the carriers, they did indeed have intelligence that none of them were in port on the morning of the raid. But this was compensated for by the fact that all 8 battleships were present, which was a fairly unusual event. (Usually, some of them were out to sea on maneuvers at any given time.) Clearly, not having the carriers there was disappointing to the Japanese. But they knew they couldn't hang around off Oahu forever, waiting for our carriers to show up. They needed to let fly their attack and get out of there to avoid falling victim to our retribution.
Was Yamamoto even @ Pearl? I see lots of online references to his planning the attack, & lobbying for the plan, & training, & etc. But as C-in-C of the IJ Combined Fleet in 1939, I thought he was confined to a HQ, or @ least his flagship, well away from the front lines. Was he @ Pearl, or with the Budo Kitai?
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilEyeFleegle
My bad..*blush*..it was of course Adm. Nagumo who was in command of the Japanese force. The rest of the post is accurate. The remark about Nagumo thinking the black smoke was the fuel bunkers is anecdotal.
Admiral Yamamoto was on board his flagship, the battleship Nagato, which was docked in the Inland Sea at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. IIRC, the only time he actually sailed in support of an operation was at Midway; and even then, he was several hundred miles behind the Kido Butai.
Admiral Nagumo was in command of the carrier striking force at Pearl Harbor, as pointed out above. But of course, he wouldn't have seen any smoke either, from 200 miles away. The person who would have seen smoke would have been Commander Fuchida, the air strike leader. I do not know if he mischaracterized the source of the smoke or not.
I don't think a third wave would have accomplished much. It might have "sank" another battleships or two, but unless the sinking was truly catastrophic, the battle ships were going to be salvageable. Likewise, the US could afford to write off the lighter ships in the area. Repair yards could be hit, but the US had an enormous capacity to repair damage, especially when skilled workers and material was brought in from the west coast.
In addition to the threat posed by US carriers, early war IJN carrier aviation was extremely lethal, but also extremely fragile. There were only about 350 IJN carrier pilots. Training such pilots took years and the pre war Japanese training rate was 30 carrier pilots per year and only 100 pilots per year in total.
Even the other naval training programs produced few numbers of pilots (however expertly trained). Thus, even the loss of small numbers of carrier pilots and aircrew could really dull the IJN carrier aviation sword.
Those numbers blow my mind. 30 a year? Were the shot callers suffering from malnutrition?
By contrast what were US, German, Russian and British numbers like?
Those numbers blow my mind. 30 a year? Were the shot callers suffering from malnutrition?
I think they were over applying the lessons learned at Tushima, where a smaller, but far better trained Japanese force won a stunning victory. Their reasoning seems to have been: "Well if a 3X better trained Japanese force did "Z" at Tushima, a 9X better trained Japanese force should be able to accomplish say, "Z" squared- and win any war."
As Busman pointed out in his posts though, in an "industrial war of attrition", sublime aerial versions of Miyamoto Musashi (http://www.musashi-miyamoto.com/ ) don't win wars. Rather, legions of "merely capable" pilots win wars.
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Originally Posted by madison999
By contrast what were US, German, Russian and British numbers like?
Great Britain trained a small number of pilots trained to very high standards (though not to the IJN naval level). Great Britain had an ace in the hole however in that their small number of pilots could be rapidly expanded by a very well run Reserve Pilot Officer Corps made up of experienced civilian pilots and social elites who owned private aircraft. These numbers could then be further increased by pre-trained, experienced volunteers from the CommonWealth.
The Soviets, in order to make good on Stalin's boasts, trained thousands of pilots per year. With the exception of a literal handful of "show piece" super pilots whose purpose was to win international recognition for the USSR, Soviet pilots were trained to very low levels.
The Germans probably came closest to the wartime US philosophy in that as they militarized, they sought to produce large numbers of capable pilots trained to high, but not extraordinarily high standards.
Last edited by Cryptic; 11-02-2016 at 01:57 PM..
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