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The photo of Harry Truman holding up the "Dewey Wins" headline is probably the most famous example of what I am soliciting with this thread. Historians have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, but for those making pronouncements in advance of outcomes, it is a hit and miss proposition. This thread is dedicated to getting it not only wrong, but spectacularly wrong.
"Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years."
—Alex Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company, quoted in the New York Times, June 10, 1955 Nuclear Powered Vacuum - More Central Vacuum Information
As nifty as a nuclear-powered Hoover sounds (and I'm holding out for the eventual fusion models - none of those cheap fission vacuum cleaners for me!), we're still waiting...
The funniest thing I ever heard was this one insurence company sent a letter to all its customers to reassure them that their software was updated and they would encounter no problems. They forgot ONE little field it used in generating reports. Nobody noticed. In the letter it said that when it became 1900 there would be no interrruptions in normal business. oops.
From the article referenced in the OP about Pearl Harbor being impregnable...
Quote:
The Navy isn’t worrying. Day and night, Navy and Army planes are droning down the warm skies in circles two hundred, five hundred, a thousand miles wide. They’re dropping bombs from altitudes of twenty and thirty thousand feet and smashing tiny targets towed by swift destroyers.
Really makes you wonder. Was this just hyperbole which Davenport employed to fashion a fictional image? Was he lied to by naval officers regarding bombing capabilities? Obviously this was not something he witnessed.
It was established early in the war that high altitude bombing was useless against naval ships. At Midway for instance, the island dispatched its entire wing of fifteen B-17's against the Japanese fleet and they scored a total of zero hits. Clearly if high level bombing was incapable of hitting aircraft carriers and battleships, there was never a time when they could hit "tiny targets towed by swift destroyers."
Really makes you wonder. Was this just hyperbole which Davenport employed to fashion a fictional image? Was he lied to by naval officers regarding bombing capabilities? Obviously this was not something he witnessed.
You know, Grandstander, I find it impossible to believe that the US Navy actually thought Pearl Harbor to be safe from aerial bombardment, and too shallow for aerial torpedo attack. Our own carriers conclusively proved otherwise not once, but several times prior to December 7th. The Japanese Navy had practiced it a lot, and in 1940 the Royal Navy pulled off excellent shallow-water torpedo attacks at Dakar against the French Navy and at Taranto against the Italian Navy.
I find it altogether possible, even likely, that the Navy Press Office (or whatever they called it) might have said something like it, "for public consumption" of course...
Oddly enough, a small flight of B-17 bombers actually did hit some maneuvering Japanese ships in the battles around Guadalcanal. Approximate date was November 1942, but it was certainly the exception.
-- Nighteyes
Last edited by Nighteyes; 09-30-2014 at 05:17 PM..
In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes published "Possibilities for our Grandchildren," in which he predicted a significantly shortened work week - perhaps as little as fifteen hours a week. Har, har.
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