Picture of the day
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HMS Glorious: Captain D'Oyley Hughes VC was in such a hurry to get back to Scapa to court martial one or two of his senior air officers for lack of offensive spirit that he sailed off with only two destroyers, grounded all flights and so had no CAP aloft. He had Swordfish torpedo bombers, but nothing was ready to fly and so instead of going down in history as the first carrier to sink a capital ship in war, the Glorious went down as the first, and perhaps the last, aircraft carrier sunk by capital ships. The battleship admirals worldwide must have been happy.
Pity D'Oyley Hughes didn't survive to appear at his own court martial.
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At the time of her sinking, yes, HMS Glorious probably held that dubious honour. However, its worthy of note that although the definition of 'capital ship' referred to battleships and battlecruisers at the start of WWII, it evolved as the war went on. Numerous carriers went on to be sunk by the new 'capital ship' - the aircraft carrier itself - but of course its the air wing there that actually deals out the blows. USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73) was probably the last carrier to have been sunk by gunfire from a near-capital ship, the Japanese heavy cruiser Chikuma.
Today in WW2 history-few ships were steaming in the Pacific to join with others in a little party known now as "Doolitle Raid"
I think we all know the outcome.
I can barley get my light plane off the ground in 900 feet. A bomber is remarkable - although there was the wind and spepd of the carrier to help.
The first plane off did not have as much runway as the last plane.
In videos of the launch you can see that one of the planes forgot to put his flaps down for take off. But he still made it.
Reminds us also that had Yamamoto not turned tail after losing his carriers at Midway he almost certainly could have sunk the American carriers with his battleships and cruisers and salvaged a Pyrrhic victory that would have left Japan with the Shokaku and Zuikaku, and the USN with only the Saratoga.
And if the Japanese had not been suffering from "victory disease" in 1942, they would not have divided their resources by simultaneously sending the Ryujo and Junyo to mess around in the Aleutians.
When sitting in the lifeboats one officer, perhaps it was Fuchida said, "If Shokaku and Zuikaku had been here this catastrophe would never have happened". Both had suffered aircrew losses at the Battle of the Coral Sea and were sent home to reinforce and retrain their aircrews, rather than consolidating both crews onto one carrier and including her in the Midway task force.
Anyway, if any one man won the Pacific War, it was Wade McCluskey.
Plenty of eternal lessons there.
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I'll keep an eye out for it. Try this one:
Midway, The Battle That Doomed Japan, by Fuchida and Okumiya, US Naval Institute Press. There's another good one from the Japanese perspective, but it must be packed away somewhere I can't find it.
Fuchida(?) was right: it would have been better to have brought both the Shokaku and Zuikaku even with under-strength crews, since it was always be better to have another deck to land on, rather than having to ditch aircraft if no other decks remained serviceable.
How history can hang on the personality and mental state of one officer! D'Oyley-Hughes was personally a very brave man as he proved in WWI, and determined to do his utmost to support the landings in Norway, but he then allowed his anger and disappointment at his two senior air officers to cloud his judgement and fatally endanger three ships and 1500 men.
Training in critical thinking and emotional detachment must be as important for senior officers as any professional training, and yet at times that spark of emotion, of irrational "spirit" is the key to victory. Inherent contradictions; no wonder blunders are made!
The rational people in Britain in 1940 or 1941 were sure the only logical course was a negotiated peace with Germany. Churchill and those like him knew something more than logic and rationality was required.
Yamamoto, who knew more about American industrial power than most of his senior officers, allowed himself to be persuaded that it was better to "run away and fight another day", and yet he clearly knew that the US would never negotiate and that Japan therefore had only one chance. If they delayed to rebuild their strength after Midway they would gain nothing: American production would overwhelm them. What point then in preserving the Yamato, the fleet and his own life? In the unlikely event he died in battle at Midway in the act of winning even a Pyrrhic victory he would have become a demi-god in Japan and an enormous inspiration to the whole country. Instead, he went home to the ignominy of defeat and what was probably "suicide-by-enemy" a year later, a blow which merely depressed and demoralized the country. But then to go from the crest of victory to the depths of defeat in an hour would test anyone's judgement.
But the half-measures began at Pearl Harbour: the islands could easily have been seized by a powerful landing force at the outset, they were totally unprepared for such an attack. Having lost Haiwaii, the USN would have had to retire either to Australia, the Philippines or the the American west coast. The Phillipines would have been "out of the pan and into the fire", Australia could not support the fleet materially, so the west coast would have been the only option!
The next step would have been the Panama Canal, but even had that been seized, the remaining American ships in the Pacific destroyed, and attacks made on the west coast ports, what chance was there of final victory, which could only come as Yamamoto said, if they marched into Washington and dictated it at the White House?
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Still alive
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I personally think the Battle of Midway was the turning point of WW2. If the US had lost that battle, they would have left the entire Pacific West Coast open to attack by the IJN. They would be forced to defend the mainland and not be able to commit as much to their forces in the Pacific as well as England/ Russia. The U.K. was just about on its knees at that point so the additional help was definitely appreciated.
The victory was also a morale boost seeing as there had been nothing but defeats up to that point ( ok, call the Coral Sea a draw).
The victory was also a morale boost seeing as there had been nothing but defeats up to that point ( ok, call the Coral Sea a draw).
Japan didn't invade Hawaii because they couldn't support an invasion that far from home, and they knew it. The whole point of the raid was to neutralize the American battleships (with the US carriers a secondary target) in the hope that the US could be frightened out of a war with Japan by a major defeat on Day 1. The Japanese didn't even have two vital targets in their attack plan, the machine shops and fuel tank farm. Knocking those out would've meant that Pearl Harbor would have been useless as a naval base until those were rebuilt, which would have taken about a year.
Distances in the Pacific are very much greater than the North Atlantic, greatly affecting the belligerents' ability to support invasions. The farthest the Japanese ever attempted was at Midway, and it took almost the entire Combined Fleet to protect the invasion transports and (attempt to) neutralize Midway's airfield.
The USN got VERY lucky when Admiral Nagumo dithered over what his main target should be when an American carrier was sighted northeast of Midway. That, Japanese intelligence errors (assuming Spruance and Fletcher had only two carriers, not three), and suicidal sacrifice by US TBF torpedo bomber crews allowed the Americans to dive bomb Nagumo's carriers without fighter opposition. Add in the bombs/torpedoes sitting on decks not in magazines from Japanese rearming and it became a catastrophe for Japan.
Yamamoto realized that he had NO air cover available after the US sank all Nagumo's carriers, meaning he was a sitting duck if he attempted to continue the invasion of Midway. Remembering what Japan's carrier air power did to the USN at Pearl less than 8 months earlier, and not knowing what the US had available in air strength on their two surviving carriers and Midway's air field, he folded his hand and retreated to fight another day.
Realistically, the Americans couldn't have done a whole lot of damage to the Japanese combined fleet, even if they'd tried to. Admiral Spruance had almost no torpedo planes left, few surface ships (and none that could hope to match Yamato), and exhausted air crews. There were few planes left on Midway, and almost no torpedo planes. There were a few B-17's, but they couldn't do much to a retreating fleet, and the Combined Fleet would soon be out of range anyway.
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Extra points if you can name ALL the turning points.
Of the entire WW2 or the Pacific theater?
Based on what happened elsewhere later, and on the fact that it would have been an attack against an enemy still in a peacetime mode and mentality, I think the Japanese would have had an excellent chance of occupying the Hawaiian Islands in December 1941. Of course that would have required the cooperation of the Japanese Army which was well on its way to insanity by that point (Yamamoto himself was threatened with assassination for not being "patriotic" enough before the war) The IJA got their asses kicked by the Soviets at Nomohan, and were getting all bogged down in China; basically a waste of time and effort. If they had not had their continental "Strike North" fixation as opposed to the IJN's "Strike South" idea, they would have got a lot farther together. Whether the final result would have been any different is doubtful of course. Once the Germans flubbed Barbarossa, the intervention of the Soviets was only a matter of time, and the result a forgone conclusion unless the Japanese A bomb project produced a workable weapon. If they had had the smarts to only attack the British, Dutch and French holdings in S.E. Asia Roosevelt would still not have been able to get the USA into the war, and the Japanese would have got the oil and resources they needed. Probably they would have invaded Australia, or else the army faction would have turned their efforts entirely against China or India as well.
Other than a delusional ignorance of the natures of their potential enemies, Japan's greatest weakness was perhaps her greatest strength: her cultural psychology. The racial grudges and resentments, losses of "face" etc. that impelled her into war against the USA when the chances of final victory were so slim and the practical benefits so few, compared to the other options.
Considering the luck the US torpedo plans had at Midway, their absence probably wouldn't have made much difference to a fleet engagement on the next day, except that they would not be there to distract the Japanese CAP again. Seeing what the dive bombers did to the Japanese carriers and heavy cruisers, I suspect they would have been just as effective the next day, but would it have been enough?
A night engagement was a Japanese specialty; which they had trained for for years and were as well prepared to fight as they could be without radar. The results of that preparation showed up in the Battle of Savo a few months after Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Savo_Island A massacre basically. A similar result was likely if a fleet engagement had happened the night of Midway, although the USN would have been much more alert than at Ironbottom Sound.
I think they stood a good chance of knocking out the US carriers that night, and the fate of the surface ships would then have been sealed, if they could be caught.
What was the point of half-measures in such a war? If there is only one chance to win, hold nothing back and concentrate all force at the critical point.
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The best bet for the Japanese would've been to leave American territory (and the Philippines) alone and get the oil, rice, and rubber they needed by taking the British, French, and Dutch possessions in the Far East, as you pointed out.
The problem with that would have been the Philippine Islands. Those islands would have been a massive salient into Japanese-controlled territory that, should the US have gotten into the European war first (and I don't think they were far from it as German submarines were just about closing the Atlantic shipping lanes - I believe the US would not let Great Britain go down like that - Hitler and Mussolini would've expected the Japanese to declare war on the US), would have had the potential to cut off Japan from the supplies she went to war to gain. Once the Japanese decided in favour of war, they had to take everything they could, then build a big perimeter and force the enemy to come to them. This was indeed their Pacific war strategy, and it worked well, right up until Midway.
It's highly unlikely that the USN would have accepted battle with the surface fleet at the time. The Japanese had almost all the Combined Fleet in the area, and Yamamoto was 300 miles west of the Japanese carrier force (roughly 12 hrs steaming at 25-30 kts). The American carriers were some 150 miles east of what was left of the Japanese carrier force, and Spruance was heading east. He knew that if the Japanese surface fleet caught his carriers, his ships were toast, regardless of his (severely depleted) air power. The US Pacific Fleet battleships were still in the mud at Pearl, and most of the rest were either fitting out on the East Coast or in the Atlantic Fleet, so the Japanese surface forces far outweighed the available USN surface fleet. The US also had the invaluable advantage of being able to read some of the Japanese codes (but by no means all) so they knew what damage had been done and what other Japanese forces were still in the area (it's also why Nimitz was able to ignore the attack on the Aleutian Islands).
As far as a US air strike on the Japanese surface fleet, had there been any torpedo planes left, it's likely it would've inflicted some serious damage to the surface fleet. There was zero air cover, and the anti-aircraft guns would've been divided between the TBF's and the SBD's (and I'm sure the Wildcat fighters would've been trying to strafe the ships' AA gunners). I doubt the SBD's would've had the same effect as they did, simply because the surface ships would NOT have had bombs and torpedoes lying around on the decks.
The problem with that would have been the Philippine Islands. Those islands would have been a massive salient into Japanese-controlled territory that, should the US have gotten into the European war first (and I don't think they were far from it as German submarines were just about closing the Atlantic shipping lanes - I believe the US would not let Great Britain go down like that - Hitler and Mussolini would've expected the Japanese to declare war on the US), would have had the potential to cut off Japan from the supplies she went to war to gain. Once the Japanese decided in favour of war, they had to take everything they could, then build a big perimeter and force the enemy to come to them. This was indeed their Pacific war strategy, and it worked well, right up until Midway.
It's highly unlikely that the USN would have accepted battle with the surface fleet at the time. The Japanese had almost all the Combined Fleet in the area, and Yamamoto was 300 miles west of the Japanese carrier force (roughly 12 hrs steaming at 25-30 kts). The American carriers were some 150 miles east of what was left of the Japanese carrier force, and Spruance was heading east. He knew that if the Japanese surface fleet caught his carriers, his ships were toast, regardless of his (severely depleted) air power. The US Pacific Fleet battleships were still in the mud at Pearl, and most of the rest were either fitting out on the East Coast or in the Atlantic Fleet, so the Japanese surface forces far outweighed the available USN surface fleet. The US also had the invaluable advantage of being able to read some of the Japanese codes (but by no means all) so they knew what damage had been done and what other Japanese forces were still in the area (it's also why Nimitz was able to ignore the attack on the Aleutian Islands).
As far as a US air strike on the Japanese surface fleet, had there been any torpedo planes left, it's likely it would've inflicted some serious damage to the surface fleet. There was zero air cover, and the anti-aircraft guns would've been divided between the TBF's and the SBD's (and I'm sure the Wildcat fighters would've been trying to strafe the ships' AA gunners). I doubt the SBD's would've had the same effect as they did, simply because the surface ships would NOT have had bombs and torpedoes lying around on the decks.
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Check out The Battle of Midway by Craig L. Symonds. Very interesting. According to the author Hornet's air group was on a bearing that was north of where the IJN force was reported to be. There was great confusion as to how many carriers and where they were. It was theorized Hornet's air wing was trying to find two "missing" carriers. Waldron disobeyed orders and turned his flight south. Had he not found the Japan carriers, he may have been court-martialed. His faith in his judgement set in motion the chain of events that ended with the destruction of the Japanese carriers
The US embargo on Japan in regards to scrap steel and oil is what finally pushed Japan into WW 2 and attacking the US.
The Japanese were also not pleased with the US military support of China.
Google ( US oil embargo on Japan ) for further reading on that and related subjects.
The Japanese were also not pleased with the US military support of China.
Google ( US oil embargo on Japan ) for further reading on that and related subjects.
Extra points if you can name ALL the turning points.
Turning Points
- Battle of Britain: Stopped Germany taking Britain and turned Hitlers attention to Russia. Also allowed Great Britain to be turned into an unsinkable aircraft carrier. If you want one single turning point I believe this is probably the closest there is. If Germany had won the Battle of Britian the war in Western Europe would probably have been over with a good chance that Germany would have beaten Russia in 1941 as the distractions, Greece and the Balkans, that delayed Germany's attack on Russia would not have happened.
- Battle of Midway: Stopped Japanese expansion and crippled the Japanese fleet.
- Battle of El Alamein: The beginning of the End for German Expansion and stopped German access to additional oil supplies. This turned out to be critical in the long run.
- Battle of Moscow: Stopped the German Advance in Russia and inflicted enormous casualties on the German Army
- Battle of Stalingrad: Stopped the German Army once and for all and started to push the Germans back.
- Battle of Normandy: The beginning of the end for Germany in Western Europe.
- The Atomic Bombs:
I deliberately didn't include Sicily, Italy, Battle of Kursk, Battle of the Bulge etc. While they were major operations and tied down German troops and caused a lot of damage and shortened the I don't believe that they were turning points more of a progression.
My point being that no one battle, except the last, is really THE turning point. If Germany had won the Battle of Britain the Battle for England would have been over very quickly as by this stage Britain didn't really have an effective army. If Midway hadn't happened the way it did then the Allies would still have won. It would have been another setback but the invasion of Mainland USA was beyond the Japanese. Both Germany and Japan knew they could not win a war of attrition. Both aimed for a quick and decisive war. In Japans case to negotiate a peace (which was never going to happen after Pearl Harbour) and in Germany's case to win the war against Russia in the summer of 1941. Net result would have been a prolonging of the war and more casualties but the simple reality is that the US got the A Bomb first and ultimately that would have won the war anyway.
Dark Alley Dan
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Thanks, CV32. Pretty boat.
Deck looks lonesome. Needs a Corsair.
Deck looks lonesome. Needs a Corsair.
