The Short Victorious War

kzt wrote:It’s lucky the IJN sunk the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Otherwise they would have overconfidently sailed out to show the inferior Japanese who is boss. And gotten mostly sunk thousands of miles from home.

That is actually paraphrase of a quote from a US Admiral about the probable action by Nimitz; I found it once and cannot find it again. There are all sorts of "what if" questions that can be asked about the action and response. Another interesting one it what would happen if they had also attacked the oil storage depot. I found this quote: "the Japanese ignored the unglamorous target that truly would have crippled the U.S. Navy for perhaps a year or more: the oil tanks next to Pearl Harbor. Without the ability to refuel at Pearl, the U.S. Navy would have had to retreat to San Diego, San Francisco Bay, and Puget Sound."

They assumed the fuel system was cleverly disguised, at least some people think that was why they bombed a baseball diamond.

It later did get buried underground, and the state is throwing a hissy fit over it.

The IJN also didn't hit the warehouse with the entire supply of torpedoes for the entire pacific submarine fleet. Not that they were very effective due to BuOrd idiocy.

tlb wrote:That is actually paraphrase of a quote from a US Admiral about the probable action by Nimitz; I found it once and cannot find it again. There are all sorts of "what if" questions that can be asked about the action and response. Another interesting one it what would happen if they had also attacked the oil storage depot. I found this quote: "the Japanese ignored the unglamorous target that truly would have crippled the U.S. Navy for perhaps a year or more: the oil tanks next to Pearl Harbor. Without the ability to refuel at Pearl, the U.S. Navy would have had to retreat to San Diego, San Francisco Bay, and Puget Sound."

And even as it was lack of oil transport caused the US to keep its remaining, and then salvaged and repaired, slow battleships based no further west than the aforementioned San Diego, San Francisco Bay, and Puget Sound for months -- the first ones only returning to Pearl Harbor in August '42 and only sending any them into the combat zone, to patrol near the Fiji islands, in November '42.

There was a shortage of tankers to move oil from the west coast to Hawaii -- in no small part because of the numbers being sunk off the eastern seaboard by German uboats. And there was also the inability to get fuel for them even further forward to the combat zone. The US only had 8 fast (18 knot) fleet oilers able to keep up with the battleship or carrier task forces at even their economical cruising speeds; and wasn't especially well provided with any oilers -- but only oilers had the training and equipment to refuel ships at sea; commercial tankers were only able to move oil from port to port. And until the US was able to seize secure forward ports they had no place west of Pearl for tankers to deliver oil to; and so no place for thirsty battleships to refuel.

No point in straining Pearl's oil supplies with battleships you couldn't send forward into combat anyway.

(Heck there's some argument that at Coral Sea the loss of the fast oiler Neosho might have had a larger impact on US Navy operations over the next year or so than the loss of the carrier Lexington)

tlb wrote:That is actually paraphrase of a quote from a US Admiral about the probable action by Nimitz; I found it once and cannot find it again. There are all sorts of "what if" questions that can be asked about the action and response. Another interesting one it what would happen if they had also attacked the oil storage depot. I found this quote: "the Japanese ignored the unglamorous target that truly would have crippled the U.S. Navy for perhaps a year or more: the oil tanks next to Pearl Harbor. Without the ability to refuel at Pearl, the U.S. Navy would have had to retreat to San Diego, San Francisco Bay, and Puget Sound."

It probably wasn't Nimitz he was talking about. It would have been Admiral Kimmel.

I found this quote by Nimitz:

"It was God's mercy that our fleet was in Pearl Harbor on December 7." If Kimmel "[had] had advance notice that the Japanese were coming, he most probably would have tried to intercept them. With the difference in speed between Kimmel's battleships and the faster Japanese carriers, the former could not have come within rifle range of the enemy's flattops. As a result, we would have lost many ships in deep water and also thousands more in lives."

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:War can also be the result of some country's irresponsible foreign policy. A foreign policy can leave a country with only the choice between war and starvation.

I misquoted this in another thread, but FDR's oil embargo forced the Japanese to attack. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. The Japanese warned the US not to back them into a corner.

Brigade XO wrote:"Don't back us into a corner" .....yeah, -now look what you made me do----expand genocide and slaughter and you were punishing me economically for doing it.

Japan miscalculated.

Rather than repeating everything that Brigade XO wrote; let me just add that the US did NOT force Japan to go to war, that was impossible since the US was just reacting to Japan already having been at war since 1937 with a country friendly with the US. From Wikipedia:

The beginning of the war is conventionally dated to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937, when a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Peking escalated into a full-scale invasion. This full-scale war between the Chinese and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia.

It didn't become a world war until Pearl Harbor. Up to that time it was two separate wars happening on different parts of the globe. Pearl Harbor merged these conflicts and as America entered the conflict, those conflicts became a world war.

As for America forcing Japan into conflict with us, I think we did. We cut off the spigot on the oil, stopped exporting our scrap iron and then made impossible to meet our demands. From the Japanese point of view, they were really left with no choice but to attack us. Roosevelt knew what was coming. So did anyone with an IQ larger than his shoe size.
Same with Germany. Attacking U-boats in protecting those convoys was an act of war. Roosevelt is known to have said he was willing to risk impeachment to get us into the war against Germany.

I think Roosevelt was right on both counts. It would have been a much darker, grimmer world had the axis prevailed.

Don

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kzt wrote:It’s lucky the IJN sunk the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Otherwise they would have overconfidently sailed out to show the inferior Japanese who is boss. And gotten mostly sunk thousands of miles from home.

It is my understanding that wasn't the US Navy's war plan, which they executed as planned in WWII.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:War can also be the result of some country's irresponsible foreign policy. A foreign policy can leave a country with only the choice between war and starvation.

I misquoted this in another thread, but FDR's oil embargo forced the Japanese to attack. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. The Japanese warned the US not to back them into a corner.

Brigade XO wrote:"Don't back us into a corner" .....yeah, -now look what you made me do----expand genocide and slaughter and you were punishing me economically for doing it.

Japan miscalculated.

Rather than repeating everything that Brigade XO wrote; let me just add that the US did NOT force Japan to go to war, that was impossible since the US was just reacting to Japan already having been at war since 1937 with a country friendly with the US. From Wikipedia:

The beginning of the war is conventionally dated to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937, when a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Peking escalated into a full-scale invasion. This full-scale war between the Chinese and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia.

n7axw wrote:It didn't become a world war until Pearl Harbor. Up to that time it was two separate wars happening on different parts of the globe. Pearl Harbor merged these conflicts and as America entered the conflict, those conflicts became a world war.

As for America forcing Japan into conflict with us, I think we did. We cut off the spigot on the oil, stopped exporting our scrap iron and then made impossible to meet our demands. From the Japanese point of view, they were really left with no choice but to attack us. Roosevelt knew what was coming. So did anyone with an IQ larger than his shoe size.
Same with Germany. Attacking U-boats in protecting those convoys was an act of war. Roosevelt is known to have said he was willing to risk impeachment to get us into the war against Germany.

I think Roosevelt was right on both counts. It would have been a much darker, grimmer world had the axis prevailed.

Don

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That is pretty much the gist of the documentary.

BTW, I won't name names because my memory isn't agreeable, but the oil fields at Pearl were tasked to be destroyed by the Japanese command. It was overruled by a single Japanese Admiral who many thought was an idiot. His only claim to fame being one successful battle. Point being, clearer heads within the Japanese command DID want the oil fields destroyed.

Roosevelt should have known what was coming because the Japanese Minister of War warned him that cutting off the oil will cause them to attack.

I stand by my statement, it was irresponsible to adopt that foreign policy and not expect an attack.

cthia wrote:I stand by my statement, it was irresponsible to adopt that foreign policy and not expect an attack.

I am in agreement with this statement with the understanding that the US did expect an attack. As KZT has pointed out at various times, the US did not expect that Japan could or would have the massive successes that they did in the opening months of the expanded war. This was an intelligence failure, not a failure of policy. The authorities in Hawaii only expected sabotage from the local people of Japanese descent, not a full fleet attack. As KZT has also said there was a lot of racist dismissal in the intelligence appraisals.

What I have solely rejected was the statement that Japan was offered "only the choice between war and starvation". The option preferred by Washington was that Japan would end the war in China and the embargoes would be lifted; which does not fit neatly into that binary choice. Instead Japan elected to keep the war in China going and as the pressure increased from Washington, to greatly expand that war.

tlb wrote:That is actually paraphrase of a quote from a US Admiral about the probable action by Nimitz; I found it once and cannot find it again. There are all sorts of "what if" questions that can be asked about the action and response. Another interesting one it what would happen if they had also attacked the oil storage depot. I found this quote: "the Japanese ignored the unglamorous target that truly would have crippled the U.S. Navy for perhaps a year or more: the oil tanks next to Pearl Harbor. Without the ability to refuel at Pearl, the U.S. Navy would have had to retreat to San Diego, San Francisco Bay, and Puget Sound."

kzt wrote:It probably wasn't Nimitz he was talking about. It would have been Admiral Kimmel.

I found this quote by Nimitz:

"It was God's mercy that our fleet was in Pearl Harbor on December 7." If Kimmel "[had] had advance notice that the Japanese were coming, he most probably would have tried to intercept them. With the difference in speed between Kimmel's battleships and the faster Japanese carriers, the former could not have come within rifle range of the enemy's flattops. As a result, we would have lost many ships in deep water and also thousands more in lives."

You are correct, I remembered Nimitz was involved in the statement; but misremembered in thinking it was a jab at him. Here is where I found that statement in Wikipedia:
Events leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I stand by my statement, it was irresponsible to adopt that foreign policy and not expect an attack.

I am in agreement with this statement with the understanding that the US did expect an attack. As KZT has pointed out at various times, the US did not expect that Japan could or would have the massive successes that they did in the opening months of the expanded war. This was an intelligence failure, not a failure of policy. The authorities in Hawaii only expected sabotage from the local people of Japanese descent, not a full fleet attack. As KZT has also said there was a lot of racist dismissal in the intelligence appraisals.

What I have solely rejected was the statement that Japan was offered "only the choice between war and starvation". The option preferred by Washington was that Japan would end the war in China and the embargoes would be lifted; which does not fit neatly into that binary choice. Instead Japan elected to keep the war in China going and as the pressure increased from Washington, to greatly expand that war.

Nope. I fielded that same objection in another thread. Can't remember if it was you. But it doesn't matter whether Roosevelt thought he was giving the Japanese a third alternative. It was whether the Japanese thought they had a third alternative. And they had already informed Roosevelt that they would not have any other alternative but to go to war if the oil was cut off. Part of the preparation for going to war is having reliable intelligence as you said. But intelligence wasn't needed here, because the Japanese command had already informed Roosevelt that they would attack, because they would see no other option.

And, likewise, blaming Pearl on an intelligence failure is also a crock of shit. Since FDR elected to go full-steam ahead with his foreign policy, those battleships should have been elsewhere instead of sitting like ducks in Pearl.

Whether Nimitz was correct or not on whether they should have been deployed forward is besides the point.