[HN Gopher] We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Ha...
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We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor
Author : stanrivers
Score : 204 points
Date : 2021-05-31 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.butwhatfor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.butwhatfor.com)
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| My uncle flew Cobra helicopters in Vietnam and the us developed a
| new anti air system and he was supposed to fly against it to demo
| its effectiveness. I don't recall the story well but he flew nap
| of the earth and in a certain manner he knew would counter the aa
| system and embarrassed the hell out of the bluefor test team and
| engineers who said he cheated. A friend in the army did an
| excercise at Bragg where Special forces made him and the other
| guys attached into opposing force to hunt them down. My friend
| and his team circled back from the trucks and climbed in the bed
| and when the sf got tired of looking for them and came back to
| the truck my friend popped out from under a tarp and simulated
| kill with miles gear and they said he cheated as well. I guess
| there are a lot of egos and sore losers in the military
| throughout history.
| saberdancer wrote:
| You have to take into account that some of these exploits are
| possible exactly because you are in an exercise and can work
| around the rules.
|
| Flying nap of the Earth with a Cobra probably works because he
| knew the location where the AA system was located, there were
| no other "combatants", no air cover or spotters/infantry along
| the route to inform the AA that helicopter is flying low.
|
| SF story about circling back is fun, but in a real scenario it
| would mean you kill a couple of guys but end up surrounded by
| unknown number of people and infantry.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| At least during Vietnam (and according to "The SOG
| Chronicles"), it seems like the special forces guys were
| really out there in areas the US didn't exactly admit to
| going (Cambodia, Laos). As such, taking them down probably
| wouldn't cause much of a counter reaction.
| kevmo wrote:
| Check out the most expensive War Games in history -- the USA
| got annihilated, and there were a lot of hurt feelings. The Lt.
| Gen. quit in the middle of the games, because he kept winning
| and they kept changing the rules to force a USA victory.
| Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul
| K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular,
| using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic
| surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to
| transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style
| light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.
| Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender
| document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of
| Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine
| the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise.
| In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise
| missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors
| and destroyed sixteen warships: one aircraft carrier, ten
| cruisers and five of Blue's six amphibious ships. An equivalent
| success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of
| over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile
| offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was
| "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both
| conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's
| inability to detect them as well as expected.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Curiously the Japanese Navy War Gamed their attack on Midway
| in a similar fashion, and the "USA" team placed their
| carriers exactly where Nimitiz did a few weeks later, and
| sank the Japanese fleet.
|
| The top brass then "re floated" and announced the US Navy
| must sail from Pearl and so be ambushed, as per plan.
|
| So, yeah, risk management is everything
| onepointsixC wrote:
| This story is a lot less impressive when you start learning
| the details.
|
| Such as the fact that the motorcycle messengers traveled at
| the speed of light to instantaneously transmit orders. The
| fact that the salvo of cruise missiles came from boats which
| could not carry them, and the fact that simulator's fleet
| defenses were turned off to prevent them from targeting
| commercial air and commercial shipping.
| quercusa wrote:
| You'd think Blue would have prepared for small boat suicide
| attacks less than two years after the USS Cole attack.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| No one expects the "loyal opposition", oh wait, they did
| ...
| enriquto wrote:
| This story is absolutely bonkers. If the wikipedia page is
| true, this paints a very ridiculous state of US high brass. I
| refuse to believe that a major military nation may engage in
| such petty stupidity. Thus my conclusion is that the whole
| summary of the events is carefully crafted to misled future
| enemies of their true capabilities.
| kevmo wrote:
| Powerful countries have done dumb stuff all throughout
| history. It's one reason why empires don't last.
|
| Burying your head in the sand only makes you part of the
| problem.
| enriquto wrote:
| > makes you part of the problem.
|
| Fortunately for everybody, I have no influence on any
| military nor political force anywhere. Or any relevant
| responsibility for that matter. The world is safe from my
| wrong opinions.
| newsclues wrote:
| Never underestimate the incompetence of senior leadership.
| corty wrote:
| Exercises are different. When you don't have to fear death
| for you or your troops, you don't act the same I guess. I
| think the blue team would have thought twice about letting
| their ego run the show if the red team had used life ammo.
| daveevad wrote:
| > Thus my conclusion is that the whole summary of the
| events is carefully crafted to misled future enemies of
| their true capabilities.
|
| Thus you have discounted the strategy that disclosing
| exactly what happened misleads future enemies the most.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| While the first sounds fine, I don't see how you could
| reasonably consider the second one anything but a complete
| waste of everyone's time.
| jabl wrote:
| Well, in retrospect it's easy to say that air power is the future
| and battleships are obsolete. But with the information available
| at the time, I don't think it really was that clear back in 1932.
| Back then, no capital ship had been sunk let alone been severely
| damaged(?) by aircraft. Aircraft, and in particular naval
| aircraft, at the time were flimsy biplanes, with monoplanes
| slowly entering the scene. Sinking a battleship with those? Pfft,
| entirely reasonably people said.
|
| I mean, put yourself into the hypothetical supreme naval planner
| of, say, the US or Japan at the time. Are you really going to
| gamble your entire nations (or empires, if you will) capability
| to project force overseas on the notion that air power is the
| future and battleships are obsolete? If you're wrong, the enemy
| battleship fleet will just shrug off your feeble aerial attacks
| and proceed to crush your navy and conquer your overseas assets.
|
| So in that sense it's no surprise that both USN and IJN built
| both battleships and carriers. And at least the US kept building
| them long after Pearl Harbor (though the Iowas were all ordered
| before Pearl Harbor, but they weren't cancelled in favor of
| carriers or converted into such either).
| aqme28 wrote:
| Totally agreed, politically, but wasn't Billy Mitchell
| demonstrating air power vs naval as far back as 1921?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell#Project_B:_Anti...
|
| It seems mostly like the powers that be weren't ready to accept
| it.
| [deleted]
| jabl wrote:
| Indeed, Mitchell's experiments were one of the first to
| suggest that air power might have a role beyond scouting in
| naval combat. And no doubt, history proved him to be right.
|
| But again, it would still have been a very risky gamble that
| air power is the future when all your potential adversaries
| are building ever bigger battleships.
| greggyb wrote:
| > I mean, put yourself into the hypothetical supreme naval
| planner of, say, the US or Japan at the time. Are you really
| going to gamble your entire nations (or empires, if you will)
| capability to project force overseas on the notion that air
| power is the future and battleships are obsolete?
|
| Per the fine article, Japan _did_ devote their preparations to
| air superiority and carried out exactly the attack forewarned
| by the 1932 war games. So, yes, that seems to have been a good
| strategy.
| jabl wrote:
| They didn't completely rely on that though, as they, for
| instance, ordered the Yamato class battleships in 1937, at
| great expense and years after the wargames mentioned.
|
| The IJN seems to have been quite obsessed with their Kantai
| Kessen doctrine, where battleship fleets would slug it out in
| one decisive battle.
| protomyth wrote:
| To be fair, some American Admirals believe in battleships
| fleets slugging it out. I cannot remember which battle, but
| it was basically caused by an American Admiral moving his
| BBs for just such a battle.
| snakke wrote:
| Your hunch is correct. There is a quote from a british naval
| officer that roughly says that -if they were right [on aircraft
| carriers being the next best thing and battleships being
| obsolete] they'd win the war. If they were wrong, they'd lose
| the empire.-
|
| The exact quote escapes my google-fu sadly. I'm quite postive
| I've seen it in either one of Indy Neidell and his team's WW2
| week-by-week episode[0] or one of the many excellent
| Drachinifel's videos about all things naval history[1].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1AejCL4DA7jYkZAELRhHQ
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mftUX7apmV1vsVXZh7RTw
| pmontra wrote:
| In other wargames:
|
| You might remember that the Ronald Reagan was sunk by a Swedish
| stealth submarine in 2005 [1] and that there is little hope to
| save the Baltic and Taiwan if Russia and China decide to occupy
| them [2].
|
| [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-games-swedish-
| ste...
|
| [2] https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-
| handed-t...
| tpmx wrote:
| [1]:
|
| > Key Point: Why are we still building aircraft carriers when
| even Sweden can sink them?
|
| Oi.
|
| Still a fair question, though.
| fatbird wrote:
| Because they're the greatest _peacetime_ weapons system ever
| invented. Until hot war breaks out, which seems increasingly
| unlikely under the umbrella of nuclear weapons and MAD, they
| are the premier force projection tool around--in essence, the
| best bluff a superpower can make, and crucially, it 's worked
| since WW2.
|
| That said, while incidents like Sweden "sinking" a carrier
| have happened and embarassed the Navy, carriers have been
| present in multiple wars since WW2 (Vietnam, Persian Gulf,
| Iraq War) and haven't been sunk. If it's really that easy,
| one would think it would have happened when enemies actually
| were motivated to inflict such a loss. This suggests that the
| wargame conditions aren't very reflective of actual doctrine.
| protomyth wrote:
| I thought the assumption was the the US attack subs would
| clear the area before a carrier would get there.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| One complication is that sinking a US carrier would likely
| trigger nuclear retaliation. Even if the enemy is in a good
| position to do so, that will make them think twice.
| senko wrote:
| Would it, tho?
|
| Answering a conventional strike in international waters
| with a nuclear one (and at different target instead of the
| original attacker, since you can't really nuke a sub) is
| crossing the Rubicon, there's no going back from that.
| vajrabum wrote:
| Submariners have long had a saying that there are two kinds of
| ships, submarines and targets.
| finiteseries wrote:
| From what I understand, the US doesn't realistically intend to
| defend or recover either of them, let alone with CSGs, let
| alone with their own CSGs. The umbrella was/is? organized
| around deterrence, allies, and ultimately retaliation.
|
| Carriers were/are? more for the vast supply lines going towards
| the areas where e.g. Swedish/Japanese stealth submarines would
| be bottling up Russian/Chinese assets near their coasts.
|
| China in particular has thousands and thousands of miles of
| neck extending into and out of the Indian Ocean.
| afterburner wrote:
| > there is little hope to save the Baltic and Taiwan if Russia
| and China
|
| With a proper counterattack, they can be liberated. The war
| isn't over just because the attacker says so.
| elihu wrote:
| The article makes a good case that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to
| surprise attacks and the Navy had good reasons to be aware of
| that at the time. However, that being the case, what should they
| have done differently to be less vulnerable?
|
| Clearly they needed some kind of early warning system, and they
| actually installed a radar installation which was brand new
| technology at the time. (Unfortunately, they didn't heed the
| warning when it came.) What else should they have done?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Well, it doesn't get any simpler than taking threats seriously.
| Beyond that a night shift and early morning patrol into the
| blind spots couldn't have hurt.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This sounds very familiar. You should look up the millennium
| challenge to see this play out again in modern times.
|
| https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
| Marazan wrote:
| The Millennium Challenge was a farce but _the Millennium
| Challenge was completely right_.
|
| The point of the millenium challenge was to see if modern
| advances in C3 could allow a numerically inferior force to the
| one used in Desert Storm could invade Iraq successfully.
|
| What they discovered was against a tenacious and unconventional
| enemy willing to use elite troops in daring and near suicidal
| ways then America would take unacceptable losses.
|
| But.....
|
| That's not the enemy they were going to face. They were going
| to face the Iraqi army. So whislt on the face of it the "reset"
| was ludicrous it was also appropriate.
|
| And, I was a critic of the US military's strategy for the
| Invasion of Iraq, I thought the force ratios were insufficient
| and I was wrong. The Millennium Challenge did indeed show that
| C3 advances were sufficient to allow the lower force ratios to
| succeed.
|
| (Of course the Millennium Challenge did have other failures in
| the limits of what it was testing. The occupation of Iraq was
| botched from the opening days as whilst the force numbers were
| sufficient to beat the Iraq army they were not sufficient to
| occupy the country in a way that stopped it descending into
| chaos)
| mcguire wrote:
| That's a well-known failure mode of modern professional
| wargames: they analyze the heck out of the first three days
| and then hand-wave the rest of the campaign.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Saying this up front, as an American, I believe we were lied
| to and misled in lead up to the invasion of Iraq, and someone
| should have gone to jail for that.
|
| That said, this statement isn't quite this simple, " they
| were not sufficient to occupy the country in a way that
| stopped it descending into chaos." The US administration made
| a decision to disband the Iraqi military and it's other
| paramilitary forces. That meant that all existing structure
| for maintaining order in the country was lost. By doing this,
| it necessitated a large occupation force, that never was
| created, and only made the US more hated there.
|
| Look at the occupations of Germany and Japan after WWII and
| it's a very different outcome and one where existing systems
| were left in place to help maintain an orderly transition.
| monocasa wrote:
| I was under the impression that the Millennium Challenge's
| red team was playing as Iran, not Iraq.
|
| A "tenacious and unconventional enemy willing to use elite
| troops in daring and near suicidal ways" particularly known
| for their use of speedboats blended with more traditional
| military material is the Revolutionary Guard's MO.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Same here. That's why I think a war would Iran would be
| suicide and we would suffer a humiliating "defeat". Or at
| least many people would die.
|
| Unless our strategies radically change.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, the descriptions I have read of the red team fits
| Iran much better than Iraq. Simulating an attack against
| the Iraqi navy seems rather pointless.
| i56asg5h wrote:
| Colonel Billy Mitchell, the "father of the US Air Force," was
| famously court marshalled in 1925. He had predicted that in the
| future Japan would attack Pearl Harbor with aircraft. He
| predicted 'aircraft traveling 1000 miles per hour would fight
| each other in the stratosphere'. He predicted troopers would one
| day parachute behind enemy lines. He predicted long range heavy
| bombers. He aggressively argued for stronger investment in air
| power, against a resistent brass, who, irritated with him, had
| him court martialed. A great 1955 Gary Cooper film tells his
| tale, "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell." This is the
| climactic court martial scene:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecMYH3dPIUI
| jgeada wrote:
| It is as if people keep thinking of the military as this
| altruistic organization staffed by pure self-sacrificing people
| willing to put it all on the line for the defense of country.
| Sure, that is somewhat true of the troops. But the generals and
| leaders are political beasts that know the true purpose is to
| call coddle the status quo & divert gargantuan sums of money into
| private pockets with as few questions as possible.
|
| This is why when real wars happen and the stakes actually
| suddenly matter there tends to be a large upheaval at the top to
| discard the political animals. When was it the last time you
| heard of a US general being fired for incompetence when a
| procurement projects they led goes totally off the rails (as they
| almost always do), blowing any notion of budget, time &
| preparedness ?
| Lammy wrote:
| IMO the use of aircraft isn't even the most interesting part of
| the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Having an aircraft carrier
| isn't very useful if you can't load it with enough fuel to get to
| a target and back:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment
| shakezula wrote:
| To add to this: One of the reasons they originally targeted
| Pearl Harbor was to take out our oil and fuel reserves there,
| but at the last minute they changed targets and went for our
| ships instead.
|
| From what I've read, if they had taken out our reserves there,
| our entire foothold in the pacific would have been lost for a
| year plus while we rebuilt, and we would've had to move our
| carrier forces back to the pacific coast, which would've been
| devastating at the time. The entire pacific theatre effort from
| the U.S. would've been crippled before it could've started.
|
| War is really just a game of logistics.
| mjlee wrote:
| First Sea Lord (Head of the Royal Navy) Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson
| described submarines as "Underhanded, unfair and damned un-
| English". He also suggest that enemy submariners be tried as
| pirates and hanged if caught.
|
| Thankfully (for the RN...) reason prevailed and submarines were
| in service for the First World War. The pirates association lives
| on today though - RN submarines returning from deployment still
| fly the Jolly Roger.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| FDR goaded Japan into that attack by cutting off their oil and
| suppressed intelligence about the impending attack to ensure a
| decisive entry into WWII over the opposition of 90% of the
| American public. Having political leadership so opposed to the
| will of the people is a state US 'democracy' seems perpetually
| unable to end, re Iraq, Vietnam, WWI, WWII etc. Hearing US
| lecture governments that fight on behalf of their people instead
| of manipulating them into war would be a national embarrassment
| if Americans weren't firmly ensconced in their pro-US empire
| media bubble.
|
| PS: FDR began sending supplies to the USSR before pear harbor
| despite its mass murder and atrocities across Eurasia and extreme
| unpopularity of the Soviet government with the US public. The
| embargo with Japan was made for geopolitical reasons and any
| "humanitarian" argument is post hoc.
|
| EDIT: Remarkably, President Herbert Hoover remained politically
| active in the post-FDR media landscape and his account of the
| events and of FDRs actions leaves little room for doubt about
| FDRs aims in his foreign policy with Japan.
|
| https://www.hoover.org/research/freedom-betrayed-herbert-hoo...
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Do you have a cite for the suppression of US intelligence prior
| to the attack? The mainstream history sources I've read have
| suggested no such thing and led me to believe the US really was
| caught with their pants down. The Japanese sent an envoy to
| alert the US after the attack started, but while trying to
| maintain plausible deniability that they tried to make contact
| beforehand.
|
| Also why would you pin the fundamental blame on FDR cutting off
| the oil? Japan was running a pretty brutal occupation of China
| at the time. Continuing to supply oil would be supporting that
| occupation. It's true though that part of Japan's motive for
| the attack was that oil was running out.
| richliss wrote:
| This is one of the best things I've ever read on Hacker News.
| Thank you.
| duckfang wrote:
| Lets remind us our dates.
|
| July 4, 1898, the Newlands Resolution was a joint resolution by
| the United States Congress to annex the independent Republic of
| Hawaii. In 1900, Congress occupied the Territory of Hawaii,
| despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians.
|
| Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu,
| Hawai'i, an occupied territory.
|
| August 21, 1959 is when they were forcibly turned into a state,
| after 60 years of occupation.
|
| Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where
| civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.
|
| Edit: both posts are at -4. And indeed it's sad to see close
| minded nationalism take and keep hold. The world is bigger than
| from Hawai'i to Maine, and the USA is often the aggressor. I
| liken to consider myself a citizen of the earth, and not any one
| nation.
| monoideism wrote:
| > Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu,
| Hawai'i, an occupied territory.
|
| With the end objective of occupying themselves, like they
| occupied so many countries during WWII.
|
| > Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities
| where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.
|
| Yes, because those settlements had no military value, so they
| focused on targets of military importance. When able, the
| Japanese had no hesitation about killing or raping local
| inhabitants of the places they occupied during and before WWII
| - see Nanking and Korean "Comfort Women".
|
| I'm OK with someone criticizing US conduct in Hawaii in the
| years leading up to WWII, but let's not pretend that imperial
| Japan was some kind of benign force for good in the world
| during the same time period.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> With the end objective of occupying themselves_
|
| The Japanese had no intention of occupying Hawaii. They
| simply wanted to incapacitate the US Pacific Fleet. Had the
| US Pacific Fleet's carriers been in port at Pearl Harbor at
| the time, they would have succeeded.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Japan could have also crippled the US fleet had they
| targeted the oil stored at Pearl.
| duckfang wrote:
| I suggest you look up some reading on the subject, and try to
| shy away from the US propaganda.
|
| No Choice but War: The United States Embargo Against Japan
| and the Eruption of War in the Pacific
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqmp3br Beyond Pearl Harbor:
| A Pacific History
|
| And you'll find out that there was continual and worsening
| relations with Japan due to US imperialism. Hawai'i was only
| one such territory colonized and conquered.
|
| And there were economic sanctions from 1931 to 1941 for
| various products.
|
| But this is also out of the US playbook to surround an enemy
| or proposed enemy, pull out economic sanctions, and then pull
| out the single bad thing. For example, here's the AFB's
| around Iran https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-
| qimg-4d67205db3b8a9d820ca77... , but we're supposed to only
| look at Natanz nuclear refining.
|
| Now, I'm not saying that Japan was honorable in combat. They
| death-marched Chinese. The "comfort women" were rape and
| murder victims. But really, all nations have similar horrific
| stories. Japan, alike the US, was no different in that
| regard.
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| The Japanese started planning their revenge on the US since
| commander perry forced them to open trade. The US has a
| history of creating cassus belli like mexican war and
| Vietnam etc but what you link to is propaganda. And WW2 we
| had a clear cassus belli for Japan. Japan not only did
| things more evil than any other force on the planet I've
| ever read about in history as listed in the rape of Nanking
| but never faced any real consequences from paying
| reparations or apologizing and even today it's full of the
| equivalent of Holocaust deniers who continue to spew
| falsehoods in defense of the poor Japanese who were only
| trying to liberate Asia from imperialists
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| > commander perry forced them to open trade
|
| Tangential: if anyone is interested in learning more
| about this, I recommend the YouTube channel _History
| Buffs_ ' review of the film _The Last Samurai_
| jabl wrote:
| Certainly all of the major combatants of WWII have blood on
| their hands and committed what would certainly today be
| called atrocities and war crimes. That being said, there's
| certainly massive differences in motivation and scale.
|
| For that reason, Imperial Japan certainly ranks right up
| there together with Nazi Germany as the most evil regimes
| in recent history, and the US of that era does not (saying
| this as a non-US'ian who is generally pretty critical of
| the post-WWII foreign policy adventures the US has gotten
| itself involved in).
| umvi wrote:
| Japan didn't bomb native settlements because doing so would
| have been a waste of resources that offered no strategic
| advantage. It would be like during the revolutionary war if
| Britain had focused on destroying the (largely neutral) Native
| Americans settlements instead of the "occupiers".
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Also, Japan brutalised and terrorised every nation it
| occupied during the war (and before). If Japan brought no
| harm upon the "occupied" Hawaiians it certainly wasn't out of
| any ethnic good will towards them. Does anyone seriously
| thank that, had Japan won the war and occupied Hawaii, it
| would have treated the natives any better than it treated the
| Chinese or Vietnamese?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| The history of US colonization of Hawaii is legitimate and
| relevant. The hint that WWII Japan was gracious towards island
| natives is absolutely _wild_.
| samatman wrote:
| Credit where credit is due: painting Imperial Japan as an
| anticolonial liberating force is novel.
|
| It's risible and insane, but novel nonetheless.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| As long as we're bringing up historical facts that are only
| tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, let's also remind
| ourselves of the rape of Nanking, the Burma death railway, Unit
| 731, the tens of thousands of PoWs that Imperial Japan murdered
| in its camps and the twenty million people who were killed
| (many of them by chemical and biological warfare) in Japan's
| genocidal campaign against China.
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| > Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities
| where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.
|
| Ah yes, Imperial Japan, known for it's incredible humanity
| toward civilians.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yeah especially considering their attitude toward civilians
| in Nanking/Nanjing, Manchuria and The Philippines.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I would point out that 94% of residents voted for statehood.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| This is a good article, and the story is certainly emotionally
| appealing, with the maverick who goes against the prevailing
| wisdom being proven correct in the end.
|
| I wonder how this sort of story would look when put into the
| context of a large scale investigation into military strategy and
| dissenting voices. When these contrarians pop up are they usually
| right? Maybe there are heaps of them and 9 out of 10 times
| conventional military strategy is the better option?
|
| Modern military history seems to have so many examples of leaders
| being wrong, including 'successful' ones, it's hard to extract a
| clear narrative in many cases.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Taken from the universe of _all_ ideas, a random contrarian
| idea is usually wrong. Taken from the universe of contrarian
| ideas pushed by domain experts and backed up by successful
| experiments, they 're usually right. Paul Graham recently wrote
| an essay on this:
|
| http://paulgraham.com/newideas.html
|
| Ernest King (the red team commander in the second wargame)
| wasn't a random newbie: he eventually served as Chief of Naval
| Operations in WW2. And a successful wargame is about as strong
| evidence as you can get. Amazingly, real-world experience is
| _still_ often discounted by people in charge, which shows the
| power that existing paradigms and status-quo bias have on
| people.
| marvin wrote:
| If leaders and strategists around the world could take one
| single lesson from the Covid pandemic, it should be that you
| must never, never underestimate the power of mental inertia
| and the status quo.
|
| It leaves all but an elite few in the dust when reality
| suddenly changes in what's perceived to be an instant. Most
| normally competent people will behave as complete morons for
| the 6-12 months it takes them to understand the new reality.
| Of course, reality has been changing for a long time, but in
| principle there's still time to react when it becomes obvious
| to well-placed observers.
|
| I'm sure that an organization that's able to internalize that
| lesson will have an immense strategic advantage in a conflict
| against a peer force. Whether that be a virus, a military
| adversary or a competing industrial entity.
| rm445 wrote:
| These large-scale war games aren't just an opinion or a white
| paper though. Maybe better to ask something like how often an
| unconventional win in a war game could actually be replicated
| by an adversary in real life.
|
| I seem to recall a similar response to massed small boats
| (simulating) taking out a U.S. carrier in war games a few years
| ago. Implying that the Persian Gulf is far more dangerous than
| previously understood. AIUI the Navy did nothing but cry foul.
| Maybe the strategy has been changed in response since.
| fmajid wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/21/usa.julianborg.
| ..
|
| General Van Riper used low-tech but effective techniques like
| using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders in a way that
| could not be intercepted by US ELINT/COMINT or blocked by
| jamming.
|
| We are lucky Saddam did not have inventive Marine generals,
| because any general smart enough to be effective would have
| been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| You're missing the part where those motorcycle messengers
| move at the speed of light, that the speed boats used were
| tiny commercial ones which could have never loaded let
| alone fired the heavy cruise missiles used and that blue
| force's defenses were off because the simulator otherwise
| would unintentionally target civilian shipping and
| aviation.
|
| If the Iranians could have they would have done so already.
| There's a reason why they had resorted to militias and
| sectarian violence in Iraq instead.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> because any general smart enough to be effective would
| have been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime._
|
| Saved our asses in the European theater, in WWII. Hitler
| was an insecure micromanager.
|
| His generals represented generations of military expertise.
| They were really good.
|
| There's a number of places where Germany could have won the
| war, but were short-circuited by _der dumkopf fuhrer_
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. His generals really screwed up
| the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. Hitler knew they
| needed to secure the oil in the Caucasus but the generals
| were myopically focused on an Eastern advance and on
| securing useless symbolic military wins that contributed
| nothing towards the oil effort. It's because they weren't
| capable of understanding the dire economic need for oil
| and were too zoned in on their domain of expertise
| (military engagement). Hitler for all his faults was one
| of the few who knew that the only important stratetic
| objective at that point was oil. He failed to get a
| number of his generals on that same understanding, and in
| some cases these generals sabotaged the oil effort.
| NoNameProvided wrote:
| > and in some cases these generals sabotaged the oil
| effort.
|
| This sounds interesting, do you have any sources about
| this?
|
| > His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in
| the late 1940s.
|
| My limited understanding of the eastern front is that: a,
| Hitler ordered the initial attack despite the warning of
| his generals b, forbid any (even tactical) retreat when
| the tides turned which eventually led to the destruction
| of multiple army groups.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > despite the warning of his generals
|
| The problem here being that his generals warned against
| all of his other attacks earlier in the war which were
| amazingy succesful. I suppose he felt that he knew better
| by the time of the Eastern front.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Anything about Operation Barbarossa is good. There's a
| few YouTube videos on the channel TIK discussing the oil
| objective on the Eastern front that are basic and densely
| packed.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That makes sense. I remember reading about that, but I
| guess it didn't sink in.
|
| Oil was _very_ important to a mechanized army.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Exactly. Most people think the Eastern front was an act
| of lunacy. In reality it was an act of utter necessity.
| Hitler's only chance of potentially winning WW2 (if there
| ever was a real chance) was to capture more oil in
| Eastern Europe. They were running on the fumes of
| synthetic oil created from coal at that point.
|
| Stalin knew Hitler's objectives well because of how hard
| Hitler was pushing for oil in negotiations before they
| became foes, and strategically positioned Russia's army
| in a way to block Hitler's advance specifically to key
| oil locations, while leaving other locations relatively
| weaker.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Hitler's problem, IMHO and only militarily, was that he
| was right more often than not in 39 and 40. He failed to
| figure out why, so. As a result, he thought working
| against military expertise was the silver bullet. That,
| and that there never was a real chance to win a
| conventional war against the allies.
|
| Another general that comes to mind os Field Marshal Haig.
| He wanted a break through on the Western Front in WW1. He
| got a war of attrition, which worked for him and not for
| the Germans. So he thought going for a break through was
| the way to go. It worked in the end, but for the wrong
| reasons.
|
| That being said, a lot of German WW2 generals are over
| hyped, first on their memoirs and then by anti-communist
| "propaganda".
| travisjungroth wrote:
| This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to
| commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are
| made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear.
|
| It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl
| Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress
| rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war
| games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and
| you're too politicized to integrate the lessons. Admiral Yamamoto
| didn't have to worry about upsetting US Navy top brass. He was
| able to benefit from our lessons, even if we weren't.
| rjsw wrote:
| Japan also learned plenty of things from Taranto [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto
| rightbyte wrote:
| > The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read
| Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just
| the stories I hear.
|
| War games are not fair really. For either side. No-one know
| what the actual outcome of a manouver would be.
|
| Also, if Red's commander is way better, Blue's paper strategy
| might still be preferable.
|
| My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in
| logistics foremost.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in
| logistics foremost.
|
| Varies. Getting people familiar with command and control
| procedures is a key theme.
|
| In the UK, 'Army HQ' manages the process of ensuring that
| forces are ready for operations - which is where the training
| happens. When the country deploys troops on an operation,
| various units and sub-units are assembled into a mission-
| specific force which is ultimately under the control of a
| Joint Task Force HQ, not the Army's peacetime HQ. Exercises
| are a key part of the peacetime 'readiness cycle' through
| which the various force elements are prepared for ops. An
| exercise might test the staff of a battlegroup HQ to receive
| orders from a Brigade HQ ('Higher Control' in exercise-speak)
| and in turn generate orders that are given to its constituent
| sub-unit HQs. Such an exercise might last for a week and have
| separate phases for Planning and Execution activities. The
| different HQ elements need this type of training because the
| precise mission-specific C2 arrangements simply don't exist
| when the forces are in their peace-time barracks.
|
| Logistics are entirely simulated in such an exercise so that
| you don't need half the army around to train 50-100 staff. In
| fact there is such a thing as a Tactical Exercise Without
| Troops that totally focusses on HQ processes so as to avoid
| wasting the troops' time while the staff in the exercising HQ
| get their act together.
|
| Field exercises using laser-simulated weapons might involve
| 'last mile' logistics activities but there is no way they
| will involve the complex logistics supply chains of a real
| deployed force.
| jabl wrote:
| In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN
| is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses
| kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans
| doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE
| of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they
| reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause
| that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the attack on
| Midway island starts.
|
| Don't know whether such a wargaming episode happened in
| reality.
| mcguire wrote:
| Yes, it did. See _Shattered Sword_ by Jonathan Parshall and
| Anthony Tully. (One additional feature often seen in the
| story is the part where the umpire "resurrects" the two
| Japanese carriers which were "sunk" in the attack---that part
| is usually overplayed, since it would be a waste of time to
| continue the game without the two carriers and there were
| still questions to be answered.)
| jabl wrote:
| I keep hearing good things about that book. Alas, my
| interest in Midway only seems to go so far and I'm finding
| myself unwilling to commit to actually reading that book.
| Oh well, maybe one day..
| credit_guy wrote:
| I don't have much time lately to actually read books, so
| I listen to them on my bike ride to and from work. I have
| had "Shattered Sword" as a paperback book for more than
| 10 years, and never read more than 2 pages in it. Once I
| started listening to the audiobook, I pretty much had to
| finish it. It's about 24 hours of audio. Longer than it
| would take to read it, but if you don't find time to read
| it, it's quite a good substitute.
| enkid wrote:
| I mean, if you know the adversaries plan, it's pretty easy to
| come up with something that wrecks it, which is what it
| sounds like that officer did. What the Japanese didn't know
| was that the Americans also knew the plan.
| TwoNineA wrote:
| Americans also got lucky that George Best and Wade McClusky
| were able to hit the carriers knowning that most attempts
| in the battle so far have utterly failed.
| jabl wrote:
| It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway
| indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into
| fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and
| fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks
| were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to
| anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits
| were enough to doom the ships.
|
| Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age
| the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable
| brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is
| much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was
| the cause of many WWII carriers burning).
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway
| is astonishing. About the only part of it _not_ due to
| luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about
| the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock
| workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to
| sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally
| broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers.
|
| This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty
| good and shows all the luck involved:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_b
| Zlk...
| ghaff wrote:
| You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack
| of essentially any success early on was a bit _unlucky_.
| But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a
| case of everything going right at a couple points for the
| US. Probably wouldn 't have altered the course of the war
| given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic
| bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer
| to Japan than Hawaii was.
| graycat wrote:
| As I studied Midway, the conclusion I came to was that
| the Japanese made a big mistake: They had two attacks for
| two quite different goals going at once, and the two
| conflicted and were one too many.
|
| The two attacks were (1) attacking the ground
| installations on Midway island and (2) defending against
| the US aircraft carriers.
|
| For (1), the main goal of the whole operation was to take
| Midway island, but early in that operation the goal was
| to destroy the ability of US planes on Midway to attack
| the Japanese ships. The Japanese kept worrying about
| attacks on their ships from US planes on Midway.
|
| For (2) the Japanese had tried to determine where the US
| carriers were but the effort failed, and, net, the
| Japanese didn't know where the US carriers were. The
| Japanese considered the possibility that the US carriers
| really were about ready to find and attack the Japanese
| ships.
|
| Then, net, handling both (1) and (2) was too much and led
| to (A) having the Japanese airplanes busy with (1) and
| unable to respond to (2) and (B) giving too little
| attention to (2) until too late. In particular, the
| Japanese had to wait, wait too long, wait on their
| airplanes returning from their attack on Midway and have
| their decks full of those returning airplanes. Also they
| had to wait, wait too long, wait to rearm their planes
| with torpedoes for attacking US ships instead of bombs
| for attacking Midway ground targets.
|
| Basically, either (1) for the island or (2) for the US
| ships was a long term effort, from getting ready,
| launching the planes, managing their fighter cover for
| their ships, recovering the planes, getting the planes
| below decks, refueled, rearmed, and ready for launching
| again. The Japanese were able to do well at all that for
| either (1) or (2) but not for both in the time available.
| The Japanese underestimated the challenge and threat of
| trying to do both at essentially the same time.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Midway had it's fortunate moments, but IJN didn't have
| much of a chance from the get go due to the absurd USN
| ship production:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M
| rjsw wrote:
| I read a suggestion recently that there was a higher
| probability of sinking IJN carriers during the Indian
| Ocean raid [1] than at Midway. Any attacks on them would
| have been done by radar equipped aircraft at night with
| no Zeros flying.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid
| Gravityloss wrote:
| This was a very good read. So many communication
| problems. Ships or aircraft were spotted or encrypted
| messages were deciphered - but information was not
| relayed for various reasons.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It wasn't as lucky as it seems. The dive bombers were
| able to dive straight down, almost vertically, with no
| risk of being shot down by the enemy Zero fighters (since
| they were drawn away by a previous attack).
|
| It's more lucky that they didn't attack the same targets,
| than that they hit their targets.
|
| Also, not directly relevant, but I'll plug this video: ht
| tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel
| =... it's great.
| jabl wrote:
| I agree, that video series is very good. (And, among its
| sources it lists the _Shattered Sword_ book recommended
| elsewhere in this thread)
| Giorgi wrote:
| This was really interesting, it's tragic that so many people died
| because of the ignorance.
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