This take on history needs to die in a fire.

Not decisively winning every single battle with minimal losses has somehow been flipped into the Navy being a bunch of incompetent idiots, which is a massive disservice to every sailor who fought in the war.

The fact is, on the tactical level, they were trading evenly with a peer nation that had a couple years head start on mobilizing for war, and on the strategic level, they were forcing the Japanese to play their game and grinding them down in an attrition campaign the Japanese couldn't win.

You can point to Savo Island as an Allied (not US - the officer in command of the surface forces was Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley of the Royal Navy) disaster, but it wasn't the US that lost two fast battleships off Guadalcanal (one to inferior forces) and had to evacuate.

The Marines had sufficient supplies to survive.  The US Admirals that led the fight were not competent.

ADM Kelly Turner was King's boy from working as Plans chief.   He received a false report that there was a seaplane tender with Mikawa, and then assumed that they were going to establish a seaplane base.  That's the sort of green decision people make at the start of a war.  He basically pointed the finger at Fletcher to cover his own ass. King skewered Fletcher for it. It's a 15:1 casualty rate. It is what it is. The two major decisions that caused failure were made by an American.  Blowing off recon reports and pulling the commander away.  Although the deployment plan was also a mess and that was Crutchley.  

Where was Crutchley at Savo? He was not with his formation because Turner called him away to a meeting. Bad call.



Bode, Callaghan, Wright (Battle of Tassafaronga) Giffen (Battle of Rennell Island) haven't fared well in history.  Ghormley basically told Vandegrift if he saw fit he could surrender.  Fletcher got thrown under the bus.  Scott did well at Cape Esperence but he had to be second in command to Callaghan, a guy with no combat experience, who didn't understand radar, because Callaghan had three weeks seniority.  And the only reason he was available because after Ghormley got fired Callaghan, his CoS, was unemployed. Another great Turner decision from a peacetime mindset.

The only admiral to lead tactical forces and to survive with reputation and life intact was Willis Lee.  But it begs the question. If Lee fought so well why was Wright in charge for the next battle, two weeks later?  War is not fought like a pitching rotation.

Putting it mildly, there was a massively uneven appreciation of radar and its capabilities in Fall 1942 among the US flag officers.  The best thing you can say is that the US prewar appreciation of radar and torpedo development was so immature that any poor admiral at Guadalcanal had the deck stacked against him. (Oh wait...there's Lee. Never mind)  But it is what it is.  One side trained for night fighting and the other didn't.  To protect Guadalcanal the US had to fight in the environment the Japanese had trained for.  So, arguably, it was a peacetime doctrinal failure, and torpedo testing failure, and the souls caught on the X when the war kicked off paid for it. But it still doesn't explain why after Scott and Lee win battles they are replaced by Turner and Halsey with some other Admiral with no experience. Who loses.

So while the US sailors fought valiantly and well its curious that so many careers and reputations of US admirals went to hell off Guadalcanal.  Outside of Lee and Scott, basically all of them.  On the other hand, the land commanders, both USA and USMC: Vandegrift, Patch, Collins...all did well and were promoted to four star level.  

The Navy sacrificed under poor leadership at the flag level to save Henderson, and Henderson did a lot of the work to isolate the Japanese.

Please give us more.This type of personal info is priceless.

Read this:
Attached File



https://www.amazon.com/First-Team-Pacific-Combat-Harbor/dp/159114471X

All of his books are outstanding.

"The Marines had sufficient supplies to survive."

LOL. "Supplies." Look's like someone read too many voluminous narratives from Big Navy.

Whereas on the ground, authors/survivors of that hellhole have written quite the opposite. Here's just one:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/02/10/green-hell-battle-recalled-guadalcanal-75-years-later.html

Not exactly.  There was enough time after the torpedo bombers were driven off for the fighters to climb back to altitude - more than 15 minutes, according to after action reports.  That the Japanese either did not do so or were poorly positioned to detect and intercept the dive bombers after climbing is a separate issue from the distraction afforded by the torpedo bombers.

As for the rearming of the aircraft - the Japanese suffered relatively heavy losses during their attack on Midway, and underwent almost continuous attacks from land based air forces.  The decision to attack Midway again was reasonable given what they knew (or thought they knew).  The aircraft had to be rearmed to attack the carriers because the torpedo bombers were fitted with bombs for high altitude level bombing of Midway, which would have been practically useless against naval vessels evading - the lack of results from level bombers from Midway were an example.  Otherwise, they'd only be able to launch the dive bombers and sacrifice much of their strength for the attack.

They also needed to recover the first Midway strike before launching an attack on the US naval forces, unless they were willing to see a large portion of it ditch for lack of fuel.  Given this, the decision to rearm the torpedo bombers wouldn't have delayed launching a strike by all that much.  The timing of the sighting of the US forces was about as bad as it could have been from the Japanese point of view - even not sighting them at all prior to the first US carrier strike wouldn't have hurt them much, and may have made their first 3 carriers more survivable when the dive bombers found them (if they hadn't decided to rearm a second time they may have been able to launch the second Midway strike before being hit)- it may well have delayed the strike from the fourth carrier, however.

Mike

Japan had to either attack the US or give up their war in China, and their dreams of empire.  They didn't have the oil to continue the war once the US (and other European powers controlling the oil production in the Pacific) declared an embargo on oil.  If they tried to take the oil-producing regions without attacking the Philippines, the US would be able to interdict the sea lanes using land-based air and naval forces based in the Philippines.  To be able to access the oil, they HAD to remove the threat posed by the US.

Mike

That was the entire point of the Japanese battle plan, though - they were supposed to show up at Midway, neutralize it (and possible actually seize it) before the US Navy could respond, and then destroy the US forces as they arrived.  From their point of view, if they weren't going to attack the island and so generate a response, there would be no point in going.  They even planned a sub-launched reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor to determine that the fleet was not in position to intervene "early," but that was also thwarted when the submarine found a US warship at the location it planned to launch from.

Mike

I think the plan was to fly a huge seaplane from Kwajalein to Pearl Harbor, then to French Frigate Shoals to refuel from a sub, then fly on to Wake Island.  

My bad, I do believe you are correct that the sub was there to refuel the planes rather than launch them - I do not recall at all the rest of the details (or perhaps I would have gotten them right in my earlier post...).

@GreyGhost
@digitalebola

John  Lundstrom sent me Chapter 15, "Sparring with the Tokyo Express."
Mom's friend Betty knew most all of Melvin Roach's friends in VF-5, VF-6, too. I have pics of most, Roy Simpler, GE Mellon, Ross Anderson, etc.

John Lundstrom told me, "Melvin Roach is one of my most favorite pilots and chapter 15 features him."

I will upload it when I do the threads digitalebola and I were talking about.

That would be great.He is by far my favorite author when it comes to the Pacific Theater.I’ve got all his books and have read them several times.It’s been quite a few years since he published a new book,any idea why?

They did several of these type missions in 1942, and tried sending submarine-launched seaplanes too.

It wasn't all luck.

IJN: "Wait, where is all this shit coming from?"
CV2 USS Lexington: "SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKER."

Plus, we had their codes and knew they were coming. That wasn't luck. That was one-sided tactical advantage. We knew they were out there and were looking for them hard. Sure, the IJN made mistakes, but they were mistakes made in the first place because we knew they were there and pressing them.

They knew it too, or at least Yamamoto knew it.  Their entire strategy hinged on being able to knock the US out of the war with one Mahan style decisive battle at pearl harbor.  When that didn't work they were fucked.   Even if they had caught the carriers and sunk them all, it's hard to imagine the US simply ceding the pacific.   All it would have done was prolong the war.

This ^^

The expected response was for the United States to take its bloodied nose and go home. The Japanese would consolidate their position in SE Asia for resources and things would settle into a new norm. It was their version of a long awaited Manifest Destiny. Obviously they got another reaction entirely. It's kinda too bad we backed them pre-WW2 instead of either old China or Josen-Korea. While I love modern Japan, the Empire was the wrong player to back. They were cruel and sadistic fuckers that needed put down.

This.  Midway was a baited ambush.  Attack the island to draw out the carriers.  But as codes were broken, the US plan (Nimitz) was to get there first and attack by surprise. Fletcher made the decision to strike from long range while they were refueling after the Midway strike, rather then wait and get in closer when the Japanese would be less vulnerable as their planes were aloft.

Nagumo's best option would have been to either a) launch his planes as soon as Tone#4 recon aircraft saw Yorktown. Hindsight being 20/20, the lousy recon plan deprived Nagumo of the initial info that Tone#4 saw carriers.  He also could have b) withdrew to the west and opened the distance, developing the situation, rather then going SE and NE.

Midway was largely an intel/recon/OPSEC failure.  The Japanese submarines failed, the recon flights were launched simultaneously with the first strike, and were under resourced.  

Generally when you walk into an ambush like the Japanese did, you find yourself behind the power curve and that makes it hard to recover.

CAPT Hughes, who wrote "Fleet Tactics" wrote that the WWII name of the game was "Attack Effectively First"  Finding the enemy carriers while remaining hidden was a huge part of that.

Among the long list of "lucky" coincidences I've seen listed in this thread I don't think I've seen mentioned that Tone#4 was launched a half hour late. The timeline sure looks a lot different if Nagumo gets that report 30 minutes sooner. There's so many little things like that it's really hard for me to not see a divine hand at Midway.

All in all I think Nagumo gets a bit of a bad rap. There weren't many good choices to be made. He had been dodging attacks from Midway all morning. He had actually been extremely lucky to not have taken significant damage from them. Those ground based attack waves weren't going to stop and that luck wasn't going to last forever. His initial choice to re-arm his reserve planes for land attack was reasonable.

The initial report from Tone#4 didn't say a carrier was among the 10 ships spotted and the initial location reported (incorrectly) was beyond the range of American naval bombers. It wasn't unreasonable for him to think he had time.

The idea that he should have sailed away from the reported contact to maintain distance is 100% correct in hindsight, but that's a little like saying Hitler shouldn't have launched Barbarosa. That's not the nature of who the Japanese were. They didn't see themselves as a lightweight with a quick jab who needs to stick and move. They saw themselves as an 800 pound gorilla who crushes people with haymakers.

Luck was part of it. So was good intel and positioning based on that intel.

Japanese also made some critical mistakes. Nagumo’s indecision on launching a second strike against Midway vs launching against Spruance’s carriers was a costly error that resulted in carriers being hit with munitions and fuel being loaded onto aircraft when the attack came.

The torpedo bomber pilots almost to a man paid with their lives to clear the path for the dive bombers.

The way they treated prisoners from Corregidor probably sealed their fate. That and the sneak attack, and the US was of a mind to make them pay, and pay they did.

What we commonly ‘think we know’ about Midway is mostly wrong, unless you have read books like ‘Shattered Sword’ (I think that is it). Both sides committed tons of errors. Nagano gets blamed for a lot but it was mostly Yamamoto’s fault. And the Japanese search plan sucked; the stuff about the plane that launched late is mostly wrong. But there were lots of errors on the US side also. It was not really 3 carriers versus 4, it was really 2 vs 4 because the Hornet was so mismanaged it basically didn’t even take part in the battle.

One thing I don’t comprehend is how much Japan feared US B-17s being used against their fleet. From altitude, they can’t hit anything like a ship. At low altitude, they’d be dog meat for fighters and AAA fire.

They just don’t seem to be the correct weapon system for attacking ships.

One of my favorite places in Pensacola.

Nagumo had few good choices. He got a bad rap because Yamamoto created a lousy plan.

if you march down a trail without flank and front security, and walk into a prepared L shaped ambush. it is a little late to say "Greetings, my good man! What decisions would you like to make to get yourself out of this predicament?"

Bad decisions made in the planning process caused a situation where Nagumo would have had to do something radically different...failing to do so, the Japanese were hit hard.

In the four major carrier battles of 1942, three out of four times the Japanese used an advanced guard or supporting force with a light carrier out in front of the main body.  In those three battles they lost two light carriers and sank two US fleet carriers.  Midway was the other battle. Walking into an ambush with Kudo Butai in the lead was Yamamoto's call; not Nagumo's.

I am somewhat reminded of Gettysburg, where a generally well trained, led, and experienced force rolled in blind due to lack of reconnaissance and arrogance, and a generally weaker force on a losing streak made them pay.

The Japanese had two light carriers, 7 battleships, and 11 cruisers that were either somewhere else, alongside Kudo Butai, or behind. Also 13 mismanaged submarines, and the potential to launch flying boats out of Wake Island.

As I wrote previously, the name of the game is attack effectively first, and the Japanese had all sorts of ability to put way more effort into reconnaissance and let the situation develop before committing Kudo Butai.

What are you considering the major carrier battles? Coral Sea, Midway...

There is some story about a Japanese destroyer in the Solomons stopping to do something, like pick up survivors, and the Captain sees B-17s approaching and he doesn’t even get underway again, he is so convinced the B-17s are so ineffective. Then his immobile destroyer was hit three times and sunk and his attitude was different when he got hauled out of the water.

For a time the B-17s were effective at skip bombing but that was a brief period as they weren’t really suited for it. And the only reason the tactic was tried was because they were just about completely ineffective at hitting maneuvering ships.

I believe in God
I also believe in SIGINT

Great question.

Level bombing from 20,000 feet took a long time for bombs to drop and hit; it was possible to see the bombs falling, put the rudder hard over, and make them miss.
The Japanese rapidly realized that high altitude level bombing was lousy.  So basically they didn't respect it.

On the other hand, Japanese antiaircaft fire was lousy. Really bad.  I believe they had poor fire directors.  Most, Id say 90% of the US losses, were from zeros, not AA.
One B-26 of the six, as well as George Gay's aircraft, actually flew over a Japanese carrier at 500 feet or less.  The B-26 nearly hit the island of Akagi.  That's pretty weak AA fire.

I think the B-17s could have gone much lower, say 5000-8000 feet, and had better luck.  I also think in general the Army's contribution to Midway was a little flaky.  The B-17s and Navy PBY reconnaissance planes were great for reconnaissance.  I wonder if there were P-40s on Hawaii that could have been ferried out, or more mediums besides the six B-26s.  The buffaloes and vindicators were the wrong planes at the wrong time.

In early 1942 the most effective land based technique was skip bombing or masthead bombing.  I'd suggest googling "The Battle of the Bismarck Sea" and check that out. Generally speaking a B-25 or B-26 was twice as fast as a TBD devastator and flew the same profile.

Eastern Solomons.

Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz.

The Japanese lost Shoho, a light carrier, at Coral Sea and sank Lexington.
The Japanese lost Ryujo, a light carrier, at Eastern Solomons.
The Japanese sank Hornet at Santa Cruz.

The Devastator was obsolete before the war began. Expecting people to fly them into combat was practically a criminal offense.

My understanding is that the B-26 could carry torpedos. At least it had a weapon it could reasonably expect to hit a ship with. Too bad early war US torpedoes were garbage.

Gettysburg

I have to say when reading about the Pacific Theater in WWII civil war battles have never come to mind.  I like that comparison though.

Western accounts seem to ALWAYS end up with Nagumo should have done this or should have done that. But who did the Japanese pin it on? Back in Port did Yamamoto say oops my bad or did he point the finger at Nagumo?

Not to hijack the thread but at the Battle of Tassafaronga, how come after seeing the two cruisers take torpedo hits did two of the three next cruisers not alter course, leading to them also getting hit by torpedos?

I have never understood that. I mean it was at night, etc, but still.

We should have used them in the same role the Japanese used the twin engine Betty? The Betty's did a lot of damage when they were properly escorted. Fast in fast out while the fighters ran interference. Interviews I've seen of wildcat pilots said they couldn't chase them down once they cut for home.

You just made him some money; I just picked up a couple of his books. Thanks!

Some of you folks that have read ‘Shattered Sword’ correct me, but I believe the author claims that if Tone 4 had launched on time it would not have spotted the US carriers.

Arrogance and racism by leadership on both sides got thousands of their own men killed.

Just like the Japanese leadership couldn't accept that those stupid gaijin might crack their superior Japanese code American naval leadership refused to believe Japanese torpedos were so radically better than ours. They often outright rejected the suggestion that the torpedos hitting their ships were from Japanese destroyers at twice the range of our own torpedos. They had to come from a close in sub or an unseen vessel.

The captains of the those 2 cruisers were likely yelling at their men to locate the close in vessel  that had hit the other cruisers.

Shattered Sword was enabled by the relatively recent translation into English of a large mass of IJN source documents. These cast new light on several widely accepted Midway myths, the Tone 4 being only one.  

Probably the most cherished of these was that the torpedo bomber crews did not die for naught, but ensured the success of the dive bombers.  Japanese after action reports indicate the fighters had more than enough time to climb back to altitude before the dive bombers began their attacks.  The fact is that the constraints placed on aerial torpedo attack profiles - low, slow, and in a straight line - by the nature of the weapon itself, make the torpedo bomber a fighter pilot’s or AA gunner’s  dream.

Wasn't Nagumo's next command on land?

Lt Kleiss - got a hit on Kaga, Hiryu and Mikuma
Lt Shumway - possibly Soryu, definitely Hiryu Midway hits

In the army they say "Intel drives maneuver," and the ISR plan
(intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) is how you decide what
information to collect and how to collect it.

For the Japanese the intel requirement was basically "where are the US
carriers?" and their ISR plan was hot garbage.

On the morning of 4 June the attack on Midway was approx. 108 airplanes,
while the recon plan was a whopping seven "Jake" floatplanes.   While Tone#4
was late the base plan was horrible.



In contrast, at Midway the US had 31 PBY Catalinas for reconnaissance, not
including the B-17s...or the SIGINT.

Meanwhile, on the Japanese side...(this is from Shattered Sword)

Zuiho, a light carrier with 24 aircraft, was back in the "Invasion
Group"...underemployed.

Two more light carriers were supporting the Aleutians invasion with another
40+ aircraft
There were two seaplane carriers with about six "Jake" recon planes, in the
back of the formation someplace.

There was talk of emplacing large "Emily" or "Mavis" flying boats at Wake
Island, which I think fizzled.

I imagine there were a few cruisers around with floatplanes that would have
been better in the front of the formation then the back.

There were also the 13 submarines in the screenline, which was emplaced
late.
At any rate, conjuring up 100 aircraft in the formation and committing that
to a recon effort, vice the seven "jakes" they did use, would have been
wise.
None of these decisions were Nagumo's. This lousy task organization was Yamamoto. For
the war-winning mission to knock the US
Carriers out of the war, it was a sloppy plan with a lot of recon assets
underemployed in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On the other hand, suppose, at 0430 on 4 June, instead of launching 100+
aircraft at Midway, Nagumo had launched 40 or 50 Val dive bombers and Kate
torpedo bombers to conduct a recon patrol, instead of letting them sitting
on their a$$es in the hangar, then waited two hours to strike Midway at 0800
or so.  A basic dawn patrol to precede the strike and pull security would
have been value added.  The ISR plan as executed was very weak and very
late. Nagumo had 250+ aircraft and had the time and resources to conduct his
own recon before the Midway strike.

Remember in the US navy half the SBD dauntlesses were in the bombing
squadron (VB-6, VB-8) and half in the scouting squadron (VS-6, VS-8)  the
expectation was a US carrier would send around a dozen+ dive bombers to find
the enemy, then the other half, the torpedo bombers, and fighters to strike.
By that math a 40-or 50 plane recon flight from Japanese carriers was
normal, not zero.

If you look at all the Zeros, Vals, Kates, and Jakes that the Japanese
burned oil to carry across the central pacific, the number used to actually
go looking for the US carriers on 4 June was about 2-3%. That's insane. The
Japanese were asleep and not looking because they assumed they had perfect
OPSEC and noone knew they were coming. They thought the fight would start the 6th or 7th...
not the 4th.

Sometimes your lousy ISR plan and lack of recon and situational awareness
puts you in a bind, and when the bullets start flying and you walk into an
ambush you have to get really good and really really lucky to catch up.

Attached File

This is a great read on that subject:



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BAU6ES0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I think the Japanese had had some mild success level bombing enemy shipping like Prince of Wales and Repulse... I dunno that they were @ 20k elevation, but I'd imagine their own doctrine was where their concern came from..

Magnificent post. Hat tip

awesome post... I assumed the Japanese had a similar recon strategy to the US before Shattered Sword... their way of doing things was absurd.

their entire attitude that they would write the script and direct all the action in this operation was absurd.