Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay

[mac]

QC when do you see them having appropriate control of the Bismarck Sea?

Cheers

[quincannon]

When? February 43. Could have October 42

[yanmacca]

I dont have much literature on the war in the pacific, but this is my favourite picture relating to US forces fighting on those Islands.
It is from Betio, which by all accounts was a killingfield, apparently the whole Tarawa campaigne was hell.
I doth my cap to the Marines who ran the gauntlet of Japanese fire on Betio just to reach the sand.

[yanmacca]

[yanmacca]

Here is the written note to the picture;

[mac]

Interesting stuff Ian.

Here is a contemporary news reel of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Shot by Damien Parer who managed to talk his way into a Beaufighter and shot film over the pilot's shoulder.

It says something of the Pacific war that the film includes joyous commentary on the strafing of Japanese life boats.

The final theatrical scenes are strangely prophetic about future US and Australia cooperation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=azanISsx19c

Cheers

[herosrest]

Apr 2, 2023 8:04:25 GMT mac said:

QC when do you see them having appropriate control of the Bismarck Sea?

Cheers

Japan lost 'control' of the sea lanes in May 1942, after Coral Sea. Brown did something remarkable in the March with Yorktown and Lexington link but Coral Sea removed the navy from the equation. Japan was stupid.

In the April, Japan was in the Indian Ocean with five carriers. They did a lot of damage but nothing decisive - able to mount one large carrier effort per month. Wasted that one, fumbled Coral Sea and then in June, the sillyness caught up with them.

[mac]

Interesting talk about the US Army in the Pacific.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=So8i6oJzA5M

Cheers

[quincannon]

The featured speaker in this video is John C McManus and the first two books of his trilogy on the Army in the Pacific War are must reads. The third will be out sometime this year, and I cannot wait.

Mac would find the first volume quite interesting in that it covers New Guinea, and it is the source of some of my more screwy ideas expressed above. McManus does not share my views, but after reading McManus my conclusion was there must have been a better way. Then it was to the maps and further research, and the ultimate conclusion I reached is MacArthur screwed up another one, just as bad or worse than he did in Korea.

Read McManus. You will not be disappointed.

[mac]

I note that after the areas North of Australia were in hand Fleet Admiral Ernest King proposed invading Formosa (Taiwan) as the next strategic step. MacArthur proposed re-taking the Philippines and island hopping. MacArthur won.

Would the King strategy have been better?

Cheers

[quincannon]

If your asking my opinion Mac, what I would say without fear (of disagreement) or favor (I despise both of them) that either strategy was not worth a warm bucket of spit. Both of them were prima donnas. Both thought themselves so important that God Almighty was subservient to them. Of the two though King was a far better flag rank officer despite the fact that he was a piss poor, largely immoral, human being.

Formosa was completely unnecessary, and would not have been either strategically or tactically important. We never set foot on the place during the course of the war, although we raided the place a couple of times.

The road to Tokyo, led straight across the Central Pacific. The objective was, like the ANV in an earlier conflict, the Japanese Navy. Defeat the Japanese Navy, wipe it from the face of the earth, and it does not matter, how many islands are occupied by Japanese land forces.

[mac]

"Defeat the Japanese Navy, wipe it from the face of the earth, and it does not matter, how many islands are occupied by Japanese land forces."

Pretty much what I was thinking.

How would you achieve this?

[quincannon]

Well I suppose given about five or ten minutes I could come up with a rather workable plan, but I do not have to. Chester Nimitz did it for me.

First land on Guadalcanal. Second tie into Japanese culture of losing face. It was fear of losing face that drove the Japanese Army and Navy to destroy themselves in efforts to retake the Canal. So you let them destroy themselves. Look up sometime how many combat vessels the Japanese lost trying to retake that miserable island, just so no one could say the Japanese had lost.

In addition, Japanese naval airpower was destroyed after Santa Cruz in November 42. They still had aircraft, but all of their highly experienced combat pilots were being remembered at the Yasukuni Shrine and not present above the seas. Never again after Santa Cruz did Japanese naval air power present a credible tactical threat. The pilots they did manage to train (badly) were the turkeys in the Marianna's Turkey Shoot. What carriers they had left were used as decoys, mostly without air groups at Leyte Gulf. Then they did the Kamikaze thing, because that's all they could do.

Don't ever let anyone ever tell you that the Japanese produced a good combat aircraft, except a couple at the very end of the war. They were miserable. The Zeke, The Betty, The Val, and the Kate were all unworthy of the very brave and skilled men who flew them. Most of that was because Japanese industry was not up to the task of providing crew protection, along with all the other necessary assets for a truly good combat aircraft. It took them years before the war to train a combat pilot, then they put him in an aircraft with inferior crew protection, and lost them in droves thereby wasting all those years. That itself was a war crime in my view.

I have a great admiration for the individual Japanese soldier, sailor, and airman. As individuals those that entered the Pacific War were among the best in the world. Their leadership though. both political and military was piss poor, and could not get out of their own way

Once Japanese naval air power was out of the way, the road to Tokyo in the Central Pacific was wide open.

So Mac, the answer is do what Chester did. There is a reason the National Museum of the Pacific War is named for him.

[herosrest]

I hunted up a an old insight on the naval stuff, by Clark G. Reynolds which was more where my overview came from and of course downstream, my ideas are............ all my own. Hope it DL's...... 44641644.pdf (1.41 MB) - ADMIRAL ERNEST J. KING AND THE STATEGY FOR VICTORY IN THE PACIFIC.

It's a good read.

I concur with QC, that route one straight across the Central Pacific was a less costly route to closing the war. Victory was never in doubt, which was truly unusual and understood by Japan, hence the consequent losses all round. It was quite evil what they did.

[herosrest]

Apr 5, 2023 20:37:46 GMT quincannon said:

The featured speaker in this video is John C McManus and the first two books of his trilogy on the Army in the Pacific War are must reads. The third will be out sometime this year, and I cannot wait.

Mac would find the first volume quite interesting in that it covers New Guinea, and it is the source of some of my more screwy ideas expressed above. McManus does not share my views, but after reading McManus my conclusion was there must have been a better way. Then it was to the maps and further research, and the ultimate conclusion I reached is MacArthur screwed up another one, just as bad or worse than he did in Korea.

Read McManus. You will not be disappointed.

It's interesting, and one foot in and one foot out. What gave Japan the Philipines would have worked in reverse which was why from day one the Japanese believed they would demolish the US fleet. That argument is circular and without its fleet, you don't have to worry about invading Japan. Is it more complicated?Of course it is - it's political. The war plans were flawed and the mindsets which produced them did NOT - clean 'brake'. Incumbent pre-war politics and strategic theory endured - I think of it as a hydra and for example, MacArthur's head was more than ripe to tumble. Because what happened in the Philipines wasn't understood, he endured and with that an entire practiice of 'fortitude in bumble', continued. It was not imposed but was latent. When a shambles like December 1941, takes place and you survive, you kick the legs off the table it sat on. Route one was the only real prospect. There was no need to invade - no Japanese fleet, cowed Japan. Game over. The same was true for UK but we endured a rolling disaster which just continued downhill for three something years. I never figured out a way to cost actual with alternative.

WaM..........