Rising Sun over Hawaii....

Military History \| How To Make War \| Wars Around the World	Rules of Use	How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Armed Forces of the World Discussion Board
Return to Topic Page

Subject: Rising Sun over Hawaii....
Godofgamblers 3/3/2008 2:03:12 AM

IN this scenario, the IJN invades Hawaii instead of a hit and run attack on Pearl. One of the invasion groups that struck Wake, or Indonesia, instead re routed to Hawaii and siezed enough real estate to make it unusable as a resupply/logistical center. The US lines of communication with Australia-NewZeland-Philipines would have been broken irrevocably for at least a year and a half. All points west severed it also catches the US oil stock and fleet repair assets in the port. Nobody can argue I think that the US forces could have repelled the invasion by say 15,000 Japanese Marines fresh from duty in China. The entire Japanese gambit in WWII was to make the US sue for peace rather than fight it out in a protracted conflict. We know what happened when the Japanese missed our carriers and ran off. In my new scenario the battle of Guadalcanal never happens because the IJN have successfully severed the artery in the middle of the pacific.

Quote Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title Newest to Oldest

Pages: PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NEXT

Herald12345 Dream on. 3/18/2008 5:35:22 PM

I feel like I should point out that at Midway, Spruance was NOT in command until late in the day. VAd Frank Jack Fletcher was in command until he delegated to Spruance after the second attack on Yorktown. By that time three IJN carriers had been mortally damaged, and the strike that would kill the fourth was already on the way. It was Fletcher's battle and he won it. Spruance's contribution was the decision to withdraw eastward after the attack on HIRYU to evade possible IJN surface attack.

Fletcher was senior in rank, but the man who did the planning when Halsey's staff collapsed into imbecility; the donkey work of fighting the battle mentally out in his head; and then implementing those moves; when their [Halsey's staff] miserable staff work failed him, and did most of the planning as well as actual damage, was SPRUANCE.

Nimitz didn't make Fletcher hisd chief of staff or look to Fletcher to whip CincPac into shape. It was Spruance. It wasn't Fletcher who was sent to face down Ozawa. it was Spruance.

And in carrier battles it wasn't Fletcher who won decisive victories. It was Spruance.

Fletcher was creamed at Coral Sea and Midway. At Coral sea he second fiddeled to Aubrey Fitch who handled the air battle as well as could be expected.with the green crews and polots he had.

Fletcher second fiddled to Spruance again at Midway leaving Raymond, the junior admiral, virtually holding the bag for whatever would go wrong; if that battle went south.

During the invasion of Guadalcanal, Fletcher was the carrier admiral commanding. He RAN for it leaving the invasion force uncovered and is held responsible for denying the Marines air cover during the critical 48 hours when the Japanese wiped out Rear Admiral Crutchley.at Savo Island. Fortunately Mikawa didn't know about that or the invasion transports would have joined Crutchley's cruisers at the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound.

Let's see how Fletcher did in the Eastern Solomons when left to fend for himself?

Well he did sink the Ryujo. But in that battle and subsequent operations he got the Enterprise and Saratoga clobbered. It was the imbecile Halsey who lost Wasp and Hornet, so you can't blame Fletcher for that, but you get the idea?

Fletcher was transferred to Alaska; where he could do no further harm. When it came time to kick off on Japan's donkey and ream the IJN according to those old dusty War-plan Orange studies [the USN main effort], Nimitz sent the best admiral he had: SPRUANCE.

Fletcher pfui!

Herald

Midway:
The planning for Midway was done before TF16 ever left Pearl Harbor. Neither Spruance or anyone else did it 'out of his head'. Spurance, who had much less technical knowledge of aviation than Fletcher, certainly didn't. Spruance's staff (formerly Halsey's) under Capt. Miles Browning (a prima donna who had been told he was a genius once too often and believed it) fumbled operational planning in several respects. They misjudged where the IJN CV force would be found when the strike arrived, and they misjudged TF16s rate of advance resulting in the loss of a number of a/c (especially from Hornet) due to fuel exhaustion. But Spruance did (and could have done) nothing about it.

Incorrect.

Spruance was damn near tossing Miles Browning overboard. After Browning screwed up the planning for the first strike, Spruance turned to pilots like Wade McClusky and Enterprise Captain George Murray for the technical help [minutes endurance for the Dauntless for example] he needed. And it was Spruance on his plotting board who double checked all the endurance estimates and flight vectors projected for each strike after Browning screwed up the first staffing for the first strike. As to Hornet's dive bombers straying off vector. Marc Mitscher, Captain of Hornet is usually unfairly blamed. He guessed wrong and gave the wrong advice when he advised Bombing Eight to turn toward Midway if they couldn't find Nagumo in the pie wedge Browning assigned them.

The Midway plan prepared in Nimitz's HQ at Pearl was for the the TFs, (TF16, Enterprise and Hornet and TF17, Yorktown) would operate together unter Fletcher's command, with Yorktown doing the air searches and CAP while Hornet and Enterprise

Quote Reply

larryjcr 3/19/2008 11:20:02 PM

Incorrect.

Quote Reply

Herald12345 Revisionists and errors. 3/20/2008 5:18:21 AM

I'll deal with the state of US carrier doctrine when I have time: but you asked about Miles Browning?

?http://www.hallowquest.com/heros.htm?

SOME REFLECTIONS FROM A PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE ON HEROS and CHARACTERS FROM THE U.S. NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

by Wesley W. Stillwagon

~December 1941

"...It was at that juncture that Kirk and Captain Howard D. Bode, one of ONI's (Office of Naval Intelligence) most conscientious officers and then head of foreign intelligence..." (Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton US Navy (Retired), "And I Was There," sub-titled, "Pearl Harbor and Midway-Breaking the Secrets" Page 166, Quill edition, William Morrow, New York.)

August 9, 1942 Battle of Savo Island

"...(Heavy Cruiser) Chicago was similarly surprised. Captain (H. D.) Bode, who in Crutchley's absence was O. T. C. of this group, was awakened out of a sound sleep by gunfire, and, with a column of five heavy cruisers to shoot at, steamed off in pursuit of Mikawa's lone destroyer, little the worse for one shell hit and one torpedo explosion well forward. Chicago was out of the battle...

Captain Bode of (USS) Chicago, whose stupidity was largely responsible for that cruiser's inglorious part in the battle, committed suicide."(Samuel Eliot Morison, "The Two Ocean War, A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War," Pages 173 and 176, Little, Brown and Company)

Two highly respected naval history writers, Layton and Morison, harbored as wide an opinion of the abilities of Howard D. Bode as one could assemble. Layton had the advantage of working with Bode, Morison had not. But I would guess, if it were possible to ask them when they made those observations, to explain further what they mean by the terms "conscientious" and "stupidity," we'd have little more to work with than those obviously subjective opinions. Subjective or not, they had obvious reasons for their selection of those terms based upon observations, Captain Bodes' personality, and research. Perhaps, while not academically correct, there was evidence for the positive or negative value of each writer's observations. In the analytical and relatively safe world of Naval Intelligence, Captain Bode would do very well, but regardless of his intelligence performance, a promotion to command a ship of the line was the wrong move for the Navy at that time.

But what process enabled such a promotion? I would hazard a guess that Captain Bode was an exceptional Naval Academy Graduate, with good grades in virtually every area. His performance during his intelligence assignments must have been superior. Typically, such good performance is rewarded with promotion and an increasing command assignment. But the promotion is a result of politics, and performance within the job at hand. No process is in place assuring the right qualifications to handle all of the tasks of a job, nor has there ever been. Primarily, this is due to the lack of a system or ability to properly define tasks, and/or to measure human factors necessary to their successful execution.

With all of the honors bestowed upon the writing of Naval historian Morison, his choice of the word "stupidity" in describing the failure of Captain Bode was poor. In a world that measures intelligence in some cases by the aggregate total of correctly recalled answers to questions (rather than the proper application of knowledge, skills or techniques); to call Captain Bodes' action "stupid" would leave an interested person with too little information. Stupid implies a lack of knowledge (know what's and know how's); his action was hardly one befitting that description. His actions, in my opinion, were a result of a lack of will to engage the enemy as expected. Knowledge wasn't a problem; he demonstrated this in his previous job, and perhaps at every previous point in his Navy career. I belie

Quote Reply

larryjcr Rep to Herald 3/20/2008 11:01:04 AM

An interesting piece of reading, and totally consistant with what I have posted. Browning was neither stupid or incompetant. He WAS emotionally and professionally erratic and could be used only by someone who could keep him on a short leash. Halsey had both the technical knowledge to catch Browning's errors and the ability to intimidate him with a glance when he got out of line. Spruance, at Midway, lacked those qualities.

Note that the account of the confrontation of 5 June was entirely consistant with that I gave, except for ignoring the presence of Murrey, Short and Shumway's part in the matter.

On a slightly different issue, your previous post stated that Nimitz blamed Fletcher for the loss of YORKTOWN. While, of course, an officer is responsible for losses to his command, Nimitz well understood that in battle men get killed and ships are sometimes lost. In his letter of 13 June, to Ernest King, Nimitz described Fletcher's actions as senior TF commander at Midway as "excellent", strongly recommended that he be retained as a carrier TF commander, and repeated the recommendations he had made after the Coral Sea that Fletcher be awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and be promoted immediately to Vice Admiral. Spruance wrote Nimitz on 8 June expressing his "admiration for the part that Fletcher ... played in this campaign," and pointed out that YORKTOWN took the blows and was lost because it happened to be between TF16 and "the enemy's fourth and still functioning carrier."

Again, clearly, both Nimitz and Spruance had a much higher opinion of Fletcher than you do.

Quote Reply

Wicked Chinchilla 3/20/2008 10:26:11 PM

Im not sure about the details with all of this, but from what you have both stated about Brownings actions and failure to control his emotions that would put him, for me, into the incompetent category. If one must preface a persons abilities with qualifiers that the person in question can only perform while he is calm, or cannot be criticized, then they are not competent. I am sorry, but at my position if I ran off and pouted refusing to believe I made a mistake whenever someone questioned me or completely lost ability to make good decisions when angry I would be out on my ass in a week.

If you are going to be responsible for the lives of others you either control your temper, or walk.

Quote Reply

larryjcr To Chincilla 3/20/2008 11:30:49 PM

If you are going to be responsible for the lives of others you either control your temper, or walk.

I guess it's a matter of definitions. Browning was intellectually brilliant, but often needed 'adult supervision'. He didn't get any real flack for his tantrum, or his 'creative' planning at Midway. In fact, Ernest King had him awarded the DSM for his 'brilliant staff work' in the battle.

But a lot of that was part of a sort of political struggle within the Navy between the aviators and the 'gun club' (Battleship and cruiser officers) over who controlled what. Browning was one of the most senior 'career aviators' (men who had spent their entire careers right from the acadamy in aviation) on active service. Capt. Murrey of Enterprise and Capt. Marc Mitscher of Hornet were also career aviators. At the time, the higher positions were held by 'JCLs'. These were the Johnnie Come Latelies, as the career aviators called them. Men who'd already had serious naval careers and gain serior rank before switching to aviation. The career aviators didn't have enough seniority for the higher positions they wanted, so they needed JCLs, like Ernest King, and Bill Halsey, but that didn't mean that they liked it.

Quote Reply

Herald12345 3/21/2008 12:31:26 AM

Note that the account of the confrontation of 5 June was entirely consistant with that I gave, except for ignoring the presence of Murrey, Short and Shumway's part in the matter.

Again, clearly, both Nimitz and Spruance had a much higher opinion of Fletcher than you do.

In direct reference to Miles Browning. I point out that everything I said about the man was DEADLY accurate including that Spruiance turned to McClusky et al after Browniing blew the first strike staffing completely. McClusky called Browining's next "effort" an "invitation to a swim meet".

Yorktown as I remind you again was standing out in the open while Spruance was tucked away behind weather. That was bungling plain and simple.

Fletcher was vwery much in the model of William Rosecrans, okay until things went south, then he tended to make mistakes-bad ones.

As for Spruance, a couple of things. He NEVER lost-even when Ozawa had him cold off Saipan.in exactly the same position that Spruance caught Nagumo off Midway.

When conflicted with the choice of trying to go after Ozawa or carryingn out his mission, which was to take his THREE targets in the Marianas, Spruance when offered the prospect of splittingn his objective and scattering his combat power instead fought to defend the Marines.He squashed the over eager Mitscher and fought the battle his way. I don't give a damn about John Tower, or Marc Mitscher or any of the other "aviator" admiral critics who aren't qualified to spit-shine Spruance's shoes. King and Nimitz may have been "disappointed" but after the Halsey disgrace at Leyte, they came to understand what a Spruance in command at Leyte would have meant.

Spruance or Halsey?

The Battle of Midway
June 3 - 6, 1942

MIDWAY VETERANS:
SPRUANCE OR HALSEY:
WHO WAS THE BETTER MAN FOR THE JOB?

Spruance or Halsey: Who Was the Better Man for the Job?
"Spruance was the right man for the job at Midway."

EDITORS NOTE: This is a dynamite answer by B. K. (Bill) Vickrey to a straight forward question posed by Dick Keefer concerning the personality traits of the two Admirals. Since I have been asked many times either to compare and contrast Spruance and Halsey, or if the US would have been better off had Halsey been in charge at Midway, I asked Bill if I could post his answer. Bill speaks on Midway several times a year, to veterans groups, civic clubs etc, around the country. He deals with this subject at e

Quote Reply

larryjcr 3/21/2008 5:55:51 PM

Note that the account of the confrontation of 5 June was entirely consistant with that I gave, except for ignoring the presence of Murrey, Short and Shumway's part in the matter.

Again, clearly, both Nimitz and Spruance had a much higher opinion of Fletcher than you do.

The
Battle of Midway

June 3 - 6, 1942

MIDWAY VETERANS:

SPRUANCE OR HALSEY:

WHO WAS THE BETTER
MAN FOR THE JOB?

Spruance or Halsey: Who
Was the Better Man for the Job?

"Spruance was the
right man for the job at Midway."

Quote Reply

larryjcr original and other questions 3/21/2008 6:35:07 PM

In regard to the original question of this thread, the Japanese studied the idea of trying to capture Hawaii to death and found that it just wasn't possible. They couldn't get enough troops from the Army to try it, they didn't have the sea lift, even if that had gotten the troops, and, even if they'd somehow found the troops and the sealift and taken the Islands, they didn't have enough cargo ship capacity not already committed to something else to keep a garrison on Hawaii supplied.

As to a landing raid, it would have been far easier, and safer and just as effective to make another air raid. Actually, if they'd gone after the fuel storage facilities and the dry docks, they'd have had a much greater effect that hitting the BBs. With the fule supply gone, the BBs would have had to withdraw to the West Coast anyway, with no hope of interfearring with Japanese expansion until the facilities were repaired and restocked, and they could have tried to slow that down with submarine attacks.

Fuel supply was a major problem for the first year of the war, as it was. During the entire Guadalcanal campaign, there was NO meaningful reserve of fuel in the south pacific area. If an IJN sub had managed to sink just ONE of the tankers carrying fuel there from the west coast, or even seriously damage even ONE of the handful of oilers delivering the fuel to the ships, the USN in the entire theatre would have been paralyzed for weeks. At one point, the fuel reserve of the carrier forces was down to only two days, as a result of a routing error sending a tanker to the wrong island, rather than to where it was expected.

There has also been a number of posts concerning the idea of converting passenger liners into CVL(S) types as stop-gap increases in the number of USN flight decks. That would certainly have been possible from a technical viewpoint, although the loss of the ships as troop transports would probably have had a negative effect on the Guadalcanal landings, and perhaps even TORCH. The problem I see is, where would you get the planes to put on the ships, and the pilots to fly the planes??

The USN, right from Pearl Harbor on had virtually every, even faintly modern a/c it could get, committed either to combat, or to training up new airgroups. Only a handful of F4Fs were anywhere except in combat. The entire Guadalcanal campaign swung around desperate efforts to scrape up a few more F4Fs to get only the island. No until the late fall when the FM1s (copies of the F4F-4 built at Eastern by GM) began reaching the ships and squadrons was that shortage even half-way met. The situation for dive bombers was only slightly better. Douglas was barely turning them out fast enough to meet combat and training needs, although it might have been possible to squeeze a little SBC production out of Curtis. There were NO extra torpedo bombers available at all until the TBFs began to arrived in June, and then it took a few monts just to catch up with the needs of the existing carriers. Ranger and Wasp had not had torpedo squadrons at all during 1941 due to the shortage of TBDs. At best, they could have scraped up half trained pilots flying F3F and SBC biplanes, and even that would have forced cut-backs in the training of new groups for the CVs.

The one point at which the CVL(S)s would probably have been welcome would have been in the period between November '42 about about March '43. With the original carrier force reduced to SARATOGA and ENTERPRISE, both damaged, and the new ships not fully worked up, but with enough a/c now available to put together groups to fly from them with minimum effect on the expansion program, that might have looked good at the time. But, as they did not know then, but we do know now, the IJN carrier force had gutted its air groups as Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz, and wouldn't be combat capable again until AT LEAST mid year. So even there, it was just as well that nothing like that was actually done.

Quote Reply

larryjcr To Herald 3/22/2008 12:07:57 AM

Your point on Fletcher's supposed negligence at failing to hide under the rain squals at Midway presupposes that YORKTOWN hat the opportunity to reach the squal line in the very limited time between the recovery of the last a/c of it's strike and the arrival of the Japanese strike. Appearantly Spruance didn't consider the possibility worth discussing. Until the TF17 strike had been recovered, YORKTOWN's movements were heavily constrained. Following the lauch of the strike, she had to proceed at best practical speed along the pre-planned option bearing, so that the returning strike could find her, and so that the strike's return flight would be shortened as much as possible. Once the returning strike arrives, the carrier must turn into the wind and make best speed possible so that the a/c can be recovered. None of that allows for any serious deviation. Unless the ship was within a very few miles (certainly no more than about five) it would not be possible to reach the squal before the ship came under attack. Entering the squal before the a/c were recovered would be avoided, if possible, because it would make finding the ship more difficult for its own a/c, and seriously slow the process of a/c recovery.

As to the question of Fletcher's 'running away' form Guadalcanal, I put forward my possition: that performing his mission demanded that he preserve his air group. You response was to redefine his mission as one that was basically unlimited, but to be accomplished with very limited resources. No. His mission was set out in the operational plan for the landing. He was committed to providing air cover for the TWO DAYS that Kelly Turner assured all involved, would be sufficient to off load the Marines, and an adequate amount of supplies. It was Turner who had already decided to pull out, in spite of the fact that his unloading plan had fallen apart on him (a fact of which he failed to inform Fletcher) before he received Fletcher's specific advisory that he WOULD be conforming to the op. plan and withdrawing after the second day.

You seem to have agreed with my position that Fletcher could NOT have done anything about the withdrawl of the Japanese cruiser force after Savo, but complain that the defeat was still Fletcher's fault due to lack of scouting from his carriers. Definately NOT SO. The CHOKAI force didn't come within range of scouting from Fletcher's carriers until late enough in the day that they could be confident that any scouts would be on their way back to the ships. They WERE spotted by shore-based scouts, my the CHOKAI was mis-identified as a seaplane tender, and intelligence advised both Turner and Fletcher that the Japanese were attempting to establish a seaplane base in the central Solomons. They were advised of the possibiltiy of attack by the supposed tender's escorts, but were assured that would be the following night at the earliest. That was why Adm. Crutchley felt free to pull AUSTRALIA out of the line for his meeting with Turner. And Turner had planned to pull his entire force out at sun-up after doing some final unloading that night, so an attack the following night didn't worry him.

In fact, Fletcher's force did the scouting for the zones that were their responsibility that morning as usual. The carriers didn't begin their withdrawl until after dark. So your argument about scouting doesn't hold up either.

There was plenty of blame to go around for Savo. Adm. Crutchley's op plan made it almost certain that if his forces were attacked, they would be fighting in detail, but he was an officer of an Allied nation, and the Navy didn't want to criticize him. Turner had signed off on Crutchley's plan, but he was very touchy about criticism, and the Navy needed it's amphibious assault expert, flaws and all. Blaming Fletcher actually made no sense at all, but King didn't like him, and the aviators wanted to get rid of him, so ....

Quote Reply

PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NEXT