Posted on 12/07/2021 9:16:17 AM PST by Retain Mike
One enduring conspiracy theory is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Marshall and Cordell Hull had foreknowledge of a potentially devastating Pearl Harbor attack and used the event to precipitate U.S. participation in WW II. In general revisionists start with the determination that the Japanese had to fire the first shot in order for the Administration to get the backing of the American people. Next looking backwards, they piece together specific data points to prove these men must have known the attack was coming.
However, they have had to ignore the fact that these men were living into history. The information the U.S. received from traffic analysis, informants, investigations, and code braking swam in a sea of 10,000’s of data points each month. Remember a few years ago you could buy pictures that seemed a mass of random color pixels, but a single picture emerged if you stared at it in the right way? In this case a host of pictures emerged each week with each put forward by professionals who asserted this could be their true intention. To direct our limited resources for the coming war these possibilities had to be reduced to the most probable alternatives.
The Pearl Harbor attack was one of the least likely options for a host of reasons among the few now noted. First U.S. War Plan Orange and the corresponding Japanese plan, which was generally known to us, both envisioned the supreme naval battle would be fought in the Western Pacific. Both navies were disciples of Alfred Thayer Mahan who wrote the outcome of war at sea would always be decided by the “decisive naval battle”. History had borne that out at Trafalgar, Tsushima, and Jutland. For Jutland Churchill said, “Jellicoe was the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon”. For the Japanese enticing the U.S. Navy into a sea battle in the Western Pacific was the best option. Their ships of short operational range would not be at a disadvantage. Japan could use land-based reconnaissance and attack aircraft in battles as we attempted to counter their attacks against Guam, the Philippines, etc. Ships lost at sea could not be recovered as they could if they were hit in harbor.
A counter argument was developed through the large-scale U.S. Navy exercises between 1923 and 1940. These proved the feasibility of an increasing role for aircraft carriers in attacking bases like the Philippines, Panama Canal, and Hawaii. For example in 1932 Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell during Fleet Problem 13 commanded the carriers Lexington and Saratoga in an effort to demonstrate that Hawaii was vulnerable to naval air power. Yarnell’s planes attacked the harbor from the northeast, just as the Japanese would ten years later. The Navy’s war-game umpires declared the attack a total success, prompting Yarnell to strenuously warn of the Japanese threat.
However, the umpire's final report did not even mention his success. Instead, they wrote, "It is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great losses in the attack air force." The battleship admirals again launched a successful campaigned against reassessment of naval tactics being able to point to other exercises in which the vulnerability of aircraft carriers was demonstrated. Therefore, in this country War Plan Orange continued to determine the most probable interpretation to place on intelligence. In that regard they were able to point to the intelligence that had been gathered through years of monitoring Japanese naval exercises which pointed to an intension to draw the U.S. into a fleet action in the Western. Hence, there were many opportunities for self-deception, but not conspiracy.
When Yamamoto proposed a radical departure from Japanese strategic principles his firm commitment to resign at a meeting in October 1941 forced the Naval General Staff to accept his new plan. Yamamoto’s plan was improbable and radical because never before had any country planned and/or coordinated an attack of such a size on a naval or land target. No inkling existed in any allied naval operational and intelligence community of a proven capability beyond the 21 Fairey Swordfish bi-plane torpedo bombers a single British carrier sent to attack the Italian Navy at Taranto. Even Admiral Yarnell used only two carriers and left no fighters for task force defense to launch 152 planes for the raid. Yet, for Pearl Harbor the Japanese forged a strategic weapon of six carriers with escorts and tankers for a coordinated mass attack by 360 planes with 55 retained to defend the task forces.
The attack deserved a low probability for consideration because it was not only unprecedented, but also unexpected. Preparations were conducted without recourse to the diplomatic Purple Code that U.S. codebreakers were reading in substantial portions. The U.S. had no agents in Japan and the Imperial Japanese Navy excluded their diplomats from all knowledge of the Pearl Harbor plan. To solve problems regarding bombing, torpedoes, and underway refueling the attack plan relied on oral doctrines and technical innovations developed during the last ninety days prior to deployment.
U.S. naval traffic analysis in Hawaii detected the same message flurry followed by radio silence as they had observed for tactical operations in February and July when major units had remained in port. Even though the Japanese had changed their fleet unit call signs December 1, Lieutenant Commander Layton says Commander Rochefort was still able to identify a large movement of fleet units south. However, they had no idea of the whereabouts of four carriers and could only assume they were still in home waters.
In briefing Admiral Kimmel, Layton could say the ships were probably in home waters but confirmed Kimmel’s assertion they could possibly be steaming around Diamond Head without prior knowledge. Layton points to what he calls moral stupidity in the way the Washington intelligence community handled limited decrypts of the naval code (JN25) and the “bomb plot” message from a Purple Code decrypt. Once again, the picture of a probable Pearl Harbor attack could have emerged for a few intelligence people only to be overcome by what many people expected to see.
This limited discussion of Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorists covered only the likelihood the attack would be considered probable and/or of such a scale. Gordon W. Prange in writing At Dawn We Slept presented arguably the most scholarly, well researched volume on the attack from both the Japanese and American perspectives. The book ends with an eleven-page summary refuting a host of revisionist imaginings including internal political collusion, secret treaties, and international intrigues. The Broken Seal by Ladislas Farago also focuses on refuting the claim that FDR knew.
And I Was There by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton
At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange
The Broken Seal by Ladislas Farago
War Plan Orange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Orange
Naval History: Pearl Harbor’s Overlooked Answer
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2011-12/pearl-harbors-overlooked-answer
Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_E._Yarnell
Lexington-class aircraft carrier (78 aircraft)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington_class_aircraft_carrier
USS Saratoga (CV-3) (78 aircraft)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saratoga_(CV-3)
Yarnell used 152 airplanes for his simulated attack leaving nothing to defend the task forces. However, nobody asked two telling questions that should have been answered, “Admiral, provide an explanation of how you traveled undetected to position north of the Hawaiian Islands to launch the attack beginning from the Japanese Home Islands or Mandates to the south and east. Also, why would you launch an attack from a position where it was impossible to retreat under the protection of land-based aircraft?”
"Reflections on Pearl Harbor " by Admiral Chester Nimitz
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/388783-christopher-menkin/242946-reflections-on-pearl-harbor-by-admiral-chester-nimitz
Fleet problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_problem
Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi (66 +25 reserve)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Akagi
Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryū (64 +reserve)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Hiry%C5%AB
Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga (72 +18 reserve)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Kaga
Japanese aircraft carrier Shōkaku (72 +12 reserve)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Sh%C5%8Dkaku
Japanese aircraft carrier Sōryū (63 +9 reserve)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_S%C5%8Dry%C5%AB
Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku (72 + 12 reserve)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Zuikaku
The total task force had 409 aircraft available at Pearl Harbor with reserves of 85. Attack made by 350-354 aircraft leaving 55 aircraft available for defense of task forces. The others were inoperative or spares in kit form.
U.S.S. Arizona http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=54661
There is no such a thing as a fossil fuel
The environmentalists invented that term.
The Brits have long claimed that they knew Imperial Japan was going to try and take their colonies and territories but they have long denied that they had any intelligence about Pearl Harbor. Japanese commanders not involved in the attack were also kept in the dark from what I have read although they were given warning orders to prepare to take objectives.
Japan was a very closed nation to the rest of the world and its difficult for us to comprehend in today’s age and technology not to mention that while both Britain and the US cracked some of the Japanese codes they were radio silent after they sailed from Japan to attack Pearl Harbor.
The American Navy at the outset of WWII was a mere shadow of itself two years later. Japan gambled that we would curl up in a ball and stay home. They chose poorly. By the end of the war our Pacific Fleet was even more powerful than the Russian Army in terms of dominance of the battle space.
Our submarines literally ran out of shipping to sink to the point that they were mostly destroying junks and fishing boats with cannon fire. Our aviation assets had total dominance. The Imperial Fleet was destroyed and Japan could no longer contest the airspace and focused on suicide attacks.
I believe they had one capital ship left in harbor that was damaged. They lost well over 300 warships and over 300,000 men in their Navy and that does not count the total decimation of their merchant fleet and even larger loss of men. They were incapable of replacing much of anything by 1944 and the loss of their experienced pilots was just as devastating as the loss of material.
It was in whole one of the most dominant defeats in the history of man if you view the war as one event. Decimation does not even begin to describe it and it was going to be even far worse as new planes, carriers, and ships continued to be built up to the atomic bombings.
Absent the atomic bombs and the quick surrender the siege of Japan would have been one of the ugliest chapters in human history. A horrific ending to the most horrible event in human history that would have made the atomic bombings look like a blip of suffering.
It remains an advantage for us today but that is decreasing with new technology for certain.
The biggest advantage we maintain might be our own natural resources despite the attempts by the democrats to prevent us from harvesting them as well as our technical and industrial might (China is gaining). Distance from an enemy and self-sufficiency is still important but nobody (me included) can know for certain what the new warfare will look like.
The wild card against China is still Japan. Ironic to say that on this date but they remain a very powerful economy and industrial base and as drone warfare becomes more dominant it is hard to predict the future of war.
Leaves me to believe that the US Navy and the Magic codebreakers had the intelligence, but that it was stirred up in a Mixmaster of internal bickering between various cliques. Did Roosevelt know? Probably.
Some historians with recent access to Soviet records make a pretty convincing case that Stalinists within the US State Department had been instructed to get FDR to annoy Japan enough to get a war started with the USA, thus eliminating them as a threat on his Far Eastern front.
Whatever the truth may be, both the Navy and the Army were woefully unprepared on The Day, and we know the results.
Are we equally unprepared today? I'd say YES.
Yes I know..
I have made it my personal mission in life to call out this farce
In December of 1941 the US, British, and Dutch knew something was up. The British had reenforced Malaya, the US was reenforcing the Philippines. The US had withdrawn the 4th Marine Regiment from China to the Philippines, along with the Gunboats of the Yangtze River Patrol.
What the US did not expect was the IJN to send its most powerful striking force to the very edge of its range to raid Hawaii.
Everything was focused on Japanese intentions for the “Southern Resource Area.”
Because I'm older now and had more time to research it - I don't believe that should have lowered our moral standing by the war of annhilation we conducted against the civilians of Japan. When we did that, we followed the lead of the barbaric ideologies we were opposing and rejected our founding as a Christian country.
We had a segment of our military forces who were both committed to the faith that the "bomber will always get through" - that strategic bombing could win all by itself and nobody but the low-born and the stupid would be needed for that grimy infantry war far below them.
bombing cities didn't work for the Germans against the Brits and as we found out in Europe, daylight "precision" bombing was inaccurate and wasted aircraft and young men's lives - so we adopted the Brit's tactics of massive, relentless night bombing of cities to kill civilians.
From there, it was an easy slide further down that moral sink to the apocolypse we conducted in Japan. Because of the high winds of the Jet Stream and the flaws in the Norden bomb sight, those very expensive and finicky B-29s had no real tactical or strategic effect up until January 1945. We had expended thousands of young Marines and soldiers to seize Saipan and Tinian - and then Iwo Jima - to secure the bases and the safe havens for those B-29s and they couldn't do anything at all until Curtis LeMay took over and committed those B-29s to low-altitude night incendiary attacks on cities with the express purpose of burning those cities out of existence and killing as many civilians as possible.
It was inhumane, unnecessary, and a genuine war crime - one that has influenced what the world would think about us for all time.
We had the Japanese completely defenseless by late 1944/early 1945. Our submarines had cut off all supplies of any kind to the Home Islands and the B-29s usefully mined the entrances to their ports. Our carriers roamed all around Japan and attacked every target within reach. Japan did not have the resources to go on and everybody knew that.
But the leadership had committed to total and complete defeat for Japan and the Bomber Mafia had to "prove" their thesis.
The more I learn about that war, the more I am sure that we could have secured victory against the Japanese without butchering civilians or invading them. We just had to cut them off and wait for them to give up.
Because I'm older now and had more time to research it - I don't believe that should have lowered our moral standing by the war of annhilation we conducted against the civilians of Japan. When we did that, we followed the lead of the barbaric ideologies we were opposing and rejected our founding as a Christian country.
We had a segment of our military forces who were both committed to the faith that the "bomber will always get through" - that strategic bombing could win all by itself and nobody but the low-born and the stupid would be needed for that grimy infantry war far below them.
bombing cities didn't work for the Germans against the Brits and as we found out in Europe, daylight "precision" bombing was inaccurate and wasted aircraft and young men's lives - so we adopted the Brit's tactics of massive, relentless night bombing of cities to kill civilians.
From there, it was an easy slide further down that moral sink to the apocolypse we conducted in Japan. Because of the high winds of the Jet Stream and the flaws in the Norden bomb sight, those very expensive and finicky B-29s had no real tactical or strategic effect up until January 1945. We had expended thousands of young Marines and soldiers to seize Saipan and Tinian - and then Iwo Jima - to secure the bases and the safe havens for those B-29s and they couldn't do anything at all until Curtis LeMay took over and committed those B-29s to low-altitude night incendiary attacks on cities with the express purpose of burning those cities out of existence and killing as many civilians as possible.
It was inhumane, unnecessary, and a genuine war crime - one that has influenced what the world would think about us for all time.
We had the Japanese completely defenseless by late 1944/early 1945. Our submarines had cut off all supplies of any kind to the Home Islands and the B-29s usefully mined the entrances to their ports. Our carriers roamed all around Japan and attacked every target within reach. Japan did not have the resources to go on and everybody knew that.
But the leadership had committed to total and complete defeat for Japan and the Bomber Mafia had to "prove" their thesis.
The more I learn about that war, the more I am sure that we could have secured victory against the Japanese without butchering civilians or invading them. We just had to cut them off and wait for them to give up.
As Colin Powell said about the Iraq army....
First we’re going to cut it off.
Then we’re going to kill it.
The whole idea that the billions of barrels of oil and the trillions of cubic feet of gas in the ground, are all decomposition products of dinosaurs is extremely questionable. I don’t think that there were that many dinosaurs.
The whole idea that the billions of barrels of oil and the trillions of cubic feet of gas in the ground, are all decomposition products of fossilized dinosaurs is extremely questionable. I don’t think that there were that many dinosaurs.
I have proven mathematically that the theory is false
Try it on Biden.
You might be right and make good points. Morally there were many questionable decisions on both sides, but by and large it is very difficult in my mind to compare our sins against those of the Axis powers who initiated the conflict.
It is an interesting argument and one that hopefully we never have to consider in the future.
The “strategic bombing campaign” as they called it in Europe did serve a useful military purpose. It pulled significant resources from the Eastern front allowing Russia a bit more breathing space (especially their air force) as most of the German fighter planes were occupied attacking the bombers. Once the P51’s were able to escort bombers all the way to Berlin they pulled even more fighter aircraft from the Eastern front and we were able to destroy the Luftwaffe on both fronts. As Herman Goering said, he knew the war was over when he saw the P51’s over Berlin.
The performance of the Russian Air Force improved dramatically and relatively consistently with the increase in the bombing campaign in the West and in the last year of the war they were quite successful against the Wehrmacht. It is difficult to gauge what impact the thousands of diverted fighter planes had to the Eastern Front but it certainly made a difference as Russian air attacks continued to grow in effectiveness against the Germans.
People forget how much pressure the Russians were under because the US and the Brits took a very long time to invade France and open up the second front. Italy and North Africa were effective but still paled in comparison to the war in the East, but every little bit helped.
While the bombing campaign against cities raises moral questions it undoubtedly took some pressure off of the Russian forces in the East. It consumed huge resources for Germany to try and defend herself not just in men and material (primarily fuel) but as the war proceeded and less fighter opposition was encountered our escort aircraft did major damage to the German’s supply chains by destroying trains, trucks, and other movements.
It can be argued that had it NOT been for the bombing campaign in the West the Luftwaffe might have potentially turned the tide on the Eastern front. The Germans would have also had a lot more artillery on the Eastern front as well being used as flak guns to defend cities and industry. The impact of the bombing campaigns did cause major disruptions to German logistics and it caused a large loss (and commitment) of resources that Germany could ill afford. The Red Army took the brunt of the fighting in the European theater. We delayed D-Day for a very long time - some would say too long as the Russians bled so the main contribution we made up until D-Day was the bombing campaign.
The entire war was brutal. However, considering the behavior of Germany (or Japan) during the war we had little sympathy. Even the much disputed raid on Dresden did significant damage to essential factories and transportation. Too many forget that the Germans initiated the Blitz before abandoning the Battle of Britain because they did not have good bombers. They even continued with V1 and V2 rockets that were best described as terror weapons.
It was total war demanding unconditional surrender. The bombing campaign turned the conflicts in both theaters into a war of attrition and materials that the Axis powers could not win. The bombing was inaccurate so carpet bombing was the only way to strike targets and we missed more often than we hit. I don’t deny that.
Had either Germany or Japan been able to bomb American cities and industry they would have hammered us. Had they gotten the bomb first they would have certainly used it much as we did.
History is full of questions, but the men of WWII made the decisions they thought were best at the time without the benefit of hindsight. We now have that luxury.
Predictably, higher education in both America and Europe focus heavily on our strategic bombing campaign as a moral question on our part to criticize our nations with very little attention given to the behavior of Axis forces.
The Germans were brutal. To become a POW on the Eastern Front meant a brutal death not to mention the ethnic cleansing campaign of the holocaust to include other groups as well. The Japanese were inhumane to most everyone they encountered including our POW’s.
The only way to truly defeat them was what we did.... right or wrong. It was really the last war that we “won” and it was ugly by necessity.
Just my .02. My Army training was certainly focused to avoid civilian casualties but it was not possible with inaccurate dumb bombs of WWII and those cities did contain factories and materials for the war effort in both Germany and Japan.
The effectiveness and moral costs of it will be debated forever.
“I feel like Japan could have actually invaded and captured hawaii and that would have been big”
They never had the ability to pull that off. Their supply lines would have been insane and enormous. And they had some brutal strengths, but forcible entry beyond friendly aircover was not one.
And don’t kid yourself, Hawaii was very strong. In October 1941, the US Army reorganized the Hawaiian Division, considered a square division with its four infantry regiments, into two new smaller divisional units, the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions. The new triangular divisions were each augmented with regiments from the Hawaiian National Guard, bringing the divisions up to the three infantry regiments allotted in the Army’s new Table of Organization. In addition, four anti-aircraft artillery regiments, nearly four full coast artillery regiments, and a company of light tanks with supporting troops made up the Army garrison as of December 1941.
The coast artillery was 8 inch and 14 inch.
The Japanese struggled for 16 days to take Wake Island from 500 Marines armed with 6 five inch 51 caliber guns and one squadron of 12 planes.
Hawaii was simply not possible for them to do anything but a a sneak “hit and run” attack.
For perspective, Imagine if the Japanese held Hawaii, think of the size of the force WE would have needed to take it on late in the war. The Japanese were just not capable of forced entry and it’s logistics that we were. They never even built a decent landing barge.
Mathematics???
He can barely handle a drool cup
About Pearl and men who were trapped
Try it on Biden and Greta.
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