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
If the US would only have flown a SR71 over Japan prior.
We could have known what was to happen.
Or send the Nimitz back in time to attack the Japanese carriers....
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.
Okinawa showed otherwise. That's why it was decided to drop the nukes, imagine the whole fight for Japan being like it was on Okinawa, it would have been an absolute slaughterhouse.
Wasting our airmen to give the USSR a break is idiocy: they would have better served the war and in the long run, the Soviets by concentrating on direct attacks on German formations and their staging areas, their fixed fortifications - and just killed German combatants without wasting millions of tons of bombs and countless aircraft missing important targets and killing old people, women and children.
The Air Force has always despised the ground troops and any whisper of direct support ("aerial artillery") is dismissed as useless, yet well-directed and coordinated CAS kills the enemy, shortens the war, and save our ground-pounder lives in the process. The Soviets stuck to direct support as their primary offensive air power and they were right to do so.
That lack of concentration on CAS killed a lot our people too - look at what happened when the Air Force "supported" the drive out of the Normandy bocage using high and medium altitude bombers. They missed for a large part and killed hundreds of our troops because of inherent inaccuracy, no air to ground communication, and no common doctrine.
I served for over 23 years and I had a close look at the way our different service do things - the enormous wastes of men and moral authority of WWII should be learning experiences.
A full blockade with continuous air attacks against barracks, airfields and ports and all shipping in or out subject to subarines or mines is hardly an embargo.
The really horrible losses of men during that war was because we had a tight timetable: we were in a hurry to get the war over with before the American people stopped supporting it.
Thanks to stupidity of our leadership, lessons learned were always after the fact and assaults carried out with little or no idea of what the enemy had waiting for us. Some of the objectives - Peleliu and Iwo - weren't even really necessary, yet thousands of good, motivated Marines were lost forever.
We were always told that succeed in our mission and if you can, save the lives of your troops. That is only possible if the folks in charge bother to find out what the enemy fortification systems, fire support and positions really are before launching the attack.
I am a former ground pounder so I get the CAS problem. The issues in WWII were that there was little means of communication between ground forces and CAS. The bureaucracy of the military hampered the effort as different commands were often incapable of rapid communication with one another.
War is a horrible thing where young men are sent to die and suffer for the whims of old men. Just my .02
All things being equal I would rather we had not bombed cities and civilian populations but we did not start the war and they believed the manufacturing base could be destroyed - it wasn’t. They did what they thought was right at the time and many of them lived with the consequences the rest of their lives if they survived.
I lived in Germany as a kid and remember seeing the damage on cathedrals and other buildings from the bombing. Sad. Germany was a beautiful place and how an entire nation could fall under the evil spell of such a madman is troubling.
Our mass bombing campaign was not our shining moment but to me there can be very little comparison between the Allies and the Axis powers in WWII. It is undeniable that it diverted a large amount of resources from the Eastern Front and while our casualties were horrific they are insignificant when compared to the Russian carnage. We would have potentially had similar numbers if we had needed to invade Japan.
Such an evil needed to be fully eradicated and it was and let us pray it never raises its head again.
There are many opinions on the big war. Regardless, thanks for your service and Merry Christmas!
Thanks.
As I said the British, an island nation and resource people in that in their history had to learn to make do with little and were very effective at guerrilla style, hit and run/commando warfare so as I said intelligence had to be guarded and shard judiciously with even their allies. As Napoleon said "No nation has allies, only interests'' and Britain's interests, well were Britain. Yes the British certainly were out to maintain their colonies which had been their economic life line of trade and goods and they could only do this by maintaining a powerful navy. But the Royal Navy couldn't be everywhere . As Clausewitz said "He who endeavors to defend everywhere defends nothing'' Churchill knew this and he knew Nazi Germany was Britain's main threat. In his memoirs Churchill confessed that his greatest fear was the U boat threat. He knew that if the Germans succeeded in sinking enough shipping to Britain they could quite likely succeed in starving Britain into stalemate or surrender so it was understandable to get us into the war even if it meant knowing the Japanese were going to attack but they saw that as their saving grace, if you will. Churchill later admitted that despite the carnage of the attack he said, to the effect "Now that America, this colossus of 130 millions souls and industry was in the fight with us I could now sleep the soundest of sleeps''.
Semper Fi and Merry Christmas!
I disagree, but you state your case well. I would just point out that throughout history, long wars usually devolve into savagery. All you have to do is look at the US Civil War and look how differently it was conducted in the last year relative to the first year.
Make it simple by using Laplace Transforms.
This is not a part of their history the Brits want us to know about...
Not the Brits. The Soviets, Richard Sorge tipped them of that Japan was going south.
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