Posted on 08/10/2008 5:54:54 PM PDT by decimon
Hollywood duo Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck portrayed the American desire to avenge the infamous Pearl Harbour bombings playing two US pilots in Michael Bay's hit 2001 epic.
But, the true devastation of the revenge attacks on Japanese forces in 1944 has been captured in one of the most ambitious underwater projects ever undertaken.
Operation Hailstorm was two years in the making - but on February 17, 1944, American forces blitzed the Chuuk Islands, in the south western region of the Pacific Ocean, sinking 70 Japanese ships, 270 aircraft and killing close to 3,000 people - though the official death toll has never been confirmed.
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Pacific Abyss will be shown in three hour-long specials starting next Sunday on BBC1 at 8pm.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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It really had military value in that it forced the japs to send airforce assets back to mainland japan for shoring up air defence.I wonder how many commanders commited hari-kari over that one.Loss of face and all that.
Yes, it’s about Truk. No, Iron Bottom Sound was in the Solomons off of Guadalcanal.
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I remember circa 1970 photos taken of the sunken vessels at Truk, probably in one of those cool sometimes sleazy men’s magazines of the time (”True” “Argosy” etc), when the wrecks were only 25 years or so. Those much older photos were also cool.
Truk Atoll: February 16-17, 1944
http://www.cv6.org/1944/truk/default.htm
[snip] At the time of the February strikes, then-Lieutenant Ramage was Executive Officer of Big E’s Bombing Squadron 10, then commanded by LCDR Richard Poor. At 0858 on 16 February 1944, Ramage led off Enterprise’s second bomber strike against Truk, followed by another strike that afternoon, and a third attack on 17 February. The assault even continued at night, as Torpedo 10 executed the first night radar-assisted carrier attack in history, accounting for nearly a third of the tonnage of enemy shipping destroyed during the raids! By the end of the attacks, the myth of the “Gibraltar of the Pacific” had been shattered. [end]
I just threw up in my mouth. "Revenge" attacks??? Imperial Japan, unprovoked, perpetrated acts of war against the British, Dutch and French Empires, the Chinese, the people of the South Pacific Islands, and the United States of America. Nobody asked them to do it, nobody provoked them to do it -- they just plain done it, off their own bat.
Then they perpetrated atrocities.
"Revenge??" Hell, they brought War upon themselves. And they got everything that they deserved. Unlike the Nazis, who generally observed the Geneva Conventions (holocaust being a huge and notable exception), the Japs almost universally did not. And, as a result, their armies and civilian populations were exterminated like bugs.
The Axis was an evil that needed to be stomped out. And the Imperial Japanese needed to be stomped out most especially. Is that really "revenge"?
No, that is Pest Control. Much like what we do when we kill rats and vermin in our homes. It was certainly "eradication". But not "revenge".
>>Unlike the Nazis, who generally observed the Geneva Conventions (holocaust being a huge and notable exception), the Japs almost universally did not.
Maybe with the West. In the East, vs. the Soviets, it was a whole ‘nother ball game, on that.
good one
No, no, no...
Yes, Nazis were half civilized in countries like Norway, Holland and France, exepting their treatment of Communists and Jews.
In eastern Europe, they were brutal beyond all comparison, killing tens of millions, not even including the Holocaust.
The Japanese were also extremely brutal, but there is no Japanese equivalent of the Holocaust. Where Nazis killed tens of millions, Japanese killed "just" millions.
But America's real problem with Japan was their Bushito code, which required of Japan's military "victory or death" -- no surrender. That's what made the Japanese military death toll so high.
If Japanese soldiers had been as willing to surrender as, say German soldiers, then many more would have survived.
> The Japanese were also extremely brutal, but there is no Japanese equivalent of the Holocaust. Where Nazis killed tens of millions, Japanese killed “just” millions.
What about the Japanese adventures in Manchuoko? The rape of Nanking? Their activities in Korea?
I know all of that happened before the US entered WW-II, but then — the US *did* enter considerably after the rest of the world did.
Yes, Japanese brutality was in some areas even worse than the Nazis. For example, of US POWs in Germany, over 90% survived (exceptions being Jews and blacks). American survival in Japanese POW camps was barely 50%.
But in terms of shere numbers killed, the war in Europe accounted for 35 million of the total 55 million deaths. When you see this broken down by country (and I don't have the list in front of me right now), you see the Nazis responsible for tens of millions, the Japanese "only" millions.
And of course, the Japanese had no systematic programs for genocide that would equate to the Holocaust of Jews.
So I'm not saying the Japanese were "nice guys," far from it. But in terms of shere wanton murder, they did not top the Nazis.
Bump
While the bombing caused limited damage, according to Japanese sources, it did cause the Japanese Navy to pull back (largely unopposed) forces from the Indian Ocean and the Solomon Islands.
The leftists at the BBC might consider the bombing of Dresden by the RAF and Army Air Corps in Feb, 1945, 12 weeks before the unconditional surrender of Germany, an act of revenge for the London Blitz early in the war.
But they get to choose their targets some 60 years later because we helped them defend themselves.
The Doolittle Raids were revenge. The rest was just the normal progress of the war.
Since you and Dad have dove the Truk Islands...
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