In the past month or so, I've mentioned the name "Prange" dozens of times, and quoted four different passages from him.
Of the four quoted passages, three were simply snippets of what Homer had already posted -- about general warnings and top-brass awareness of threats to Pearl Harbor.
The fourth is this lengthy passage I quoted to you, demonstrating how Prange -- "fair and balanced" -- spreads the blame around to everyone from Washington to Pearl Harbor:
Quote from Prange on who was to blame
LS: "Prange is detailed, and did well for what he had at the time.
So did doctors who believed in applying leeches under the humoral theory of medicine."
No one has yet demonstrated where Prange is in actual error on anything he said.
The only complaint is that Prange didn't know as much as more recent authors have uncovered.
LS: "I don't need to "take up a complaint" with anyone other than you. YOU are the one who invokes Prange at every turn."
Yes, it's possible that you truly don't understand what's going on here, so I'll explain again.
This thread is run by "Homer_J_Simpson", whose real name I don't know (wouldn't recognize anyway), but probably a good many here do know him, and like him -- I like him, even though I don't know him. ;-)
Homer manages all of the original data which starts these threads, and I'd expect that he does 90+% of the work himself.
CougarGA7 and several others routinely contribute significant data as well.
All are hugely appreciated.
Among the items that Homer routinely posts are significant quotes from several books, including Winston Churchill's memoirs, and works of various historians, including on the subject of Pearl Harbor: Gordon Prange.
On occasion, Homer has also quoted Toland, who in that particular instance had a condensed version of the story which Prange explained in more detail -- Ambassador Grew's first warning from Japan of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor.
My point is: since Prange is Homer's "textbook", that's where we have to begin any discussion of Pearl Harbor.
So if you want to begin the discussion somewhere else, just ask Homer to use a different "textbook."
Indeed, if you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd offer to post data or quotes yourself, pal.
LS: "Clausen and Lee are the only source to correctly incorporate the relevant material, and others, including Prange, IGNORED their findings."
Both Prange and Stinnett discuss Major Clausen's investigation at length, and Prange conducted a personal interview with him.
Major Claussen was acting as General Marshall's defense lawyer, securing sworn affidavits from all levels of command.
Near the end, in 1945, Clausen even chased down Colonel Rufus Bratton near Berlin, forcing him to change his own testimony in light of Clausen's other affidavits.
I think Clausen's work was important, but don't think it was definitive.
LS: "You can't just slough off the codes as "tangled up"..."
But you yourself have already "tangled up" the whole discussion by confusing Japanese Purple diplomatic codes with their more secure Naval codes.
So all I'm saying here is: be careful, be careful what you say when you walk into this "minefield," because it's nearly impossible not to make some mistake or other in discussing the subject.
So, did Prange or Stinnett "tangle up" anything?
Sure, your former buddy Jacobsen claimed they did, but I can't verify that from sources that are readily available in print at bookstores.
LS: "Again, if you actually LOOK at Stinnett's end notes, he doesn't support a single solid statement with a broken code or testimony. The only thing he supports are "should have/could have" kinds of statements."
Actually, the afterword & appendixes of Stinnett's book include 57 pages worth of reproduced original documents and other data supporting his conclusions.
The notes with references section is 68 pages long.
LS: "ALL of his claims about radio traffic have been debunked.
NONE of his so-called cryptanalitic evidence has survived scrutiny of the men who did this for a living, yet you continue to obfuscate, wiggle, and otherwise ignore their testimony and analysis, which is really all that matters."
Nonsense. You have not cited or quoted even one actual reference.
When you do, I'll respond to that.
LS: "The change in the alert status was critical, because Marshall, having ALREADY TOLD KIMMEL AND SHORT TO EXPECT WAR, was confident that Pearl Harbor, on "Alert 1," was able to defeat any attack easily---ESPECIALLY AIR, because that was what they had trained for.
You really think infantry was going to storm the beaches at Oahu???"
Obviously, what I think is irrelevant.
What matters is, what did General Short believe that General Marshall was telling him to do.
The answer is clearly in the "war warning" Marshall sent Short -- prepare to defend against sabotage, not air attack.
Now, yes I understand, you keep claiming some misunderstanding over Short's alert codes puts all the blame on Short and takes it off Marshall and other top-brass in Washington, but I'm not so sure.
For one thing, both Short and Kimmel responded to Washington's "war warnings" with detailed reports of what they had done in response.
These details clearly demonstrated that Short was not at highest alert, but rather, as directed, had prepared to defend against expected sabotage.
So Washington's failure to understand or respond appropriately to Short's & Kimmel's status reports cannot be excused by some supposed misunderstanding of alert codes.
LS: "To have sent a second, "here they come" message would have alerted Japan that we were reading their DIPLOMATIC AND NAVAL codes."
Now you make an extraordinarily interesting, possibly unintentionally revealing argument.
Let's note first that you seem to admit our guys were also reading Japanese Naval codes.
If you'll stick to that, it could save us a lot of disagreement! ;-)
Second, how could additional "here they come" messages to Kimmel and Short possibly have alerted the Japanese?
And why would such an alert have mattered at Pearl Harbor?
LS: "Your explanation of utter failure to use long-range recon was insufficient and would have gotten Kimmel and Short court-martialed in any reasonable court."
In fact, both Kimmel and Short were cleared of wrong-doing, in this area, by their respective courts of inquiry.
Again, the key point is that full spectrum, long-range aerial reconnaissance could only be conducted for short periods after a clear warning of a coming air attack.
Neither Kimmel nor Short believed they had received such a warning.
What the cryptanalists will tell you is that you don't just "intercept" something like you see on TV then run to the commander and say, "oh, Admiral, they're coming." Consider that after we intercepted the famous Midway "water condenser" false message, we STILL didn't know exactly where the Japanese would be or in what force level. But anyway, since you don't want to take the time to educate yourself on this, I'll make it simple (and Stinnett completely obfuscates this): a message from the JN-25b Code would be intercepted. It first had to be decrypted. Even with the code breaking in operation, that wasn't done quickly: such a code had to be verified that, in fact, it was real and not some jibberish decoy. Then it had to be analyzed. This is the tough part. Many codes from 1941 were not analyzed until 1944. There were simply too many. Figuring out which ones were "the most important" was a rather significant job, and extremely time consuming. Rochefort got lucky with the "water condenser" message because it was something he could test pretty easily. Most weren't like that. Once decrypted and analyzed, they were passed simultaneously to CINCPAC and to Washington. Either or both might take the message seriously, or might conclude that it meant something just the opposite of what the codebreaker thought it meant.
And, yes, Stinett badly "tangled up" the codes and decrypts. I wrote a review of his book in Continuity; Jacobsen has written several article-length reviews. Not ONE of his "is" statements has a matching note---the only statements he supports with citations are the "could be/should be/could have/would have." That is to say, he doesn't understand codebreaking, or what the cryptanalysts were saying, and Jacobsen (and his colleagues) called him on it at length.
Now, I don't care if it's Homer Simpson or you, whoever relies on Prange for certain information is going to get bad information. Yes, he cited Clausen but clearly didn't understand what Clausen said to him in an abbreviated interview so he basically ignored the impact of Clausen's comments. As for Toland, really. His whole "Seaman Z" thing was blown out of the water and he was exposed as a fraud by Seaman Ogg himself. Churchill? As much as I like Winston, his study on the Second World War is not accepted by any mainstream historians as accurate.