Posted on 06/03/2019 2:32:07 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Why was Midway such a critical victory? First, the fact that the U.S. Navy lost just one carrier at Midway meant that four carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, and Wasp) were available when the U.S. Navy went on the offensive during the Guadalcanal campaign that began the first week of August 1942. Second, the march of the Imperial Japanese Navy across the Pacific was halted at Midway and never restarted. After Midway, the Japanese would react to the Americans, and not the other way around. In the language of the Naval War College, the “operational initiative” had passed from the Japanese to the Americans. Third, the victory at Midway aided allied strategy worldwide.
That last point needs some explaining. To understand it, begin by putting yourself in the shoes of President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the beginning of May 1942. The military outlook across the world appears very bad for the Allies. The German army is smashing a Soviet offensive to regain Kharkov, and soon will begin a drive to grab the Soviet Union’s oil supplies in the Caucasus. A German and Italian force in North Africa is threatening the Suez Canal. The Japanese have seriously crippled the Pacific Fleet, driven Britain’s Royal Navy out of the Indian Ocean, and threaten to link up with the Germans in the Middle East.
If the Japanese and the Germans do link up, they will cut the British and American supply line through Iran to the Soviet Union, and they may pull the British and French colonies in the Middle East into the Axis orbit. If that happens, Britain may lose control of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Soviet Union may negotiate an armistice with Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at warontherocks.com ...
Attu, the westernmost of the two islands produced a bloody battle in May 1943 which lasted most of a month. Kiska, the island further to the east, was quietly evacuated. Operation Cottage, to invade and retake the island in August produced 313 allied casualties in total due to landmines and booby traps left behind, friendly fire, motor vehicle accidents, etc.
Go here and enjoy: https://youtu.be/Y9rkKtK1b44
True. I was referring to the long held Western view that it was primarily a feint to serve totally the effectiveness of the Midway campaign and nothing more.
I admit, it was a bit of a revelation for me, I never gave it much thought!
I certainly see your points as well.
Just for info the carrier Battles of the Eastern Solomons on August 24-25 and the Santa Cruz Islands on 25-27 October 1942 were part of the Guadalcanal campaign.
The surface actions around Guadalcanal are the stuff of disasters, legend and lessons. Iron Bottom Sound.
It might have been a feint, but it also diverted force from the main battle. But, AIR, Yamamoto had to agree to toss a sop to the Army to get the Midway operations approved.
The author of Shattered Sword referred to the Guadalcanal, et al, as the ‘sausage grinder’ the US had to have to heavily attrit the Japanese. It was fought the way we fought best.
Right...but as discussed in the book, if it were a feint...it simply would have been useless due to the transit time from Peal Harbor. They would have had to have the Aleutian operation scheduled much earlier than it was to have had the desired effect of attracting any American naval attention.
At least that is how I recall it was explained...it has been a few years, so I could be mistaken.
I agree. They just hurt themselves with it. But, bear in mind, after all the success of the previous years, the Japanese had ‘victory fever’ and couldn’t wait for their next conquest. It led to some serious over-reaching. The supply line to the Aleutians would be an exercise in vulnerability.
“Do something, even if it’s wrong,” comes to mind.
And the Doolittle Raids had a lot to do with that.
Yes...the importance of the Doolittle Raid sure did extend far beyond those few bombs they dropped...
Brave men.
With the maneuvering and such and time it took to bring up the AC they were sitting ducks when the dive bombers finally arrived.
Thus, the sacrifice, especially Torpedo Six was not in vain.
Strange how history is shaped but in five minutes the war started to turn.
Me, too. What he said makes perfect sense.
Yamamoto must have been frantic.
I saw a Hollywood movie last night that included the Doolittle raids. It was very short on the preparation but very long on the damage done to Tokyo. Massive explosions that are unlikely to have occurred given the limited physical damage the raid accomplished.
The rest of it had to do with a Chinese girl involved in getting the pilot home, or something. I turned it off after the raid. The music in the background told me the ‘guy’ movie was over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thach_Weave
Developed by LCDR John S. "Jimmy" Thatch, USN and employed by his squadron VF-3 during the Battle of Midway.
Six Grumman F4F Wildcats were attacked by 15 to 20 Japanese Zeros. VF-3 shot down four Zeros and lost one Wildcat.
It was the first loss in an air-to-air engagement for the Japanese.
Shame. I have always loved “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”, not only because it was one of the first books I ever checked out of a library when I got my first library card, but because I am an aviation nut, and to see all that great footage of B-25’s from a time when they still had great numbers of them flying, is a real treat.
But you can almost always trust Hollywood to screw up a story, and I don’t doubt it. I have had more than a passing interest over the years in the plight of the USS Indianapolis, and there was a movie that came out “Men of Honor” that was supposed to be about the ship, but...it was so Hollywoodized I couldn’t even get through 15 min of it, so I know what you mean.
i have indeed read the Hornfischer work. It is quite good.
I do believe that the Solomons campaign, and especially the loss of Guadalcanal turned the tide against the Japanese. The campaign stopped their territorial gains cold, and bled them white, in many aspects.
Not to take anything away from the Midway battle..it was certainly catastrophic for the Imperial Japanese Navy, but they lost no territory in that battle, and were still able to field an impressive surface fleet after Midway, which the US Navy discovered in the waters off Savo on August 8. They were still very much on the offensive on Guadalcanal. That defeat, however, marked the last time they were on the offensive. After that, they fought a defensive struggle only.
It can be argued that the impact of Japanese air power was diminished to a certain degree around Guadalcanal, due to the loss of 4 carriers, forcing them to fly from land bases in Rabaul, etc. We will never know.
I also think that Guadalcanal was a huge psychological defeat for the Japanese, also...up to that time, their land forces had not lost a campaign, having fought in China for many years prior.
By their own admission, “victory disease” did them in..AKA hubris...similar to Hitler at Stalingrad.
The Solomons campaign is certainly worthy of deep study.
I appreciate the need to have people like the author who can look at an event with a different set of eyes, even if I don't always agree.
For example, his statement that VT-8 drawing down the IJN CAP from altitude wasn't the reason the dive bombers later came in unmolested, and he backed it up with timing statements (asserting accurately) that the CAP could have climbed back up to fifteen thousand feet in five minutes in their Zeroes (which is accurate as well). I appreciate that analysis, but...in the end, he assumes (I say he assumes due to the way he words it) that they DID climb back up to altitude.
I took a bit of issue with that (UNLESS he actually knows they did climb back up) because it isn't out of the realm of possibility that they didn't. They had just completely destroyed two full squadrons...I could see the confused nature, everyone exulting, and not realizing they should be back at altitude all contributing to a delay to get back up.
But I follow his logic. It is that same logic that does ring a bell of truth abut the Aleutian "feint" and how...it wasn't.
I had a remarkable experience some years ago, back in the late1990's.
I used to play an online war flight simulator called "Warbirds" and did it extensively for about four years. I had the whole setup, a chair I built with stick, rudders and throttle controls, so I was into it. It was a massive online environment, the first of its kind for a flight simulator, so you might have 300 people online. All that is so common now, but it was unique back then, especially for a flight sim.
Most of the time, it was simply going up in the air and looking for an opponent to dogfight, and sometimes it was flying in a squadron setting (I was a member of a squadron called "The HellFish"...I recall about forty guys...a navy squadron, flying Wildcats, Hellcats, Dauntless, TBFs, etc.
But sometimes, we would take part in a "scenario". For example, one of the scenarios was the Schweinfurt Raid. They were very structured, they only allowed a certain number of people to register to participate so that the number of planes on both German and American sides were similar to the actual historic numbers, though you would never have a full crew in a B-17 anywhere from 2-5 guys, though some of the hardcores would go up with full crews. You had to assemble on the ground in the planes, line up, take off, climb to altitude, form up into formations take directions from a leader who would tell your formation where to go. It would take 20 minutes of boring climbing to altitude with a full bomb load, go out across the channel, the whole nine yards. Then, when you approached the target in your B-17, there they were, imperceptible specs that grew and grew in number. German fighters, all being flown by real people. I found it pretty incredible...you could almost visualize how it must have looked to those bomber crews as they approached the target with that huge swarm of hundreds of ME-109's and FW-190's getting ready to dive in on you, with no fighter escort. Anyway, one of the "scenarios" was the Battle of Midway, where it was set up historically the same way from a ship position perspective. You knew what quadrant to find them in, and they didn't know you were there if you were on the American side. I was flying a Dauntless doing search. That is, me and one other guy in the backseat on the gun were given a piece of the ocean to search in, and radio back to the rest of the planes if we spotted the Japanese ships...which we eventually did. Funny thing was...it played out exactly as it had in real life. It was astonishing. Nobody planned it that way...nobody was going from a historical knowledge, everyone was just flying it and playing it like a game, but...the torpedo bombers got there first, the Japanese CAP came down in their Zeroes and shot nearly all of them down, and the dive bombers appeared on the scene above, dove in and bombed the Japanese carriers! I found that to be completely amazing that it worked out the same way with no overt orchestration. That was a huge amount of fun, for me being a total aviation nut who will never get my pilot's license...I guess as close as I will ever get...:)
Your quest has weighed on my mind.
I checked to be sure, and there were on the order of 300 US Navy ships involved in the several units fighting the battle. Knowing your father’s ship will allow your to find which of the various naval task groups he participated. Knowing the task group, you can get much closer to finding out how he participated.
Here is the Wikipedia article listing the various naval task groups participating in the battle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf
Your quest is a very worthwhile endeavor
It was kicking up a considerable wake at full speed, knifing along with no zig-zagging or precautions at all. The travel of this lone cruiser seemed to be purposeful —like it might be making haste to rejoin a larger body of ships (this cruiser had been attempting to sink American sub that had been spotted by the Japanese main force much earlier and had remained behind).
The cruiser had a bone in its teeth, producing bow waves which, combined with the extensive stern wake its screws made, looked like a arrowhead pointing toward its destination.
Thank you...he was on Hugh L. Scott...a transporter evidently...don’t have time for research right now...but Vaca coming!
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