Posted on 01/16/2007 5:28:45 PM PST by VOA
Re-Broadcast Times for "Dogfights" episode of "Death of The Japanese Navy"
are EASTERN time:
Tuesday January 16 11:00 PM
Wednesday January 17 03:00 AM
(from a "Dogfights" webpage)
In one of the most amazing yet lopsided naval battles in history,
a mighty Japanese fleet led by the Yamato, the biggest battleship
in the world, versus Taffy 3, a small U.S. task unit of tin can
destroyers and baby flat-tops. The U.S. fleet is made up of ships
too weak to fight and too slow to run. David battles Goliath in
a fight for survival, with the lives of thousands of American soldiers
in the balance. We will recreate this famous battle using state
of the art computer graphics. Viewers will feel like they're in
the battle, facing the enemy.
bump for publicity
Frankly, I think Halsey led a charmed life...any other commander would have been relieved and replaced. If not for Kurita suddenly developing a cases of the nervous nellies the Leyte Invasion could have turned into a slaughter. The entire Showa Plan was built around Japanese perception of H That Halsey could be suckered north to chase a tactically irrelevant target. They guessed right and Halsey fell for it.
Sprague's Taffy Three fought with astonishing courage. But it was fight or die. They weren't about to outrun Kurita 's fleet. There tenacity induced in Kurita a failure of nerve that not only saved the Leyte Invasion but saved the reputation of Halsey. If Kurita had gotten in among the transports at Leyte the US death toll would have been in Ten's of thousands. Halsey would have been finished. As it was Halsey became irrelevant in the largest Fleet engagement in history.
Having dodged ignominy once Halsey proceeds to sail into a Typhoons....twice. And lost more men, ships and aircraft than in any fleet action.
Admirals?....Give me Nimitz, Spruance and Mitscher. They didn't give a damn about the glory and had no press battalion.
I agree with your Halsey retrospective. It's a shame that The Battle of
Samar "got no respect" as Navy poobahs (Nimitz?) wanted to avoid public
criticism of Halsey.
IIRC, Halsey was credited with taking over at Guadacanal and helping
turn things around...but he did follow up with major mistakes.
And just missed letting a major blood-bath happen when he sailed off
the map chashing near-empty Japanese carriers.
I think I heard that Halsey never had a class of ships named after him
due to the dings on his record.
I heard a discussion of modern warefare tonight on talk radio. They say it is now 80% politics and 20% effort.
Amazing when you think of the egos in Patton, Monty, MacArthur, Halsey etc....and trying to win wars at the same time
A friend of mine, a military historian, says " Great Commanders" in the popular consciousness are often a function of the size and skill of the commander's personal public relations staff. If Journalism is the first draft of history then the government/military spokesperson is the first schmoozer.
In all of WWII there were maybe five great strategic battles. In that if you didn't win you lost the war. Midway, The Battle of the Atlantic ( probably the most important and unheralded of all) Stalingrad, The Battle of Britain, and Normandy. But few could name the winning commanders of them.
I just watched this for the third time. It was just a good as the first time.
The Four you mentioned,Patton, Monty, MacArthur, and Halsey were the most notorious about fusing personal 'presence' to the battle scenario. Patton, Monty, MacArthur, Halsey. They never missed th opportunity for the well turned phrase or dramatic image. It makes sense if thei is some strategic objective in it it not it is just blustering ego.Patton, Monty, MacArthur, Halsey.
Their a kind of triumphalism that clouds the judgement of biographers when they fall in love with their subjects. Patton is a good example. We justifiably admire Patton's tactical brillance but we patently ignore the fact that he made a disasterous decision about tank doctrine that doomed the US into selecting the M-4 Sherman over a heavier, up gunned Main battle tank. The result was US and British tankers went up against Panthers and Tigers believing their superior mobility would be the deciding edge. It wasn't. They got slaughtered in a ratio of 9 to 1. If not for air supremacy Normandy would have failed.
The CGI is amazing. I've never seen anything better.
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