Posted on 10/02/2012 9:21:09 AM PDT by Fedora
The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you deescalate the bombing and brought you to the negotiation table. It was therefore a victory….The war was fought on many fronts. At that time (Tet) the most important was American public opinion.
--A 1989 Safer interview of Giap, quoted in Howard Langer, The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations
Historian Clay Blair claimed that May was responsible for a major release of highly confidential military information during World War II, known as the May Incident. In that incident, U.S. submarines had been conducting a successful undersea war against Japanese shipping during World War II, frequently escaping Japanese anti-submarine depth charge attacks. However, the deficiencies of Japanese depth-charge tactics were revealed in a press conference held in June 1943 by Congressman May on his return from a war zone junket. At this press conference, May revealed the highly sensitive fact that American submarines had a high survival rate because Japanese depth charges were typically fuzed to explode at too shallow a depth. Various press associations sent this leaked news story over their wires and many newspapers (including one in Honolulu, Hawaii), published it.[3]
It was subsequently discovered that Japanese naval antisubmarine forces were adjusting their depth charges to explode at a deeper depth. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Pacific, later estimated that May's security breach cost the United States Navy as many as ten submarines and 800 crewmen killed in action.[3] A report from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Submarine Fleet determined that Japanese ASW forces failed to uncover the maximum test depth ability of U.S. fleet submarines during the war.[4] However, the report made no finding as to whether Japanese ASW forces altered their depth charge attacks to deeper settings as a consequence of May's revelation to the press.
I wasn't familiar with this before you mentioned it, so I will need to follow up on that. Thanks for drawing my attention to it!
That’s the one.
And ever since then, members of our government have had a grand time selling us out to the press for “atta boys” as they turn around and sell us out to the enemy.
True all of that. Nor do I know the whole story, but the impression only gets stronger with all of the seemingly unconnected parts. I don’t like to think poorly of a fellow alumnus, but everyone’s human. Peace.
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