Posted on 04/17/2017 7:37:05 AM PDT by SpeedyInTexas
Some sixty-eight years before U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, America conducted an assassination of another kind.
This time, the target wasn’t a terrorist. It was the Japanese admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor operation. But the motive was the same: payback for a sneak attack on the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Air Power was 100% of the difference.
Hooray for our expert code breakers. I love the movie, Midway, that portrays the Navy’s action. Also, the US task force lost most of its planes and pilots, brave brave men.
He wasn’t ‘assassinated’. He was a key strategic asset to the enemy. It was no more revenge than sinking carriers was revenge.
Yamamoto was not the tyrant that Tojo was. He was in the US for a long period of time prior to the war and came to respect us greatly. I see him as closer to Germany’s Rommel.
Whereas Tojo was much more like Himmler if not Hitler himself. Tojo called the shots.
Tojo was just about to off Hirohito and prolong the war.
One of my flight examiners was a p-38 pilot involved in this mission. I spent as much time talking to him as we did getting me signed off.
Rommel took care of that
They were fighting for their living god...the emperor
The casualty and death estimates for the US were over a million soldiers. It would still be going on
There’s a Japanese movie about Admiral Yamamoto. The melodrama is painful.
Here’s the ambush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNNEj5-6aOk
Bong museum?
The Americans knew where Yamamoto would be because they had broken the Japanese code. Quite risky in that the Japanese could have put 2 and 2 together, and realized that their code was compromised.
Germany did advise the Japanese that their code had been broken but the Japanese ignored this as they believed that their code was unbreakable.
He did; he’d been to the US and seen the manufacturing here. He knew victory was impossible.
Yes, I think the questioning of the A-bomb use in hindsight is absurd. Anyone who had family in uniform in the Pacific I’m sure was happy the bombs were dropped instead of invasion...
Damn straight.
Totally B.S.
Yamamoto was a target of opportunity delivered by MAGIC
He was a Prime military target
I love saying that, but that’s what it is. It generally gets a raised eyebrow. Go to the link, it’s work safe.
I just recently watched a documentary of Japan in the 20s and 30s. The control of the military over society was total.
Richard Bong. America’s leading ace in WWII, with 40 victories. Awarded the CMH.
Yamamoto ironically enough was one of the few Japanese who understood and appreciated America. He had studied at Harvard and had been naval attache to America. He wasn’t enthusiastic about war with the United States but he was a loyal son of Imperial Japan.
I ran across a fellow whose last name is Lanphier. Asked him if he might be related to the pilot who was part of the Yamamoto raid and that turned out to be his uncle. The wreckage of Yamamoto’s Betty bomber was discovered a few years ago and is now on display at the Chino, CA airport where you can see quite a few still operational WWII aircraft.
I would think the enemy will be even more motivated to fight if you target his family.
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