Iwo Jima - A stupid Mistake?

The Navy and Nimitz especially were opposed to the Phillipine landings. The whole operation was a sop to MacAuthur's ego.

When told that a Japanese destroyer ran over Jack's boat in the middle of the night, Rose Kennedy asked "was Teddy driving it?"

"Teddy is very fat" - excerpt letter from JFK in the Solomons

In Europe, we had inferior tanks that went up against the Panzers and Tigers, but defeated them by overwhelming them, learning their weaknesses and developing tactics in the field to beat them.

One slight correction. Tank doctrine in WW II had our tanks avoiding enemy tanks. Tanks were only to support infantry – not take on enemy tanks. For the role they were to have they were good. Tank Destroyer Battalions were formed to take on the enemy tanks.
By the end of the war we realized that tank on tank battles were unavoidable. Our WW I era tank doctrine was revised and the Tank Destroyers were out and heavy tanks were in.

It is my understanding that the vast quantities of fuel at Pearl are primarily stored in huge underground caverns, far below the ground.

Don't know. I've seen aerial photographs of huge tank farms at Pearl in 1941. Regardless, Nagumo should have pressed the attack until he was out of ammunition and fuel. He should have come home without one round of ammunition and needing a tow into port. He was afraid of being jumped by U.S. carriers, (whom he could not account for) but he would have been sailing flank speed for home (and the rest of the Imperial Fleet) as soon as the attack was finished. Besides, it's unlikely that the U.S. would have been able to mount a meaningful pursuit, or even if they could that they would have risked their remaining fleet in what might have been an ambush.

I think if Yamamoto could have had a Mulligan, he would have ordered the invasion of Hawaii, not just a raid.

Roosevelt ordered the Seventh Fleet be deployed from San Diego to Pearl personally. (He had been Secretary of the Navy during WWI). Clearly this was an enormous blunder.

The problem I (and many historians) have with the Phillipine invasion was that it did little to shorten the War

Correction: Clearly it lengthened the War.

Eposide II will be the bad decision to invade Okinawa and the final installment will be how it was not necessary to drop the bomb.

Pity those making the argument weren't on hand in San Francisco when the Japanese plan to hit Frisco with a *dirty bomb* made from German-supplied radioactive matrerial was carried out, as scheduled for a submarine-carried aircraft during late August 1945.

Details herein:

hindsight is always 20/20. The Japanese obviously felt it was important to defend the island.

"we knew the germans had poison gas before ww2 started but they never used it because hitler feared retaliation. even as germany was collapsing they didn't use poison gas. if fdr had used it, it would have opened the door for the germans to use it."

Thanks for the response but I based on my reading I disagree.

1) the plan was to jam Radio communications then use the Gas. So, the Germans never would have known we used gas on iwo.

2) German was on the point of collapse in Feb 1945 with the Soviets on the Oder River -90 miles from Berlin we had no reason to believe the Nazi's would have used Gas at that point in the war.

3) The War Department and JCS agreed with points 1 & 2.

4) FDR disagreed and for POLITICAL reasons banned the use of Gas at Biak and Iwo.

I've always wished that we would have had a nuke developed by then, it could have gotten many of them in their caves before the Marines went in. Probably would have saved American lives and maybe shortened other battles.
I will be taking my family to DC next week, the Iwo Jima memorial is on the list of things to see.

You are correct. They bombed the ____ out of Iwo before February 19^th, and they spent a lot of time doing it.

Thank you, Michael.

In that, at least they tried.

The battleship Pennsylvania was bombed in the docks, and two destroyers were sunk/blown to bits inside the drydock next to the Penn.

Good comments..Boot makes valid points, except tnat they are written from 60 years hindsight, which is always easy to do..And the ONE point in favor of the IJ invasion, not mentioned, was that it removed any doubt at the time about the use of the A-bomb..If you recall, there was a growing movement for the US to conduct a demonstration bombing ..and to "invite" the Japanese to witness it...

Mistakes happen in the chaos of wa --big mistakes. And the mistakes cost lives. This is a reality that the Dems pretend to be be too stupid to understand.

Someone should write a compendium of all the mistakes of WWII and all the lives lost as a result. On the Atlantic side, we could start with the very first action, the invasion of North Africa. Troops were sent in a poorly planned (in hindsight) operation with inadequate equipment (many drowned in floundering sub-standard craft) against an enemy (the colonial French) who fought us due to our failure in diplomacy and intelligence.

If "mistakes were made" were considered as highly against FDR as against Bush43, "Roosevelt" would be a name of shame among the Democrats.

I taped the one hour special on Iwo Jima that was on the military channel last week. I watched it again last night. They took about 20 Iwo Jima survivors back there to visit after 60 years. I was moved to tears by some of their stories. Without Iwo Jima, we could not have dropped the 2 bombs on Japan that ended the war. Iwo Jima was a stepping stone and a prerequsite to taking Japan. The military was prepared to sacrifice up to 1 millions lives to take Iwo Jima, that's how strategically important is was to us. We HAD to take Iwo Jima and we did. I will save this recording forver as I never get tired of watching it. Compared to the lives lost in WWII, Iraq is a cakewalk but you would never know that by listening to the liberal media. God bless the Iwo Jima survivors, and all the men that died there, and god bless the Corps!

All democrat started wars (WWII, VIETNAM, KOREA, KOSOVO...

You forgot Wilson and WWI. Probably some earlier also.

Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

His last book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books) was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. He is now writing his next book, a history of revolutions in military affairs over the past 500 years, War Made New: Four Great Revolutions That Changed the Face of Battle and the Course of History, which will be published by Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin (USA).

Boot has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs and many other publications. He is also a frequent public speaker and guest on radio and television news programs. He has lectured at many military institutions, including the Army and Navy War Colleges, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, and the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Before joining the Council in October 2002, Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, the last five years as editorial features editor. From 1992 to 1994 he was an editor and writer at The Christian Science Monitor.

Boot holds a bachelor's degree in history, with high honors, from the University of California, Berkeley (1991), and a master's degree in history from Yale University (1992). He grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in the New York area with his wife and three children.

Thousands Die: FDR Won't Admit Mistakes;
-------Refuses to Fire Nimitz!
Kennedy and Leahy enraged.

---I think I recall seeing this headline in an old LATimes.

The whole point of the Naval Proceedings article (written by a member of the military) that the LA Times article is based on is that the above is a complete crock.

And NOTHING you've written today substantiates that claim.

As I recall, the island was subjected to a devastating barrage of naval gunfire, but the elaborate tunnel system kept most of the defenders protected.

you are right of course. This is the kind of nonsense a person does when he gets a new job and tries to make his new masters happy.