Yamamoto was a valid military target.
bump
Ah those were the days, when armies wore uniforms.....
When are we going to hear froim the Magicians Union that the code name is offensive?
I’ve always thought the shootdown of Yammamoto an Act of God. Kind of like the Battle of Midway, it could easily have gone the other way. Even though the Allies had the info, still, finding his plane in the the middle of the big sky like that, was like finding a needle in a haystack.
I have always thought this incident would have made for a great movie.
No mention of Tom Lanphier?
It wasn’t worth risking Magic over.
Yamamoto the “brilliant” stratagist split the Kido Butai of six carriers in May 42 to conduct Coral Sea with only 2 carriers. Shokaku’s flight deck was wrecked by bombs and Zuikaku’s air groups were mauled meaning neither carrier was available for Midway. And they didn’t get Port Moresby either.
Around the time Yamamoto was assassinated, he had come up with the “brilliant” strategy of committing the retraining carrier air groups of Zuikaku and Shokaku for a landbased air offensive and Japanese naval pilot quality never recovered.
This is the plane that got Yamamoto
P-38 Lightning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITRLk9b9AcY
DOGFIGHTS, P38 LIGHTNING VS ME 109
FDR (Roosevelt) unlike POTUS Obama, wanted to win WWII and....in doing so realized you must kill the enemy, both military and civilian. This was done, in both Japan & Germany and with all the Axis support countries. Obama does not care for America, so Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, the Sudan, Iran go untouched. Facts and truth will show that Obama was forced into a yes or no on Bin Laden by both CIA Director Panetta and Secretary Of the DOD, Gates. Valerie Jarrett, an Osama Bin Laden adoree was urging Obama not to pull the trigger. Obama did of course, throw Bin Laden under the bus, but for his own political survival which will not happen. Obama is protecting and shielding Gaddafi, his soul brother and with direction from Farrakhan & Rev. Wright whom both adore Gaddafi. One day the American public and voters will come to realize what a low-life, dirt bag POTUS Obama really is. Shame the fools have not figured this anti-American, un-American empty suit out!!! As for Yamamoto, he was a brilliant Admiral, he loved his country, he knew, that in a prolonged war with theUSA, Japan would be badly defeated. He detested the Japanese military leadership, because he knew Americans would come back at Japan with a hate and determination to destroy the nation of Japan which they did. It was probably better that he was not around to see his beloved Japan on her knees and bleeding to death. Roosevelt, Doolittle, Halsey, Nimitz, Arnold, Patton, Eisenhower, Churchill, and....on and on and on!!! Dirt Bag, POTUS Obama does belong in the same room with these heroes that saved the world, freedom and our nations!!!
Folks, there was a Declaration of War between Japan and the United States. It addition, Yamamoto was a uniformed combatant carrying an ID card. There is no comparison with this case and bin Laden. He was not a uniformed combatant and there is no Declaration of War. Note that the Geneva Convention generally does not cover non uniformed combatants. Traditionally, they were questioned, awarded a non judicial punishment, and subsequently shot.
I don’t see the Yamamoto and bin Laden as comparable (apples and apples) situations.
Had the capability, and opportunity, existed in 1943 to conduct a snatch-n-grab of Yamamoto the US certainly would have tried to take him alive.
However, they didn’t. So the next best alternative (killing him during his tour) was taken.
In the case of bin Laden there was definitely capability, and an opportunity, to capture him alive.
That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have been killed, it just means that the situation is somewhat more complicated. With tradoffs between any intelligence take that could be pulled out of him (after Eric Holder’s DoJ read him his rights and allowed him to lawyer up, of course), the threat he posed to the SEALs by potentially having a weapon or suicide vest, and the potential for a demoralizing circus-like atmosphere if he were to go on trial (including the potential for him to continue to act as the spiritual leader of AQ while behind bars).
I don’t know what potential intel could have been dragged out of him, since he doesn’t seem to have been in any sort of operational control of AQ. So setting that part aside, I don’t think that he was worth the life of a single SEAL, and that allowing him to live and be tried would be extremely damaging to the nation and the War on Terror. So I think the decision to exterminate him using 5.56 insect repellent was the right one.
No link? What’s the source for this article?
(Later Justice) John Paul Stevens was one of the Navy cryptographers who helped decode the original message about Yamamoto’s tour.
I've always found it fascinating to read about Yamamoto's close ties to the U.S. in the decades before World War II. He attended Harvard from 1919-21 and was assigned to work in Washington D.C. for a while as a young naval officer. He also seemed to have a pretty keen sense of Japan's limitations in fighting the U.S. in the Pacific.
About all the mission accomplished was to enshrine the memory of Admiral Yammoto. Subsequent events would have tarnished his reputation within the Japanese hirarchy, even though he had predicted them well in advance.
The interception was a technical and airmaship feat of note. Mag compasses in the P-38 were notoriously unreliable, so it was a remarkable feat of navigation by a single pilot aircraft reportedly conducted in complete radio silence. It also posed the possibility of exposing our ability to read the Japanese naval code.
Decades later a dispute grew among the surviving praticipating pilots as to who really “shot down Yammoto”. But there are no similarities between the interception of Yammoto and the taking of bin Laden IMO. Yammoto was a serving military member. Bin Laden was a terrorist. The former was a warrior, the latter merely a rat. >PS