[lit-ideas] Re: On underestimating America
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 21:12:01 -0800
On Feb 18, 2020, at 12:43 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I’m about 10% through Weinberg’s A World At Arms. He discusses, as everyone
seems to, how leaders in Germany and Japan underestimated the military
potential of America.
Keegan is clear that Yamamoto, having spent time in the U.S. did not
underestimate that potential at all. I’ve now finished “The Price of
Admiralty,” which title apparently comes from Kipling, “the price of admiralty
[domination of the seas] is blood.”
In the debate about which kind of ship is the future Keegan votes for
submarines, citing the manifest vulnerabilities of a carrier group. His
accounts of several conflicts are, in my view precise, but not as enlightening
as has been the case with his analyses of land warfare. Two passages stick in
my mind:
"In 1932 U.S. carriers Saratoga and Lexington, in a pre-dawn simulated raid on
Pearl Harbor with 152 aircraft, caught the Pcaific Fleet base totally by
surprise and overwhelmed its defences.” p162. Two things I don’t get about
this: the Pacific Fleet was not moved out to Hawaii until 1941 and how can you
overwhelm defences that aren’t firing at you? War gaming rules I assume.
In May of 1918 Admiral William Sims planned large-scale American naval
expansion, “no other navy in the world…has to cover so great an area…as the
American navy…it ought, in my judgement, to be incomparably the most adequate
navy in the world.” (p. 171) An older use of “adequate.”
There was also the story of some guy in an Atlantic convoy who was rescued by
one of the escort vessels. He was rescued by the same vessel months later when
another ship was sunk in the Mediterranean. Echoes of the Unsinkable Molly
Brown.
Since I live where the current occupant of the White House proposed putting
defensive missiles, I don’t take the North Korean threat lightly. But we also
live with the threat of a subduction quake or one of the Cascades blowing its
top.
I’ll open, “World At Arms” soon.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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