David,
I read your note a second time and see that I did not address your (Keegan's)
emphasis on chance. Maybe Parshall & Tully's dealing as much from the Japanese
leadership diminishes the idea of chance playing a very important roll. The
hubris of Japanese leadership, the fact that they at the Battle of Midway had
gone "all in" whereas the Americans were back home churning out another battle
fleet much better than the one facing the Japanese at Midway (something the
Americans could and did do many times over, but the Japanese fleet at Midway
was all there was. They never again had a battle fleet that could match the
ones the Americans were turning out in abundance. They never even tried to
match them again.).
If all the listings of chance had gone for the Japanese instead of the
Americans they may have delayed the final defeat of the Japanese, but not by
much.
When a Japanese carrier was taken back to Japan for repair, it was most likely
out for the entire war. When an American carrier was taken back to Pearl
Harbor for repair, that repair would take place so quickly it could sometimes
be sent back to the same battle it had limped away from.
Carriers were no good without planes, and the Americans shot almost all the
Japanese planes down. If I remember correctly, one last attempt by the
Japanese to damage an American carrier at Midway occurred when all they could
put in the air were 13 planes.
I have been reading someplace that the mindset of the Japanese and Germans was
similar. Neither had an adequate battle plan. The idea of the Germans
imagining they could conquer the Red Army by chasing it over the Urals in
winter on horseback can seem Quixotic if we don't focus on all the people
dying. We excuse the Japanese from folly because Yamamoto understood that
American industrial resources would eventually wear the Japanese down, but he
nevertheless underestimated the Americans to a fatal degree.
Yamamoto made his name because of his "success" at pearl harbor, but he didn't
manage to damage a single carrier, and his plan was to sink them all. That
isn't success. Also, this attack at Pearl Harbor that had the Japanese
cheering back home, had the effect of pissing the Americans off so that they
transformed themselves on that day from a nation that was predominately
isolationist to nation that was in a brief period to become the most powerful
in the world. If Yamamoto had left Pearl Harbor alone, it is unlikely that
America would have gone to war against Japan. America was counting on its
embargoes, and it is true they were hampering Japans ability to conquer the
Chinese. So instead of finding another way, or even giving the idea of
conquering China, Yamamoto took the Japanese into a war he, we are told, he
knew the Japanese couldn't win.
Yamamoto's poor battle plan at Midway virtually condemned the Japanese to
defeat.
Yes, I recall reading in the past that if in both the Japanese and German
portions of World War II things gone just a little more their way, that they
could have won that war, but in the stuff I've been reading recently, that was
never going to happen. Neither the Japanese nor the Germans had the manpower
nor the resources to win.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of david ritchie
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:12 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On underestimating America
You’ll read all this in Keegan’s compact account. Here’s the best bit.
American planes have found and attacked the Japanese carriers doing pretty much
no damage at all, but they have scattered the fleet and brought the protective
fighter cover down to sea level. Nagumo has been indecisive. Yorktown has
been found and damaged. The Japanese gird for a killer blow.
"Still, ninety-three aircraft—Vals and Kates—were ready to depart. The time
for the decisive strike against the American carriers, whose location was now
known within close limits…The Japanese air groups were intact, greatly
outnumbered the American groups even before they had suffered their recent
losses and must certainly succeed in devastating Hornet, Enterprise and
Yorktown, at latest by noon…the big ship began turning into the wind. Within
five minutes all her planes must have been launched.
“Those five minutes were to constitute one of the few truly crucial ‘moments of
decision’ which can be isolated in the whole course of warfare. At 1025 Naugmo
stood poised on the brink of perhaps the greatest naval victory ever promised
an admiral, certain to be spectacular in itself and destined to alter the
balance of power between the Western and Asian world for decades to come. At
1030 he confronted not victory but disaster. This change of fortune was the
result of two accidents. The first was the course chosen, quite by chance, an
hour earlier, by Yorktown’s torpedo-bombers, which gave them sight of the
Japanese carriers and so called their combat air patrol down to sea level
[Inferior planes armed with inferior torpedoes, they were annhilated, but the
Japanes fighters came down to join the turkey shoot]. The second was the
random intervention of an American submarine Nautilus, whose straying into the
First Air Fleet’s path caused a destroyer, Araksi, to be detached from the
carriers to drop depth charges. Araski’s depth charges missed; but the white
ribbon of its wake, as it worked up speed to rejoin Nagumo’s covering screen,
caught the eye of the leader of Enterprise’s dive-bomber group at 0955 and
sowed a seed of suspicion.
“Enterprise’s Bombing 6 squadron had, like others, lost its way when Nagumo
altered course. Now its leader, Lieutenant-Commander Wade McClusky, dtected,
even from 14,000 feet, that Aruski was in a hurry and guessed that she was
steaming to rejoine the Japanese main body. The stream of her wake was a
perfect indicator of the main body’s position. McClusky now lined up his
formation—thirty-seven Devastators—on Aruski and headed north-east. Shortly
after 1020 he sighted Akagi, Soryu and Kaga steaming north-west in a ‘circular
disposition [of] roughly eight miles’…The sky was empty of Zeros, [which could
fly a good deal faster than the bombers] all at sea level or on their mother
ships’ decks, and nothing impeded the trajectory of their 500lb and 1000 lb
bombs.”
You’ll recall that refueling hoses were out all over the decks and planes were
crowded for take-off. From the U.S. point of view and, I think, humanity's
that was one really lucky moment.
David Ritchie,
Portland,
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