tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post3480080393480454991..comments2024-02-29T02:10:56.878-08:00Comments on J O S H U A P U N D I T: Loyalty And Love - D-Day, 70 Years LaterFreedom Fighterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13649470110087808596noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-70736543691125468782014-06-06T13:05:18.801-07:002014-06-06T13:05:18.801-07:00Point well taken, Louie.(Although in my case, a co...Point well taken, Louie.(Although in my case, a couple of folks asked me to repost this so I obliged).<br /><br />You're right about how one battle sets up another. In the case of Midway, it was the Battle of the Coral Sea, a victory which stopped the Japanese from taking Australia and New Zealand.<br /><br />Midway was a chancy ,strange battle. Yamamoto was focused on eliminating our naval strength in the Pacific,which meant the carriers. <br /><br />At the Coral Sea, the Japanese though they had sunk the USS Yorktown as well as the USS Lexington, but somehow the Yorktown got back to Pearl Harbor, was repaired with amazing speed and lived to fight at Midway.<br /><br />Also, while Yamamoto's original plan was to create an ambush and sink our carriers, we ended up turning the tables on him because we had broken the Japanese code.It was our Navy that ended up setting ambush.<br /><br />Another key part of the victory and a mystery to this day was actions taken by Admiral Nagumo. Since the initial Japanese air attack on Midway had failed, he ordered his attack planes to be re-armed with bombs rather than torpedoes. And while the Devastators from TS 8 and TS 6 from the Enterprise got slaughtered, those attacks meant that a lot of Japanese planes had used up fuel and ammo. So the carrier decks were full of grounded planes being re-armed and otherwise worked on when squadrons of SBDs from the Enterprise and the Yorktown found the Hiryu and Soryu and turned the Soryu into flaming debris.<br /><br />Another chancy thing happened when our planes attacked the other two Japanese carriers, the Kaga and Akagi.The Kaga took a hit on the bridge which killed its captain and sll its senior officers and made it essentially a piece of floating flaming junk. The Akagi took an even more lucky hit, a bomb that hit the elevator, started a huge fire that penetrated below the flight deck and started exploding planes like fire crackers. <br /><br />Fliers from the Enterprise late tracked down the Hiryu and finished her off.<br /><br />All chance aside, Midway was won primarily because the Japanese were spread out far too thin and even at that point had no real way of replenishing their losses either in manpower or materials.<br /><br />You're totally correct, they never recovered from Midway. <br /><br />I think the real reason more people don't write about Midway is because it didn't have the drama associated with D-Day, the start of the liberation of a whole continent.<br /><br />But you're right, it shouldn't be as overlooked as it is.<br /><br />But hey, I once wrote a whole essay about the <a href="http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-battle-of-crecy-1346-age-of.html" rel="nofollow">Battle of Crecy</a>, one of the most decisive battles in world history...talk about overlooked!<br /><br />Regards,<br />RobRobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13332213651195340500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-90317109114792371612014-06-06T10:59:00.595-07:002014-06-06T10:59:00.595-07:00Well, it’s june 6th , and every blogger dusts off ...Well, it’s june 6th , and every blogger dusts off their D-Day essays, and insertS a few new wrinkles before posting.<br />June 6th, 1944. D-day. A day punctuated by courage, valor, heroism, and sacrifice on a scale unmatched in history.<br />Or as I call it, just another day.<br />Let’s all pause here to let that comment sink in.<br />Perhaps it would be prudent of me to frame my comment, by wondering out loud what D-Day would be known for, had the commanders told their soldiers their ammunition would not fire from their weapons, “Now go get ‘em boys!” Maybe, just maybe, now you may begin to get some idea of what Torpedo Squadron 8 wrestled with.<br />A thought experiment if you will?<br />During the first week of June 1942, a full two years before D-Day, daring, luck, and courage came together over a tiny speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.<br />Midway atoll.<br />As with any thought experiment, numerous avenues may be pursued for discussion. For the sake (not to be confused with sake’) of brevity, I will only address the possibility that the overwhelming Japanese forces won the day. What would have happened?<br />That would leave the Saratoga, in dry dock, as the only carrier in the Pacific Fleet. The Japanese had fourteen(14). Prior to the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese were happy consolidating their positions in Asia. That raid is what forced the Japanese out of their shell of influence, and you could say, possibly, that the Japanese were lured into an ambush of their own doing by coming out to attack Midway.<br />So, if you are Tojo, how aggressive do you want to be at this point?<br />Well, first off, you designate Hawaii a prison camp. <br />Let’s say, because this is a thought experiment, that you assign two Japanese carriers, each, to protect Pugent Sound, the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollywood, San Diego, the Panama Canal, and Cape Horn. You can decide for yourself what the term “protect” means. That leaves the Japanese Navy two carriers to shuttle back and forth across the Pacific and monitor the newly established prison camp previously mentioned.<br />Given this scenario, can you just imagine the morning commute in LA? They wouldn’t need extras to make their war movies. They would just need to turn their cameras overhead to get vintage footage of waves of Zeros flying overhead. And just for grins, can you imagine the political pressure on FDR? The American war machine was just gearing up, but the front lines were not some isolated south Pacific island in this scenario, it would be the Santa Monica freeway, if, the Santa Monica freeway existed then.<br />And, as part of persuading the Japanese from protecting those locations mentioned above, the Japanese included some language in a negotiated peace to stop providing munitions to the British and Russians. If not, the Japanese would annex the amount of southern California they currently own. But I digress. <br />Given this dreary thought experiment, can you imagine what June 6, 1944 would be known for?<br />But we know what happened in the first week of June 1942. Or at least some of us do. I wonder sometimes, because NOBODY writes about it.<br />Just a handful of men in airplanes and Nimitz rolling the dice, dealt the mighty Japanese empire a defeat they could never recover from. No cliffs to climb. Just the thought of one in ten torpedos functioning properly and vicious AAA. And what were the US losses at Midway? The carrier Yorktown and destroyer Hammand(sp) were lost to a Japanese submarine after the battle. The US losses at the Battle of Midway were approximately 300 souls. That hardly makes it an epic to write about. So maybe that is why NOBODY ever writes about it. <br />Every battle is the result of every previous battle. That’s how wars are won/fought. If not for those 300 lost in the mid-Pacific the first week in June of 1942, then June 6, 1944 would have been, just another day.<br />NOBODY EVER WRITES ABOUT THAT.louielouienoreply@blogger.com