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Post by artraveler on Sept 25, 2019 7:34:27 GMT -8
I think the Atlantic Charter pretty much guaranteed that the US would ultimately come to the aid of England. If Germany had maintained its non-aggression treaty with the USSR they might have been able to scrape up the ability to launch an invasion. German boots on the ground in England would have outraged Americans almost as much as Pearl Harbor.
Had the Germans invaded England they might have been able to hold territory as far north as York. The American counter strike could not have come before 43. England would have been devastated and the final battles on the continent would have been nuclear,. Germany would still be glowing in the dark. And Stalin would be the ultimate winner in Europe.
Given the swing to socialism in England after the war. The English might have been better off losing to Germany and being liberated by America. Possibly all of Europe would be better off.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 7:41:26 GMT -8
I ran into an interesting article yesterday when I was trying to find out what a “jeep carrier” was. It’s just another for an escort carrier. There were “light carriers” as well that were the same except that they “were capable of higher speeds to allow operation alongside carriers.” I thought the whole article was an interesting read. The lightness of their hulls could be an unseen benefit as described regarding the Battle off Samar: Gotta love the escort carriers. Cheap. Fast to build. Multi-purpose. And from what I understand in the overall, with the loss of so many planes and mens, the Jap carriers (big or little) were often simply glorified transports. Here’s a wonderful model of the Gambler Bay at the USS Midway museum which gives you a good look at the detail and an appreciation for its relative size:  That, and a host of other evidence, shows how the Japanese people themselves needed to be saved from this death cult. That wasn’t our purpose, of course. But it was a side benefit. |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 25, 2019 8:01:34 GMT -8
The Japanese thought they were facing destroyers and fleet carriers, not destroyer escorts and escort carriers. Their cruisers were more effective than their battleships because their shells were likelier to blow up inside the ships instead of after passing through.
Meanwhile, the bombers were hitting the cruisers. Later Halsey's fleet carriers belatedly got into the attack. I think the Battle off Samar and its aftermath cost the Japanese 3 heavy cruisers.
Artraveler may well be right; FDR certainly was trying to provide the US with an excuse to declare war, or to get Germany to do so. Something similar happened with Japan as they prepared to attack (he knew it was coming but wasn't sure we would be hit), hence The Cruise of the Lanikai. There's no doubt in my mind that its purpose was to scout the Japanese and be sunk as a result -- under circumstances that would lead to US involvement in the Pacific war, which he trusted (correctly) would lead to US involvement in the European war. (If the US initiated war with Japan, the mutual-defense aspect of the Tripartite Pact would be activated. In the event, Hitler had no obligation to go to war, but chose to do so anyway.)
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 8:05:13 GMT -8
That’s an interesting factoid, Artler. That reminds me of some other interest aspects of the B-29 mentioned in the book.
Paul Tibbets, of course, is the third leg of this book. And he will obviously become more prominent as we go along. But right now he’s back in the states helping with the B-29 program. He’s gotten certified in it and is training others and doing just all-around bug squashing.
One of the initial concerns was defense. The standard configuration at the beginning was to equip the B-29 with a set of several (4?) automated guns that could be aimed and fired by just one person. But that was a lot of weight. What Tibbets found out was that if you dispensed with all this weight )guns and its ammunition), the B-29 had entirely different flying characteristics. At the extreme height that it operated in (thin air, of course), it couldn’t outrun the fighters but it could very easily out-turn them.
The book doesn’t go into any more detail than that but obviously the B-29s huge wings could catch some of that thin air that the fighters could not. The B-29 could just take a hard left and there was no way a fighter could stay on its tail.
Whether or not these flying characteristics pertained to a fully-loaded (with bombs) B-29, I don’t know. Another factor we all are aware of is that the B-29 was flying at such altitude that unless the Japs had some advance warning, they couldn’t climb that high before the planes had already gotten out of range.
I remember reading a book (or part of a book, maybe an article) that was about installing (expanding, really) the airstrip on Saipan to accommodate the B-29s. It was a logistical and engineering nightmare to fill ravines with coral (and other detritus) so that the runway could be extended. I wish I can remember where I read that but it was interesting. There is a very brief mention (so far) of those efforts in this book (by jumping ahead, I think). At the current point in this book, they’ve only just recently secured the airfield. And where I exactly left it, Spruance was just given a ride to the top of Mount Tapochau.
And according to wiki, “Unlike many of the mountains in the Mariana Islands, it is not an extinct volcano but is a limestone formation.” The book doesn’t mention that. No wonder it was full of caves. It was perfectly suited to the Japanese style of island defense. One wonders how the Americans would have defended an island. Obviously we did defend Midway. We defended with Naval power. But I wonder if it would have occurred to the American military back then to dig in with suicidal determination.
From Normandy and other experiences, the key would seem to be to make sure the initial landing was a failure. The Japs obviously did try the attrition strategy, making the Allies pay and hoping, I guess, that they would give up. One of the undercurrents of this whole story is perhaps how much the Japanese Army hated the Japanese Navy. They were not there, particular in safeguarding Army transports of men and supplies. And obviously when you’re on an island getting pounded for weeks and days by American naval vessels, it’s going to make you wonder were your own boys are.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 8:25:38 GMT -8
There’s a (boring) section in the book the describes the commander of the Army forces on Saipan who was, at best, incompetent. He was eventually replaced. But it did reveal some military philosophy. I don’t know if this was out of the mouth of Turner or not. But someone said that the slow, careful approach of the Army did little but extend the amount of time that casualties were taken. It was thought that the speedier approach of the Marines actually helped reduce casualties. The cargo cult is a hilarious outgrowth of that industrial and technological capacity. Regarding jungle warfare, the author did give a rundown of the flamethrower squads….or anti-Japs-in-caves squads, whatever you want to call them. I’m not sure if it was the E7-7 Mechanized Flamethrower that they used, but it was one like it. And when they were in places which that couldn’t go, they obviously had portable units. Basically it was thickened gasoline propelled by compressed carbon dioxide. They had a whole routine for it. Four people with machines guns at the ready. Two people for communications with the tank. Four people with bazookas. And four people who protected the tank. Or roughly like that. Basically the machine-gunners would stand guard at the cave entrance. If Japs ran out, they would be mowed down. They would then send a couple bazooka shells in. And finally the flamethrower. Apparently even the people doing this noted the special horrors of this war. But the Japs offered them little choice. And apparently (very few details given) they got good at bouncing shells from the offshore naval vessels into the caves. But at some point, virtually nothing could move on the island without the risk of being shelled from somewhere. They describe a spotter on the island working in conjunction with a destroyer calling in artillery. The Marines loved the destroyers best because they were the most responsive. The spotter was calling in the shells and really working well with the destroyer. Quite literally, when the spotter heard screams, he knew he was on target. When that destroyer had salvoed its daily quota another destroyer would immediately take its place. This kind of coordination was devastating. And it sounds as if they had star shells in the air almost constantly and planes spotting, although I don’t know if the planes were spotting at night. But they could, through high-power binoculars, see a lot of what was going on from the ships. Given that this was an island with forces advancing on many sides, it became tricky calling in artillery or air support (if you could get it…apparently there could delays so long that by the time you go support, the situation would have changed). And even if you could call in, say, an airstrike, the author nicely explains that those on the ground had little conception of the difficulties involved. A certain bunker that they wanted taken out might be unreachable by an airplane just because of the way the prevailing wind was blowing and the obstacles it would have to avoid once coming out of a dive (such as a mountain just beyond). |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 25, 2019 8:57:42 GMT -8
Ralph Smith, as I recall, commanded the Army troops who captured Makin while the Marines captured Tarawa. The Navy thought he took too long, especially after one of the escort carriers was sunk by a Japanese submarine. And considering that Holland M. Smith, the Marine (and overall) commander on Saipan, was known as "Howling Mad" Smith, some of the sparks in the "War of the Smiths" may have been personal.
Incidentally, there's a section of Richard Powell's excellent The Soldier that was clearly based on Saipan. (He also had an incident no doubt partly inspired by MacArthur's reluctant personal withdrawal from command in the Philippines.
The US defended Wake from Japanese attack, even repulsing the first effort. There were troops on Midway to try the same thing. Of course Wake fell in the end, and no doubt Midway would have too. But then, so did Attu, Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
It's too bad the book starts too late to cover the Aleutian campaign. The Battle of the Pribilofs, the Battle of the Komandorskis, the last-ditch Japanese attack at Attu (which came close to success), the Battle of the Pips, and the final seizure of Kiska ("It took two days before we learnt that more than dogs there simply weren't") all made interesting (if sometimes embarrassing) tales.
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Post by artraveler on Sept 25, 2019 9:07:27 GMT -8
American doctrine in defense has always been defense in depth especially if outnumbered. Lee's defense of Richmond is a classic of outnumbered forces inflicting horrendous causalities on an attacker. By the time of Saipan the handwriting was on the wall for the Japanese and they knew it.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 9:34:47 GMT -8
Much has been said, Artler, that WWII was a war not necessarily of armies-vs-armies but of production capacity. This is the nature of a war that is highly dependent upon technology. Imagine if the Germans had been able to stock its fighters with a 1000 refined Messerschmitt Me 262s. An article on the best fighters of WWII notes: The Germans were already ripping our bombers to shreds. But we had a lot of bombers. But if they had fielded an effective jet fighter, they could have put an impenetrable umbrella over Europe. Every sortie over Britain was wasted time and energy. There should have been a crash program to build these jet fighters. As for whether or not an effective long-range bomber that could hit beyond the Urals would have made a difference, I don’t know. I tend to think the entire Barbarossa campaign proved little more than that megalomaniac dictators don’t tend to have an “off” button. It’s either total victory or total bust. A more conservative approach would have consolidated the gains already made. An effective fighter force should have been goal #1 for the Germans after the conquest of Western Europe. The U-boats put vast pressure on England, but it could have never won out in the end. It’s greatest enemy was letting the Allies gain air superiority. No, it’s probably quite true that you can’t bomb your way to victory. But because production capacity was central to the outcome of the war, it was crucial in paving the wave to ultimate victory — or a defense so rock solid, German conquest would have been taken as a fait accompli. Oh well, he's no worse than Stalin. That sort of thing. But if we couldn’t have bombed Germany (or even France) effectively, what could we have done? Without air superiority, there would have been no Normandy invasion. A few squadrons of German jet fighters would have blown the transports out of the water before they ever hit the beach. |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 10:01:38 GMT -8
You would suppose Americans would be outraged by German boots on the ground in England. But we already had our hands full. It could have been very easy to think “We’ve got enough on our hands with the Japanese. Those Europeans have been making war on each other forever.”
I think we came to the aid of Britain only because of Churchill. Churchill didn’t just stiffen the backbone of his own countrymen. I think he was an effective spokesman for defiance all over the world. This man did not have a bone of capitulation in his body. And his defiance was infectious. I do believe he was received well in America even if a fever pitch for war (prior to Pearl Harbor) hadn’t been reached.
That is, Churchill’s doctrine was worth defending. But imagine some feeble vanilla baloney coming out of today’s technocrats in Britain. Would you have wasted an ounce of blood to defend that?
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 10:12:41 GMT -8
I doubt that Stalin would have invaded Europe without being attacked first, but you never know. And it’s possible that Hitler could have been able to successfully complete the invasion of Russia without worrying about a Western front.
But had Germany somehow made peace (or avoided war) with the United States and still undertook Operation Barbarossa, it’s also quite conceivable that Germany would have gotten its ass kicked eventually and that Stalin would have been sipping champaign in Paris. There’s no way that Stalin would have stopped at the German border. Hell, he didn’t stop at the Ukraine border after the war was long over.
Artler brings up the topic that, given where the Germany is today, might not they be better off being liberated by America. That’s an intriguing thought. Still, one must admit our cultural, military, and monetary influence is arguable as strong in England as it would have been in any occupation/rehabilitation phase.
England threw off their Churchillian defiance of hard dictators and instead began electing a bunch of soft dictators. The results could turn out to be very much the same, if on a slightly longer time scale. We’re doing the same at home. Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 25, 2019 10:28:02 GMT -8
This book does make mention that Japanese loses were covered up and often presented as great victories. Your average person on the street probably heard rumors but likely had no idea how the war was going.
When B-29s first hit Japan from bases in China (which, I think, was concurrent with the Saipan invasion), that probably was a sign to a lot of civilian Japanese that things might not be going so well.
As callous as this might sound, the best thing that happened to Japan was the atomic bomb. It rid them of their destructive and oppressive military dictators and replaced it with another war that the Japanese were very good at and that had a positive effect: competition in the free market.
We’re now best buds, BFFLs as they might say today. This, interestingly, was probably made possible by one divine being, and I don’t mean God Almighty. I mean MacArthur. And there is, I guess, a difference.
But this book does briefly (in the introduction, I think) mention that the man was certainly matched with the place. You could not have constructed a better match if you started from scratch. How do you sort of placate and pacify Japan while the population undergoes the inherently humiliating and disruptive act of occupation?
Not knowing all that much about the time, one supposes that the civilian population already had been more or less occupied by their oppressive military dictatorship. That dictatorship had, after all, produced little but destruction and death for them in the long run, and a legacy of shameful behavior.
So there was a little necessary white-washing of the Emperor’s involvement, he was demoted to just a mere human being as the price of his continued symbolic reign, and the nation was rebuilt. They must have been surprised as hell that the stories about the Americans were false. We didn’t eat their children. We didn’t set the “negros” on their women. Etc.
Who knows what the future holds? But I suspect it will be very difficult for any country to leverage distance between Japan and the United States. That’s not to suggest we are necessarily best buds in the familial feelings many Americas certainly have for Britain. But the ties that bind are deep. We would almost certainly go to war with China to defend Japan, if only because we know (same thing in regards to England in WWII) that if Japan can fall then we will be next.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 25, 2019 10:35:32 GMT -8
One renowned German author proposed the idea that by December of 1941, Hitler knew his gamble in the Soviet Union had failed and that Germany's defeat was inevitable. He therefore desired a Goetterdaemerung ending and by adding the USA to his foes, he guaranteed Germany would go down in flames with him.
While this may be the case, I am more inclined to believe that by early 1941, at the very latest, Hitler was clinically insane. Of course, even if this was the case, Haffner's theory might have been the case. Maybe Hitler's insanity would increase the likelihood that Haffner is correct.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 25, 2019 10:39:30 GMT -8
Barbarossa came before Pearl Harbor. An American Communist was denouncing American support for Britain when he learned about it, and switched in mid-speech to calling for intervention against Hitler. No doubt Orwell heard about this, or some similar incident in Britain, and used it in 1984 when the enemy suddenly switches from Eurasia to Eastasia. (Incidentally, Progressive/Republican "Young Bob" LaFollette of Wisconsin, a pacifist, continued to oppose war until Pearl Harbor. As a result, the Communist Party supported his primary opponent in 1946 -- Joseph McCarthy.)
Germany started the war prioritizing bombers (both dive bombers and medium bombers) over fighters. Later they prioritized fighters, producing as many as 4000 in September 1944 (mostly piston-engined, especially the FW-190 and Me-109, rather than jets such as the Me-262). The Me-262 had 2 engines compared to one for the Meteor V and the P-80 Shooting Star and was faster, and 4 30mm machine cannon (and could also fire air-to-air rockets). But it was very unmaneuverable and had a short range as well as needing longer runways. Its jet engines didn't last long, apparently because of a shortage of high-quality steel that needed more nickel and chromium than Germany could get (especially by late 1944, when it was cut off from most foreign supplies).
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Post by timothylane on Sept 25, 2019 10:49:38 GMT -8
It's well to remember that Churchill was half-American, which may have helped make him so popular here.
The Japanese leaders had a good notion of what was happening, but of course they didn't tell their people. The US eventually dropped propaganda leaflets on Japan that showed a clock face with different islands, with the final hour to be hit being Japan itself. The islands were named, and Elizabeth once read off all the names (which were in Japanese ideographs). But I wonder how many Japanese knew about them.
Joseph Major once showed me a short atlas of the Holocaust, and something about it made me realize that once it got going, it was Hitler's primary war aim. In addition to forgoing a lot of usable labor, the Germans devoted a lot of their transportation resources to hauling Jews around rather than supplying their forces. This could be related to the notion that Hitler wanted to create the ultimate funeral pyre. Certainly his scorched earth plans at the end would have devastated Germany far worse than it was anyway. (Shirer in his End of a Berlin Diary once cited a lot of Germany military industrial plant that survived the war and was available as soon as anyone wanted to start producing.)
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 25, 2019 10:51:33 GMT -8
I might have mentioned that I said that several times to different Japanese while I lived in Tokyo. In my defense, I only said it after someone brought up the American "crime" of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
More importantly, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably saved 5-10 million Japanese lives. As I would explain to various Japanese, the atomic bombs ended the war and stopped the physical invasion of the Japanese Islands by the Soviets in the north and the U.S. in the south.
The Soviets were not known for the tender mercies visited upon their foes. And Hokaido and possibly northern Honshu would still be occupied. Part of the Kuriles still are.
As for Americans, having had to fight their way across a number Pacific Islands in vicious bloody campaigns, the American Marines and Army would display little patience with any Japanese who got in their way.
I would give an example of a bunch of brain-washed Japanese farmers/civilians attacking American troops with bamboo rakes and such. Given the American experience in the 3 year Island Hopping Campaign I said American troops would have little inclination to try and get the Japanese farmers to give up. Instead they would likely just mow them down and move on.
Multiply that by thousands or hundreds of thousands of incidents.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 25, 2019 11:03:39 GMT -8
Over tens years back, I gave a talk to some Eighth Airforce WWII veterans on this subject. They all agreed with me that had Germany been able to field the Me262 in 1943 instead of later, the war would have been drawn out for at least another year, perhaps longer.
Albert Speer was clear in his opinion that the bombing campaigns against German were very significant in her defeat. I forget the numbers, but he pointed out the huge amount of guns and men required to defend German cities during the bombing campaigns. That artillery, ammunition and manpower could have been better used on both fronts.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 25, 2019 11:05:37 GMT -8
Right on both counts, and a Soviet invasion of Japan would probably also have meant the equivalent of the Korean War being fought on Honshu rather than in Korea (or maybe both). In addition, there would have been a lot of civilians suicides (not always voluntary), as happened with the Suicide Cliffs of Saipan. That's why that horrifying incident is so important.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 25, 2019 11:09:15 GMT -8
Galland field-tested the Me-262 in early 1943. It could have been mass produced a lot earlier than it was, though not quite that soon. But it wasn't a priority to the higher-ups, and Hitler wanted it converted to a bomber instead of a fighter. Of course, in 1943 the Americans found out that unescorted daylight bombing could be a very costly proposition. Especially on bombing raids against Schweinfurt and Ploesti.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 25, 2019 11:16:43 GMT -8
In the same line of thought, there is a wonderful scene in a movie, I believe it is "A Bridge Too Far" in which a German general played by Maximillian Schell looks up at the hundreds of Allied planes flying overhead for some sort of invasion and says something like "Wenn Ich nur ein Viertel dieses Material zu meiner Verfuegung haette, konnte Ich dieser Krieg gewinnen" (If I had only a quarter of this material at my disposal, I could win this war) or something like that. He may have been correct.
On the other hand, Prof. Steven Kotkin makes some very interesting points about how German military manpower was simply insufficient to win the war unless it was won very quickly. He points out how the Soviets lost something like 3-3.5 million troops in the opening months of Barbarrosa, but could easily replace them. Germany could not replace her manpower losses so easily.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 25, 2019 11:20:03 GMT -8
I believe Hitler wanted the plane to be modified to act as a fighter bomber as well as fighter. This delayed things for months. I pointed this out in my talk to those Eighth Airforce Veterans. The desire to make a plane multi-functional is often very costly when war comes. I suspect the F-35 project is suffering under this doctrine.
The early daylight bombing campaigns were so costly that they had to be cancelled for some time, for the higher-ups to figure out how to mitigate the losses. Can you imagine what the losses would have been had the Germans had the Me262 in the air in numbers?
You may recall I knew someone who was a navigator on a B-17 in the Eighth Airforce. His first 5 missions were over Berlin, Schweinfurt and Merseberg. (Twice over a couple of them) These were considered the most dangerous targets which the Eighth Airforce bombers could hit. After surviving that run, my friend said he figured he would make it through the war.
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