Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Biggest screw ups of WWII

1 - Hitlers invasion of the Soviet Union. I mean, let's just tie into a military that's 3x as large as yours, while you're still involved in a war on another front...Genius idea.

2 - Japan's attack of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. Hey, we're an island nation with the 3rd largest navy in the world. So let's just start a fight with the #1 & #2 navies in the world at the same time...BRILLIANT!!!

3 - Hitler's declaration of war on the US. Hey, we've already got a serious tiger by the tail in the Soviet Union, so let's just declare war on he worlds largest economy with the 2nd largest Navy...But we're the master race, we got this!!

4 - Operation Market Garden - Let's send tanks up a single road in a nation that's mostly under water, and make our objective 3 bridges away...I mean, what could go wrong? Right?

The Versailles treaty created the war.
The primary war was against the Russians. Big prize was the Ukraine. 19/20 German soldiers died on the eastern front. Russia was prime to be attracted due to a purge by Stalin.
Really nothing smart about untold million of people dying for reperation greed.

On a more personal level, I'm sure my dad would say the Battle of Kasserine Pass. He was the only man from his platoon to walk out of there on his own two feet. Rommel was a bad azz.

Yeah that was ugly...rude welcome to the war for sure. So glad your dad made it.

GunGeek,

"so let's just declare war on he worlds largest economy with the 2nd largest Navy.."

I thought that we had the largest Navy at the time. If we were # 2, who had the largest ?

Myron

Not fire bombing Japan sooner.

Intel is everything. With it you win. Without it you can lose without knowing why.

pearl harbor,by far.
piss off the eagle,git ya az kicked.

"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace."

(Unless your boss is a meth head)




Dave

Early in the N Africa campaign Germany was intercepting US intel. Rommel was a bad ass so I'm not taking anything away from him but he had good information.

After the allies cracked enigma we shut down our leaks and the tables turned.

How about MacArthur's 9 + hour paralysis after Pearl was attacked and losing almost his entire air force on the ground.

The British surrender at Singapore.

Exercise Tiger

On Operation Barbarossa, there is evidence that it was meant to preempt a Soviet invasion of German territory of which the Germans had intel.

Anything and everything that the Axis powers did to bring the US into the war. Jonathan Parshall's "Combined Fleet" page makes a good case that, based on economics alone, the Japanese had no chance of defeating the US.

Why Japan Really Lost The War - Grim Economic Realities

Their only chance was to break our will, and they overestimated their ability to do that by a jug full.

What a waste. What a bloody awful waste.

Tien, mon ami! Une autre temps, une autre guerre.
(sigh).

Glider assault during Operation Husky was pretty bad.

However here's a plan for future unwanted politicians.

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/08...med-lives-of-st-louis-mayor-nine-others/

My dad witnessed American .50 BMGs mistakenly open up on US paratroopers. I think it was at Anzio.

The British surrendering Singapore to the Japs.

The Marines attacking Peleliu Island. Not needed and wasted thousands of Marine lives.

Putting British General Montgomery in charge of the Battle of The Bulge. Should have been Patton, arguably the war may have ended sooner had Patton been put in command.





Actually a great idea but Hitler waited to late in the year, winter came early.



Not a bad idea if the Japs had made plans to land troops and take HI. Also sticking around and making sure our carriers were taken out.


Germany/Hitler had a oral agreement with Japan to do so. It forced his hand.

4 - Operation Market Garden - Let's send tanks up a single road in a nation that's mostly under water, and make our objective 3 bridges away...I mean, what could go wrong? Right?

Japanese not bombing fuel depot at Pearl.

Not dropping the bomb on Tokyo.

Was there much left after Lemay firebombed it?

I have a question??? Good a place as any. Didn't read the book. But saw the movie "Unbroken". When he was taken to the restaurant in Tokyo, there were several tables of US military personnel in their class A's dining. I never realized there were that many American collaborators in Japan. They were collaborator, correct???

All your examples are valid, however, do you realize how a detail change or two would have made things way worse for us. As someone mentioned if the japs had taken Hawaii, or just sent the planes back to clean up the job, the whole island hopping campaign would have been almost impossible.

Tien, mon ami! Une autre temps, une autre guerre.


Tien? my friend another time another war I understand but Tien I don't guess my French is getting very rusty.
Mr. Kaywoodie Cheers NC

NC, Old Slang for "well"

You know those crazy guys. 15 words that mean the same thing!!

Germany spending $3 billion on the V-2 program and getting nothing of strategic value while the US spent only $2 billion and got the atom bomb.

Operation Tiger was big. 700+ killed in a training exercise.

The Morganthau Plan for post war Germany to starve up to 1/3 of the German population to death. Started in mid 1945, by mid 1947 german outrage was so high there was fear the germans would go over to the soviets.

My dad told me on his death bed about his work during the war at the atomic research facility in Washington state. Not high level stuff (he was a clerk) but people of his generation took oaths of secrecy seriously. I had no idea he had worked there.

Japanese attack on Midway. We were very lucky, and it turned the war in the Pacific. The Japanese navy had not suffered a major defeat in a couple of hundred years. They could not conceive of the attack being a failure.

Gen. Lucas not rushing to take the high ground at Anzio. His delay turned what could have a been a brilliant surprise landing and end run around the German lines into a prolonged shooting gallery with US soldiers sitting on the bullseye.

On a smaller scale, the fubar landing of Marines at Tarawa. Someone messed up the tide tables so the landing craft didn't have enough water to clear the reef, forcing the Marines to wade some 400 yards through the surf to the beach under constant Japanese fire.

Not a screw up so much as a bad miscalculation was the failure of US planners to realize the perfect defensive nature of the hedgerows in Normandy.

Taking on the other side, not waking Hitler up for D-day. The Germans' delay in rushing Panzer divisions to counter that landing since they still thought the main invasion would come at Calais. With our supply lines dependent on two concrete piers that still had to get into full operation they had a very good chance of pushing us back into the channel in the first couple of days or at the very least holding us in place while they rushed more reinforcements into the battle.

Kaywoodie
If IRC it was Tres Bien for very well sorry no accents on the keyboard.
Cheers NC

I'm guessing Great Britain.

I may be off, but I think 'tres bien' translates roughly to "very good"

Myron

That is true

Britain, I believe had the largest navy at that time.

but then again, we gave them a ton of surplus WW1 destroyers etc to prop up there Navy....

The USA might of had the largest Navy in 1940.

other big Screw UPs......

The Limeys' belief in Monty....

And the US not putting Patton at the head of the US Army Forces in Europe....

Interesting question. Differing answers.
Quotes, take your pick:
“The Royal Navy, still the largest in the world in September 1939”
“The Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II, at the beginning of the Pacific War in December 1941, was the third most powerful navy in the world.”
“The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) at the outset of World War II in the Pacific was the most powerful navy in the world.”


Britain and the US had to fight a two ocean war, so Japan started with the largest navy in the Pacific. They had ten carriers and we had three. They had ten battleships and we had nine before Pearl Harbor. That all changed at Midway.

As the war progressed, the balance between the Pacific and Atlantic fleets shifted back and forth, but we always had the big dogs in the Pacific.

“By war's end in 1945, the United States Navy had added nearly 1,200 major combatant ships, including 27 aircraft carriers and 8 battleships, and had over 70% of the world's total numbers and total tonnage of naval vessels of 1,000 tons or greater.”

Agree on Patton. The war would have been a year shorter, and the Russians wouldn't have controlled as much of Europe.

Len Deighton wrote a book on this very subject.




I read it over this past turkey season. Singapore was high on his list, but there were a bunch more.

Germany, for instance, screwed up big time not learning anything from the Battles of Khalkhin Gol. General Zhukov showed his capabilities against the Japanese and demonstrated a lot of his winning tactics. When the Germans came up against him, they did not have effective counters.

Germany also screwed the pooch in their assessments of what it would take to win Barbarossa. The generals submitted early estimates that were accurate. Hitler rejected them, so they went back and cooked the numbers. The final logistics were about 30% lower than what was needed.

Deighton was remarkably scathing of Churchill. He blamed him for screwing up in Greece, Crete, and North Africa and getting Britain involved in a short war with Iraqis in the middle of WWII.

The book is a good read but bogs down in the last third or so.

For the Germans, failure to realize that their major code was broken early. Polish cryptographers initiated the process and gave their knowledge to the Brits just prior to the German invasion of Poland...This resulted in the Ultra operation....

The Brits (and Russians by other means) knew what the Germans were up to often before the Nazi commanders.

It never dawned on the Germans that a lost U-Boat may have actually been captured (which did actually happen) and the Enigma cipher machine and books taken intact. HMS Bulldog captured a U-Boat and it's code apparatus intact, unknown to Jerry.

Britain vs. Germany vs. France in 1939:

http://ww2-weapons.com/fleets-1939/

The US in late 1941:

http://ww2-weapons.com/us-navy-in-late-1941/

Japan picking fight with US.

These were the naval production numbers during the war.

United States Japan
Aircraft Carrier 141 17

Battleship 10 2

Cruiser 48 9

Destroyer 349 63

Subs 203 167

Merchant ships
(in tonnage) 33,993,000 4,152,000

Aircraft 324,750 76,320


For an island nation to pick a fight with a nation whose production capabilities were about 12 times greater than them was suicidal.

Above figures are from a fabulous website: http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

Single biggest screw up of WWII was not finishing off the Russians with Stalin in charge when the opportunity presented itself. The West should have let Russia and Germany fight to destroy themselves on the Eastern front without assisting Russia, and then taken out that maniacal SOB Stalin at the first opportunity.

The USA becoming involved in it.

D-Day. Every time I watch it, I'm overcome with deep sadness. There should have been no D-Day. FDR was a traitor and a Stalin puppet. Stalin wanted FDR to open a western front thereby forcing the Nazis to fight a two front war, thus taking a lot of Nazi pressure off of Stalin. A patriot would have never, ever aligned with Stalin. A patriot would have placed his soldiers above all others. A patriot would have told Stalin to eff off, that Hitler was his problem. After all, Stalin & Hitler signed the Non-Aggression Pact making them allies. Hell, Stalin was such a dupe that he actually thought that Hitler and he were going to divide Poland among themselves.

WWII was a continuation of WWI, neither of which was any of our damned business. But FDR was hellbent on duping gullible Americans into the war, so he set up Pearl Harbor.

FDR was nothing but a 2-bit dirt bag murderer who should have been tried and hanged.

He'd never read the wisdom in the Bible I'd bet. 2 Samuel 11:1

"In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle"

Hrsesheit.

I hear a cuckoo-clock.



Dave

Great Britain

Britain and France declaring war on Germany to save Poland. Six years later after possibly one hundred million deaths, they gave Poland up to a worse dictator than Hitler.

I disagree with Sakoav saying we shouldn't get involved

But our involvement was indeed mostly at the machinations of FDR

No one can know for certain the whole emperor gig is kinda crazy , but FDR basically gave Japan's emperor an ultimatum & either boycotted or threatened to boycott oil to Japan

There's pretty good evidence to suggest they calculated an attack on US soil as a result

Thus changing the sentiment of the average American for the US to get involved

Lots of lives lost over oil

Some things seldom change

Not just oil, then, but rubber (the Goodyear plantations in the South Pacific controlled nearly all the supply of rubber in the Pacific region) and steel. Without those three, Japan's economy and military would have - and did - crumble.

No all were dip-chit ideas. Sure, they could have turned out better, but eventually they were all massive strategic blunders into a war they cannot win. The only thing that would result in your ideas are more Allied casualties, and a different end date to the war.

Germany attacked with 86 divisions (IIRC) and expected to encounter between 100-120 divisions of Soviet Soldiers. After 3 weeks of fighting, Von Manstein cabled back to high command that thus far his forces had identified 320 divisions of Soviet troops. That's a MASSIVE screwup. I can't even imagine how pissed Von Manstein was.

Japan didn't know those would be the numbers at the time of the attack. You have to remember that 1941 USA looked vastly different from 1945 USA. Our military was unproven and politically we were isolationist. It was a 50/50 gamble by Japan that they could destroy our Pacific fleet and the US would acquiescence instead of fight. If a few things had gone Japan's way, the war would have been extremely different. We almost lost the 1st Marine division on Guadacanal. The Navy abandoned the Marines there. We were down to the Big E being our last carrier at one point. If the Japs has sunk her, they would have owned the Pacific. The Japanese were not easy to defeat.

Good,points Sean, but it seems evident FDR wasn't looking for a diplomatic solution.


Still with what I can glean of the collective Japanese thought process during that time, it's very possible no diplomatic solution existed


One of the biggest screw ups imo is that Hirohito escaped any punishment, true he'd been raised by the military and was a bit of a pawn in their scheme, still he bore some great responsibility

He wasn't, because he couldn't afford to. He wanted in the war, badly, and a lot of that stemmed from the facts that 1) the US economy was still faltering and a war would spur industry and save his legacy and ideology; 2) Germany was going to destroy Western Europe this time; and 3) he had boxed himself out of diplomatic options and the only way to save face was to fight. There were many other reasons, but those three are often overlooked.

Ignorance and arrogance. Very few in Japan had any real understanding of how vast of a nation the US was; or the massive natural resources and man (woman) power.

Still, they did know it was David picking a fight with Goliath.

The biggest strategic blunder was in their estimation of our resolve. They knew we had a large Navy, but we lacked a real strong fighting tradition and history. They thought we were like the Italian Navy...big, impressive, but unwilling to risk anything in a real fight.

Their strategic thinking was that the US wouldn't risk it's beautiful Navy over some Pacific islands, and that after 6 months of Yamamoto "running wild" in the Pacific, and the loss of some US capital ships, that the US would sue for peace. Biggest strategic blunder of WWII.

In the early days of WWII, Japan did indeed kick our Navy's arse each and every time we clashed. A friend's grandfather was a seaman aboard the USS Chicago, and USS San Francisco, both heavy cruisers, during the early days of WWII. He swam off the decks of both Cruisers as they went down. He said they just knew if they even caught sight of the Japanese, they were going down; and he was right. THAT's how overbearing the Japanese Navy was in the Pacific in those days.

But the US Navy turned out to be even more competent than the Japanese. They thought we would be like the Italians. They were a bit shocked after Midway that we turned out to be like the British.

That's not how President Hoover described WWII. All the same to you, I'll go with facts and President Hoover's book. I'm good with your meandering in pastures looking for horse droppings. Who knows, horse dropping might be the divining rod that pulls knowledge to you.

You gotta believe what you gotta believe. For some people, these three words are impossible to say, "I was wrong."

You can go along merrily in life believing what you want to believe, or you can search out facts. My advice is to go with facts.

Pearl Harbor conspiracies are the bunk.

FDR did tell Stalin to pound sand for 3 years. We invaded at OUR time and place of choosing. You're forgetting, Germany declared war on US, not the other way around. And we were engaged in open naval warfare for 3 years with Germany before D-Day. Whether you like it or not, D-Day had to happen at some point. And D-Day was a resounding success even with the losses at Omaha beach. And when you consider the scope of D-Day, the losses at Omaha start to take perspective. To think we could just stroll onto German occupied territory unopposed is crazy. We got seriously lucky that the only Omaha and Juno faced any serious opposition. D-Day is perhaps the most important day of the 20th century.

We had deciphered the Japanese Naval Code before Pearl Harbor. We knew where Yamamoto was before he did.

Every ship destroyed in Pearl Harbor was obsolete. The only two of military value were aircraft carriers that were suspiciously moved out of Pearl Harbor a day before the surprise attack that FDR knew was going to occur.

Everything that Americans were taught about Pearl Harbor and why we got involved in WWII was a lie.

Out of all the books on WWII you choose THAT one as "fact"...You take one very controversial book, and that becomes fact to you? What about the vast preponderance of evidence to the contrary in hundreds of other books? All just some vast conspiracy I presume?

Gun Geek,

Stalin had FDR in his back pocket. FDR was a Stalin puppet. Google, "Tehran Conference." FDR shared a room with his master, Stalin.

And you know this how? Were you on your Ouija Board this morning?

You're telling me that dozens of people knew there was going to be an attack on Pearl, and...

1 - Just let it happen because FDR wanted it that way?
2 - Didn't bother to warn ANYONE?
3 - Kept it a secret that they took to their graves?

Bullsheitt!!!

GunGeek,

You can believe what you have to believe, or you can go with facts. My advice to you, should facts be your quest, is to read President Hoover's Freedom Betrayed.

Believe me, I'm good with what you have to believe.

Thank you.

Hoover was a bloody failure as President, and undoubtedly had an axe to grind with FDR. Kind of like Fuzzy Theobald. You're probably a fan of his book, too.

PrimeBeef,

Now that was a logical and well thought-out reply. However, it had nothing to do with whether FDR duped us into WWII.

Next time, go with refuting facts.

Hoover Truman wasn't a total failure. He did the one thing that needed to be done more than any other. He had the guts to order the bombs dropped on Japan. That was, without a doubt, the single greatest humanitarian act of the 20th Century, and perhaps to date in human history.

I know all about the Tehran Conference. But you seem to be the conspiracy theory type, so no amount of logic is likely to change your mind. Thinking Pearl Harbor is a conspiracy shows a SERIOUS lack of critical thinking skills.

In December of 1941 the Japanese military was definitely a force to be reckoned with, plus the fact that they had been kicking butt in China for a few years by then. Maybe China at that time wasn't the most powerful foe, but delivering an ass kicking to anybody always raises one's confidence.

On the European side, the Germans had been kicking butt since May of 1940 when the Sitzkreig ended and they rolled over France and threw the British Army off the continent. They had had a good proving ground for their equipment in the Spanish Civil War as well.


Not to change the subject, but WWII was a classic example of a war of attrition. After an initial startup we finally began producing material - planes, tanks, ships and everything else - faster than the enemy could destroy it. That's how it was won, by sheer strength of numbers and particularly in Europe. By 1944 we had put a fair dent in German supply lines and oil production and so forth, but they still presented a very formidable defense to the combined armies of America, Great Britain and all of the commonwealth and they did it with about a third of their forces, the rest being tied down on the Eastern front.

While Patton made great advances across the rolling plains of Northern Europe up to the Siegfried Line the mountainous region of Italy was a slug fest and muddy meat grinder right up until the end. If the Wehrmacht had their full strength to throw against us they could have prolonged the war by who knows how long. IIRC we suffered 200% casualties from D-Day through May of 1945. Basically we threw more men at them faster than they could wound and kill them while we wore them down.

The FACTS are, Hoover's book was VERY controversial, and there are literally hundreds of WWII historians who flatly do not agree with Hoover's assessment of FDR.

To be blunt, and I personally agree that FDR had at least some information suggesting a Japanese attack on Pearl, you aren't presenting any facts. Facts would be citations or clear indications of record. You are presenting an hypothesis distilled from one book and without citing exactly what within that book leads to your hypothesis, nor are you critiquing the volumes of literature that disagree with your hypothesis. If you want someone else to refute facts, start by presenting them. Otherwise, you're akin to BOWSINGER with his obsession with Failin'Palin and his crackpot theories he likes to call "facts".

That was Truman, not Hoover. And the notion that our nukes caused the Japanese to surrender is BS.

Oops. Brain fart. I stand corrected. Had my POTUS's mixed up. I'll edit to revise.

Our nukes DID cause Japan to surrender, specifically the second one. That surrender saved the lives of tens of millions.

Hoover walked into a minefield as POTUS.

Thought you were a bit of a nutto newby. Pretty much cements it.

It's Raisuli/Laguna again.

Check the record. After Hiroshima the Japanese high command did...nothing; they didn't even meet. 3 days later we nuked Nagasaki, and the Japanese high command did...nothing; they didn't even meet.

At 2 minutes past midnight on the same day as Nagasaki, the Soviets invaded Manchuria and declared war on Japan. The Japanese high command had an emergency meeting at 4am local time to discuss surrender. They had been trying to negotiate peace with the US using the Soviets as an intermediary.

The military tried to impose martial law on the high command to prevent them from surrendering. There was a coup attempt, and a ton of internal strife in Japan, but the Japanese surrender didn't come until August 15.

Japan was holding out for a surrender to the US, they didn't want to surrender to the Soviets. After the Soviets invaded the knew it was all over, and they would have to have an unconditional surrender to the US.

And when you think about it, the nukes didn't really impress the Japanese because the equivalent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was happening every single night in Japan, just took more aircraft, but the destruction was the same. But surrender and occupation by the Soviets; that was a truly frightening thought.

"You do not laugh at the Raisuli!"

Roflmao!!! He hasn't been here for a coons age, has he???

Sorry guys. Everytime I hear "Nagasaki" I think of this!!!



What a great Foxtrot!!!

Please forgive.

Makes perfect sense - thx

During WWII, Guy Small was head of British intelligence.

In the 1980s, I worked in a small company and very well knew Guy's daughter, Anne. Anne and Royce Sullivan ran the company.

Anne knew that I was reading books on Enigma, and the history of WWII. So one day at lunch, she told me that the Brits had intel that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor about the first of December. Guy Small flew to Washington DC, and briefed J Edgar Hoover about the first of September. Why he chose to brief the head of the FBI escapes me, but that's what he did.

After Pearl Harbor, Small had a very expensive gold table top cigarette lighter that was engraved and given to him by Hoover. When he would have friends over, he would show off the lighter and laugh that it was Hoover's payoff for not ratting him out.

Fatuitous jerk that he was, Hoover may or may not have briefed FDR. The fact that Small couched it as a payoff would indicate that Hoover probably didn't brief FDR.

But the story from someone who was an eyewitness to much of what went on is that at least some people high in US government knew well in advance that the attack was coming. Whether that information ever reached the right people is another question.

Rankings mean nothing. Years back data suggested Oregon ranked second among states for crayfish production. Louisiana was responsible for the other 98%.

denton,

The official propaganda is that British agents smuggled an Enigma machine out of Germany, thus breaking Enigma's code. However, the reality is Polish methematicians deciphered Enigma.

Churchill was set to capitulate to Hitler. Polish fighter pilots convinced the RAF that Hitler's Luftwaffe could be whipped. In fact, it was Polish fighter pilots that taught RAF pilots how to shoot down ME-109's.

After the war, Churchill & Truman gave Poland to Stalin and back stabbed the Polish fighter pilots that won the Battle of Britain.

After Poland was under the evil rule of Stalinist Soviet Union, Churchill did reflect upon his treatment of Poland and Polish fighter pilots that enabled Churchill's famous speech about fighting Nazis with sorrow and regret. But that was far too little and way too late for the Polish who were forced into Stalin's bloody regime.

Evil always follows bad, and Operation Keelhaul was about as evil as it gets.

FDR was a lyin' POS elitist who should've been arrested, tried, and hanged for treason.

Americans are diverted by battles. Few dig behind scenes to examine dirty machinations of war, especially monetary beneficiaries of dead American soldiers.

Poland never surrendered to Hitler.

What Americans don't know won't hurt 'em. Besides, they're easy to propagandize.

BTW, A Question of Honor is an excellent read, and one of the best books I've read about WWII. I give it highest recommendation.

Doubly impressive considering they were on drugs....

Some horses can be lead to water, yet will never drink from the trough of knowledge.

"The two most ardent boosters of the Normandy invasion were Stalin and Harry Hopkins."

From here

Google Books, "Stalin FDR western front." Knowledge beats assuming and propaganda every time.

This is a classic ad hominem attack, logical fallacy that is used only when one is unable to refute facts.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I search for facts; hence, it ain't a theory if it's factual.

If you knew of the Tehran Conference as you claimed, that you'd of known than Stalin had FDR in his back pocket.

Churchill thought FDR was dangerous because of his close relationship with Stalin, who by the start of WWII had already murdered tens of millions in his purges.

With all the intelligence we had on the Pearl Harbor attack, we never at any moment before the attack had ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE. At no time before the attack, did all the necessary, verified intelligence, arrive on any one person's desk who could have prevented the attack. I have never seen any credible evidence that any one US leader had all the pieces of the puzzle before the attack.

And then again we still come back to the whole conspiracy, and I don't find the conspiracy credible at all. There is NO way someone wouldn't have talked...no freaking way.

Neat anecdote, but in this case, it really did matter for the Japanese. They had a large, and very competent navy and chose to square off with a larger and more competent navy (UK) and a larger yet somewhat un-proven navy (US).

But Japan was easily the largest navy in the Pacific.

You honestly believe that a Pearl Harbor conspiracy was taken to the grave by every last person involved in the conspiracy? You really believe that?

Don't tip to around the question, a simple yes or no.

Given the death tolls in WWII, having someone conveniently killed would not have been too damned difficult. Patton comes to mind....

That's an easy statement to make, but it's not the fact that SOMEONE can be killed. It's WHO would be killed, because there would have to be dozens, from high ranking to low ranking, to politicians and advisors. ALL would have to be killed, and you'd have to do so in a way that absolutely ensures NONE of them made any record at all of the conspiracy. How likely is that? How realistic is that?

And we know FOR A FACT that many who would have to be in the know were NOT killed...and supposedly took said secret do their grave.

I don't know, maybe some can see that actually happening...I just can't buy into something that fantastic.

I'm not sure it would have had to have been that vast a conspiracy at all. As you stated, there were lots of bits of intel within the U.S. gov't on threats leading up, but supposedly no one had put them all together in an actionable, or even plausibly actionable scenario. The number of people who would have had access to ALL the data available would have been very small, maybe just a handful or two. From that small group, it wouldn't be hard for it to have been a very committed bunch (think the inside schitshow that lead to Hitlery NOT being indicted when all the evidence was there to do so, or all the schit that J.Edgar ran while in charge of the FBI, or Fast & Furious, or the CIA gun running to the Middle East, or any number of other little "episodes" the .gov have done), or to have had just a few conveniently reassigned to missions that they never returned from, or natural causes, etc.

I'm not saying that it did happen, I'm only saying that it could have happened with just a small number of people involved.