Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944

I'm reading Pacific Crucible now, about halfway through it.

what a powerful description of Pearl Harbor, after the attack. the dead and injured, the oil everywhere, the burns, the efforts to restore as much functionality to the harbor as possible.

Samuel Eliot Morison's "The Rising Sun in the Pacific 1931-April 1942," part of his 15-volume history "History of United States Naval Operations in World War II," has an excellent discussion of the efforts to recover ships and rebuild the harbor facilities at Pearl Harbor. The engineering and logistics feats our navy achieved all over the world during WWII are just as impressive as the combat actions, in my opinion.

especially when you think about the US bringing everything from the west coast to the fight ACROSS the Pacific, vs Japan fighting (relatively) near home.

Sycamore

just read in "Pacific Crucible" that one unintended consequence of the japanese sinking most of the US battleships and not the US carriers, they converted the US Navy from a 17 knot fleet ot a 24 knot fleet. Since the japanese battleships were undamaged, they did not switch over to "carrier mentality" as fast. (most of the senior naval leaders in both Navies were battleship guys)

Sycamore

That's good, too. Recommended to me by a friend who was on nuclear sub (boomer).

This was merely a "bi-product" of what the japs were doing to our guys. For example in the book Shattered Sword about the battle of Midway (arguably the best book on the subject), it relates a story of two USN fliers fished out of the water by the japs. After being physically tortured, they were tied to weights and thrown overboard whilst still alive. Then there's Bataan, etc. Same thing happened here in the West during the Imperial Expansion (AKA Manifest Destiny), where US soldiers also mutilated dead indians as a result of their savage practices of doing it to our guys. This also eventually extended to women and children, who also partook in the savagery. Wars to tend to bring out the worst (and best) in us..

Our Navy and the Brits were indeed larger than the Japanese Navy. Washington Conference established the 5:5:3 ratio on capital ships five for us and the Brits and three for the japs.

Isn't that the reason the Japanese built more carriers, as they weren't seen as "capital ships" at the time?

Emulating my "hero" Starman, this is from Wiki:
"signed by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement" Carriers were a separate category, but still limited to tonnage, that as we all know, the japs blew it off.

And

Tonnage limitations
Country Capital ships Aircraft carriers
British Empire 525,000 tons
(533,000 tonnes) 135,000 tons
(137,000 tonnes)
United States 525,000 tons
(533,000 tonnes) 135,000 tons
(137,000 tonnes)
Empire of Japan 315,000 tons
(320,000 tonnes) 81,000 tons
(82,000 tonnes)
France 175,000 tons
(178,000 tonnes) 60,000 tons
(61,000 tonnes)
Italy 175,000 tons
(178,000 tonnes) 60,000 tons
(61,000 tonnes).

My point has always been...what if we had flexed our war machine muscle when the Axis was getting started. Shown the world what we could do if we put our minds to it.

Not only shorten the depression but shown Hitler and Tojo that their targets would have an virtually unlimited and protected supply dump.

The Japs were worried about the location of two of our carriers. What if they were facing the same number as they had?

NO Pearl Harbor.

Before reading Neptunes Inferno I didn't realize how soon after Pearl Harbor the old/slow battleships that were damaged were put back into service and that they would have been available to the fleet in 1942/43 if there had been forward fuel depots to support them.

An untold story is how quickly the U.S. built the support and logistics infrastructure across the Pacific to support the combatants. In just a few months, Ulithi Atoll went from being a sandy speck on a map to becoming the U.S. Navy's largest logistics and support base and once the fighting moved westward, it was downsized until it was abandoned in 12/45.

And the problem with using too much fuel (the old battleships) was why they weren't returned to service to assist in the Solomons as they came out of the repair yards. I didn't realize that until reading Conquering Tide. They eventually did contribute big time at the battle for Leyte.

Just finished The Fleet at flood tide. Excellent read. It reinforces my opinion of Mac Arthur as a "two trick pony" as it were. The post-war occupation of Japan and Inchon (not in this particular book) being his only real successes.

I think MacArthur was a military genius with a huge ego, but that is common in people who really are geniuses. One of his two weaknesses was that he surrounded himself with sycophants who fed his ego and managed the information that he saw. His other weakness was being nearly totally tone deaf about political matters.

A lot like Stanley McChrystal.

Off subject a little, but one of the better WW2 Naval movies is on tonight at 11:15pm on TCMHD, James Cagney and Dennis Weaver in "The Gallant Hours" about Adm. Halsey... Cagney day on TCM all day.

Phil

Battle of the Coral Sea is on the next page (when I put it down last night) . This (Pacific Crucible) is a good book!

Got started on Neptunes Inferno. still enjoying this .

Sycamore

Neptune's Inferno is my favorite recent book on the Pacific War, great book.

The First Team, by Lundstrom is still my favorite.


Websites below both have a ton of general and really specific info, and can keep your interest for hours.

Battle of Midway Roundtable http://www.midway42.org/

Combined Fleet http://www.combinedfleet.com/

Highly recommend "Nimitz" by E. B.Potter pub Naval Institute Press