Quicksand Fans

With the memorial day weekend, and the 71st anniversary of the battle coming up, Shattered Sword is an excellent read - available in hard copy and e-book at Amazon It is probably the best treat on the Battle of Midway, an objective look at how events unfolded, and how it dispels many myths of the engagement, including some flat-out lies by some, which were perpetuated for decades. Luck of course was a factor, but less than you might think. The IJN really wasnt that good, and the USN wasnt that lucky, and was better than you think. So much of the battle seems to have leached into 'history' that it infected movies and opinions, of those who really should know better. it is eye opening to say the least

Speaking of the Battle of Midway, I read an analysis I wanted to run past you (you being the resident expert on all things military on this site). I forget who it was who wrote it, but he said the Japanese plan was fatally flawed from the beginning because it hinged on the Americans doing everything the Japanese thought they would. The IJN was completely thrown for a loop when it became clear the US Navy wasn't following their script.

Trying to predict what your opponent will do in combat is always a tricky proposition. At best, you can make an educated guess, and you better have a "Plan B" to fall back on. The Japanese didn't have a Plan B at Midway.

One Japanese historian I saw said the IJN had "victory disease;" they had achieved so much so soon and so relatively painlessly that they thought they were invincible and didn't see their own weaknesses. The US Navy, on the other hand, realized that underestimating the Japanese was partly what led to the debacle at Pearl Harbor. They never underestimated the Japanese again.

On a side note, I think most historians agree the fighter plan the Marines were equipped with at Midway, the Brewster F2A Buffalo, may have been the worst fighter plane the Americans had during the war. The Mitsubishi A6M Zero couldn't literally fly rings around it, but it came close. One of the surviving Midway pilots said anyone sent up in a Brewster should be written off as dead before he left the ground.

The Navy pilots were glad to be flying Grumman F4F Wildcats at Midway. This plane was not considered as good as the Zero, but it could hold its own. The best things about it were that it could hit very hard, and it could also be hit hard itself and keep flying. The later Hellcat and Corsair fighter planes had these same qualities, but they also had flight performances that gave them an advantage over the Zero.

The Zero's biggest weakness was its lack of armor. It also did not have self-sealing fuel tanks, like the American planes did. It was hard to hit, but, when you hit it, it went down.

On another thread, some mention was made of codes. We had a code the Japanese never did crack. It was the Navajo Indian language. You've probably heard of the Navajo Code Talkers, or seen the movie "Windtalkers." Navajo is a very complex language that is difficult to learn unless you're immersed in it almost from infancy. Navajos who could speak the language were recruited by the Marines and sent to radio school. They were basically transmitting phonetic spellings of Navajo words in Morse code. The Code Talkers played a key role at Iwo Jima.

My favorite story about a code talker centered on the now politically incorrect practice of bestowing nicknames like "Chief" or "Geronimo" on Native Americans (I've often wondered what Navajos thought of being called by an Apache name). In this case, a Code Talker who's been nicknamed Chief was having his position shelled. One of his comrades said to him, "Chief, we gotta get out of here!"

"Hey, man, I'm not your chief!" he answered. "If I were your chief, we wouldn't be in this fix!"

I guess we could call that fox hole humor.

- Big Bad John

Correct

That might seem simplistic, but really, it isn't It just happens to cut out a lot of the hand-wavium bullshit that seems to try and infect objective history.

The IJN -- and the Imperial Armed Forces in general -- were enamoured with overly complex battle plans. As you say, basing your entire plan on your enemy MUST DO THIS is generally a losing strategy. The staff colleges of any of the other powers (US, USSR, Germany) would have either laughed their asses off or shot the offending parties, depending on who was who.

The real irony is that everyone thinks Yamamoto was some sort of super-genius -- well, he wasnt. Really wasnt. He was a good Admiral, but he was just as intoxicated with the "genius" of Japan's plans as anyone else, and made some really dumb decisions. Remember now, this man KNEW that there was no way, ZERO chance , of winning a war against the United States, never mind any idiots who suggested invading the west coast. Yet, he persisted with the strategy that if they could force the USN PacFlt into a "decisive engagement" , they could somehow secure favourable terms to negotiate the "Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". He never considered that his enemy, would be consumed with RAGE and would only be satisfied with his utter obliteration. Old School War. The way it is supposed to be.

Note on the F2A -- yes, she was a piece of shit; but, that was the version used by the USMC; the problem was the original F2A was an ok fighter, and was very effective when used by the Finns against the Russians. However, when you add armour plating, self-sealing fuel tanks, an arrestor hook, and the radios needed for carrier operations, well, you have a hog. Against an A6M, you pretty much dead meat. Now, the F4F, is another story. it was a lot closer match for the A6M than is commonly realized; no, dogfighting was a bad idea -- although you could hang in there for one circle, and going downhill, but that was about it. Once you lost energy, you were screwed. The F4F however, using tactics of mutual support (aka Thatch Weave) would murder A6M's. A typical Grumman Iron Works bird, tough, armoured, and with 4-6 .50 calibre machine guns, if it scored hits, it was lethal. And USN aviators were the best deflection shots in the theatre. A6Ms simply blew up or burned like torches under fire. Very few Zero pilots took damage and made it back alive , unlike Grumman pilots who would come home, and maybe trash the aircraft on landing. But get out, and get a new one.

One myth is that the F6F was designed to fight the Zero. Completely untrue. The F6F was in development well before the first A6M was recovered and test-flown by the USN. Probably one of the single most underrated fighters of the war, the F6F slaughtered more enemy aircraft than any other type. The F4U came first, but it was a highly complex aircraft, and as such, required more work in its development phase. It wasn't called the ensign eliminator for nothing. In contrast, the F6F was the ensign's airplane -- any nugget could fly it AND bring it aboard safely. Tough, 6 x .50 cal MGs, a ton of ammo, and the ability to haul an ever -increasing bombload, it became what the F-18 is today, the first true strike fighter.


With the 71st anniversary of the Battle of Midway, being, well, right now one major myth that really needs stomping on is how Hiryu and Yamaguchi , were supposed to be fighting on alone after Soryu, Akagi, and Kaga had been smashed. While it is true they launched the strikes against Yorktown, they were still under Nagumo's tactical control. Furthermore, Nagumo's intention was to press on to attempt to force a surface engagement. This persisted for quite some time, and with Hiryu conforming to his movements (and the relative wind) this aided in the destruction of Hiryu. Even Yamamoto took some convincing before finally ordering a general withdrawal. Spruance was criticized in some circles for not closing at the time, but the cold analysis is that it was an extremely shrewd move. Further, he was able to conduct additional airstrikes on the IJN forces as they disengaged before finally breaking off. He is likely one of the most underrated admirals of the pacific war.

If you really waned to sum up Midway you could simply say it marks the date the Japanese began to wonder if they'd bitten off more than they could chew.

Love this chat.... being a history buff, I can't get enough of it. Heck, I even don't mind having my own errors pointed out. It's the only way I learn.

On that, regarding discussions about the Hellcat and Wildcat fighters. I read of one Japanese ace who found out his lighter Zero could outclimb planes like the Wildcat, so his favorite and quite successful tactic was to start climbing whenever an eager pilot got onto his tail, and when the poor fellow would stall out, he would then swing around and get him. Then he tried this out on the Hellcat, which sure looked like the Wildcat (it was a similar airframe, or maybe the same?) but with a more powerful engine. By the time the fellow found out the US airman was able to keep up with him with ease... well, that was the end of him.

As for overall strategy, the Japanese navy tended to be caught up in the idea of the one big naval victory which would win the day... as many militaries tend to use past wars to shape current strategy, the Japanese had the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war to rely on, where to everyone's surprise they beat a European power in modern warfare. Few would have guessed that outcome, as Japan then was considered somewhat backward then.
The decisive blow was the Battle of Tsushima Straits on 27–28 May 1905, when the Japanese fleet, using British military tactics and know how (Britain trained and helped found the modern Japanese navy) incvluding Nelson's classic "Crossing the T" manoever, pulverized the Russian fleet, and combined with victories on land forced the Russians to sue for peace.

Since then, that victory somewhat clouded the Navy's view of things, which led to the belief one decisive blow would take out their enemies in the Pacific as well. Pearl Harbour grew partly out of that idea, as it was believed such a strike, besides taking out the fleet, would deal America's fighting spirit a death blow right from the start. One could say that was a bit of a miscalculation.

Other campaigns since then all had that idea underlying them that if the IJN could lure the US Navy into a decisive battle, and win it, then the war would be as good as won. Trouble is, they really doidn't have a back up plan to use in case the USN didn't get the memo on the part they were supposed to play in this drama.

Yamamoto may not have been so brilliant as he was audacious. The attack on Pearl Harbor was audacious. When audacious tries something and it works, he's called a genius. When he tries something and it doesn't work, he's called variations on $#@!%&*!

Someone who is audacious is often full of himself. I think that's what Yamamoto was when it came to Midway. You will notice that "full of himself" is only two letters different from "fool of himself."

The attack on Pearl Harbor turned out to be the biggest strategic mistake Japan could've made. Given how divided the American people were about going to war in 1941, it's doubtful we would've made any sort of forceful response to the Japanese seizing British, French or Dutch territories in the Far East. Once Pearl Harbor was attacked, however, all debate about the war ended. We were in it, and we were fighting to win.

In my home state of Arizona, the big paper in Phoenix, the Arizona Republic, had a cartoonist in the war years named Reg Manning. He had a character named Little Itchy Itchy. He was a stereotyped Japanese, complete with thick glasses and buck teeth. He always appeared whenever the Japanese got their butts kicked again. He carried around a samurai sword on a pillow, and he always had the same one-word question for the Japanese commanders: "Now?"

As Manning noted, Itchy kept getting more and more busy as the war wore on.

- Big Bad John

The Japanese read Mahan's epic work about the influence of sea power on history and took it greatly to heart. This was where they kept going back to the idea of the decisive engagement. As correctly pointed out the United States failed to oblige them on this until the US could pick the time for it. One of the "Klausewitzian" things the Japanese overlooked was that this was a war not only of warriors but of national production and against the US they could not come close. Ironically it was the IJN leadership at it's most senior levels that feared war with the US the most. Admiral Yamamoto himself told the General Staff that he would run wild for six months to a year but if they didn't get peace by then there was no way to prevail against the US. That timeline held up very well until the "end of the beginning" at MIdway.

*Looks at today's calendar.... gee, almost exactly 6 months, to the day -- he sure as hell got that right...


Full of himself, is a good description. It's actually probably a conservative statement, since it doesn't begin to describe the degree to which he was. Shattered Sword makes it clear: in the planning for the operation, he basically put forth the position that unless he got his way, he would resign. So he essentially took over all planning for Combined Fleet. That, is a bad way to run a navy. Worse still, with their complex-o-fetish, they immediately violated one of the primary Clauswitz-ian principles of warfare: concentration. By dividing his forces, with the "decoy" operation to attack Dutch Harbour, he deployed a significant part of the fleet to support it. And when things went to hell off Midway, you have the semi-comical action of the carriers deployed there actually trying to come south and assist.

With all their studying, and in spite of getting crushed at Midway, 2 years later they STILL hadn't gotten past the overly complex planning fetish. In the Marianas, Ozawa's entire battle plan was based on being able to augment his carrier airpower with airstrikes from Guam, as well as shuttle his aircraft back and forth there to rearm and refuel. This sort of ran facefirst into a concrete wall with its eyes shut, when the forces on Guam were mercilessly shot out of the sky and strafed, by hundreds of F6Fs. TF58 established air dominance over the island, AND retained the ability to put a massive CAP over the fleet. Bad communications did not help, so there was a long period of time where he was making plans with airplanes that didn't exist. It took until about the end of the afternoon of the 19th June before the extent of the debacle was realized. Roughly 90% losses to your air groups, will take the starch out of just about anyone. That's somewhat past defeat, into the land of exterminated. 5 months later at Leyte, the carriers used there were empty decoys -- the only time one of their plans partially worked (if you can consider acting as bait and being wiped out a success...)

I read that some Buffalo wreckage was found not too long ago in the water just off Midway. Don't know how salvageable it is, but it would be cool to see it brought up.

Do people with fetishes for overly complex battle plans have their own boards?

DangerGirl wrote:I read that some Buffalo wreckage was found not too long ago in the water just off Midway. Don't know how salvageable it is, but it would be cool to see it brought up.

Do people with fetishes for overly complex battle plans have their own boards?

Most of the video shoots I engineered resembled overly complex battle plans. There might be a connection.

I like it best the way Gen. Schwarzkopf explained it to a reporter. Planning battle was like conducting a symphony until some bastard jumps out of the orchestra pit and starts chasing you around with a bayonet.

Yep. The more I think about it there has to be a connection.