A scenario for WW2 history buffs: What if?

[JakeStarkey]

Your last sentence is a non sequitur to the entire paragraph before it.

 

[Toronado3800]

You might be used to reading elementary school versions of WW2 or propaganda movies. In the greatest Country in the world the truth is out there but it is sometimes obscured by propaganda. The US was totally unprepared for WW2. America had virtually no intelligence network and government relied on rumors and racist assumptions about Japan. The media writes the pop-culture history books and the media became part of the FDR administration. FDR was first elected about the same time Hitler came into power and he was well aware of the Nazi Holocaust but he did nothing politically. Meanwhile the Japanese were viewed seriously as "nearsighted little monkeys who couldn't build a plane that would fly or a ship that would float? America was a blind giant mired in three terms of the FDR depression.

I thought lend lease was a FDR tool and Charles Lindbergh was the one who was in love with the NAZIs?

Now I can agree quite a bit with underestimating the Japanese and our military being small in 1937. Heck, what was it in 1931 though? Also, there were folks thrilled with the idea if Germany pounding the Communists. Stalin WAS another monster after all.

We can all talk about the ineffectiveness of the Reagan deficit spending and or the New Deal in another thread I suppose.

But yes, we were at Pearl Harbor ready for a battle, just we were ready for Jutland not Toranto.

God I spell bad

 

[jwoodie]

The only time a single ship made a difference was when the Goeben eluded the RN and sailed into Istanbul, bringing the Ottoman Empire into WWI on the side of Germany. Although the Gallipoli campaign was a disaster for the British, they got their revenge at Versailles. The rest is history...

 

[regent]

You might be used to reading elementary school versions of WW2 or propaganda movies. In the greatest Country in the world the truth is out there but it is sometimes obscured by propaganda. The US was totally unprepared for WW2. America had virtually no intelligence network and government relied on rumors and racist assumptions about Japan. The media writes the pop-culture history books and the media became part of the FDR administration. FDR was first elected about the same time Hitler came into power and he was well aware of the Nazi Holocaust but he did nothing politically. Meanwhile the Japanese were viewed seriously as "nearsighted little monkeys who couldn't build a plane that would fly or a ship that would float? America was a blind giant mired in three terms of the FDR depression.

Yeah, FDR had a hell of a time trying to get the Republican America-Firsters to pass laws to help the British and Lend Lease was one way. Giving Britain fifty destroyers was another. America had its first peace time draft under FDR and it was renewed by one vote in the House. The American people were pretty isolationist until the fall of France. Had it not been for FDR we probably would have been totally unprepared. But when Pearl Harbor occurred we had an army in training, factories producing war materials, and the groundwork for the OSS, later to become the CIA. We had also broken one of the Japanese diplomatic codes. We would have had more equipment but we seemed to have shipped a lot of it to Britain. Books have been written about FDR trying to prepare for war and the Republicans fighting the preparations. Who was it, Martin, Barton and Fish that FDR mentioned in one of his preparation pleas? Republican even jumped on the CCC's because they believed, of course, that it was the beginning of our Brown Shirts. As for the Japanese perhaps most of the public and cartoonists saw it that way but not the upper echelons of the military. Japan had taken a big chunk of China by that time.

 

[whitehall]

Germany's surface navy was a joke. The days of the gigantic battleships were numbered when Billy Mitchell's fledgling biplane bombers sunk their first ship. Maybe that's why FDR sacrificed the US battleships at Pearl Harbor while the carriers were safely at sea.

 

[JakeStarkey]

No, silly Whitehall, he did not sacrifice the BBs while the CAs were at sea. No, silly Whitehall, there was no criminal subterfuge to allow the JIN to make a secret attack while the big wigs knew all along. That is the same type of extremely convoluted thinking along the lines of the Troofers and the bilderburgers with cheese.

 

[whitehall]

No, silly Whitehall, he did not sacrifice the BBs while the CAs were at sea. No, silly Whitehall, there was no criminal subterfuge to allow the JIN to make a secret attack while the big wigs knew all along. That is the same type of extremely convoluted thinking along the lines of the Troofers and the bilderburgers with cheese.

OK, let's try it this way, FDR was busy with, umm, whatever and the Japanese sailed clear across the ocean right under our noses and bombed the snot out of Pearl Harbor while we had access to their diplomatic codes. Oh well, anyway it was pure luck that the valuable carriers were out at sea while the battleship sitting ducks were moored side by side. Feel better? It's something like the defense we are seeing in the Obama administration today. Incompetence is better than criminal negligence and much better than freaking treason.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I will go with incompetence, for sure. That happens in American military history all the time. For instance, GWB invaded Iraq disastrously for America on bad intelligence. For instance, General MacArthur's chief of intelligence kept ignoring signals the Red Chinese were coming into the war, who then administered a series of whopping ass kicks to the US Army and UN forces all the way south of the DMZ. For instance, Pearl Harbor. For instance, MacArthur's incredibly poor preparation of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

And so forth and so on.

 

[Toronado3800]

No, silly Whitehall, he did not sacrifice the BBs while the CAs were at sea. No, silly Whitehall, there was no criminal subterfuge to allow the JIN to make a secret attack while the big wigs knew all along. That is the same type of extremely convoluted thinking along the lines of the Troofers and the bilderburgers with cheese.

OK, let's try it this way, FDR was busy with, umm, whatever and the Japanese sailed clear across the ocean right under our noses and bombed the snot out of Pearl Harbor while we had access to their diplomatic codes. Oh well, anyway it was pure luck that the valuable carriers were out at sea while the battleship sitting ducks were moored side by side. Feel better? It's something like the defense we are seeing in the Obama administration today. Incompetence is better than criminal negligence and much better than freaking treason.

Look man. FDR more or less put the battleships there. Heck, he put the carriers there. Now FDR did not tell them expresely to be ready on Dec 7th. I am sure we expected to sail out to sea and win Jutland or something similar.

Treason? I dunno. Sounds extreme.

 

[Jarlaxle]

You know what I was lied too in history class in the 80's I remember that reading there was a sister ship to the bismark that never sailed. the gun mounts were removed and placed on Normandy.....

That was German battlecruiser Gneisenau, sister ship of Scharnhorst. Much like Bismark, Scharnhorst sortied out to attack convoys and was sunk by the British. Gneisenau, like so much of the German surface fleet, was bombed by the British while in port, and damaged so badly that it was written off and pieced out to shore batteries.

She was badly damaged by mines (and I think a torpedo) in the "Channel Dash"....while under repair, she was hit again, damaging her beyond reasonable repair.

 

[Jarlaxle]

No, silly Whitehall, he did not sacrifice the BBs while the CAs were at sea. No, silly Whitehall, there was no criminal subterfuge to allow the JIN to make a secret attack while the big wigs knew all along. That is the same type of extremely convoluted thinking along the lines of the Troofers and the bilderburgers with cheese.

OK, let's try it this way, FDR was busy with, umm, whatever and the Japanese sailed clear across the ocean right under our noses and bombed the snot out of Pearl Harbor while we had access to their diplomatic codes. Oh well, anyway it was pure luck that the valuable carriers were out at sea while the battleship sitting ducks were moored side by side. Feel better? It's something like the defense we are seeing in the Obama administration today. Incompetence is better than criminal negligence and much better than freaking treason.

The Japanese sailed on a carefully-selected route, through empty sea lanes and using weather fronts for cover, something they had trained to do for years. In 1941, it was VERY easy for a naval force to disappear in the Pacific! (Remember: there were no radar-equipped search planes.)

The US Navy had six active carriers in 12/41. (Hornet had just been launched & was shaking down, Langley had been reclassified as a transport.) One of them, Ranger, was totally unsuited to Pacific duty and as such, had zero chance of being at Pearl.

Three were in the Atlantic on neutrality patrols, Saratoga was getting a much-needed overhaul at Bremerton. In contrast to the six CV's (note: a CA is a heavy cruiser, not a carrier), the USN had eighteen battleships (all but Washington and North Carolina 20+ years old), eight of which were at Pearl.

 

[whitehall]

No, silly Whitehall, he did not sacrifice the BBs while the CAs were at sea. No, silly Whitehall, there was no criminal subterfuge to allow the JIN to make a secret attack while the big wigs knew all along. That is the same type of extremely convoluted thinking along the lines of the Troofers and the bilderburgers with cheese.

OK, let's try it this way, FDR was busy with, umm, whatever and the Japanese sailed clear across the ocean right under our noses and bombed the snot out of Pearl Harbor while we had access to their diplomatic codes. Oh well, anyway it was pure luck that the valuable carriers were out at sea while the battleship sitting ducks were moored side by side. Feel better? It's something like the defense we are seeing in the Obama administration today. Incompetence is better than criminal negligence and much better than freaking treason.

The Japanese sailed on a carefully-selected route, through empty sea lanes and using weather fronts for cover, something they had trained to do for years. In 1941, it was VERY easy for a naval force to disappear in the Pacific! (Remember: there were no radar-equipped search planes.)

The US Navy had six active carriers in 12/41. (Hornet had just been launched & was shaking down, Langley had been reclassified as a transport.) One of them, Ranger, was totally unsuited to Pacific duty and as such, had zero chance of being at Pearl.

Three were in the Atlantic on neutrality patrols, Saratoga was getting a much-needed overhaul at Bremerton. In contrast to the six CV's (note: a CA is a heavy cruiser, not a carrier), the USN had eighteen battleships (all but Washington and North Carolina 20+ years old), eight of which were at Pearl.

Let's see, the FDR administration virtually goaded Japan into an attack with the oil embargo so the US could get into the "real war" in Europe. The administration knew war with Japan was imminent but the radar was inaccurate and there was no effort to maintain search planes or picket ships to protect Pearl Harbor. The smartest guy in the Army with a photographic memory and all couldn't remember where he was the night of Dec. 6, 1941. Marshall worked on weekends and usually arrived at his office early but on 12/7 he was late while his frantic personnel were trying to reach him for hours. He read the decoded message that apparently indicated an imminent attack and he re-read it and re-re-read it until the message center went down and a Western Union telegraph to Pearl Harbor arrived the same time as the Zeroes. He could have picked up the phone but he didn't and 1,000 Sailors were sleeping below decks on the Arizona. It was incompetence squared or treason but FDR had the media under control. It wasn't such a happy go-lucky time as nostalgia would indicate. Nobody dared criticize the government and Hoover's agents were everywhere looking for "subversives".

 

[JakeStarkey]

Whitehall's nonsense begins without the beginning: Japan's occupation of Korea, Japan's continuing invasion and war with China, and then only after Japan's occupation of Indo-China, does the USA embargo oil and other goods.

Whitehall would have done the same thing in the same situation: occupy Korea, war against China, and occupy Indo-China.

 

[whitehall]

Whitehall's nonsense begins without the beginning: Japan's occupation of Korea, Japan's continuing invasion and war with China, and then only after Japan's occupation of Indo-China, does the USA embargo oil and other goods.

Whitehall would have done the same thing in the same situation: occupy Korea, war against China, and occupy Indo-China.

Are we even on the same page? Yeah Japan was an evil empire and FDR wanted desperately to get into the "real war" in Europe. The best you can say for FDR's responsibility for the disaster at Pearl Harbor is incompetence squared and the worst you can say is the "T" word. Nobody dared criticize the administration back then and we are living with the cozy relationship between FDR and the media that passes for history today.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Any advancement that the germans put out that could have delayed us about 1 year, would have put nuke bombs and maybe missiles in their arsenal.

And that would have been a game changer.

but

2 more ships may have extended the war a tiny bit, giving Japan a few months more before the end.

 

[JakeStarkey]

It is no more military intelligence failure equivalent to Bush's failure for reasons to invade Iraq and MacArthur's failure to listen to the warning the Red Chinese PLA was coming into the war to kick American butt.

The only treason here is that of whitehall who refuses to accept objective evidence that FDR and the military establishment were responsible for negligence, not treason.

 

[whitehall]

It is no more military intelligence failure equivalent to Bush's failure for reasons to invade Iraq and MacArthur's failure to listen to the warning the Red Chinese PLA was coming into the war to kick American butt.

The only treason here is that of whitehall who refuses to accept objective evidence that FDR and the military establishment were responsible for negligence, not treason.

Bush had permission from congress to invade Iraq to enforce UN sanctions. Harry Truman sent Troops to Korea on an executive order and 55,000 were killed in three years. Japan was a formidable enemy before war broke out but the racists (in the truest sense of the word) in the FDR administration thought Japan was a push over and the US was criminally unprepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

[longknife]

It is no more military intelligence failure equivalent to Bush's failure for reasons to invade Iraq and MacArthur's failure to listen to the warning the Red Chinese PLA was coming into the war to kick American butt.

The only treason here is that of whitehall who refuses to accept objective evidence that FDR and the military establishment were responsible for negligence, not treason.

We're talking about the 1940s and the usual garbage about "Bush's fault" just has to pop up.

 

[hoosier88]

I read a bit about WW2 and think about this quite offten, (I wont make this long and sorry for any typos) What if the Germans managed too, Launch the Bismark her sister ship and the Aircraft carrier they were trying to build.....in the same fleet on the same day? Could the Allies have destroyed it before it would have run heck in the Atlantic shipping lanes? Could have an escort carrier fleet stood up to it? just curious what you all think.....

The European Theater was not a good venue for naval power. Too vulnerable to land based air attacks. Battleships were obsolete and a single carrier would have been sunk by subs or land based air attacks

(My bold)

I disagree. The ETO was excellent for naval power, especially for the Allies early on. We beat Rommel in Africa on logistics, his supply lines - naval & air - never delivered as promised, because Allied naval forces & land-based air kept kept hammering his supply lines. Even the relatively short run from Italy-Sicily-Tunisia was littered with the gutted wrecks of German merchantmen & aircraft.

The Brits also bottled up/destroyed French naval assets in the Mediterranean, & the Allied navy @ the invasion of Africa destroyed whatever French naval units refused to go neutral.

 

[regent]

No, silly Whitehall, he did not sacrifice the BBs while the CAs were at sea. No, silly Whitehall, there was no criminal subterfuge to allow the JIN to make a secret attack while the big wigs knew all along. That is the same type of extremely convoluted thinking along the lines of the Troofers and the bilderburgers with cheese.

OK, let's try it this way, FDR was busy with, umm, whatever and the Japanese sailed clear across the ocean right under our noses and bombed the snot out of Pearl Harbor while we had access to their diplomatic codes. Oh well, anyway it was pure luck that the valuable carriers were out at sea while the battleship sitting ducks were moored side by side. Feel better? It's something like the defense we are seeing in the Obama administration today. Incompetence is better than criminal negligence and much better than freaking treason.

It seems strange that the military didn't put out sentries at Pearl Harbor, certainly some patrols at sea and in the air, but apparently they didn't. Seem the entire defense of Pearl Harbor was left to FDR and Marshall, and both were in DC, and FDR was a cripple. Reminds one of the loss of the marines in Lebanon while both Reagan and the marines slept. The question might be: who should be responsible for defending the military?
How many times has the Pearl Harbor attack been investigated and what conclusions did all those investigations reach? Yet we are still coming to our own conclusions, our own causes, our own truths.