Sunday, June 6, 2021

The Fate of Empires

Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless dive bombers of VS-8 from USS Hornet about to attack the burning Japanese cruiser Mikuma for the third time on 6 June 1942.

Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku said, "I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years."

Nearly six months to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the four fleet carriers of the Kido Butai¹ (機動部隊) would go to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. This same force had spearheaded the attack on Pearl, now it was crippled and, truth be told, would be virtually toothless for the remainder of the war.

The Battle of Midway, which took place from the 4th to the 7th of June in 1942, was a critical turning point in the Pacific War. Much hard fighting lay ahead, thousands more would perish before the Japanese Emperor commanded his forces to stand down in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yet most people in the United States barely remember that battle, instead they remember (if they remember anything at all about our history, Lord knows it isn't taught very well anymore) the Normandy Invasion of June 1944, D-Day, the 6th of June.

Assault troops in a landing craft approach Omaha Beach on D-Day. Normandy, France, June 6, 1944.

Midway turned the tide of the Pacific War, until then the war had been a string of Japanese victories, that string ended at Midway.

D-Day on the other hand was the first step in landing significant forces on the European mainland with a fairly clear path to the heartland of Nazi Germany.

Though Allied forces had been fighting on the continent since the Allied landings at Salerno in Italy on the 9th of September 1943, a cursory glance at a good map of Italy reveals that the defenders have many advantages.

Rugged terrain, a narrow peninsula, multiple river lines, getting to Germany via Italy can be categorized as an extremely bad idea. At the northern end of Italy there's also the Alps to get over. Sir Winston Churchill might have been a brilliant politician and an inspiring figure, but he was no strategist, Gallipoli and Salerno proved that.

If the truth be told, the British feared an invasion of France, their reserve of men of fighting age was weakened to the point that they had to be very mindful of casualties. They believed that the raid on Dieppe in August of 1942 proved that any landing on the coast of France might prove to be a complete disaster.

Dieppe's chert beach and cliff immediately following the raid on 19 August 1942. A Dingo Scout Car has been abandoned.

Events on Omaha Beach nearly proved them right, had it not been for the bravery of the men on the ground and various leaders taking the initiative² it could have been another Dieppe. Omar Bradley was at the point of recalling the landing force at one point.

Midway led to the United States Navy being the dominant force in the Pacific, not the Imperial Japanese Navy. Without seapower and the victory at Midway, the Pacific might have become a Japanese lake. A place we could cross only by their forbearance.

D-Day led to the Western Allies liberating all of Western Europe. A loss on the beaches of Normandy wouldn't necessarily have prevented the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union might have continued on and the Red Army might have wound up on the English Channel. The agony of Eastern Europe would have been suffered in the west as well.

Like the aftermath of Midway, much hard fighting lay ahead for the Allies after D-Day. The events leading to the eventual capitulation of the Nazis on the 8th of May 1945 were kicked off as soon as the first paratroopers came down in Normandy.

Both events were important to the history of the world, both should be remembered. But most of all, the people who gave their lives to seal those victories must never be forgotten.

Midway sealed the doom of the Japanese Empire. Normandy hastened the fall of the Nazi Third Reich and prevented the Communist domination of all of Europe.

We forget the lessons of history at our peril.




¹ Literally the Mobile Unit or Force, not an official designation but one of convenience. It designated the six aircraft carriers which carried the 1st Air Fleet.
² Major General Norman Cota and Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt Jr. immediately spring to mind.

Sarge Note: I would also like to mention that the 6th of June 1944 was my father's 16th birthday. He would have been 93 today. Miss you Dad.

44 comments:

  1. All true and America's forgetting that lesson will result in great suffering and loss.

    Last night I was buying Hornfisher's Guadalcanal book and found out he had passed away a few days ago.

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    1. The loss of Hornfischer was a shock. Loved his trilogy on the Pacific. A talented writer and a solid historian.

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    2. I had no idea Hornfischer passed. What a loss. Your French and Indian saga is quite engaging. Keep up with the good stuff and thanks.

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    3. I'm still in a daze over his passing.

      Glad you're enjoying my scribblings!

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    4. Like so many, I was shocked and saddened by Hornfischer's death. A great talent gone too soon; but what a legacy he's left!
      Boat Guy

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  2. Sheer luck if D-Day is mentioned on the national news today, as for Midway......pphffftppp! Too many people don't know History, when something happens then it's "Why did that happen and whose fault is it?" Good to remember those dates Sarge, I'll lift one up today for your Dad (a Root Beer that is) had 99 degrees yesterday...........:)

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  3. A (very) small nit to pick, from the Infantry POV. The guys in that landing craft are not "assault troops" except in the broadest and most general of senses. Yes they are part of an "assault on Nazi tyranny" or some such, but they, personally, have no intention of assaulting anybody. They are support troops of some type, probably engineers. Look at their weapons; carbines, carbines, carbines, and a bolt action rifle. No Garands, no BARs, no Browning MGs, no mortars, no rocket launchers, no hand grenades. God bless 'em and stand up when they enter the room, 'cause they were there at the day of days when it counted, but they weren't assault troops. Nit picked.

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    1. I used the original caption from here. I wasn't going to argue with that source. More to the point, I consider everyone, regardless of MOS, who went ashore that day to be assault troops.

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  4. I might comment, Midway was turning point but brought about not direct USN superiority, but a period of "balace of power" where neither side had decisive edge, and that period led to the bloody Guadalcanal slugfets.
    IJN lost core of their carrier fleet, but USN was not in much better position until Essex class came online at end of 1943.
    Enterprise versus Japan was not only a figure of speech at one point...
    If I had to pick decisive point for Pacific campaign, it would be Marianas in June 1944, as with Normandy at same time and Bagration on the Eastern front. The synchronicity of events here is quite amazing.
    Later IJN efforts were increasingly desperate, throwing off carriers as decoys at Leyte, and sending most of the surface fleet on suicide charge into the landing troops there, It was conparable to Germans last gamble at Ardennes at roughly same time. That they almost succeeded is solely fault of reckless Halsey leaving Leyte Gulf unguarded in pursuit of what was but a bait. Only bravery of the tin can sailors and breakdown of Kurita saved troops stuck in transports at Leyte from major bloodbath.
    Also, RIP Mr Hornfischer. History had rarely better teacher...

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    1. We can agree to disagree. Midway sent a shock through the Japanese Navy, with good reason. The loss of four fleet carriers in one battle? Unprecedented. The Marianas was a turkey shoot, the Japanese pilots were inferior and so were their aircraft.

      Nope, Midway was decisive from a naval point of view.

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  5. Learned a lot from the post and the comments thus far. Thank you for that!

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    1. I learn something every time I write one of these posts, from the sources I use to the readers' comments. Good stuff.

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  6. I wonder how the troops felt in the Aleutians that were pawns in the grand scheme of the battle. From what I've read, neither side had an easy assignment, fought terrible battles, and history smothered their exploits with other parts of WW2.

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    1. The Aleutians, yup, crappy place to fight a war. Particularly for a diversion.

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  7. It is interesting Sarge - The European Theater gets a lot more glory and attention than the Asian Theater in modern media and remembrance. I wonder why that is. Is it that Nazism was perceived as somehow "worse" than Japanese Imperialism? Or perhaps the military history of the Pacific reflected poorly on the U.S.'s position (not in any way to demean the sacrifice or bravery of the troops at Corregidor or Singapore or Jakarta, just that the Allies were completely overcome)? Or is it the idea that we cannot discuss the Pacific Theater without people believing there is implicit racism in merely discussing it?

    We are not only actively in the process of forgetting our history, we are tearing it up as quickly as possible. Even those tribes, clans, and nations that had no written language at least had their history immortalized in their songs and epics poems. We will end up with nothing but what has happened in the last 24 hours and whether or not it received enough social popular opinion.

    Yamamoto was a man of foresight and understood how badly things would go. One wishes that his voice could have been heard more loudly.

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    1. It's worse than you think. "History" now being written about WW2 will dwell on the horrible United States internment of Japanese-Americans, systemic racism which kept blacks largely in segregated units, the environmental destruction, and the evils of the atomic bomb. Overlooked will be the atrocities of the Japanese, the holocaust, the sacrifices of the men (and women) who contributed to the war effort in diverse ways, and the inspiring leadership of men like Churchill.

      The denigration of history, and deliberate distortion of what is left is causing irreparable harm to our nation, its citizen and our future.

      Good on Sarge and others who bring the past the the present generation preserving the truth.
      John Blackshoe

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    2. TB - I fear that's the way it's going. How do we stop the rot?

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    3. JB - We have to remember, otherwise we lose everything.

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    4. (Don McCollor)...Europe First was practicality. German was much more dangerous. If Britain and/or Russia fell, it would control the resources of a continent with a huge industrial base. The US would be left alone to assault across the Atlantic with no friendly ports to sail to. In the dark background, Germany had scientists and the potential resources to develop a nuclear weapon (Japan had good scientists, but not the resources). Japan controlled a lot of area on a map, but mostly empty sea. They had captured raw material resources, but it had to be shipped back by sea. And the American subs were waiting. And Japan simply not match US war production. The yards at a single shipbuilder (Bath Iron Works in Maine) built more destroyers than the entire Empire of Japan...

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    5. Don McCollor - I had never thought of it that way before. It certainly seems sensible.

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  8. Looking down on Omaha beach from the cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer is something that every American should do.

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    1. (Don McCollor)..and atop Pointe du Hac where the Rangers climbed the sheer crumbling cliffs while the defenders fired straight down into their faces...

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  9. It is interesting to remember that, at the same time that D Day was occurring, we had 600 ships, and 128,000 men on their way to the Marianas, for Operation FORAGER. While even more ships and men were gathering in staging areas, to begin the Liberation of the Philippines, that would involve another 1,250,000 men.

    At the same time, we were still going full bore in Italy, the 8th and 15th Air Forces were busy bombing everything in range, and the first steps of Operation DRAGOON were taking place.

    In the Atlantic, the Royal, and Royal Canadian Navies had defeated the U Boats in the North Atlantic, and USN CVE Groups were sterilizing the Atlantic of Milch Cows, which inadvertently lead to GUADALCANAL capturing U-505 on June 4th.

    A very busy month, for the US War and Navy Departments.

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  10. Hey AFSarge;

    With Midway, it shifted the power in the Pacific, we went on the Offensive, the loss of 4 of their first line carriers and worse was the loss of the pilots that they never recovered from. I honestly believe until that point, the Japanese pilots were better trained than we were and their planes were first rate. The loss of so many experienced pilots shocked the Japanese command. Also whereas we would send our experienced pilots back "to the world" to train the new pilots, the Japanese did not do such things and their experienced pilots were whittled away by the law of averages. We gradually got better and they progressively got worse, and our new planes were superior to theirs. Granted some of their later planes were really good like the "Oscar", but the pilots were mediocre on the average, so the advantage of a good plane was wasted on the lack of skill of the pilots. Also once we got the Essex class carriers going it spelled the doom for the Japanese. The Slogfest of Guadacanal and the Solomon chain was brutal and a close one, we almost lost it a few times, the Japanese experience at night fighting and their "Long Lance" torpedoes made them feared, and we had the sucky Type IVX torpedoes and a hidebound ordinance dept that wouldn't admit that there was a problem until the Submarine fleet commanders forced Admiral King to face the issues of the torpedoes and that got corrected, then we started wracking up the kills in the pacific. Sorry for the long post :)

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  11. And don't even get me going on how badly Commander Joe Rochefort was screwed over despite his brilliance at Midway.

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    1. Yup, one of those unsung heroes who made a HUGE difference.

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  12. Midway is an important historical moment around our house. A number of my father's classmates at Annapolis played important roles in the battle, not the least of which were Wade McClusky and Max Leslie. My lasting regret is that I met them, and other classmates, while I was too young to appreciate the contributions they had made. To paraphrase Stonewall Jackson, "The Class of 1926 was heard that day",

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    1. They were indeed, their deeds should resound forever.

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  13. Too bad the inept commanders such as Ring and Mitscher got passes.
    Boat Guy

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  14. Well, an interesting what-if would be if McClusky didn't turn to box pattern search and continued along plotted course to where Kido Butai was suposed to be... Or just didnt spot the lone DD hunting for Nautilus.
    Leslie from Yorktown would probably take out one CV , but then full might of rest of the Kido Butai would counterattack while USN was busy recovering own planes.
    Mitscher kinda redeemed himself with his further career. And Hornet's air group in general at Solomons.

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    1. Ah, the what-ifs of history, interesting to ponder.

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  15. Midway allowed the fleet submarines of the US Navy to run amok for the rest of the war. Now if they only had decent torpedoes... Sometimes the worst enemy you have is your own side.

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    1. Yup, those torpedoes were "fine" according to the boffins. Bloody eggheads.

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  16. Your point about the Pacific becoming a Japanese lake reminds me of that Amazon Prime series, the Man in the High Castle. Did you ever watch?

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    1. I eventually did, though the history was implausible at best, the story was good and the characters were very good.

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