The Super Summary of World History (107 page)

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    So why attack? Politics mostly. This was the last pure English victory of the war. Well . . . kind of pure. They used American equipment.

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    Some argue there was no two-front war since Britain had no forces on the continent; however, Hitler had troops in France, the United Kingdom was bombing the continent, the war at sea required a large number of resources (submarines), and North Africa was an active front; thus, many resources were committed to the contest with Britain.

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    This is an important process whereby the generals set up their cardboard units and the supposed enemy units to fight one another over the same terrain the battle (s) will be fought on. Generals take sides and then fight it out with referees watching the game. In this way, armies are able to discover flaws in their plans before implementation. Interestingly, German
logistic experts
predicted the limits of the invasion with good accuracy before it was launched.

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    Hitler did not realize the code breakers read the German codes and warned the defenders of the impending attack; thus, surprise, a key element in any airborne assault, was totally lost. Was this the reason Hitler did not want to attack Malta? No one knows.

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    Page 138,
The Great Crusade
, Willmott, 2008, Potomac Books

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    “Lost” in the sense that the USSR would not be conquered. Many German generals thought the Soviets could still be fought to a standstill, and Germany could achieve a stalemate and a truce which would release German units to fight in the west.

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    After the advance on Moscow failed, German generals wanted to retreat to better defensive positions and prepare for possible counterattacks; but Hitler refused to give up any ground even for tactical advantages.

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Japan’s War: the Great Pacific Conflict,
Edwin Hoyt.

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    Some think 260,000 civilians died in Nanking. Estimates at the time put the death toll at 50,000.

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    Poor planning and thinking on Japan’s part. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact to keep the United States from interfering with Japan, but in fact it convinced the Americans that Japan had to be stopped.
This was a major foreign policy blunder
.

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Japan’s War: the Great Pacific Conflict,
Edwin Hoyt

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    Yamamoto was the commander of Japan’s Combined Fleet.

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    The movie
Tora, Tora, Tora
does this, but the viewer must have enough knowledge to appreciate the magnitude of the Japanese errors.

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    At Dawn We Slept: the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, Prange, Gordon., 1981, McGraw-Hill,
The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans
,
Prange, Gordon W.
(1999), Brassey’s,
ISBN 1574882228

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    Some
of
the trouble stemmed from lack of preparation because of the impact of the peace movements, but poor leadership was the main cause of the Allied debacles.

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    Note the Japanese landed on an undefended beach. They landed far from Singapore to avoid British resistance during the landing.

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    Aircraft carriers. It should be noted the aircraft that sank the two British ships were land based. Since the 1600s battleships or ships of the line had ruled the waves. The attack off Singapore changed all that forever.

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    Nations prepare for war against all other nations of any consequence by war gaming the conflict and then drafting plans based on those war games. These plans are updated constantly.

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    War Plan Orange was updated to the Rainbow Plan that assumed a war with Germany and Japan, but still called for the defense of Bataan in the Philippines.
War Plan Orange
, by Edward S. Miller,1991, US Naval Institute.

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    The “initiative” is a term that means the power to determine what to do next. The attacker decides when, where, how, and with what forces to attack. The defense then responds. Thus, the attacker has the initiative. Note there is both a strategic and tactical initiative.

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    He also received a huge sum of money from the Philippine government . . . for some undisclosed reason (want to make a guess?).

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    US Army thought he should have said, “WE shall return . . .”

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    The Japanese had aircraft spotters to help direct their shell fire and they had the
Long Lance torpedo
. The Japanese Long Lance torpedo had a twenty-mile range, one thousand pounds of explosives, was very accurate, and always worked, which made this the best torpedo of the war by far. Four Japanese destroyers defeated a larger Allied force in an action at Badung Strait with these superior torpedoes.

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    This was a daring raid by B-25 aircraft flown off of the carrier USS Hornet. The air crews successfully bombed Tokyo and flew on to China.

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    The emperor was a god on earth to the Japanese, and he had to be protected.

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    See,
The Shattered Sword, the Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
, by J. Parshall and A. Tully.

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    Admiral Halsey’s place at Midway in command of the USS
Enterprise
was taken by Admiral Spruance due to Halsey’s being ill. USS
Yorktown
, in a different task force, was commanded by Admiral Fletcher.

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    There is some dispute about this: see,
The Shattered Sword: the Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
by Parshall and Tully;
Midway, the Battle That Doomed Japan
, by M. Fuchida, M. Okumiya, R. Spruance and C. Kawakmi;
Miracle at Midway
, by Gordon Prange
; Incredible Victory
, by Walter Lord, among others.

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    This destroyer had been depth charging the US submarine
Nautilus
that was trying to get in on the battle. The Japanese destroyer was heading back to the main fleet.

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SBD
was the Dauntless designation meaning Scout, Bomber, Dive (or, slow but deadly).

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    Nagumo was badly served by his staff during these critical moments in the battle. Constantly changing orders caused the ordinance crews to rush, leaving bombs and torpedoes just lying on the deck. When the fire reached the ordinance it exploded helping to sink the carriers. One bomb was enough to sink one of the Japanese carriers.

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    Because of outstanding damage control efforts, it took two Japanese air strikes hitting the
Yorktown
with four bombs and two torpedoes, plus torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, to put the
Yorktown
under.

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    Sounds like the battle for Malaya and Singapore.

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    The Japanese force was starving as it advanced up the Kokoda Track because of inferior logistic support. Still, they went forward.

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    See:
Guadalcanal: the Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle,
by Richard B. Frank

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    See p.977
The Oxford Companion to World War II,
editors Dear, & Foot, Oxford University Press, 1995.

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    As the battle went on, the Japanese became much worse off. Even with fast destroyers as the delivery method, little food got through. Japanese troops were literally starving to death and eating grass trying to stay alive. Again, we see the importance of logistics in warfare.

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    Hitler wanted fascist Spain to join the Axis, but Franco (Spain’s leader) wanted no part of another war. Sub-rosa, Spain did aid the Axis, but stayed neutral. Spain joining the Axis would increase the Axis power base substantially.

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    Reserves were available on the Eastern Front in early 1942
IF
no further offensives were undertaken.

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    General Von Paulus commanded the German Sixth Army fighting at Stalingrad.

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    After the attack, Germany’s Army Group Center ceased to exist. It was wiped from the German order of battle as completely as the Sixth Army had been after Stalingrad. And this was an
ARMY GROUP
of twenty-five divisions or more, not just one army.

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    Operation Drumbeat.

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    German Type VII submarines carried twelve torpedoes

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    In fact, there were barely any escorts for convoy duty. The United States failed to construct or even design ships suitable for convoy duty or fighting submarines. Convoy escorts are normally smaller ships with a large carrying capacity so they can haul a lot of fuel and depth charges and stay on station for long periods of time. The larger and faster destroyers are not well suited for that kind of duty, but they could have been used for convoy protection given the state of the emergency in 1942.

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    Horton was one of the most important and least known men of WWII. He was the key man in the defeat of the German U-boat menace. He was in charge of the Western Approaches to England.

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    This shows how essential supply is to war
. Logistics are THE first priority.

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    Well . . . not everything. In the category of armor missteps occurred.
Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the US Army, 1917-1945 (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
by David E. Johnson (Paperback—Mar 2003). The Germans had better tanks, and both the British and American troops knew this by 1943. Somehow, the Allied generals did not get the message until late 1944. Better Allied steel, slopping the armor, better ammunition, and a high-velocity 75mm gun could have made a substantial difference for the main Allied battle tank, the M-4 Sherman. The Sherman was inferior to the German tanks but was not upgraded until sometime in late 1944 (Battle of the Bulge saw some improved Shermans). Some of this was due to Allied battle doctrine wherein the
Tank Destroyer
was to fight other tanks; however, anyone should have seen, as the Allied troops did, that the Sherman was totally outclassed at D-Day and needed immediate improvement or replacement. The tank crews were simply riding in their coffins as they faced German Tiger and Panther tanks. On the plus side, the Sherman was fast and reliable, and once up gunned it did a little better against the German tanks. The German Panther was an excellent tank, but it too had problems stemming mostly from design flaws that were caused by Nazi infighting during the production process.

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    In later years, Montgomery said the invasion of Italy was planned in the men’s room at Allied HQ. The results certainly make it look like the plan was drawn up in the men’s room.

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    The landings in Sicily were about as large in terms of men committed to the initial assault; but at D-Day, the follow-on forces were much larger and the stakes far higher.

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    Large British raid of 18 to 19 August, 1942 on the German-held French coast at the town of Dieppe involving some five thousand Canadian troops. The raid was a colossal failure resulting in the loss of two-thirds of the invasion force.

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    In one location, the Americans found a buried chest full of Japanese code books enabling US code breakers to read Japanese transmissions more extensively, thus giving US commanders better intelligence on Japan’s actions.

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    General McKinney is largely unknown because he served under MacArthur, who was a fanatic about keeping his name ALONE in the news. It was “MacArthur’s air force sinks convoy.” McKinney was never mentioned. Most military men didn’t care. They were fighting to win the war, not gain accolades from the press

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    The Higgins boat was a landing craft with a flat bottom, a shallow draft, and a bow ramp that dropped to let the troops rush ashore, but it needed
four feet
of water to float and the reef was
three feet
below the surface on invasion day.