Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "The Development of Night Fighting in the USN and IJN - The 1942 Crucible" video.

  1. My Dad was in the Marines and eventually I was myself. I read a young persons history of the Marines from the school library when I was 10 and that transitioned me from wanting to be a Cowboy to wanting to be a Marine. During my High School years - Robert Leckie was my favorite author. I read Guadalcanal Diary and a number of Morrison's books. Eventually I read Franks book on the Campaign and also read a History of Marine Aviation in WWII - among other works that I can't recall just now. So I've been studying this campaign or parts there of for longer than most of you have been alive. And - it was truly joyful to listen to 3 well informed people talking about this campaign. I drank beer with a group of other history buffs for over 20 years and this reminded me of that. The Guadalcanal Campaign in 1942 was the last chance Japan had of avoiding utter disaster in the war, even if it wasn't much of a chance. I disagree with Jon that the Japanese ever could have won the campaign. Even after the shellacking Henderson received you will note - that the attempt to unload supplies the next day from the Japanese Transports - which in desperation were run aground - utterly failed. The airfield had been put right back into operation and those transports were sunk and their supplies destroyed. Here - the thing was - the Japanese Navy couldn't operate in daylight against the airfield and even if they had had spotter planes that survived American Air - it's uncertain they could have so destroyed the field as to take it out of operation for anything but a short period of time. The Americans had all the equipment there that had been used by they and the Japanese to build the air field - and could rapidly repair any damage done to it. As to New Guinea - the main factor (as I understand it) that prevented American Transports from supporting the Buna-Gona Campaign was a lack of charts for those waters. The "Rag Tag Fleet" MacArthur's people put together - was of much smaller ships - many of which may well have already operated in those waters so that even if they didn't have charts (and they themselves may have had them even if the Navy didn't) the crews of these ships might have been familiar enough with these waters to operate in them. The thing with the Kongos was that they were the only Japanese Capital Ships that were fast enough - due to their Battle Cruiser History - to operate with the carriers. And so - once again - we have that excellent researcher - Jon - whose conclusions are completely out to lunch. Yes - they may have been escorting a crappy little carrier at the moment - but - there were not going to be any more of them - and when they got some better carriers - using all the Kongos in the Guadalcanal Campaign they could lose them all the way they'd lost half of them in a few days. The decisive moment in the campaign was when Nimitz replaced Ghormley with Halsey. Whatever his later faults - Halsey, like Grant, would go right at the enemy regardless of his own losses - as each of these men understood - that their enemy could not replace his losses - but they could replace theirs. This point is well made in the discussion of that last battle. The Comment I loved the most was about people who stopped reading Mahan after the Decisive Battle. That was the Japanese to a T. They had all their submarines out chasing warships. They had some very notable results but - submarines are much more effective against merchant ships. One Japanese characteristic - is that they tend to develop their plans based on group consensus - but then - if they need to change their plans they tend to be inflexible. The best example of that is their attempt to avoid becoming a colony by becoming a colonial power. They just didn't seem to realize that that time had passed when they went about conquering China. They also don't seem to have noticed - that none of the Colonial Powers had let any of the other Colonial powers take ALL of China. Thus the Americans stopped supplying them with the oil they were using to rape Chinese cities. The big thing here though - is that you train the way you are going to fight - because you WILL fight the way you train. The Americans practiced Daylight Gunnery before the war and the Japanese practiced night battles. The thing with firing guns in a night battle - besides the fact that everyone can see you - is that after you do - the flash destroys your Night Vision and you can't see anyone else - unless they are on fire. Catch on fire - and EVERYONE shoots at you. Torpedoes were the weapon of Night Warfare - before Radar. You could fire your torpedoes without the enemy knowing you'd done so or even if you were there. The Americans had no torpedoes on most of their Cruisers and the torpedoes they had on their destroyers were horrible - in contrast to the Japanese - who had the best torpedo in the world. Very good points about the CIC and Radar especially that the Americans could actually field all of them they wanted. One of the things about the American/British Technological Team - was that things the British thought up - the Americans (besides the things they thought up themselves) could mass produce. The Germans were the only other participant that was on a par with the Americans and British Technologically - and they - couldn't come close to the Americans ability to mass produce things. Webster's remark pretty much sums up the Axis forces in WWII: "You have horses! What were you thinking?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyZK8k4gzyg No one else - not even the Russians - could touch that. .
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