Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The Japanese Submarine Campaign of WW2 - Origins to Coral Sea" video.

  1. It picks up a bit in the Guadalcanal campaign, but then gets sidelined into bypassed garrison resupply.
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  2. Actually, across the dateline in Japan it was already December 8th.
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  3. If you take an average figure of around 2,500 tons surfaced, then in raw displacement equivalences you would get around 28 boats per Yamato. The detail issue is that a lot of the latter is specialized armor, guns, and engines, much more dense or complicated than the Type-Cs. Cost-wise, you probably would get a few more for the extra expense.
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  4.  @amerigo88 Regarding Kido Butai distance to Midway, the range difference was between IJN aircraft and USN aircraft, not land-based aircraft. Further away would have meant longer transit times, greater danger of damaged aircraft not making it back to the fleet. The ineffectiveness of USA aircraft against ships was evident in the pre-10AM attacks, easily dealt with by CAP. Midway, although "unsinkable", was still small, a single runway, flat and with little shelter. Two or three consecutive strikes, especially if you catch the defending force on the ground refueling like at Wake, would shut it down or denude it of flyable aircraft. It was the codebreaking and Nimitz's bold pre-deployment of carriers that turned the tide. Despite Mitscher's useless contribution.
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  5. Good question. Those two do not even look related - the splits are different, and the second has more sectors and what may be graphics rather than kanji. And what is the function of the dual boxes below the circle?
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  6.  @bkjeong4302 And yet that still did not account for the truly revolutionary development that changed carrier defense - radar. In the 30s the Brits and others calculated that a CAP could not get airborne and intercept a strike from the time it was spotted by eyeball, so they needed armored decks and small air groups protected inside. Escorts, from BBs to DDs, were the only other chance to interrupt incoming air strikes, or handle surface threats when the weather was bad or during night. I would say that expectation lasted up into 1942.
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  7. Those look like training or propaganda videos. Only a few seem to be real action.
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  8. USS Saratoga begs to differ...
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  9. He seemed to think that the midget subs were going to win the war on their own.
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  10.  @wedgeantilles8575  Disagree. The Pacific was a theater of logistics. At one point the USN was down to only 6 fleet oilers. Every base had to be supplied or it became useless. The flood of Kaiser-built Liberty ships was still in the future early in 1942. A serious dent in allied shipping could have cut off major operations for USN and RN that year. Japan had no chance of crippling the whole US economy, but it did have a chance of crippling Pacific supply lines and frustrating USN operations, most especially the "shoestring" Guadalcanal campaign. As for the "decisive battle that takes the will out of the enemy", that was hopelessly lost on Dec. 7th, the "date that will live in infamy", by turning all those isolationists into staunch "we will fight on to ultimate victory" unconditional-surrender-demanders. Humongous strategic mis-calculation on Yamamoto's part. He should have known better.
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