Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "Ships of the Imperial Japanese Army - Much Maru About Something" video.

  1. After he lost his Army Air Force on the first day, MacArthur tried to shift the blame to the Navy by giving his adoring journalist entourage some demeaning quotes about lack of Navy support. King was so incensed he blew up when Marshall suggested appointing MacArthur as Supreme Commander in the Pacific, and Leahy backed him. For some unknown reason, MacArthur had some respect for Halsey and vice versa, so Halsey got the tap for escorting him to the Philippines. FDR was a Navy man, but respected the political pull MacArthur could bring if he threw his hat in the ring for the Republicans. Getting to command the recapture of the Philippines kept him out of the race in 1944.
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  2. Aside from the S-boats that used the Mk 10, the Mk 14 had a success rate of around 20%. If it was lower maybe they would have investigated earlier.
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  3.  @Right-Is-Right  That's the Chinese who are scraping up the environmentally-fragile reefs and building islands on them - the Japanese made steel reefs by losing freighters and tankers all over the place.
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  4. Actually, it was a "Kate" Nakajima B5N horizontal/torpedo bomber on the BB, at 10,000 feet dropping a modified 16" AP shell.
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  5. Junior officers of both groups plotted to assassinate the Emperor in the 1930s...
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  6.  @Right-Is-Right  The standard fleet type sub design was nailed down pre-war: six tubes forward, four tubes aft.
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  7.  @magnemoe1  The Soviets just had way more land and resources (including peasants) to fall back on than Japan.
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  8. USN PACSUBFOR: Let's just gang up on BuOrd...
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  9. The Army was all for taking on Russia again, they wanted "Lebensraum" on the Asian continent. They got their noses bloodied at Khalkhin Gol in 1939, so they left off the Russians and resumed trying to put down the Chinese. There were few proven sources of oil in Siberia, but they were more interested in potential ores and timber. The Navy pushed for the southern option, which was mostly a naval war, and had the advantage of aiming for the Dutch East Indies were there was significant oil, along with rubber and tin in Malaysia. But their battle doctrine was all offensive big-gun Main Battle, so they neglected issues like convoy protection and air defense. They took the southern DEI easily, but could not defend the convoys carrying the resources homeward.
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  10. The land-based bomber units of IJN were a significant part of IJN, they took out Prince of Wales and Repulse on Day 3. Fear that the US land-based air might be as good as them may have driven Nagumo to retreat from Pearl after the first strikes. The IJN "marine corps", the SNLF, were only good as occupation forces and showed their poor capabilities in opposed landing at Wake.
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  11. The Japanese Cabinet interwar was dominated by the Army and Navy Ministers, who could bring the government down just by refusing to agree - which happened several times. Every significant issue revolved around whether the Army and Navy got something out of it.
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  12. A "Q" ship with underwater Long Lance tubes and tons of 25mm AA guns?
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  13. ... by submarine...
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  14.  @CharlesStearman  But they would not give CC any good long-range 4E planes until Churchill ordered them to...
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  15. How did they achieve successes? Surprise Initiative Distraction (Germany in Europe) Underestimation (of their abilities) Training and Experience (admittedly against weak Chinese) Note how long that lasted - about 5 months...
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  16. Literally, "circle" or "round". It was commonly used for a lot of civilian ships, anything bigger than a small boat.
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  17. Had they executed a more coherent strategy, either they would have ganged up on the Soviets and ignored the West or they would have made nice and not gone to war at all. Germany First was the Allied motto; Russia First should have been the Axis motto.
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  18.  @rohannbennedicktan7226  Pulling back from Burma would mean the reopening of the Burma Road and strengthening of Chinese forces, so more IJA losses in China. The battle for northern Australia would be hard-fought, but US, UK & AUS can probably trade space for time while bringing up more air units and sub units to nibble at the flanks and supplies. Long-term, still an Allied victory, just more of the battles happening in northern Australia and nearby waters.
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  19. They both did really well after taking 6 months to plan the beginning of the war (IJA: Singapore; IJN: Rabaul); they both lied to each other about their failures (IJA: Khalkhin Gol; IJN: Midway); they both tried to overextend their agreed perimeters and got bloody noses (IJA: Imphal; IJN: Coral Sea); young officers of both tried to overturn the government by assassination (IJA: 1936; IJN: 1932); they both resorted to suicide tactics rather than surrender when they were overwhelmed (IJA: Saipan; IJN: Kamikazes). On a more serious note, the IJA got itself entrenched in endless insolvable warfare in China after aiming to take on the Soviets but losing to them in Mongolia in 1939. Their primary strategy of moving northward would not have solved Japan's greatest strategic resource need, which was oil. The IJN got itself entrenched in endless insolvable warfare in the Solomons after sparking the US involvement with a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Their strategy of moving southward did manage to capture major oil sources in the Dutch East Indies, but their neglect of convoy protection measures meant they progressively lost the ability to transport the oil back to Japan.
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  20. Read up on the Battle of Sunda Strait and the "incidents" of 1932 and 1936.
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  21.  @RonJohn63  No, I'm saying that only one Army person really ticked off the USN, and that was MacArthur's attempt to blame the Navy for his own failures in the Philippines.
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  22.  @geordiedog1749  Junior Army officers disregard direct orders from headquarters and start a major war by staging an "incident" claiming Chinese forces fired on them...
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  23. Blame a good chunk of that Army-Navy issues on MacArthur...
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  24. As long as they were fighting different battles they were doing ok. When they had to cooperate, like at Guadalcanal, it went badly.
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  25. Read any good history of the 1930s in Japan, particularly Japanese authors. Junior officers trying to assassinate senior officers, cabinet members, the prime minister, even the emperor at one point. Governments falling due to Army-Navy spats. Wars started by junior officers despite direct orders from headquarters. It was bad.
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  26.  @demanischaffer  The unspoken dynamic is the feeling on the ground that the A-10 is dedicated to their support, while the F-16 or whatever else is "capable" of CAS and occasionally tasked with it, but is also capable and often tasked with other missions and probably won't be available when the SHTF. The ground-pounders have experienced so many times the AF putting CAS last on their get-done list.
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  27.  @TheTutch  In the 30s while the US and UK were dreaming of peace and quiet, the Nazis were dreaming of taking over the German government and rescinding the Versailles Treaty while the Japanese Army were already boots-on-the-ground in Manchuria, dreaming of the rest of China and then Siberia.
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  28.  @halojump123  Wasn't there two Smiths, USA and USMC, that got into a match after Saipan?
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  29. The army wanted to go north into Russian Siberia. Khalkhin Gol stopped that.
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  30. Yeah, all they hit was the oil tanks and the shipyard...
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  31.  @halojump123  "Those who neglect or forget history are doomed to repeat it"...
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  32. Estimates are that Mk 14s worked about 20% of the time in 1942.
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  33. Any of the US Army landing craft?
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  34. In 1942 the Mk 14 had a 20% success rate. Worth trying, if you have more than 4 tubes...
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  35. IJA lines were not close enough...
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  36. That would be the Marco Polo Bridge "incident"...
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  37. At the Japanese Naval Academy, the top graduates were sent to battleships; the next rank was sent to cruisers, the next rank to destroyers, the next rank to air units, and the next rank to submarines. Anyone left after that was sent to escort units.
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  38. The Yamato...
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  39. And yet they only spent about 6 months doing amphibious assaults in SEA...
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  40. Not too many ships get the privilege of damaging their own ships in TWO battles...
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  41.  @florinivan6907  Germany had some small hope of building nukes, but Japan had practically none. Nor did they have a good uranium source.
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  42.  @kimmoj2570  Ah, but the Army's air force is limited to helicopters - they offered to take over the A-10's, but were turned down...
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  43. The IJN proposed the invasion of Australia to the IJA in 1942 after the unexpected early success of the First Operational Phase (taking the Dutch East Indies), but the IJA rejected the idea because they wanted to preserve their troops for Burma and China. The IJN went ahead with trying to move southward anyway with it's own forces, first towards Port Moresby (stopped by Coral Sea) and then toward New Caledonia and Fijis via Guadalcanal (stopped there).
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  44. Japanese Army tried an attack against Russia-backed Mongolia in 1939, short initial success followed by extremely bloody rebuff when Stalin sent Zhukov with major reinforcements including tanks and aircraft. After that Japan signed non-aggression pact and switched to trying to pacify China, which was an endless quagmire. The other issue was oil - neither Siberia nor China had any oil, and Japanese synthetic fuel program was very slow and used up needed coal stocks. Even the Army agreed they had to move south towards oil-rich Dutch East Indies.
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  45. They were big on the bayonet charge...
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  46.  @cariopuppetmaster Explain Wake then.
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  47. Hopefully Mrs. Drach is not a Shakespearean Literature lover...
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  48.  @olliefoxx7165  China had numerous warlords in the 1920s, but they grudgingly united against the Japanese after the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1931. The Chinese theater was the largest focus of Imperial Headquarters throughout WW2, and the area of greatest loss of IJA troops. The US and UK tried hard to keep the Chinese forces supported, hence The Hump - costly airborne supply runs from India to China when the Burma Road was closed. After the war, China was awarded one of the five permanent seats on the Security Council of the UN.
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  49. IJA reply: Just don't tell the IJN about this...
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  50. Army single-engine aircraft, and mostly ferrying, not equipped to land and rearm.
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  51.  @thanakonpraepanich4284  I suspect the IJAAF was influenced most by Germany, as that was the primary advisor they sought out. Practically, they did not have the same level of control over field units as the Wehrmacht - the Kwantung Army was constantly doing things Tokyo did not want them to, including starting a serious shooting incident with the Russians in 1939. From what I have read of Yamamoto's thoughts on land-based bombers, there was NO strategic level to his planning - support of the fleet was the primary objective, particularly the First Phase of the Decisive Battle plan.
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  52. Probably for how many IJN torpedoes she took?
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  53. Perhaps that works more as a diversion from military services combining to overthrow the civilian government. In Japan's case, the makeup of the Cabinet was such that the Army-Navy competition could overthrow the government, and often did. Japan was practically governed by kow-towing to the military in the 30s.
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  54.  CreedOfHeresy  What, the US? What is your "preferred pronoun" today?
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  55.  @paulsteaven  And then the IJA gets them back by falsely telling them they've taken Henderson Field - "oops, sorry..."
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  56.  @nikolatasev4948  Agreed - too much too quickly, probably "opportunity targets" since French, Dutch & UK/AUS were distracted by the war in Europe & North Africa. Similar problem with Germany, they struck east, then west, then east again, and added south as well. Four fronts going on all at the same time, and still Hitler declared war on USA. Stupid.
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  57. I think you are right about Japan vs Russia, but their #1 problem, caused by IJA ticking off US with atrocities in China, was lack of oil. Going north does not get you oil. Either go south to Sumatra/Borneo or make peace with US.
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  58. Here's a few that might amuse you: Argentina Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Kaiy%C5%8D Brazil Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Maru Hawaii Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Maru Lima Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Lima_Maru Lisbon Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Maru Montevideo Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Montevideo_Maru Suez Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Suez_Maru Tango Maru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tango_Maru That's from a list of "hell ships", there were lots more without links like Clyde Maru, Thames Maru, Winchester Maru, etc.
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