Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "The Last Japanese Victory: Vella Lavella" video.

  1. You have to believe that High Command was constantly harping on the need to save ships for the Big Battle. Tokyo already knew that the US was cranking out Fletchers at a frantic tempo. That's why exchanging an IJN DD for a USN DD was a DEFEAT. The same production logic drove the Germans crazy on the Soviet front. In both cases, the Axis forces needed to pick off five or more opponents for the loss of even one DD or tank. The crippled USN DDs actually counted for nothing. Their crews survived. Whether the ships were repaired or scrapped was irrelevant. Worse, the IJN had squandered a real opportunity to really punish the USN. They lost this engagement. They had superior forces in play, exchanged even, and gave up Vella Lavella. The damaged DDs simply don't count -- except to wargamers. Even exchanges are a DISASTER for the IJN.
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  2.  Mwaura Kinuthia  The IJN HAD to use DDs as transports.  Japan simply did not have fast transports -- any transports -- remotely as fast as those sailing under the Stars and Stripes. The scheme worked brilliantly -- until it didn't. The RN and USN never imagined that destroyers would be so tasked and that SNLF would seize island objectives so quickly and so cheaply. This gambit was as stunning in the Pacific as parachute drops were in Europe in 1940. In the early going, the IJN was picking off islands on the cheap as in most cases there was no resistance at all. BTW, it's interesting that Vella Lavella rates as an IJN victory when it's strictly a compelled retreat. The IJN is by now seriously short on DDs. Even losing just one to sink one USN destroyer is a losing 'trade' for the IJN. Damaged USN DDs actually count for nothing. Their crews will just jump to a new Fletcher.  In the larger picture, this was an IJN defeat. Tokyo was right.
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  3. They war-gamed it. They simply could NOT get transport to reach out that far in the amounts needed and the speed needed.  Look at how tough it was for the USN to close up on Japan. Hawaii was MUCH tougher than Truk. Look at how difficult it was. Lastly, did you know that FDR had moved the USN bunker fuel into the the middle of Oahu? (Imported West Virginia coal miners excavated two massive caverns in total secrecy.) The above-ground tanks were actually empty, December 7th. Yeah, that was kept secret until 1991... fifty-years after Pearl Harbor. The only scary tanks were those holding aviation gasoline -- on Ford Island. It had been an air strip, too. But by 1941, it was only used for touch-and-goes and the occasional light aircraft. The new stuff couldn't tolerate its short strip. Barber's Point NAS had been opened up in the middle of a cane field by then. "On December 7, 1941, Barbers Point was one of the many targets attacked by the Japanese during the attack on Pearl Harbor..." It should've been mighty empty as its squadrons were at sea.
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  4. Poetic repetition in names was -- and remains -- common for Polynesians. Some of these crazy names are Europeanized versions of the local names. Guadalcanal smells Polynesian, too. It certainly was no canal. It probably translates as "The Armpit of the Solomons." (It gets hairy there.)
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  5. Their captains have been brow-beaten with the mantra that their ships must be saved for the Big Battle. It's by this point that the IJN realizes that the Pacific War has devolved to a production war -- and they are totally screwed. The Solomons were the last time that the lay of the islands actually favored the IJN. From here on out, the USN was going to be able to pick off the Japanese, island by island. There would be no New Britain to back-stop the out-posts. Their land based aircraft are, by now, being just shredded. The P-38 is now showing up in numbers. It's pretty long-range, too... right up there with the Japanese machines. What a nightmare.
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  6.  @mikearmstrong8483  Only those conned cretins were deemed stupid.
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