A bold response is the same as a foolish response if if it fails.
Bad ideas in war
- Thread starter HansMustermann
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
No, it really isn't.
Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
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Don't forget both Wake and Midway were attacked just hours after Pearl Harbour.
So that's Philippines, Pearl, Midway and Wake all attacked on the same day.
Where was the Japanese main force?
Where was the carrier force that attacked Pearl?
Cunningham the Wake commander had been working to get the civilians away, but Pearl Harbor had lost so many ships in the attack there weren't the resources available.
The first Japanese attempt at landing on the 11th was driven off, they lost several Destroyers.
They sent
3 light cruisers
6 destroyers
2 patrol boats
2 troop transports
1 submarine tender
3 submarines
It was planned for an American convoy covered by two carrier groups to re-enforce the Island on the 24th.
On the 23rd the Japanese tried again snd succeeded.
The Japanese sent
2 carriers
2 heavy cruisers
3 light cruisers
8 destroyers
2 patrol boats
2 troop transports
1 submarine tender
3 submarines
2,500 infantry
Distant cover provided by elements of the battle fleet.
The American relief force would have been
2 carriers
4 cruisers
6 destroyers
1 seaplane carrier converted to a cargo stores ship
The original Japanese plan for the second landing was to go in on the 24th but the moved it forwards a day after intercepting US radio transmissions from a Catalina evacuating several key radar technical officers.
So that's Philippines, Pearl, Midway and Wake all attacked on the same day.
Where was the Japanese main force?
Where was the carrier force that attacked Pearl?
Cunningham the Wake commander had been working to get the civilians away, but Pearl Harbor had lost so many ships in the attack there weren't the resources available.
The first Japanese attempt at landing on the 11th was driven off, they lost several Destroyers.
They sent
3 light cruisers
6 destroyers
2 patrol boats
2 troop transports
1 submarine tender
3 submarines
It was planned for an American convoy covered by two carrier groups to re-enforce the Island on the 24th.
On the 23rd the Japanese tried again snd succeeded.
The Japanese sent
2 carriers
2 heavy cruisers
3 light cruisers
8 destroyers
2 patrol boats
2 troop transports
1 submarine tender
3 submarines
2,500 infantry
Distant cover provided by elements of the battle fleet.
The American relief force would have been
2 carriers
4 cruisers
6 destroyers
1 seaplane carrier converted to a cargo stores ship
The original Japanese plan for the second landing was to go in on the 24th but the moved it forwards a day after intercepting US radio transmissions from a Catalina evacuating several key radar technical officers.
Can you mention a failed plan that is praised as being “bold”?
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
lobosrul5
Philosopher
Interesting subject, in fact its one I remember in my younger days watching a History Channel doc and getting angry that we abandoned the men on Wake Island. But, I'm not sure its one I'd put in the category of without hindsight they should've attacked the Japanese invasion force. There was confusion a mixed up command structure, the Navy just wasn't ready. What if we had lost a couple of carriers defending Wake, could we then have completely crippled the IJN's carrier force at Midway? Of course the worst even semi plausible case for Japanese success is... still getting nuked and overrun by the Soviets in mid 1945.
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dellarte
Illuminator
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lobosrul5
Philosopher
Hell we could start a thread on that one. The absolute untrue revisionist history that the Treaty of Versailles was super harsh, no it wasn't, not relative to other treaties of the era. Or that it lead to German hyperinflation... no not the primary cause.
dellarte
Illuminator
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
"After the devastation of World War I, the victorious powers imposed a series of treaties upon the defeated powers. Among the treaties, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war. Germany became liable for the cost of massive material damages. The shame of defeat and the 1919 peace settlement played an important role in the rise of Nazism in Germany and the coming of a second “world war” just 20 years later."
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lobosrul5
Philosopher
Important role because the Nazi party made it a scapegoat, along with the stab in the back myth.
Please read thru the following article:
No, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles Was Not Responsible for World War II
What "everyone knows" about the infamous treaty ending World War I is wrong. Stop blaming the Treaty of Versailles for the rise of Adolf Hitler.
www.historynet.com
And I even kinda don't think that article goes far enough. With the "Germany was at fault" section. Germany was at fault for WW1. They goaded the Austrian Empire into declaring war despite Serbia agreeing to almost all their demands. And it was for their own expansionist goals. Germany was 100% to blame for the war.
and watch
and realize that Foch's quote "This is not a peace treaty, this is an armistice for 20 years". Is often misinterpreted. He didn't think it was too harsh, he wanted an occupation.
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I've seen the claim that it did hamstring the German war effort with things like staff training, which ended up reducing its ability to sustain some aspects of the war.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Don't forget that immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the carriers were dispatched to try to find and attack the Pearl raiding force.
They were already looking for the Kido Butai. Why not look for them at Wake, if it seemed that's where they might be? And especially since Wake needed succor anyway?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The Japanese attack on Midway. It doesn't make sense to classify any failed military operation as "stupid". Giving battle means accepting risk. Sometimes an intelligent commander makes an intelligent decision, based on the information he has at the time, and still experiences defeat.
The Midway attack was certainly bold, and very little about it was stupid.* But the Japanese lost anyway, because that's what happens to sometimes, even to intelligent commanders with good battle plans.
*We could certainly argue about whether it made sense to hold back half of the raiding force, and whether a wiser admiral might have avoided the conundrum that led to having full flight decks right at the moment the Americans had the good luck to finally find them. But the overall plan was solid, up to and including the intent to goad the US carriers in decisive battle. Which is exactly what happened.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Midway was six months later. The US carriers that participated in that battle had already been committed in previous battles, and some had already suffered severe damage.
Midway is considered "the" decisive battle of the Pacific because it's the battle that upended the relative strength of each navy's carrier fleet. But I tend to the school of thought that there was no single "decisive" battle in WW2. If the Kido Butai hadn't been crushed at Midway, it would have been crushed sooner or later regardless. By the end of the war, Japan only had about 4-5 carriers, and the US had about 28-30 carriers (fleet and light carriers; not counting escort carriers) in the Pacific. Even if the entire Kido Butai had survived Midway, there was no way Japan would ever survive American industrial output. If there was a decisive battle in the Pacific, it was Pearl Harbor, where Japan's inevitable defeat was set in motion.
That's a silly position to take. Obviously there are varying levels of risk. But there are also varying levels of potential reward.
And I'm sure there are plenty of situations where both sides played the best hand delt to them or where calculated risks were taken and either worked or failed.
However there have been loads of blunders, where either the chances of success were minimal, or the potential rewards for success were minimal.
The Ardennes Offensive in December 1944 being one example.
Or the planning for Operation Barbarossa, deciding to invade the Soviet Union with such a complicated logistics train was more than a gamble, as Germany had the luxury of being the suprise aggressor
lobosrul5
Philosopher
Yes, and had even one fewer carrier been available we could not have taken advantage of our intelligence advantage to crush the Kido Butai at Midway.
With hindsght that is true, there was no way Japan was going to win. Hell, even during the war I think the flag officers in command were confident of this. But, their goal was to defeat Japan as quickly and with the fewest casualties as was possible. That the US eventually had such a big carrier advantage is immaterial to the situation in the war that would've occurred in the second half of 1942, and well into 1943# with no victory at Midway. It almost immediately change the Pacific theater from a series of defeats to being operationally on the offensive. We checked the Japanese during the Solomon Islands/Guadalcanal campaign but even with the victory at Midway it was a very near run thing. The USN was for a time down to Enterprise being the only operational carrier in the entire theater. Without that victory, and the IJN is able to more or less impose their will wherever their logistical train would allow. We'd likely have retreated back to just defending the main* Hawaiin Islands and Aleutians, until a large force of Essex class carriers were available in late 1943 to even begin offensive operations and island hoping. The fighting to retake the Solomon islands alone would've been far more costly. New Guinea is almost certainly controlled by Japan. The Philippines are occupied until VJ day.
The war still would have ended by a B-29 dropping atomic bombs on Japan, though from the Aleutians or western China instead of Tinian. But no one would've known that in 1942.
*I say "main" because technically Midway is part of the Hawaiin island archipelago.
#Looking it up, April 1943 before the 4th was commissioned. But even that is misleading, since a few months of sea work ups and training for new carrier squadrons would be needed
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
That's exactly the position I'm taking, the one you said is silly, right before taking the exact same position yourself!
Agreed. I'm dissenting from the view, implied by steenkh, that all failed military operations are stupid, and should be considered bad ideas. My position (and yours), is that sometimes a failed operation is the result of a bad idea, and sometimes it's the result of a good idea and bad luck.
The concept of a good idea that didn't bear fruit for reasons outside the commander's control is woefully overlooked in this thread, I think.
The Ardennes Offensive is a good example of what I mean.
Nazi Germany was in dire straits in 1944. There was little they could do, other than what they did. Is a last stand always a bad idea? Is a final, desperate sortie, when no other options remain, always a bad idea? I don't think so. Obviously one could argue that German should have just surrendered at that point, and that surrender was the only good idea left to them. But surrender, or fight to the bitter end, is always a difficult choice.