This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear.<p>It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you're too politicized to integrate the lessons. Admiral Yamamoto didn't have to worry about upsetting US Navy top brass. He was able to benefit from our lessons, even if we weren't.
Well, in retrospect it's easy to say that air power is the future and battleships are obsolete. But with the information available at the time, I don't think it really was that clear back in 1932. Back then, no capital ship had been sunk let alone been severely damaged(?) by aircraft. Aircraft, and in particular naval aircraft, at the time were flimsy biplanes, with monoplanes slowly entering the scene. Sinking a battleship with those? Pfft, entirely reasonably people said.<p>I mean, put yourself into the hypothetical supreme naval planner of, say, the US or Japan at the time. Are you really going to gamble your entire nations (or empires, if you will) capability to project force overseas on the notion that air power is the future and battleships are obsolete? If you're wrong, the enemy battleship fleet will just shrug off your feeble aerial attacks and proceed to crush your navy and conquer your overseas assets.<p>So in that sense it's no surprise that both USN and IJN built both battleships and carriers. And at least the US kept building them long after Pearl Harbor (though the Iowas were all ordered before Pearl Harbor, but they weren't cancelled in favor of carriers or converted into such either).
Colonel Billy Mitchell, the "father of the US Air Force," was famously court marshalled in 1925. He had predicted that in the future Japan would attack Pearl Harbor with aircraft. He predicted 'aircraft traveling 1000 miles per hour would fight each other in the stratosphere'. He predicted troopers would one day parachute behind enemy lines. He predicted long range heavy bombers. He aggressively argued for stronger investment in air power, against a resistent brass, who, irritated with him, had him court martialed. A great 1955 Gary Cooper film tells his tale, "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell." This is the climactic court martial scene:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecMYH3dPIUI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecMYH3dPIUI</a>
In other wargames:<p>You might remember that the Ronald Reagan was sunk by a Swedish stealth submarine in 2005 [1] and that there is little hope to save the Baltic and Taiwan if Russia and China decide to occupy them [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-games-swedish-stealth-submarine-sank-us-aircraft-carrier-116216" rel="nofollow">https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-games-swedish-ste...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-wargames-heres-a-24-billion-fix/" rel="nofollow">https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-t...</a>
This is a good article, and the story is certainly emotionally appealing, with the maverick who goes against the prevailing wisdom being proven correct in the end.<p>I wonder how this sort of story would look when put into the context of a large scale investigation into military strategy and dissenting voices. When these contrarians pop up are they usually right? Maybe there are heaps of them and 9 out of 10 times conventional military strategy is the better option?<p>Modern military history seems to have so many examples of leaders being wrong, including 'successful' ones, it's hard to extract a clear narrative in many cases.
My uncle flew Cobra helicopters in Vietnam and the us developed a new anti air system and he was supposed to fly against it to demo its effectiveness. I don’t recall the story well but he flew nap of the earth and in a certain manner he knew would counter the aa system and embarrassed the hell out of the bluefor test team and engineers who said he cheated. A friend in the army did an excercise at Bragg where Special forces made him and the other guys attached into opposing force to hunt them down. My friend and his team circled back from the trucks and climbed in the bed and when the sf got tired of looking for them and came back to the truck my friend popped out from under a tarp and simulated kill with miles gear and they said he cheated as well. I guess there are a lot of egos and sore losers in the military throughout history.
This sounds very familiar. You should look up the millennium challenge to see this play out again in modern times.<p><a href="https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/" rel="nofollow">https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...</a><p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002</a>
It is as if people keep thinking of the military as this altruistic organization staffed by pure self-sacrificing people willing to put it all on the line for the defense of country. Sure, that is somewhat true of the troops. But the generals and leaders are political beasts that know the true purpose is to call coddle the status quo & divert gargantuan sums of money into private pockets with as few questions as possible.<p>This is why when real wars happen and the stakes actually suddenly matter there tends to be a large upheaval at the top to discard the political animals. When was it the last time you heard of a US general being fired for incompetence when a procurement projects they led goes totally off the rails (as they almost always do), blowing any notion of budget, time & preparedness ?
I'm surprised to see no mention of the interesting recent book, 2034 by a recently retired us admiral, about how in about 10 years China, through tech superiority, could beat the us, and badly. "A Novel of the Next World War, 2034", by Elliot Ackerman and James G. Stavridis. It has a lot of things that resonate with these war games thoughts. I loved it.
IMO the use of aircraft isn't even the most interesting part of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Having an aircraft carrier isn't very useful if you can't load it with enough fuel to get to a target and back: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment</a>
First Sea Lord (Head of the Royal Navy) Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson described submarines as "Underhanded, unfair and damned un-English". He also suggest that enemy submariners be tried as pirates and hanged if caught.<p>Thankfully (for the RN...) reason prevailed and submarines were in service for the First World War. The pirates association lives on today though - RN submarines returning from deployment still fly the Jolly Roger.
It is very odd that the attack is often taught as something just out of the blue - e.g. there was the Japan War Scare of 1906-1907 <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/japan1906.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/japan1906.htm</a> and Japanese citizens in the US were bascially treated like 2nd class citizens stoking up a lot of resentment (not that I'm defending the attack or the Japanese military/fascist leadership!)
The article makes a good case that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to surprise attacks and the Navy had good reasons to be aware of that at the time. However, that being the case, what should they have done differently to be less vulnerable?<p>Clearly they needed some kind of early warning system, and they actually installed a radar installation which was brand new technology at the time. (Unfortunately, they didn't heed the warning when it came.) What else should they have done?
This is not a story about a war as much as a story about organizations that know better. You can see these cases in various circumstances, from the military to governments to private companies where incompetent decision makers dismiss anything they don't like.
Training enemy has a price. Those j admiral from USA West Point ... observing is just one.<p>It has gone before. As the training of Ag. And ... It is going now.<p>Good luck USA.
FDR goaded Japan into that attack by cutting off their oil and suppressed intelligence about the impending attack to ensure a decisive entry into WWII over the opposition of 90% of the American public. Having political leadership so opposed to the will of the people is a state US 'democracy' seems perpetually unable to end, re Iraq, Vietnam, WWI, WWII etc. Hearing US lecture governments that fight on behalf of their people instead of manipulating them into war would be a national embarrassment if Americans weren't firmly ensconced in their pro-US empire media bubble.<p>PS: FDR began sending supplies to the USSR before pear harbor despite its mass murder and atrocities across Eurasia and extreme unpopularity of the Soviet government with the US public. The embargo with Japan was made for geopolitical reasons and any "humanitarian" argument is post hoc.<p>EDIT: Remarkably, President Herbert Hoover remained politically active in the post-FDR media landscape and his account of the events and of FDRs actions leaves little room for doubt about FDRs aims in his foreign policy with Japan.<p><a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/freedom-betrayed-herbert-hoovers-secret-history-second-world-war-and-its-aftermath" rel="nofollow">https://www.hoover.org/research/freedom-betrayed-herbert-hoo...</a>
Lets remind us our dates.<p>July 4, 1898, the Newlands Resolution was a joint resolution by the United States Congress to annex the independent Republic of Hawaii. In 1900, Congress occupied the Territory of Hawaii, despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians.<p>Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai'i, an occupied territory.<p>August 21, 1959 is when they were forcibly turned into a state, after 60 years of occupation.<p>Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.<p>Edit: both posts are at -4. And indeed it's sad to see close minded nationalism take and keep hold. The world is bigger than from Hawai'i to Maine, and the USA is often the aggressor. I liken to consider myself a citizen of the earth, and not any one nation.