Hiroshima justified? (Invasion should have been attempted atthe very least if not carried thru)

How much of a difference did battle ships and destroyers make in the
Pacific battle?? Since the carriers were out to sea when Pearl was
attacked, and looking at the day by day reports of the battles, it seems
that most damage was done by the planes from the carriers. Torpedo
bombers and such. It doesn't seem like the damaged battleships were
missed. Also, how effective were the bigger bombers in the ocean
battles. Looking at a particular photo on the Navy's history web site,
B17's were a complete miss when going after a Japanese ship.

Sawfish wrote:

Merlin Dorfman writes:



Glenn Jacobs ) wrote:
: On 22 Dec 2003 17:13:30 -0800, cave fish wrote:





: Yes. Against the prospect of instantly annihilating entire populations
: indiscrimately, I would risk more American soldiers' lives. And,
: unless the invasion was attempted we wouldn't know whether it was a
: good or bad idea.





: Invasion is almost always a bad idea when other alternatives are available.
: You fight a war to win it and part of winning it is to conserve your lives,
: and to waste as many of the enemies lives as possible. As for military
: versus civilian, the only place that the Japanese respected this was at
: Pearl Harbor, in all other cases they treated the civilians equally as the
: military.





I think this isn't really true. I think the difference was
Army vs. Navy. The Imperial Japanese Army had really been driving
the militarization and expansion, and had few officers who had ever
spent any time outside of Japan. The Navy was reluctant to
participate in aggression, having seen the Western world and
understanding that the US in particular could out-produce Japan
many times over; and in modeling itself after Britain's navy seemed
to have a more Western sense of how a war should be fought.



I don't think that you understand the psyche of the pre-war Japanese
leadership. It was an arrogant crew of elitists with the peculiar Japanese
trait of being reluctant to make a commitment because the anture of
commitment carries infinitely more moral weight there than here.

So, the Army leadership could see that the likelihood of them mopping the
floor with the British/Dutch/Americans/what-have-you was very great;
success for them was very likely. Hence no problem commiting to war; their
part looked pretty safe.

But the naval leadership could see that they were going to have no great
strategic advantage if Pearl Harbor was not a rousing success (it was
not), and hence the tendency to equivocate.

How much of a difference did battle ships and destroyers make in the
Pacific battle?? Since the carriers were out to sea when Pearl was
attacked, and looking at the day by day reports of the battles, it seems
that most damage was done by the planes from the carriers. Torpedo
bombers and such. It doesn't seem like the damaged battleships were
missed. Also, how effective were the bigger bombers in the ocean
battles. Looking at a particular photo on the Navy's history web site,
B17's were a complete miss when going after a Japanese ship.

Both your points are valid. Curiously, the Japanese could be said to
have invented the concept of the carrier battle group, which the
Americans used to such good effect from 1942 onward. Perhaps they did
the U.S. Navy a favor in so rudely divesting the Pacific Fleet of its
battleships?

Battleships saw heavy use as seaborne artillery throughout the war,
right up to its last days.

And high-level bombing did prove ineffective against ships,
vindicating the navy's decision not to use the Norden bombsight (a
navy project) but to develop dive-bombers instead.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email:

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

Cub Driver ) wrote:

: How much of a difference did battle ships and destroyers make in the
: Pacific battle?? Since the carriers were out to sea when Pearl was
: attacked, and looking at the day by day reports of the battles, it seems
: that most damage was done by the planes from the carriers. Torpedo
: bombers and such. It doesn't seem like the damaged battleships were
: missed. Also, how effective were the bigger bombers in the ocean
: battles. Looking at a particular photo on the Navy's history web site,
: B17's were a complete miss when going after a Japanese ship.

: Both your points are valid. Curiously, the Japanese could be said to
: have invented the concept of the carrier battle group, which the
: Americans used to such good effect from 1942 onward. Perhaps they did
: the U.S. Navy a favor in so rudely divesting the Pacific Fleet of its
: battleships?

The concept--referred to by the US as a Carrier Task Force--had
occurred to someforward-looking US officers but had not been
accepted by the high command, which still saw battleships slugging it
out as the way sea wars would be decided. (War Plan Orange, still in
effect on 12/7/41, called for the US to send battleships towards the
Philippines to engage the Japanese fleet. Cruisers and destroyers,
supplemented by carrier-based aircraft, were primarily scouts, though
they could deliver some weapons.) Pearl Harbor forced the US to
abandon this strategy and build the striking force around the aircraft
carrier.

: Battleships saw heavy use as seaborne artillery throughout the war,
: right up to its last days.

And as anti-aircraft platforms. More and more AA guns were
added to battleships, cruisers, and destroyers through the war. With
the proximity fuse, they were quite effective, leaving the Japanese
to adopt Kamikaze tactics as the only way to get through.

: And high-level bombing did prove ineffective against ships,
: vindicating the navy's decision not to use the Norden bombsight (a
: navy project) but to develop dive-bombers instead.

Through the 15 or so years before the war, both the US and
Japanese navies, and to a lesser extent the British (whose operating
environment was completely different), worked on effective means of
attacking ships with aircraft. Coordinated dive bombing and torpedo
atacks were the preferred method.
But the US Army Air Force was able to attack surface ships by
skip-bombing using conventional bombs.