Military Affairs & History

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:54 pm

So as I mentioned in the Politics thread, I'm always learning new things about WWII. MacArthur decided not to attack Japanese air fields on Formosa/Taiwan after Pearl Harbor because of his close relationship with President Quezon. Lots of shady payments to MacArthur for services to the Philippine army prior to the war, and so on. Quezon didn't want the Japanese to attack the US airfields from which the B-17s took off.

So MacArthur ignored his air corps' requests to strike, and then got most of the B-17s destroyed on the ground when the Japanese eventually attacked. An early attack on Japanese bases probably wouldn't have done much other than delay the inevitable, but it is an interesting what if scenario.

https://www.historynet.com/why-did-maca ... -first.htm

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:34 pm

I may have asked this a while back, but does anyone else listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History? It is absolutely superb. I just finished Part IV of "Supernova in the East" about the rise of the Japanese Empire and the War in the Pacific. So damn good. The primary sources and quotes he uses makes it so much better.
I've been meaning to watch/listen to his interview with Tom Hanks about Greyhound for months now, but I keep putting it off.

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:36 pm

So as I mentioned in the Politics thread, I'm always learning new things about WWII. MacArthur decided not to attack Japanese air fields on Formosa/Taiwan after Pearl Harbor because of his close relationship with President Quezon. Lots of shady payments to MacArthur for services to the Philippine army prior to the war, and so on. Quezon didn't want the Japanese to attack the US airfields from which the B-17s took off.

So MacArthur ignored his air corps' requests to strike, and then got most of the B-17s destroyed on the ground when the Japanese eventually attacked. An early attack on Japanese bases probably wouldn't have done much other than delay the inevitable, but it is an interesting what if scenario.

https://www.historynet.com/why-did-maca ... -first.htm
Very interesting. The rah rah American military history loving me can't get enough of MacArthur, but he was a sketchy diva to the nth degree.

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:15 pm

Hard to believe it's been that long


DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:34 pm

Very good thread on the air war


Kaiser
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Postby Kaiser » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:08 pm

not sure that guy understands the objectives of war. we're destroying their ****, not helping them with their lego set.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:18 pm

There sure are some takes in that Twitter thread..........

Shyster
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Postby Shyster » Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:00 pm


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Postby Shyster » Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:16 pm

Personally, I think they should go back to the WWII tradition of naming attack subs after fish. There are plenty of famous names that they could reuse, like USS Tang, Flasher, Rasher, Barb, Growler, Albacore, and Wahoo.
I also just noticed that the Navy is going back to fish names. The first two Flight 5 Virginia-class subs will be Oklahoma and Arizona, but the next four after that will be Barb, Tang, Wahoo, and Silversides. Nice.

NAN
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Postby NAN » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:11 am

I'm reading "With the Old Breed" the book by Eugene Sledge and one of the books used for the Pacific HBO mini series. Man, what those men went through on Peleliu and Okinawa. It was just a slaughter. And not only were they up against an enemy that wasn't going to surender and were going to fight to the death regardless, but on Peleliu they had to deal with 110-115 degree days, no water, little to no food, the insects and hard rock for 3 straight months. And there was no rest or relief.

And then on Okinawa, being so close to the mainland, the Japanese were relentless and all 110K Japanese soliders were going to fight to the death. Suicide attacks, using villagers as shields and suicide bombers, etc. And then on top of that it rained a ton and every movement was through mud, sometimes knee deep. Just absolutely crazy. And again, this was for 3 months.

I know many don't agree with Truman dropping the bombs on mainland Japan, and I feel horrible that it killed many cilivilians, but just from the books I've read and talking to my grandpa when he was younger and what these men saw from the japanese on their island jumping campaign to get to mainland Japan, if the US didn't force the surrender of Japan with those bombs, the fight on the mainland would have been absolutely brutal. From all sides.

dodint
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Postby dodint » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:20 am

The Sledge book is exceptional. Glad you're reading it.

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Postby NAN » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:25 am

The Sledge book is exceptional. Glad you're reading it.
Any recommendations for other WWII books like that? I really enjoy reading these.

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:27 am

Yeah, the fight for the main islands would have been brutal. Casualty estimates were north of 1 million for the US, who knows how many for the Japanese. Every civilian was being trained to repulse attackers using whatever weapons were handy. Scary.

dodint
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Postby dodint » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:28 am

WTOB is kind of exceptional in that I believe, at least at the time it was written, it was the only WWII memoir published from the enlisted perspective. It's kind of its own sub-genre.
I re-read Band of Brothers every 10 years or so but I assume you've already done that.

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:30 am

The Sledge book is exceptional. Glad you're reading it.
Any recommendations for other WWII books like that? I really enjoy reading these.
I really enjoyed William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness. He was a Pacific veteran (and historian) that fought in many of the same battles as Sledge. He goes back in the 1970s and walks the battlefields and alternates that with his own biography. It's very good.

Robert Leckie's book, Helmet for a Pillow, was also pretty good.

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Postby NAN » Wed Jan 27, 2021 10:37 am

The Sledge book is exceptional. Glad you're reading it.
Any recommendations for other WWII books like that? I really enjoy reading these.
I really enjoyed William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness. He was a Pacific veteran (and historian) that fought in many of the same battles as Sledge. He goes back in the 1970s and walks the battlefields and alternates that with his own biography. It's very good.

Robert Leckie's book, Helmet for a Pillow, was also pretty good.
I'll have to read those too. I know Leckie's was the other book used in the Pacific.

dodint, I read Band of Brothers, but it's been probably 20 years. I'll have to pick that up again and read.

I read over the fall, Voices From the Attic: The Williamstown Boys during the Civil War. That was really good if anyone is interested. The author was cleaning out his dad's attic and found 2 chests full of letters from one of great uncles or something. They were all letters to and from home from two brothers from Williamstown Vermont I believe while they were fighting the Civil War. It's all first hand accounts of their experiences during the Civil War. It was really good, and yet again another eye opener with what the troops went through from a field perspective. Just the marches, the long cold winters, the actual battles they were involved in. And during the Civil War, just a lot of waiting.

Freddy Rumsen
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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Wed Jan 27, 2021 11:02 am

In a similar vein I recommend "The Faces of Battle" by Donald Kagan.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 11:15 am

D-Day and The Wild Blue (both by Stephen Ambrose) are also very good books. Much narrow focus in subject, but they're incredibly well researched and presented.

relantel
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Postby relantel » Wed Jan 27, 2021 12:05 pm

One of the many quibbles with Top Gun is the F-14 also had an ejection loop between each crewmember's knees, not just the face curtain pulls on the top of each headrest......

You could set either crewmember to command both seats to eject.in the Tomcat, and with a normal crew during ACM it was common for the RIO to have control, so it made sense when Goose fired they were both sent for a ride. But if the non-commanding crew fired their seat, only they would blow out, leaving behind one very confused aviator. Iirc in the case above the Guy In Back was a VIP RDML who accidentally pulled the lower loop under G-loading and sent himself into the Wild Blue.
JAG did a storyline like that in an episode, with Chegwidden inadvertently ejecting over WV somewhere.

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 12:34 pm

D-Day and The Wild Blue (both by Stephen Ambrose) are also very good books. Much narrow focus in subject, but they're incredibly well researched and presented.
D-Day was phenomenal. Need to get The Wild Blue.

I also have the Sledge book on my bookshelf based on dodint's recommendation.

After taking two months to finish the Oppenheimer bio, I need to switch gears to fiction. Starting Imajica tonight, very excited.

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:19 pm

Wild Blue is the one he got called out for plagiarizing, fwiw.

Masters of the Air is really well written, and the basis for the Spielberg/Hanks miniseries coming out eventually.

Freddy Rumsen
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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:26 pm

Is that like when DKG got caught plagiarizing...it was basically the researchers writing the book and she just kind of collated everything?

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:33 pm


tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:45 pm

Ambrose was found to have a habit where he'd cite sources in footnotes, but would lift entire passages verbatim and not put them in quotes.

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Postby NAN » Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:05 pm

I'll have to get D-Day too.

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