re: Interesting tweet from Newt regarding Pearl Harbor

quote:

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Are you denying that the attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't a strategically amazing Japanese military endeavor?

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I don't want to be "that guy" - but strategically, it cannot be deemed "amazing" - it was a disaster for the country.

Operationally? It was one of the most dazzling naval operations in all of human history.

I get that civilians are not fully comfortable/versed with the SOT snowman and other terms of art.

Looking at the attack objectively, it was a marvel of planning and execution. Every variable was considered by the Japanese. Hell, they even followed a weather front so as to avoid detection . The maintained complete radio silence from the moment they left Japan. They then positioned themselves to the north of Oahu between Hawaii and the mainland so as to make the American radar ant coast watchers think that it was a convoy of American planes coming in.

Fuchida implemented the actual air attack according to plan .

From an objective study it was perhaps one of the great surprise attacks in all of history. Of course even they knew...especially Yamamoto that unless the carriers got hit, that ultimately Japan was toast....Yorktown and Hornet had shifted to the Atlantic and Lexington was at San Diego and Enterprise and another carrier were out at sea.

I wasn't aware of it until the 80's.

Regardless of what anyone thinks that attack was well planned over several years and extremely well executed. They even had to create shallow running torpedoes to work in Pearl Harbor.

FDR and Marshall knew something was up for sure. Tojo had threatened war as late as the end of November. But the US commanders at Pearl were convinced that Japan was never going to attack Pearl flat out. There were reasons to believe that. 1) Japan needed the raw materials that could only be found in the Dutch East Indies , like oil and rubber. 2)There was a fair amount of agreement that an attack on the Phillipines was imminent and maybe Guam but Pearl presented challenges.3) Mainly the depth of the harbor which is actually pretty shallow. Torpedos needed a certain minimum depth in which to operate correctly and Pearl was only 35 feet deep which was considered too shallow.

Despite the revisionism, it was Kimmel the Naval commander who made the determination that Japan would not attack Pearl. He had solid reasoning that involved the fact that Russia was not yet defeated and the Japanese feared a Russian attack by way of Vladivostok and Sakhalin Island from the north.

I give it 3 hours before CNN says Gingrich is personally responsible for ordering the Rape of Nanking.

It was amazingly well executed but not very brilliant. Bring the US into the war cost the axis powers their victory. Strategically it was stupid as frick on their part