WEBVTT

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That was Welcome to mid Rats with
sal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one

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from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your
home for a discussion of national security issues

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in all things maritime. And good
day everybody. Glad to have you aboard.

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And if you are with us Live, which I would like to thank

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everybody who's totally obsessed about the Super
Bowl today, it doesn't start yet,

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you've got time from mid Rats,
so you've bracedols that decide you need a

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little bit of a brain cleanser and
get back to our favorite. We appreciate

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you join join us Live. One
of the great things like about having you

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live is we're able to get feedback
from you. So while we're doing the

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show, scroll down to the bottom
of the show page. That's where you

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will find a link to the chat
room. And if you are so inclined,

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you have some observations you would like
to share during the course of the

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show, or even a question you
would like for us to direct to our

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guests. If you put it there
in the in the chat room, we'll

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be glad to pull it in.
And I always like to do the Altar

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call when I get a chance,
and I don't forget that. If you

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don't already, go over to iTunes, spreakers, Spotify, wherever you aggregate

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your podcast, and go ahead and
subscribe to mid Rats, because maybe Sunday

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Live is not always comming it to
you that way when you're doing your commute

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during the week. We'll be right
there ready for you when you want to

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listen to us prattle on. But
we're not going to prattle on today.

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We've got a great topic with it
with a great guest, and what we're

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going to look about is it's a
regular conversation. Everybody likes talking about the

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vulnerabilities of aircraft carriers as if it's
really anything new. It's really not.

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You can go back to the dawn
of when aircraft carriers are first used in

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combat, and they are vulnerable,
not just because of what they're designed to

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do, which is carry a bunch
of thin skinned airplanes full of fuel and

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bombs around, but it's because of
what they can do. There are few

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assets that you can think of,
especially in the last century, that a

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nation can project sovereign authority and power
on a global scale at sea, in

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the global commons than an aircraft carrier. As such, people who don't have

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that capability, or even have a
smaller version or an equal version, They're

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going to want to eliminate that capability
because that's what best suits their needs if

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they decide they don't want Uncle Sam
twirling around in their waters doing what he

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wants to do. And at peace
and war, we see that even in

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the events in the Red Sea recently, again the questions asked, where's the

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aircraft carrier? It's not so much
where are the armored divisions? And when

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we look back at the great Pacific
wars of the last century, whether World

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War II, Korea and Vietnam,
there are places where, especially towards the

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end of World War Two, not
so much in the beginning, which is

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what we're going to talk about.
The aircraft areas could operate pretty much,

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it will and dominate most of the
world oceans and that history and that habit,

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especially for those that are Gen X
and younger, we think that's our

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birthright since to follow the Soviet Union, it's really not that age, if

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it's not already, is going to
be shutting its door any moment now.

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And we want to talk a little
bit about that reality because it's a background

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I think is important for people to
understand should the next Great Pacific War come

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that it's not going to be like
other wars where we're used to just having

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our aircraft carriers, airwings doing whatever
they want, wherever they want. And

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we're going to bring on a returning
guest today, spot on. He's been

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doing a lot of the intellectual heavy
lifting on this exact topic, and that

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is doctor John T. June.
He's a professor of military history at the

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Army Command in General Staff College in
Leavenworth, Kansas. John, Welcome back

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to mid Rats this Sunday. It's
great to have you board. Hey,

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it's good to be here. So
sorry about my bark and dog. He's

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got a bark collar on too,
so I don't know, we might have

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to check our bark collar out.
We are a dog friendly show that just

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gives it that homie feel. I
just introduced you and regulars the mid Rats.

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They've they've listened to us interview you
before, but we've always got new

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listeners on board, and I've I've
always found your job to be as interesting

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as it is important because here you
are, retired US Navy commander in the

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heart of the country, very far
away from salt water samitting most of your

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time trudging around with army guys in
Kansas, and talk for a little bit

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about the staff college that you have
there in Levenworth, your role and not

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just you know, specific role,
but how you see yourself as one of

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the few Navy guys there that can
perhaps broaden the horizon then for a lot

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of our developing the leaders mostly on
the land component. But I know that

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you have a joint student body there. Yeah, yeah, no. I

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came through here as a student back
in the nineties. It was kind of

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one of those good deal secrets that
kind of exist in the military for people

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in the Navy who wanted to kind
of get access to the Midwest, which

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is hard to do in a Navy
career. So I came through here.

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Oh gosh. I came from here
twenty four years ago as a student or

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no more than twenty four years almost
twenty eight years ago, as a student

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as part of you know, the
jt ME one piece Joint Professional Military Education

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once. But once I got here, I liked it. There was a

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lot of military history here. I
was a military history nut even back then.

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And then when I got an opportunity
to come back here and teach.

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It was a joint billet to teach
back here, and so I came back

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and taught here. So it's you
know, it was a great way to

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kind of get to the Midwest and
also to kind of do military history stuff.

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Really great place to teach and everything, a really nice quality of life.

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The base, the base here,
they don't call it a base,

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they call it a post. But
it was just really nice. And so

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so I've been here for twenty four
years teaching foreign active duty and the rest

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as a uh, civilian Department of
the Army civilian. So I've been I've

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been in actually in the Army now
almost as long as I've been as I

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was in the Navy before I retired
from the Navy. So pretty joint is

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a great it's a great job.
I mean, we get approximately twelve hundred

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students in every every year to the
Command of General Staff Officer course. And

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again it's there for the Army.
It's their version of the Navy Command of

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Staff College at a Newport and and
and the top fifty in the Army comes

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through here, and they pretty much
do a good job sending that fifty here.

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Of course, they don't have to
manage ships to see like we do.

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But you know, for a time
it was difficult for them to get

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through here because the law and terror
with the Force GEN and and and the

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rotational piece for Force GEN and but
they, yeah, they send their top

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fifty guys through here. And then
they're all of our major allies and partners

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and their office send their best officers
here. So the cream of the crop

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from all the NATO countries and Australia
and New Zealand and anywhere else that's that's

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actually a parking with the United States, including the Vietnamese, send their guys

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here. So they're here, and
so you get to meet a lot of

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different people, a lot of different
perspectives, and of course you're reading the

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best that the army has. You
know, quite a number of these guys

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will go on to become become generals
and and you know, a couple of

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them will probably go all the way
to the top the four star. The

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Navy has the requirement to send people
here at the Air Force and the Marines.

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The Marines do the same thing that
the Army does. They send their

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best guys here, and the Air
Force does that. The only service that

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doesn't send their best people here is
the Navy. The Navy basically sends like

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whoever they can. Once they get
here, they realize it's a pretty good

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deal. But it's really hard for
them to get people here unless you're like

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me. You know, I had
a buddy who'd gone here, and he

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goes, hey, you like military
history, this was the place for you.

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Yeah, you got to put up
with some army stuff, you know,

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learning some army stuff here and there. But and you know, that's

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this is broadening as far as I
was concerned. So I've been doing that

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for twenty years. I've been in
the History department for that long. I

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got a joint job teaching the joint
curriculum here, but I almost immediately transferred

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down to the History department because the
guy who worked down there, who was

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the director, guy named doctor Jim
Wilbags, he and I were buddies,

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and he wanted to get me down
there so I could finish my PhD and

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go to work for him. So
that's how I did it, and I

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worked my way up. I've been
a named professor here. I was the

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WILLIAMS. Stoft Chair of Historical Research
from twenty thirteen to twenty sixteen. I'm

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a full professor. Now I'm one
of the I'm one of the gray beards

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around the department. I'm one of
the most senior guys in the department.

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I used to be that new,
young, you know, brand new historian,

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and now I'm the old, you
know, fogey historian. You know

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who who you know can remember events
that other people weren't even born during,

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you know, and so all that
Cold War stuff that I did. You

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know. I was telling my students
the other day, you know, the

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year I turned eighteen was the year
that they eliminated the draft. And they

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look at me like, my god, you know, I tell them I'm

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a twenty I'm a twentieth century man. You've got a living relic of the

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past century here to teach you.
So so I've got lots of anecdotal stories

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and see stories and stuff. So
I love it. As long as I

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as long as I enjoy teaching the
students, I think I'll keep doing it.

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I didn't lose you guys, did
I. No, it's my turn

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to ask you a question, John, And I couldn't find my unmute button

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because I'm even older. I'm even
older than you are. So it's one

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of the one of those, one
of those, one of those exciting adventures

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in live radio in your moment.
Yeah yeah, Well it's got a little

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red light on it. You think
I'd be able to spot it right away,

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but you know, I'm not any
naval aviator, so I usually have

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a long time to think about these
things. Let's talk a little bit about

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your book that I think came out
in October of last year, Strategy and

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Crisis. Talk a little bit about
that and the lessons we can learn from

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from World War Two that maybe this
is a broad topic, but maybe applicable

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to what's going on in East East
Asia right now. Yeah. So the

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book actually began during COVID was I
was at the Naval War College as the

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Ernest King professor there lisiting professor,
So I was there during the COVID year,

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and I always tell people I eventually
came back here because they never opened

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the college backup, so I could
actually teach for them from my basement.

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But while I was there, I
met this guy named Mike Pathkeovict. Mike's

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an old friend, and he was
doing a new series for the Naval Institute

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called The Essentials of strategy right,
and he goes, hey, we'd like

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to get you to do a book
for us in this new series. So,

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as it turned out, this is
the inaugural book in the Essentials and

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Strategy series. And I looked at
the Pacific War in nineteen thirty seven and

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nineteen forty five, and I started
it in nineteen thirty seven because because that's

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when that's when the war really started. It started in China, and in

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nineteen thirty seven in North China at
the Marco Polo Bridge, and then it

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rapidly spreads throughut China with his massive
battle in Shanghai in nineteen thirty seven.

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That was a World War two kind
of battle, you know, with with

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machine guns, tanks, a naval
aircraft, bombing targets ashore, you know,

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over a million combatants and just this
amazing thing. So so I agreed

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to do it. In the book
looks at all of the all of the

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aspects of that war of World War
II in the Pacific and in concise chapters,

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so it's a one stop shopping book. I kind of modeled it on

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Ron Spector's Eagle against the Sun.
I wanted to kind of have that sort

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of the Steel to it, but
does to sort of take a fresh look

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at that. And and so so
that the title was not my title.

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Naval Listen To kind of picked it
out for me, Strategy and Crisis.

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My title was, you know,
world War two in the Pacific, you

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know, kind of you know here
it is, you know, generic Wheedy's

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or something, you know, but
they wanted it to be, you know,

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something sexy. So so so I
did that book. And so the

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book is really looks at at the
operational and strategic level of World War Two.

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I don't get into the tactics very
much at all. But when they

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changed the funny story that I want
to tell you guys here and you might

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give me a chance to to kind
of kind of riff on this is is

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that when they said, okay,
well we want you to title the book

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Strategy and Crisis, and I said, well, heck, you know,

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nobody's people are gonna people are gonna
want their money back because I don't really

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you know, kind of go into
strategy and Crisis. I kind of tell

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you about the strategies that Japanese and
Americans, Chinese, the British, the

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Netherlands, France, all these different
actors are trying to import both prior to

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the war and then as the crisis
deepens and war breaks out in China.

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But I don't really have a thread
of strategy crisis throughout the book. So

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maybe I should write an eplogue,
you know, to kind of explain why

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it's strategy and crisis. It's it's
more narrative than argument. The narrative is

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uh we talked about this in the
pre show bit, but just just for

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the listeners, uh, kind of
the the the impetus to invite John to

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come back on here is is.
I just was having it again one of

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my little little moments where I was
getting little frustrated with some of the conversations

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about future conflict west of the International
date Line and aircraft carriers and vulnerability because

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it's I remember back it was a
cover of The Atlantic back and I think

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nineteen eighty seven. I was in
college at the time that I saw that

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had the US Navy as sitting ducks. I mean, this is not a

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new line of argument, and I
think a lot of people find think this

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is a new thing that they've discovered, when it's just the opposite. This

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has always been true for some of
the reasons that I said in the introduction,

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and John kind of kind of popped
me a DM and he's like,

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hey, you know, I've I've
written a book that kind of covers on

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this, and as I will,
let me come on and bring it on,

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because I think it's a really important
part of because a lot of people

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they're not so much reinditting the wheels, they're getting the first blush of thinking

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about something that they really should be
on the fourth or fifth iteration trying to

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pick up the details on And I
liked one of the maybe it's because you've

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been around a bunch of army guys
here, but in chapter two of your

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book, Strategy and Crisis, I
like the title that you use, which

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was an oceanic blitz Greg and the
fact that as one of my favorite but

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also one of my frustrating pictures of
World War Two is the famous one.

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I think it's a outhily a tall
murderers row that has all these Essex class

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carriers, plus I think the Enterprise
lined up in a row with this huge

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fleet around them, and that really
did not represent that that first fifteen months

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of the war from nineteen you know, the way I would like to like

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to draw. The line is from
Pearl Harbor up to about March of forty

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three. It's a very different war. It was very much the come as

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you are war that we would face
if we have something in the Western Pacific

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showing up in the next ten years. If you could for a second,

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you know, talk for a little
bit the cold water in the face of

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what the Imperial Japanese Navy was able
to do in the Western Pacific with their

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interior and exterior lines of communication to
really, even in hindsight, regardless of

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how many times you've read it,
it's just shocking to what they're able to

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accomplish in those fifteen months. Yeah, if your listeners have a screen available,

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or they have multiple screens like I
do, they might want to bring

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up the West Point Atlas page and
go to something called go to to the

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West Point Military Atlases, it's public
domain, and then go to the World

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War two in the Pacific, and
then go to something called the centrifugal offensives,

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which is a beautiful, beautiful sort
of betrayal of what you're talking about,

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was what I call the Oceanic Blitzkreeg. So I want to back up

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here a little bit and talk about
two. The first thing is is,

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you know, the aircraft carrier was
a very contingent weapons system platform idea slash

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concept world War One. The impetus
for aircraft carriers in World War One was

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not to go out and ships at
sea. The idea was the British were

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going to create these carriers that could
take the fight depends in Belgium and North

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Germany, and so they began converting
battleships and one battle cruisers the furious to

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go attack these things. Well,
the war kind of ended before they'd actually

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proved their utility, but the British
had quite a few of these. They

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led the world in aircraft carriers when
the war ended, and by the time

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we get to the early nineteen twenties, the British had like eight aircraft carriers,

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most of them converted from other ships. The Japanese had one experimental carrier,

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the host Show, and the United
States had one experimental carrier, the

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Langley. But it got all caught
captured into this idea of airpower. I

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mean, it's going to be ironic
that the nation with the lead in aircraft

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carriers at the end of World War
One, Great Britain will actually be the

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nation that's furthest behind in aircraft carrier
development when war comes in the nineteen thirties,

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So for Britain in nineteen thirty nine. For Japan, of course,

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in nineteen thirty seven, Japan will
have already used aircraft carriers as power projection

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platforms against land targets as early as
nineteen thirty two. So the Japanese is

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the pros from delver when World War
II comes along in terms of employing aircraft

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carriers at least as power projection platforms. But people didn't know what these things

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were going to do so much they
kind of to guess. You know,

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the Americans went down a track of
aircraft carriers are going to provide air defense

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for the battle fleet. You know, we agree to these treaties that we're

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going to limit the number of aircraft
carriers we have, and pretty soon we

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learn that their role that we don't
really have enough of them to provide air

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defense for anything more than air defense. Even though in the war period we

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come up with this thing called the
scouting fleet, and we put the aircraft

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carriers in the scouting fleet. But
we keep learning over and over again in

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our fleet exercises that battleships are very
vulnerable to aircraft carriers and so they need

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air defense and so so nobody really
knows what these things can or cannot do.

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Early in the war, one of
them get sunk by German battle cruisers

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up off of Norway. The British
loser carrier to battle cruiser fire up off

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of Norway. So they are very
very biblical, and that's known prior to

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the war beginning in the Pacific well
at the same time, and I spend

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quite a bit of time when I
do the World War II lecture for the

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Naval War College and to do one
on Tuesday and Prins Cola. By the

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way, World War two, the
US Navy and World War two, the

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Japanese do a really fine job developing
their concept, but they use it for

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the wars that they end up in. And so if they're in a land

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war in Asia, they use their
aircraft carriers to conduct the land war in

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Asia, kind of like we do
in the War on Terror. So land

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wars in Asia necase. So there. But they also have designed these things

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to as a sort of fleet,
you know, command of the sea platform.

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But their their main role is power
projection and defense of the battle fleet.

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That's their main role in the Japanese
Navy and in the US Navy.

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And it makes you know, it
makes perfect sense at their first major blow

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against the United States is not a
fleet on fleet engagement. It's an engagement

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against a couple of islands, you
know, the Hawaiian Islands. And so

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this big blow by aircraft carriers,
that the Japanese strike will be power projection,

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not fleet on fleet engagement. Yamamoto
actually is very, very worried that

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the considerable air defenses that exist on
Pearl Harbor. You know, we have

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the Pacific Air Forces, they are
the Army Air Force and the Navy Air

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Force, that his carriers will be
discovered. He's very worried that land based

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air is gonna sink at least a
third of his carriers, and that's his

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estimate for the Pearl Harbor. After
he's decided, you know, if we

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get out of this with one third
of aircraft carriers sunk, we'll be lucky,

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okay. And so when he gets
out of it without any of them

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being sunk, he's you know,
he basically has a party back there on

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his flagship Knock Uptoe. He's not
on the Yamapa yet, he's still on

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the battleship, which is not part
of the Pearl harbor rating force. So

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the aircraft carrier was an unknown quantity. The knowns about the aircraft carrier was

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that it was a really good strike
you know, power projection platform in an

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environment where the other guy didn't have
any navies or where the other guy was

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sleeping, and said, Pearl harm
it, right. So that's kind of

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that, and I go into that
in the in the book. The other

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piece is the Oceanic blitz Green this
is. This is. I had come

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up with this a number of years
ago, over twenty years ago. I

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looked at a map of the Japanese
offensives and I'm gonna I'm just gonna make

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this analogy and then I'm gonna let
you guys kind of tease me some more

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questions. And the Japanese attacks looked
a heck of a lot like what the

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Germans did on the Eastern Front against
the Russians in nineteen forty one, you

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know, about six months earlier,
in fact, in June of nineteen forty

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one. So you have these major
offensives, except in the Japanese case,

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they're on land, air and sea, and in the German case it was

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air and land. But it was
the same direction going east, and it

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was the same way they had.
They had efforts to the south, they

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had efforts to the to the north, they had efforts down the central Pacific,

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and the Japanese did Germans won better. They went they went west as

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well, into Thailand and Burma towards
India. So just these incredible offensives and

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the movement trying to follow the movements
of the Japanese navy in this time period,

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the first six months of the of
the Japanese expansion of the war in

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the Pacific against the United States the
Netherlands. In Great Britain was is it's

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Dizzy's the mine. You know.
That's why I since your listeners to to

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the centrifugal offensives, just to show
them just this incredible reach and movement of

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these naval forces, and not just
the aircraft carries, the entire combined fleet,

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you know. And John Parcells got
captured by this idea, you know,

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forty years ago or however old John
is I don't know, maybe maybe

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he's younger than that, and he
it fascinated in fore Lesia. He has

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a web page, you know,
combined Fleet, you know that he that

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he does, and then he wrote
a whole battle on Midway about it.

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He's so fascinated with this Japanese fleet
that can move and strike all these blows

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in such a vast fashion. But
I always thought that the similarity between the

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Blitzkree against the Soviet Union and the
Blitzkree against the Americans, the British and

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the Netherlands bore so many things in
common with each other in terms of it.

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And of course in the Japanese case, the distances are almost triple of

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what they were for the Germans against
the Soviets, and quadruple in some cases.

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Just these vast, vast distances.
Well, at some point, I

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think you talked about the shift in
the United States. But first the US

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had to defend, had to build
up, and we had think at the

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time, after Pearl Harbor we had
three terriers if I'm not mistaken, in

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the Pacific, maybe four, I
can't remember exactly, but and we want

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to do since we had lost most
of our at least temporarily lost our battleships,

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it was pretty clear I would think
to the Tonis when he took over,

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maybe to Kimmel before he before he
left, it that we were suddenly

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dependent on the aircraft carrier for a
lot of things. Talk a little bit

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about that, the need to preserve
those and preserve the logistics train that was

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keeping them, uh and and any
of the other ships out at sea.

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Yeah, well, there's a lot
of new scholarship on this. But but

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but the source that I used was
Ernest King's reports to the Secretary of the

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Navy to kind of set things up
for the approach. And I once remember

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when when the Japanese attack US on
December seventh, and then he attacked the

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British and the Dutch and the Ties
on December the eighth, uh and and

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of course US in the Philippines.
The uh, the uh. You know,

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the strategy has already been decided by
something called the American British Conversations,

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which occurred secretly in washing in DC
the year before, in nineteen forty forty

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one, and that decision was codified
in a memorandum called the Planned Dog Memo,

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which was which was said to the
people who were doing something called the

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Rainbow Plans. And so Europe was
first. Certainly, when the Germans attacked

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Russia, the europe first strategy became
became even more solidified. You know that

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we were going to use lend lease
the arsenal of democracy for the Russians and

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for the Soviets and for the British
and anybody else who wanted to fight the

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Germans. So the strategy was already
decided. That strategy, of course,

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is put into crisis by the Japanese
attack at Pearl Harbor. And so now

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we have some decisions to make.
But Admiral King, not yet chief of

359
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Naval Operations, is the Commander in
chief of the US League, recently promoted

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for Commander of the Atlantic Fleet to
Commander in Chief of the US Fleet.

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And King King describes to the Secretary
that we have to defend first, and

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he divides the Pacific War up into
four phases. The defense, defense,

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the defense offense, where he's going
to use what forces he has as an

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active defense offensively using defensive forces actively
to kind of keep the Japanese off the

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balance, but not really to go
on the offensive. And then he'll use

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something called the offense defense. And
then he'll have the offense offense. And

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so he divides the war up into
those sort of phases. The other thing

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that he makes clear for the Secretary
to know, and which was well understood

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in the Navy at the time.
But it's King who's pushing this down to

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his commanders, especially Chester Nimmits when
he takes over a Pearl Harbor. Is

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this idea of calculated risk. Trent
Hones talked about this and his work,

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particularly his recent work, uh mastering
the Art of Command, which is on

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minutes and what he's doing in the
Pacific War. But it's King King,

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and it's well understood throughout the Navy, and this is the idea that we're

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not going to gamble our naval assets, but we will risk them if there's

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the opportunity to perhaps do more damage
to the enemy than he can do to

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us. But this has got to
be calculated. You can't lose precious assets,

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really, Milly And initially the Dolittle
Raid, which is something that mimics

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is or that King is excited about, kind of violates King's guidance and mimeotoas

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actually against the dou Little raid.
Uh So that first period after Pearl Harbor

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is the period of the carrier raids, but Nimets actually doesn't like the fact

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00:29:52.519 --> 00:29:57.400
that the King and Doolittle and Halsey, but King's really the father of it,

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are gonna risk two of these very
very important aircraft carriers in kind of

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a crazy raid on Japan to kind
of boost American morale and the sort of

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proof of concept, you know,
with these precious aircraft carriers. When Pearl

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00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:18.559
Harbor is struck. There are only
three aircraft carriers in the Pacific. One

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of those carriers is the Saratoga.
Who's Who's Who's getting her overhaul and having

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00:30:22.680 --> 00:30:30.200
her eight inch guns removed by the
way in in the in uh, Saratoga

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is not even anywhere near Pearl Harbor. The other two aircraft carriers are out

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on a war punting already. One
of them is going to Wake Island to

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00:30:38.599 --> 00:30:45.799
beef up the defenses of Wake Island
UH with with the marine aviators and supplies,

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and the other one is pushing in
aviation and supplies into Midway. And

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so the Lexington and the Enterprise are
that's what they're doing when when war comes.

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The other more aircraft carriers will probably
shock your readers to know are europe

395
00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:10.640
first. One of them, the
Wasp, is faring aircraft to Malta in

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00:31:10.759 --> 00:31:15.640
the in the in the Mediterranean.
You know, I've always thought what would

397
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:19.039
happen if the if the WASP had
got plugged by a by a U boat,

398
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you know, doing this mission in
the Mediterranean. So and then the

399
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and then the other carriers are just
coming online, and those are gonna be

400
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the Yorktown, the Hornet, and
the UH and the Ranger, and the

401
00:31:33.279 --> 00:31:37.119
Ranger will never come over to the
Pacific. The Ranger will say eventually,

402
00:31:37.359 --> 00:31:41.920
Wasp, Porned and Yorktown will all
come over to the Pacific through the sus

403
00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:45.720
Canal or not. The seuwis canw
the Panama Canal. They're designed to go.

404
00:31:45.160 --> 00:31:48.960
They're they're not so big that they
can't get through the Panama Canal.

405
00:31:48.039 --> 00:31:52.799
So they were designed deliberately so that
they could move between the fleets. So

406
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the United States is on the defense
with its carriers UH and the first carrier

407
00:31:57.519 --> 00:32:05.759
Rays do cost Japanese concerns, and
they follow King's guidance of calculated risk.

408
00:32:07.519 --> 00:32:09.759
Aside from the Doolittle raid, which
I argue is very important, it has

409
00:32:09.799 --> 00:32:15.559
an outsized impact. It causes the
approval of a hair brain scheme that yam

410
00:32:15.559 --> 00:32:19.640
alone has been trying to get approved
by which the Army and the Navy Imperial

411
00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:24.279
General Staff have been detailing as a
bridge too far. And that's this plan

412
00:32:24.400 --> 00:32:29.640
to take Hawaii to eliminate the US
fleete once and for all. And Yamomoto

413
00:32:30.039 --> 00:32:34.920
is frantic. He wants he realizes
the Americans have decided to go ahead and

414
00:32:34.920 --> 00:32:39.240
fight anyway without their battle line.
They're using these task forces built around aircraft

415
00:32:39.279 --> 00:32:45.279
carriers to power projection in the Pacific
against the Japanese advance on one of their

416
00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:51.480
main lines of advance. The Japanese
have three main lines of advance going on

417
00:32:51.680 --> 00:32:57.359
in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor.
One is to the south to capture the

418
00:32:57.400 --> 00:33:01.000
oil and the resources of the Dutch
and British East Indies. One of them

419
00:33:01.079 --> 00:33:07.839
is driving into Burma to threaten Britain's
cash cow and the engine of the British

420
00:33:07.880 --> 00:33:10.480
economy that's kind of keeping Britain in
the war both with manpower and resources in

421
00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:16.119
that's India. And then the third
one is to cut off the strategic sea

422
00:33:16.160 --> 00:33:22.720
line of communication between the United States
and Australia. And where NIMTS is doing

423
00:33:22.759 --> 00:33:29.440
the most damage is on that third
leg that's driving down New Guinea and the

424
00:33:29.519 --> 00:33:34.559
Solomons and the Bismarcks to try to
cut the sea line of communication with Australia.

425
00:33:34.640 --> 00:33:37.279
And as if we and as if
we needed any reminding, of course,

426
00:33:37.319 --> 00:33:42.440
in Nagumo comes in Hammers Tarwin Australia
with a carrier raid in March April,

427
00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:49.119
but Nimts in one attack sinks a
bunch of Japanese transports and and and

428
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:53.480
and actually his carriers under I'm trying
to remember who was in charge. I

429
00:33:53.480 --> 00:33:57.519
don't know if it was Lee Noius
yet, it wasn't Fletcher yet, but

430
00:33:57.599 --> 00:34:01.640
Fletcher was actually uh uh heading up
a carry task force in New York Town

431
00:34:01.960 --> 00:34:07.000
and they actually fly over the Owen
Stanley Mountains in New Guinea, sink a

432
00:34:07.039 --> 00:34:10.440
bunch of Drapanese transports, and they
shoot down all these Japanese airplanes the first

433
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:15.400
time the Japanese naval aviation, land
based naval aviation in this case is actually

434
00:34:15.400 --> 00:34:22.079
given a bloody nose by American aircraft
carriers. You talked about logistics. The

435
00:34:22.119 --> 00:34:27.400
list logistically, as it turns out, is not depleted, will become We

436
00:34:27.480 --> 00:34:30.920
actually have a shortage of fast oilers. One of the reasons that we kind

437
00:34:30.920 --> 00:34:35.800
of leave the battleships behind is we
don't have enough oilers for fast carrier task

438
00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:43.519
forces and battleships. Another myth is
that there are no battleships after harderest nonsense.

439
00:34:43.559 --> 00:34:46.159
Within a it's enough months, and
we've got at least four battleships that

440
00:34:46.280 --> 00:34:51.280
can work and run, and we
have battleships in the Atlantic that we could

441
00:34:51.320 --> 00:34:54.400
bring over what we just don't have
the fast oilers to oil these things.

442
00:34:54.400 --> 00:35:00.480
So Nimics makes the decision, supported
by King, to devote these pressions fast

443
00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:05.599
oilers like the Neoshow and the Cimarron
and ships like this to supporting the fast

444
00:35:05.679 --> 00:35:13.840
carrier arrays and of course the doozy
of the ray against Japan. Yeah,

445
00:35:14.039 --> 00:35:19.079
it's amazing the amount of echoes of
officis we have here in twenty twenty four

446
00:35:19.119 --> 00:35:23.320
that they were experiencing right at the
kickoff at war. And in the back

447
00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:30.199
of King and Nimits and everybody else's
mind, they knew that by mid nineteen

448
00:35:30.360 --> 00:35:37.039
forty three, the decisions that were
made seven years ago to really invest in

449
00:35:37.079 --> 00:35:42.840
the two Ocean Navy and to get
the shipyards up and running and the cut

450
00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:47.559
steel would start to come to the
front, but they still had a war

451
00:35:47.639 --> 00:35:52.679
to fight. And there's a tow
your book. There's a nice companion article

452
00:35:52.079 --> 00:35:58.239
I would recommend to the reader.
They can just google John's name k but

453
00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:02.760
it's titled multi the main operations in
a bygone era, the Guadalcanal Campaign August

454
00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:09.559
forty two to January of forty three. And when people talk about what could

455
00:36:09.639 --> 00:36:15.400
possibly a war game different scenarios today
west of the National Daylight, I think

456
00:36:15.440 --> 00:36:20.559
it's really important for them to look
back at things. For instance, you

457
00:36:20.639 --> 00:36:24.119
start the article not at the very
beginning, but about a couple of pages

458
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:29.960
in quote, the American carriers,
as Admiral Fletcher had already pointed out,

459
00:36:30.199 --> 00:36:36.920
were under the same constraints and particularly
vulnerable to Japanese submarines and land based aircraft

460
00:36:37.039 --> 00:36:42.679
unquote the modern day equivalent. The
Chinese do have quite a few submarines,

461
00:36:42.719 --> 00:36:49.800
but it's the People's Liberation Army,
rocket forces and their aviation forces and a

462
00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:53.119
lot of their ballistic and cruise missles
of things. It's a similar threat.

463
00:36:53.599 --> 00:36:58.800
And then as you go through the
campaign, you know certain things pop up.

464
00:37:00.480 --> 00:37:06.119
In late August, the Enterprise is
damaged, the submarine I twenty six

465
00:37:06.239 --> 00:37:12.920
torpedo, the Saratoga you have later
on, the Hornet was sunk and the

466
00:37:13.039 --> 00:37:16.960
Enterprise was damaged again, and of
course the Japanese forces are saying again.

467
00:37:17.920 --> 00:37:23.039
And by the time we got to
the heart of the Guadalcanal campaign, there

468
00:37:23.119 --> 00:37:30.039
were not as many carrier assets that
ideally you would want to operate with.

469
00:37:30.840 --> 00:37:37.320
Talk for a little bit about how
the leaders we had at the time and

470
00:37:37.519 --> 00:37:43.719
changing out some leaders at the time
were able to continue with the overall campaign

471
00:37:44.239 --> 00:37:47.159
not having some of the assets that
they would ideally want to have, simply

472
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:53.000
because of a little bit of bad
luck at sea. Yeah, so I

473
00:37:53.760 --> 00:38:00.199
use Guadalcanal as an example, and
King doesn't do this in his report where

474
00:38:00.199 --> 00:38:05.840
he actually switches to the offensive.
I think at Coral c or Midway.

475
00:38:06.280 --> 00:38:10.440
But I consider Corals and Midway both
sort of defensive victories. But the guy

476
00:38:10.480 --> 00:38:15.519
in tactical command at both of these
battles as a guy nobody remembers anymore.

477
00:38:15.840 --> 00:38:20.199
Frank Jack Fletcher, who earned a
Navy Cross in World War One and earned

478
00:38:20.199 --> 00:38:27.159
a Medal of Honor fighting Mexican War
War troops in Mexico in nineteen fourteen.

479
00:38:27.199 --> 00:38:31.719
I think so, And he's going
to be the guy in the initial phases

480
00:38:31.719 --> 00:38:39.039
of Glaudalcanal, but King characterizes King's
characterization, I change it. This is

481
00:38:39.079 --> 00:38:43.880
the beginning of the American offense,
and it's called the first offense for a

482
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:50.280
reason. This is the first American
offensive in the Pacific since the Japanese had

483
00:38:50.320 --> 00:38:52.960
brought the Americans into the battle.
Till then the Americans of British and the

484
00:38:53.039 --> 00:38:58.000
Dutch had all been on their heels
just kind of moving backwards. As the

485
00:38:58.079 --> 00:39:04.519
Japanese took the Philippines, book the
Indies, uh, the took the started

486
00:39:04.519 --> 00:39:08.119
to take most of New Guinea,
got into Papua New Guinea, took the

487
00:39:08.199 --> 00:39:15.119
Bismarck Islands, started their way down
the Solomon Islands, and so after midway,

488
00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:20.480
King takes this risk, it's not
a gamble and throws in the first

489
00:39:20.760 --> 00:39:24.920
marine division plus, so it's a
division plus in the Vaucanal to secure an

490
00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:34.159
airfield. And it begins this this
fight and over command of the sea in

491
00:39:34.280 --> 00:39:39.440
the southern Solomon Islands, which is
at the very edge of the Japanese operational

492
00:39:39.480 --> 00:39:45.559
reach from their major base at Rebult, very edge of the Americans operational reach

493
00:39:46.239 --> 00:39:52.960
from their bases that they're developing in
French territory in New Caledonia, Innumeya,

494
00:39:52.079 --> 00:39:57.079
which is in New Caledonia, and
then a fete which is today Vona Apsu

495
00:39:57.599 --> 00:40:01.599
in the New Hebrides. So the
it's at the very edge of the operational

496
00:40:01.639 --> 00:40:06.400
reach for both the Japanese and the
Americans. But the Americans take this thing

497
00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:10.519
on the offensive. The carrier forces
are very much the same, but that

498
00:40:10.639 --> 00:40:15.079
big fleet you talked about is not
going to really start to come online until

499
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:22.400
the next year. And so so
we seize this airfield. We also sees

500
00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:30.480
a seaplane base which was actually was
the initial initial objective was to see the

501
00:40:30.559 --> 00:40:35.760
seaplane base at two captured during the
Battle of the Coral Sea. And so

502
00:40:35.920 --> 00:40:42.920
we send Nimitz sends his most experienced
commander of carriers in combat. Not Spruance,

503
00:40:42.960 --> 00:40:46.119
he spruances. Actually Niman's a chief
of staff. He sends he said

504
00:40:46.199 --> 00:40:52.199
Fletcher, and Fletcher's got strict guidance, No, don't risk these carriers,

505
00:40:52.400 --> 00:40:55.840
and and so forever afterwards, because
he pulled these things out for about a

506
00:40:55.880 --> 00:41:00.480
week after the marine's landed, everybody's
kind of cast. But he comes back

507
00:41:00.559 --> 00:41:07.880
and he almost and he gets torpedoed
by Japanese submarine for his trouble. Actually,

508
00:41:07.880 --> 00:41:12.079
before that happens, he fights another
major carrier battle in the Eastern Solomons,

509
00:41:12.079 --> 00:41:15.599
which the Japanese think is a victory. They come away from the Battle

510
00:41:15.639 --> 00:41:19.280
of the Eastern Solomons just like they
did at the Coral c thinking, Hey,

511
00:41:19.400 --> 00:41:22.599
the Americans don't have any aircraft carriers
left. We've sunk them all.

512
00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:25.480
Now we can get rid of this
American you know, regiment that's down at

513
00:41:25.480 --> 00:41:30.679
Guadalcanal. And this is the beginning
of a Japanese tale of intelligence shortcomings,

514
00:41:30.679 --> 00:41:36.960
where they have no idea that we
have this entire marine division down there with

515
00:41:37.159 --> 00:41:39.719
enough rations, you know, to
make it by until the Americans could push

516
00:41:39.719 --> 00:41:45.159
another supply convoy through at least for
months, and Marines have enough to keep

517
00:41:45.199 --> 00:41:50.880
them on maybe starvation rations, certainly
way more than the Japanese have. And

518
00:41:50.920 --> 00:41:54.880
so begins this battle over this airfield
called Henderson Field, a marine aviator who

519
00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:58.280
was killed at Midway, and so
they name it in honor of him.

520
00:41:58.880 --> 00:42:02.559
Every time American carrier will go down, it's air wing will fly into Henderson

521
00:42:02.639 --> 00:42:07.599
Field and become part of what's called
the Cactus Air Force. By the time

522
00:42:07.639 --> 00:42:13.360
we get to September, there are
three different air forces at Henderson Airfield,

523
00:42:13.719 --> 00:42:20.719
the Marines with their Marine Air,
the Navy with the Navy Air mostly carrier

524
00:42:20.760 --> 00:42:25.199
aviators who are now on an unsinkable
aircraft carrier named Henderson Field, and an

525
00:42:25.400 --> 00:42:30.800
Army aviators will start flying in P
thirty nine aer cobras that'll become part of

526
00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:37.679
the air force. In the daytime, the Japanese will be unable to operate

527
00:42:37.800 --> 00:42:42.360
in the waters around Guadalcanal. At
the night time, the Americans will be

528
00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:46.400
able to unable to operate in the
waters around Guadalcanal because of the Japanese service

529
00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:52.760
night fighting tactics. And they'll deliver
a stinging defeat at Sado Island early in

530
00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:57.599
the campaign, and then another bloody
battle at Cape Esperance where it's more of

531
00:42:57.639 --> 00:43:01.400
a tie but still very very black, and so you get this battle.

532
00:43:01.440 --> 00:43:06.400
You know, airplanes don't fly at
night back then, and so the uh

533
00:43:06.519 --> 00:43:09.360
SO the Americans control the seas by
day because they have land based air,

534
00:43:09.519 --> 00:43:14.400
not really carrier air uh and and
by the time we get to the end

535
00:43:14.440 --> 00:43:20.119
of October, the Americans don't have
any carriers left. The Japanese themselves are

536
00:43:20.199 --> 00:43:23.760
starting to run out of ships too, and and and uh, and the

537
00:43:23.880 --> 00:43:30.159
Japanese keep trying to capture the airfield, but they keep losing these battles.

538
00:43:30.159 --> 00:43:35.280
They lose a battalion level force in
in the beginning of the campaign, and

539
00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:40.519
they essentially are defeated with a brigade
attack on the airfield in September, and

540
00:43:40.559 --> 00:43:46.159
then in October they try a core
level attack which is completely unsynchronized with the

541
00:43:46.280 --> 00:43:51.400
Navy attack from Truck, and so
you have the Japanese coming down with an

542
00:43:51.440 --> 00:43:58.280
invasion invasion force from from Truck to
support the army, but the Navy force

543
00:43:58.880 --> 00:44:02.480
attacks early defeated the Battle of Santa
Cruz Island where the Hornet is sunk and

544
00:44:02.519 --> 00:44:09.719
the Enterprise damaged, and so now
it's just the Marines and their air force

545
00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:15.400
against the Japanese and their surface ships
that are trying to supply the Japanese army

546
00:44:15.480 --> 00:44:21.639
to take the base. And you
get these bloody battles in November called the

547
00:44:21.719 --> 00:44:27.239
Naval Battles of Guadalcanal, where ironically
the ship that kind of seals the doom

548
00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:32.239
of the Japanese garrison in Guadalcanal will
be the radar equipped battleships under Willis leave

549
00:44:34.039 --> 00:44:42.320
and they'll break the back of the
Japanese Navy and its attempt to desperately reinforce.

550
00:44:43.679 --> 00:44:46.159
When it's all said and done and
the sun comes up after four days

551
00:44:46.199 --> 00:44:52.400
of day night land fighting at Guadalcanal
in the middle of November, the Marines,

552
00:44:52.840 --> 00:44:58.639
the Navy aviators, and the Army
aviators will control the seas around Guadalcanal,

553
00:44:59.039 --> 00:45:02.239
and the Japanese on the the decision
to withscaw their forces from Guadalcanal and

554
00:45:02.320 --> 00:45:07.519
let the Americans have it. So
this is a six month all out battle.

555
00:45:07.880 --> 00:45:12.280
It'll go on for another month as
the Japanese withdrawn on the northern end

556
00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:15.440
of the island to retreat and pull
their forces out. And by the way,

557
00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:20.360
they will pull out somewhere around seven
to eight thousand Japanese soldiers at night

558
00:45:20.519 --> 00:45:25.960
using the Tokyo Express in the face
of the American American Navy, because we

559
00:45:27.119 --> 00:45:30.119
just don't have the combat power to
prevent them from doing it. So it's

560
00:45:30.159 --> 00:45:36.480
a very desperate fight, but it's
an American win. Fletcher loses his job

561
00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:43.719
because he gets wounded on the Saratoga
and Slew McCain, who's commanding the land

562
00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:50.119
based there is also given a break
so too, and then the Navy overall

563
00:45:50.159 --> 00:45:55.280
Commander, Robert Gormoley will be fired
and removed from command and replaced with Halsey.

564
00:45:55.840 --> 00:46:00.400
But Halsey is gonna have precious few
aircraft carriers to do this fight.

565
00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:06.920
He's going to be mostly using surface
ships and airplanes land based airplanes including Army

566
00:46:06.960 --> 00:46:13.119
B seventeens from a fete to kind
of contest this this operation, and it

567
00:46:13.239 --> 00:46:17.119
becomes very much of a close run
thing, an amazing fight. I just

568
00:46:17.159 --> 00:46:20.840
want to tell your readers one thing. If they go to look for the

569
00:46:20.920 --> 00:46:24.880
article that sal mentioned that the Commander's
and the Commander Salamander mentioned, they're probably

570
00:46:24.960 --> 00:46:30.159
going to find that they have to
be a student that seek gets a seat

571
00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:32.639
to get at the article. They
might be able to get access to it

572
00:46:34.239 --> 00:46:37.559
because it is posted on blackboard for
the Navy students and the Army students.

573
00:46:37.599 --> 00:46:43.119
Hear it, but it's not it
has it's an unpublished reading for the students.

574
00:46:43.119 --> 00:46:49.039
So I'm sorry that that article on
guadal Canal Multi domain campaign, it's

575
00:46:49.039 --> 00:46:52.559
based on the same research though that
I wrote the chapter for the book on

576
00:46:52.599 --> 00:46:58.880
this. So so if people go
to the book that they can get pretty

577
00:46:58.960 --> 00:47:02.639
much sort of stuff. Not quite
the same thing because because they it is

578
00:47:02.719 --> 00:47:07.159
different. But but the book does
have a chapter that deals with puble Canal.

579
00:47:07.159 --> 00:47:09.599
I'm trying to try to go up
to it right now and tell him

580
00:47:09.599 --> 00:47:14.079
which chapter it is. Yeah,
I think that's deep into the offense.

581
00:47:14.119 --> 00:47:16.920
I think it's uh, it's either
chapter three or chapter four, maybe chapter

582
00:47:16.960 --> 00:47:23.239
four. Yeah. As I was
reading through the book, I was struck

583
00:47:23.280 --> 00:47:29.719
by how Admiral Wiley in his in
his analysis of how we you know we

584
00:47:30.239 --> 00:47:43.039
strategy. You know, he's the
the concept of the sequential end and ulatives

585
00:47:43.719 --> 00:47:47.199
cumulatives there you go. Yeah,
sure I knew that. You know,

586
00:47:47.440 --> 00:47:51.320
it's pretty well laid out in your
book. I mean they you know,

587
00:47:51.400 --> 00:47:53.719
they it was. It was kind
of forced. I think by that by

588
00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:58.320
the nature of course, Wiley has
the benefit of of hindsight because he's looking

589
00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:01.239
at it after the after the war. But uh, you know, we

590
00:48:01.239 --> 00:48:07.400
we turn the we turned these subs
loose to engage in unrestricted warfare, and

591
00:48:07.440 --> 00:48:14.679
then we start uh moving along as
we had to do to capture these outlying

592
00:48:14.840 --> 00:48:19.000
areas until we could get close to
the to the homeland. Kind of talk

593
00:48:19.039 --> 00:48:22.119
about that a little bit, as
you know, is is it just King's

594
00:48:22.159 --> 00:48:27.760
genius that he saw this ahead of
time? Is wildly just reflecting what what

595
00:48:27.760 --> 00:48:34.440
what actually happened, and is not
really well. So, you know,

596
00:48:34.559 --> 00:48:39.079
scholarship is hard to find consensus on
the reasons for the success in the Pacific.

597
00:48:39.159 --> 00:48:45.000
That Trent Hoane has provided some really
good answers when he talks talks about

598
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:47.760
this in Learning War that the Navy
is a learning organization. But again it's

599
00:48:47.760 --> 00:48:52.039
a learning organization with an immense industrial
base behind it. So if you're going

600
00:48:52.079 --> 00:48:57.760
to fight a nutritional war with the
United States at least back, then not

601
00:48:57.920 --> 00:49:01.320
a good idea. Right on top
of it, there is good leadership,

602
00:49:01.719 --> 00:49:06.960
but it's it's systems and systems.
I mean, it's like one of the

603
00:49:07.000 --> 00:49:13.159
French captains Seid after Trafalgar. At
Trafalgar, every British captain was a Nelson.

604
00:49:13.599 --> 00:49:19.440
Well, in the Navy you had
a lot of Nelson's and Kings and

605
00:49:19.519 --> 00:49:24.039
Nimtzs and Halsey's and Spruances and Fletchers, and these guys all sort of follow

606
00:49:24.199 --> 00:49:29.920
sort of the same pattern and they
all sort of had the same view of

607
00:49:30.039 --> 00:49:34.880
warfare. I think does a good
job of kind of showing you it's not

608
00:49:35.119 --> 00:49:37.840
just the Navy and the Marines.
The army plays a huge role in this.

609
00:49:37.960 --> 00:49:44.719
I mean MacArthur wanted to do the
first defensive. He told the Combined

610
00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:47.559
Choose of Staff and the JCS,
listen, give me two weeks, give

611
00:49:47.599 --> 00:49:52.360
me the first Marines, and I'll
kick the Japanese out of New Guinea and

612
00:49:52.400 --> 00:49:54.840
I'll go capture a bull. Of
course, everybody on the Joint Piece of

613
00:49:54.880 --> 00:50:01.199
Staff laughed at him. They go, we no, that's a crazy idea,

614
00:50:01.280 --> 00:50:06.280
and it'll take us Gosh, Rebull
won't even ever fall, but it'll

615
00:50:06.320 --> 00:50:10.960
take another year and a half to
neutralize Reball. So MacArthur was, you

616
00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:15.639
know, doing some sort of you
know, tropical route or something down in

617
00:50:15.679 --> 00:50:21.480
Australia when he after that. But
he does begin his offensive shortly after the

618
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:25.719
Guadalcanal begins at Boona and Goona,
And just like Guadalcanal, it's at the

619
00:50:25.840 --> 00:50:30.159
limits of his operational reach. And
it's ugly, you know. It's the

620
00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:37.119
Americans don't have it their whole way
there are the Pacific is the second priority,

621
00:50:37.280 --> 00:50:43.239
right and and and Nimitz himself or
not Nimets, but MacArthur's theater is

622
00:50:43.400 --> 00:50:47.880
you know, even lower priority than
then Nimtz's South Pacific theater under Halsey.

623
00:50:49.760 --> 00:50:53.840
After Guadalcanal is over, MacArthur and
Halsey develop a really good working relationship,

624
00:50:54.199 --> 00:51:00.000
and then Hall and then and then
MacArthur h starts to build up his own

625
00:51:00.159 --> 00:51:04.440
naval forces. Eventually they become the
seventh Fleet under Kincaid, and he fights

626
00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:13.000
a series of just really dazzling operational
campaigns up New Guinea across to Cape Gloucester

627
00:51:13.239 --> 00:51:20.840
on the island of New Britain,
which is where Reball is. At the

628
00:51:20.880 --> 00:51:25.480
same time, Halsey is fighting another
campaign up the Solomons, and so Halsey

629
00:51:25.719 --> 00:51:30.280
and MacArthur are the original duel advanced
with Halsey going up to Solomons, to

630
00:51:30.400 --> 00:51:38.440
New Georgia and Bougainville supported by the
Navy, and Nimmet's actually his offensive in

631
00:51:38.480 --> 00:51:43.960
the Central Pacific doesn't really get started
to late nineteen forty three with Tarla,

632
00:51:44.119 --> 00:51:49.320
and then Nimts has his brilliant campaigns
in the Marshalls and in the Carolans,

633
00:51:50.079 --> 00:51:52.960
well not really in the Carolands,
you know, and some people would say

634
00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:55.480
and a wee talk is really in
the Marshalls, and it's not in the

635
00:51:55.480 --> 00:52:00.440
Carolns. You know. The fascinating
thing here is they figure out how to

636
00:52:00.599 --> 00:52:07.000
kind of make Japan's defense on interior
lines at the strategic and operational level a

637
00:52:07.159 --> 00:52:12.000
drawback, not an advantage. You
know. The idea is that Keto Bu

638
00:52:12.119 --> 00:52:15.360
Tai and the Japanese carriers and fleet
would be able to run around on interior

639
00:52:15.480 --> 00:52:22.719
lines and defeat these turn these offensives
in turn. But the problem is Yamamoto,

640
00:52:23.400 --> 00:52:29.480
Japanese fleet that's in rapul and the
Imperial Navy General staff have got to

641
00:52:29.559 --> 00:52:35.639
meet three major offenses at the same
time, and they simply don't have aircraft,

642
00:52:35.679 --> 00:52:37.639
carriers, the aircraft, and the
army troops to do it. In

643
00:52:37.679 --> 00:52:42.440
fact, the Army goes to the
Navy and says, you lied to us.

644
00:52:42.519 --> 00:52:45.320
You're telling us you need more troops
to defend these islands, but we've

645
00:52:45.360 --> 00:52:50.079
got a war in China that were
bought down in and we really don't have

646
00:52:50.119 --> 00:52:52.559
any troops to give you. You
kind of lied to us about, you

647
00:52:52.599 --> 00:52:57.199
know, what it was going to
take to beat the Americans, and so

648
00:52:57.199 --> 00:53:00.920
so you know, on the American
side, everybody's working together on the Japanese

649
00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:05.559
side. Everybody's dysfunctional, and each
time the Japanese think they have figured out

650
00:53:05.559 --> 00:53:07.559
where the next blow is going to
land. You know, the Americans land

651
00:53:07.599 --> 00:53:12.119
in Tarawa and see the Gilberts and
they go, okay, well, let's

652
00:53:12.119 --> 00:53:15.719
focus there, and then boom,
you know, MacArthur lands. You know,

653
00:53:15.840 --> 00:53:22.760
MacArthur lands in Cape Nassa, and
it lands Alamua, and then boom,

654
00:53:22.920 --> 00:53:28.360
Halsey shows up in Bougainville, and
you know, and the Japanese just

655
00:53:28.480 --> 00:53:32.320
can't they can't get their balance.
And the problem is now they're in the

656
00:53:32.360 --> 00:53:37.039
worst form of warfare that they wanted
to fight, which is a nutrition war,

657
00:53:37.480 --> 00:53:42.519
and the Americans keep showing up with
more and better troops. Are almost

658
00:53:42.599 --> 00:53:46.079
from mid nineteen forty three on,
the Americans will almost always have command of

659
00:53:46.119 --> 00:53:51.679
the air and local command of the
sea in these fights, and the Japanese

660
00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:54.320
won't, and it'll be very difficult
for them. The only time where they

661
00:53:54.360 --> 00:53:59.119
really make an effort to kind of
get it back will be in the Battle

662
00:53:59.119 --> 00:54:01.599
of the Philippines Sea, where they
kind of try to get that command of

663
00:54:01.599 --> 00:54:06.000
the air and see and it backfires
on them. They have a something called

664
00:54:06.000 --> 00:54:12.079
the Decisive Battle Doctrine and So when
the when NYMPHIS Central Pacific Campaign shows up

665
00:54:12.119 --> 00:54:16.000
in the Marianas, and this is
gonna be Operation of Forager, the the

666
00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:21.320
the Japanese just aren't ready for it. They're thinking that they're gonna, you

667
00:54:21.360 --> 00:54:24.599
know, launch their carrier airplanes.
Then they'll go on a one way trip

668
00:54:24.679 --> 00:54:29.920
and fly into the bases in Guantini
and Saipan. Well, the Americans shoot

669
00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:35.519
down all the Japanese land based air
forces before the Japanese fleet even shows up.

670
00:54:35.559 --> 00:54:38.760
And then if they're flying into land
in these bases, the Americans already

671
00:54:38.800 --> 00:54:45.840
dominate the air and then they have
the Great Marianas Turkey shoot and and so

672
00:54:45.880 --> 00:54:51.880
the Japanese suffer these horrendous losses of
these precious carriers that it's taken them almost

673
00:54:51.880 --> 00:54:55.719
to nine months together enough to kind
of attack the Americans. And so you

674
00:54:55.760 --> 00:55:00.239
get this. So the Japanese had
this decisive battle, they lose it,

675
00:55:00.639 --> 00:55:06.840
and they keep losing it. They'll
lose it again. And I'm sure I'm

676
00:55:06.840 --> 00:55:09.480
going here that they kind of keep
losing the decisive battle and they go,

677
00:55:09.559 --> 00:55:13.000
well, next time we'll get them, you know, next time we'll get

678
00:55:13.039 --> 00:55:15.440
them. And they take it all
the way to the end. Of the

679
00:55:15.480 --> 00:55:20.239
war with Okinawa, where they again, are the Americans, you know,

680
00:55:20.440 --> 00:55:24.000
getting off likely and these battles,
No, they're they're suffering, but they're

681
00:55:24.079 --> 00:55:31.719
just totally strange Japan with air and
sea and power and UH and the Japanese

682
00:55:31.760 --> 00:55:37.679
are starting to run out of options. I'm curious your opinion on something that

683
00:55:38.519 --> 00:55:42.559
the older I get, the more
I agree with. Is when you know,

684
00:55:42.599 --> 00:55:45.119
we talk about attritional warfare, and
especially when you think about the industrial

685
00:55:45.159 --> 00:55:50.039
age of warfare, and it's also
easier to put up on a put up

686
00:55:50.079 --> 00:55:53.360
on a slide, so to speak, numbers of ships, numbers of aircraft,

687
00:55:53.400 --> 00:56:00.360
aircraft carriers' losses. But one thing
that really during the latter part of

688
00:56:00.360 --> 00:56:04.760
the war seemed to be an even
greater problem with the Japanese. And I'm

689
00:56:04.840 --> 00:56:08.679
curious where you'd put the balance here. It's not so much the fact like

690
00:56:08.800 --> 00:56:13.639
in Midway that they lost all those
carriers, but they lost all of the

691
00:56:13.679 --> 00:56:19.639
most experienced aviators they had, which
gave him that comparative advantage at the opening

692
00:56:19.679 --> 00:56:24.679
of the war. And so it
wasn't just the material and industrial attrition,

693
00:56:25.400 --> 00:56:30.559
but the Japanese never seemed to get
off the back foot when it came to

694
00:56:30.679 --> 00:56:37.719
having their air wings led and experienced
on the level that the Americans just kept

695
00:56:37.840 --> 00:56:46.239
sending from Konis. Yeah, the
the Japanese training and Mark Pete goes into

696
00:56:46.239 --> 00:56:51.000
this in a great book called Sunburst, which is the history of the Japanese

697
00:56:51.079 --> 00:56:57.480
naval aviation. It's very much like
his book with Dave Evans Akaign, but

698
00:56:57.920 --> 00:57:02.559
Sunburst tills the story of jeb and
they come up with this grueling training program

699
00:57:02.639 --> 00:57:07.199
to train the most elite naval aviators
in the world, Japanese. Japan and

700
00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:13.639
in nineteen forty one has the best
naval aviation force in the world, both

701
00:57:13.719 --> 00:57:17.599
land based and sea based. I
mean they sink the Prince of Wales and

702
00:57:17.639 --> 00:57:23.079
the Repulse with land based torpedo bombers
and it's like they didn't even break a

703
00:57:23.239 --> 00:57:29.960
sweat when they did it. And
so they but they don't have the programs

704
00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:35.000
to train these guys for the long
deray. And then when the war against

705
00:57:35.239 --> 00:57:38.559
desperate as at Guadalcanal, they can't
pull these guys out of the line.

706
00:57:38.599 --> 00:57:43.079
I mean, we're pulling guys out
of the line like Jimmy Thatch and flat

707
00:57:43.159 --> 00:57:46.639
Lee and butch oh here to trained
guys back in the United States because we

708
00:57:46.719 --> 00:57:52.039
have this huge one hundred carrier fleet
coming and we cycle guys out of the

709
00:57:52.079 --> 00:57:54.840
line. Japanese don't do that.
They won't bring their guys back, and

710
00:57:54.880 --> 00:57:59.960
then they run into the problem of
not only don't they have the veterans anymore,

711
00:58:00.559 --> 00:58:04.440
but now they don't have the gas
to train these guys because we're sinking

712
00:58:04.480 --> 00:58:07.760
all their oilers. They have to
divide their fleet with the carriers up in

713
00:58:07.840 --> 00:58:13.719
Japan and the battleships and the service
ships down in Lingo Road in Singapore because

714
00:58:13.719 --> 00:58:16.199
they don't have the oil anymore because
we sink all of their oil tankers in

715
00:58:16.239 --> 00:58:21.760
the av gas and so the Japanese
ironically end up where the Germans are.

716
00:58:21.920 --> 00:58:27.719
In mid nineteen forty four, a
new pilot's first combat mission will be his

717
00:58:27.800 --> 00:58:31.480
last mission. The only guys that
are surviving are a few, you know,

718
00:58:32.000 --> 00:58:36.880
you know, the few that are
left. You know. I forget

719
00:58:36.920 --> 00:58:38.960
there was a Stuka pilot who wrote
a book called, you know, the

720
00:58:39.000 --> 00:58:42.800
First and the Last. I think
it was I forget his name, but

721
00:58:42.800 --> 00:58:46.559
anyway, that was The Japanese and
the German looked off are very much alike

722
00:58:46.679 --> 00:58:51.960
it. They just don't have the
pilots to compete anymore. And that's because

723
00:58:52.000 --> 00:58:55.239
they hadn't foreseen that this was going
to be a war of attrition in the

724
00:58:55.320 --> 00:59:00.840
air. You know, we sort
of stumbled into this in the German campaign.

725
00:59:02.159 --> 00:59:06.960
We sort of stumbled into this,
this Achilles heel for the Luftwaffa.

726
00:59:07.440 --> 00:59:09.920
We don't in the Pacific. Slu
McCain in the midst of the Guaddal Canal

727
00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:17.480
campaign rites back and he's the commander
of calm Air so packed commander Air Forces

728
00:59:17.519 --> 00:59:22.800
South Pacific, the land based Air
Forces, and he writes back to King

729
00:59:22.920 --> 00:59:28.920
saying, hey, we can turned
Guadalcanal into the sinkhole for Japanese aviation.

730
00:59:29.599 --> 00:59:35.320
And we do, and we basically
do it throughout the Pacific, and it

731
00:59:35.400 --> 00:59:39.480
becomes a case of where the Japanese
have to resort to these desperate measures of

732
00:59:39.719 --> 00:59:45.360
Kamikazi's katsu goos, banca boats,
suicide boats, all the kinds of things

733
00:59:45.360 --> 00:59:47.920
we're seeing today, you know,
are basically sort of you know, I

734
00:59:47.960 --> 00:59:52.800
mean, I hate to use it
because it's not really their unmanned, unguided

735
00:59:52.840 --> 00:59:57.079
systems that well, the Japanese don't
have that luxury in nineteen forty four,

736
00:59:57.239 --> 01:00:01.360
so they go with manned guided systems, right, and is the guidance system.

737
01:00:01.800 --> 01:00:07.000
And so it's a it's a fascinating
story. It's a tragic story too,

738
01:00:07.119 --> 01:00:12.280
because this is this is a superb
force that the Japan takes to war,

739
01:00:12.360 --> 01:00:15.000
but by the time we get to
the end, very few of them

740
01:00:15.039 --> 01:00:21.960
are alive. Yeah. I liked
the first quote at the conclusion, in

741
01:00:22.000 --> 01:00:24.599
the conclusion you wrote, which is
from addwal King. The war has been

742
01:00:24.679 --> 01:00:29.000
variously termed a war of production and
a war of machines, whatever else.

743
01:00:29.039 --> 01:00:31.000
It is as far as the United
States is concerned, as a war of

744
01:00:31.039 --> 01:00:36.079
logistics. And you know, you
just hit on that we sank their oilers

745
01:00:36.400 --> 01:00:40.199
with that interrupted their ability to train
new aviators. We were cutting off their

746
01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:45.880
supplies to make new aircraft. And
yeah, I mean that spells of doom

747
01:00:45.920 --> 01:00:50.239
and and I think there are a
lot of lessons to be learned to that

748
01:00:50.280 --> 01:00:52.000
if we have to go to war
again in the Pacific, it's you know,

749
01:00:52.119 --> 01:00:57.079
the logistics is key. But let's
let's talk a little bit about what

750
01:00:57.320 --> 01:01:00.360
you know. This book I highly
recommend people read. It's not it's not

751
01:01:00.400 --> 01:01:05.079
a it's not a very long book, but it's it's dense and Yeah,

752
01:01:05.199 --> 01:01:09.199
Naval Institute wouldn't let me make it
longer. They wouldn't let me out an

753
01:01:09.199 --> 01:01:13.679
epilogue to it. That's how short
they wanted it to be. I wrote

754
01:01:13.719 --> 01:01:17.239
it now, Yeah, I wrote
another four pages and they couldn't even put

755
01:01:17.280 --> 01:01:21.280
that in the book. The advantage
of that, though, John, is

756
01:01:21.280 --> 01:01:24.000
that people, you know, they
they will read a shorter book if you

757
01:01:24.199 --> 01:01:30.079
if you pick up my Hands,
you know, History of Seapower. That's

758
01:01:30.159 --> 01:01:35.960
that's an intimidating book for a lot
of people. So, uh, while

759
01:01:35.960 --> 01:01:37.159
we're talking about this, so what
are you working on now? What can

760
01:01:37.159 --> 01:01:44.199
we look forward to the next scene
out of your your fertile mind. Well,

761
01:01:44.480 --> 01:01:46.840
I've got some chapters coming out and
some new books that are going to

762
01:01:46.840 --> 01:01:51.679
be coming out. One of them
is with Naval Institute Press. It's a

763
01:01:51.760 --> 01:01:54.559
book on fleets and being edited by
Sally Pain. So I've got a chapter

764
01:01:54.679 --> 01:02:00.679
on fortified fleets and beings. They're
talking about actually the British Navy in the

765
01:02:00.800 --> 01:02:05.719
Dutch Navy and what they were doing
early in the Pacific War and prior to

766
01:02:05.800 --> 01:02:09.960
it in terms of how they wanted
to defend. So that'll be an analogy

767
01:02:10.239 --> 01:02:15.400
in an anthology that's coming out.
I'm working on a paper right I'm going

768
01:02:15.440 --> 01:02:22.800
to present in April at the Society
of Military History, and it's completely it's

769
01:02:22.880 --> 01:02:27.480
like, you know, Mighty Python. Now for something completely different. It's

770
01:02:28.079 --> 01:02:35.519
going to be on Mark Bristol,
a lieutenant commander commanding the Newport Torpedo Station

771
01:02:36.280 --> 01:02:42.719
in nineteen o eight to nineteen ten
eleven. And that's because I'm fascinated by

772
01:02:42.719 --> 01:02:45.119
this guy Bristol. He's not a
World War Two admiral, but he's He

773
01:02:45.239 --> 01:02:50.480
was our first ever ambassador to Turkey
while he was an active duty admiral,

774
01:02:50.800 --> 01:02:54.920
and he also commanded the gunboats in
China as the commander of the Asiatic Fleet

775
01:02:55.320 --> 01:02:59.199
and it was on the General Board. So I'm right. So this was

776
01:02:59.280 --> 01:03:02.199
kind of a spinoff and my interest
in Admiral Bristol and him commanding the Newport

777
01:03:02.280 --> 01:03:07.159
Torpedo Station. It's it's I hoped
eventually publish that at some point. But

778
01:03:07.559 --> 01:03:10.880
one of the archives there is Stacy
Perilla and I were talking about, you

779
01:03:10.880 --> 01:03:15.079
know, the Newport Torpedo Station.
Today it sounds like, oh yeah,

780
01:03:15.239 --> 01:03:17.880
very boring torpedo station, you know, prior to World War One, but

781
01:03:17.960 --> 01:03:21.719
it was like Silicon Valley. I
mean, it was right at the center

782
01:03:21.760 --> 01:03:29.760
of all this advanced innovative technology like
wireless telegraphy and periscope optics and submarines and

783
01:03:30.360 --> 01:03:34.800
unguided systems like torpedoes, and and
this guy was right here in the middle

784
01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:37.920
of it with all of these crazy
inventions and machines and everything. So that's

785
01:03:37.920 --> 01:03:42.159
coming up in h that's coming up
in side of military history. That'll be

786
01:03:42.199 --> 01:03:45.519
up in Washington at Arlington when they
have their conference there. And then the

787
01:03:45.559 --> 01:03:50.280
next book project I have is with
Navorlands due press, but I'm I pitched

788
01:03:50.280 --> 01:03:52.960
it to him. It's a Mask
of Naval Command, kind of modeled on

789
01:03:52.079 --> 01:03:57.199
John Keek's Mask of Command. Have
a contract or anything for that right now,

790
01:03:57.199 --> 01:04:00.480
it's just a book proposal, So
I'm just kind of waiting to hear

791
01:04:00.519 --> 01:04:04.079
on that. Well, I'm really
interested in the UH, in the the

792
01:04:04.159 --> 01:04:11.199
Newport UH torpedo stations, those little
little out of the out of the direct

793
01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:14.960
view cornered little stories that I think
are really enlightening. So yeah, I

794
01:04:15.519 --> 01:04:17.599
look, you have to to send
me a link when that becomes publicly available,

795
01:04:17.599 --> 01:04:21.880
and that seems really interesting, I
have to give you a preview on

796
01:04:21.960 --> 01:04:30.079
it. So so Bristol takes over
this outfit and takes command. And shortly

797
01:04:30.119 --> 01:04:34.239
after he gets there and takes command, Uh, a submarine comes to report

798
01:04:34.280 --> 01:04:38.760
for duty. And it's the USS
Plunger. It's one of the brand new

799
01:04:39.239 --> 01:04:44.119
first generation American submarines and it comes
in to get its torpedoes tested and also

800
01:04:44.239 --> 01:04:48.440
to assist with research and development on
torpedo systems for submarines. And the commander

801
01:04:48.480 --> 01:04:55.000
of the Plunger is Chester w Mimics
Ensign w NIMMS. So I love this

802
01:04:55.039 --> 01:04:59.440
stuff. It's it's always been a
small navy. You'd never know who you're

803
01:04:59.519 --> 01:05:02.280
to run into. And and John, we really appreciate you coming on for

804
01:05:02.360 --> 01:05:05.320
this Super Bowl Stundy. It has
been a great conversation and look forward to

805
01:05:05.320 --> 01:05:11.000
the next time. Yeah. I
love to sell Eagle ones. You guys

806
01:05:11.000 --> 01:05:14.679
are great goat chiefs. Yeah,
get ready to put your gear on.

807
01:05:14.760 --> 01:05:20.599
Get get that face paint going,
John, Thank you, every Thank everybody.

808
01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:26.679
Another edition of mid Rats until next
time. Hope everybody has a great

809
01:05:26.760 --> 01:05:43.280
Navy day. Cheers. Goodbye to
Paddy, Mike, my looney want to

810
01:05:43.599 --> 01:05:54.360
marry me and a friend of be
comily all your being to blame me said

811
01:05:55.719 --> 01:06:04.280
holding all the name a long way
off y. It's a long way.

812
01:06:08.119 --> 01:06:24.800
It's a long way. The Army
all think it well lived well. It's

813
01:06:24.880 --> 01:06:45.880
a long long way to differ,
but it's an exciting time. As United

814
01:06:45.960 --> 01:06:51.519
Way of Northeast Florida celebrates one hundred
years of uniting and serving our community since

815
01:06:51.639 --> 01:06:56.880
nineteen twenty four, our mission has
been simple, create hope and opportunity for

816
01:06:56.960 --> 01:07:00.000
those who need it most. Over
the decades, wease provide at essential needs,

817
01:07:00.079 --> 01:07:04.719
guided people towards financial well being,
and helped create a more equitable Northeast

818
01:07:04.719 --> 01:07:09.880
Florida. But one hundred years was
only the beginning. Helped create an even

819
01:07:09.920 --> 01:07:15.480
brighter future for the next generation at
UNITEDWAYNFL dot org. Selling a home is

820
01:07:15.599 --> 01:07:19.679
different today. With fewer homes on
the market, it's an excellent time to

821
01:07:19.719 --> 01:07:25.440
sell and for your next move.
Wawson is here to help with legendary quality

822
01:07:25.480 --> 01:07:27.400
of service. That's the Loston Way.