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Two Sunken Japanese Submarines Found Off Hawaii
Ponca City, We love you writes "The NY Times reports that two World War II Japanese submarines, including one meant to carry aircraft for attacks on American cities, have been found in deep water off Hawaii where they were sunk in 1946. Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the US East Coast — perhaps targeting Washington, DC and New York City — the 'samurai subs' were fast, far-ranging, and some carried folding-wing aircraft. Five Japanese submarines were captured by American forces at the end of the war and taken to Pearl Harbor for study, then towed to sea and torpedoed, probably to avoid having to share any of their technology with the Russian military. One of the Japanese craft, the I-201, was covered with a rubberized coating on the hull, an innovation intended to make it less apparent to sonar or radar; it was capable of speeds of about 20 knots while submerged, making it among the fastest diesel submarines ever made. The other, the I-14, much larger and slower, was designed to carry two small planes, Aichi M6A Seirans that could be brought onto the deck and launched by a catapult. The submarines were meant to threaten the United States directly, but none of the attacks occurred because the subs were developed too late in the war, and American intelligence was too good. 'It's very moving to see objects like this underwater,' says Hans Van Tilburg of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 'because it's a very peaceful environment, but these subs were designed for aggression.'"
Speaking as a guy who's spent time on modern boats, anyone who can get the opportunity to tour a submarine should do so without delay. It's awesome to see photos, but it's even better when you seen the insides at work.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The whales and dolphins, or the chickens and cows?
Sounds kind of interesting, but I haven't heard of it. How does that work? I assume it's not like the typical medieval catapult.
It's very moving to see objects like this underwater
Compared to those damn flying submarines...
some nerds like history.
There was also a third sub. This one had 8 tentacle arms, and loved to rape pixelated pussies with them. Instead of sending it off to war like the others, the Japanese found it to be cute, and kept it as a pet.
When I first read this headline, I thought they had located the missing midget submarine used to attack Pearl Harbor. (See this) This is not the case. That ship still remains lost.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Since when does Rupert Murdoch own the NYT?
Gojira!!!!
We're talking about the (re)discovery of a submersible aircraft carrier here, a presently defunct offshoot of military technology. I'd say it qualifies (and I'm sure everybody who's ever played Supreme Commander would agree with me).
Well, it's a teaser. It always amazes me at how advanced the Germans and Japanese were in some things, and just how arrogant and stupid the Americans were. (Of course the same could be said for all participants, but as victors, the Americans wrote the history after the war.)
American Generals refused to believe the early reports of the speed and agility of the Zero. British Generals refused to fund the development of the jet engine until the Germans fielded theirs.
Now I learn that the Japanese were playing with submarine stealth technology.
Lots of good stuff for geeks; just gotta do your homework and not wait to be spoonfed.
And The First Sub Says, "sup sub?"
Second sub says, "Sub witchoo"
I know, right?
Gojira!!!!
Earth's only hope for survival will be to resurrect these two subs as spaceships to kick some Gamilon ass.
"Leader Dessslok, it's as if we're fighting a ghost ship! How can an old Earth submarine defeat all of Gamilon?"
Hurry Starforce, there are only 57 days before all life on Earth becomes extinct!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Jet engines aren't much use to the army.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And yes the aircraft were recoverable by the sub crew: they were seaplanes, and would be picked up by a crane aboard the sub.
You can read a summary of US-mainland attacks here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_United_States_territory_in_North_America_during_World_War_II#Japanese_assaults
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
Well, it's a teaser. It always amazes me at how advanced the Germans and Japanese were in some things, and just how arrogant and stupid the Americans were. (Of course the same could be said for all participants, but as victors, the Americans wrote the history after the war.)
American Generals refused to believe the early reports of the speed and agility of the Zero. British Generals refused to fund the development of the jet engine until the Germans fielded theirs.
Now I learn that the Japanese were playing with submarine stealth technology.
Lots of good stuff for geeks; just gotta do your homework and not wait to be spoonfed.
Yet the countries with the advanced high-tech military hardware still fell to the swarming hordes that out-produced them materially. A lesson the US probably should keep in mind going into the 21st century.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The 25 Museum Submarines Located Across The USA - Listed In Order Of Launch Date
Clive Cussler has written quite a number of excellent thrillers; one of them is about a sunken Japanese sub containing a biochemical warfare agent. So maybe we're only getting half the story... :-)
Well worth reading, IMO.
Thank God those whales and dolphins bombed Hiroshima or we might have had to face more of these things.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The fact that you dont also seem amazed at the arrogance of the Japanese general staff, the German high command, etc. or any officers of those countries seems to indicate that you haven't had an in-depth study of the war. Or any war, for that fact. War is arrogance.
The axis forces of WWII made many arrogant mistakes, like not believing in convoys (Japanese), not believing allies had broken their codes (Japanese and German), not believing that their own governments could come up with anything like a "death camp," etc. Arrogance ran up and down the command structure on both sides of that particular war.
And even though it's more exciting to talk about secret Japanese and German technology, don't forget that the misuse of secret technology was a specialty of all parties involved in the war; Japan was making better suicide planes, Germany was mastering the infrastructure of genocide, and so on.
The Freudian implications of a large, phallically-shaped object coated in rubber cannot be ignored.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Hehe. You missed the part about "same could be said for all participants". My point was that as vicotrs, the Americans got to write about their achievements, while minimizing the achievements of others, and glossing over their mistakes.
History is seldom written from the perspective of the losing side; if it's written it's called a hostorical novel or fiction.
If you don't think history and geekiness can mix, I recommend you read Cryptonomicon which will change your mind. ISBN is 978-1-4395-0179-5, it's also online (for example here)
I call bullshit. There were plenty of Japanese and German survivors of WWII, and they wrote plenty about their perspective of the war.
The time in which the losers were all killed and only the victors remained is long past.
But you keep up with your rabid anti-American whinging. You wanna make a fool of yourself, who am I to stop you?
...don't forget that the misuse of secret technology was a specialty of all parties involved in the war; Japan was making better suicide planes...
Actually, for the purposes for which they were designed, "suicide planes" were a pretty practical weapon. They knew that many planes weren't coming back. A piloted plane diving onto a boat is both dangerous and terrifying. It inspires local forces as much as it intimidates the enemy. AFAIC, it's a great example of hive think. And, simultaneously, a travesty of humanity and an example of focusing on strategy and practicality to the point of completely neglecting any other goals.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
USS Silversides (SS-236) Active in WWII from April of 1941 to July 1945, and saw quite a bit of action.
Can be seen at the Great Lakes Naval Memorial & Museum.
In Muskegon, MI. They have several "overnight" programs for Cub Scouts and Indian Guides and such so you can spend the night sleeping in the bunks, as well as eat in the galley, watch Das Boot, etc. Very very very cool for kids and adults both.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
The Japanese were convinced that Dolittle's raid was conducted by submarine launched bombers to such an extent they spent an enormous amount of effort developing them.
Like many such items during the war - these subs attempted too many innovations in one jump and were not reliable. The Germans and the Japanese had a penchant for attempting to produce super weapons as opposed to incremental improvements in existing stuff. Some of what they produced was incredible, but none of it was really ready for prime time, or available in sufficient quantity to significantly have any effect on the war.
One of the most draconian decisions of the war was on the part of the US - it was recognized that the Sherman was no match for the heavier German tanks. There were some improvements, but the US counted on the fact that we were producing and delivering tanks at a rate that outstripped the Germans ability to destroy them or replace their own.
...carrier dead.....
Helicopters. Tanks. Nit-pick if you want that a turbo-shaft engine is not the same as a "jet" engine, the idea is the same.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Like Japan wasn't bombing civilians? Or Germany? Or Britain? Or Russia? Or _ANYONE ELSE_?
That's how wars were fought in those days. Get over it. We didn't have smart bombs, we couldn't take out a specific building, or even a specific city block. And their war industries were located right in the middle of their major cities. We had no other choices. The only way to stop their military was to carpet bomb their cities, or though a direct ground assault. And do you realize how many _more_ people would have died had we not dropped those bombs? We would have kept carpet-bombing their cities (killing civilians), we would have been stuck in war taking these tiny little islands for _months_, possibly _years_ (killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and plenty more civilians), and with the Japanese mindset at the time we likely would have had to march our troops right up to the emperor's palace before they would have surrendered. These are the same people who were using Kamikaze aircraft. Do you really think they would have surrendered, ever? Yes, it was a horrible act, but it was the best option we had at the time - though I will admit we should have waited before dropping the second bomb - from what I've heard they didn't even fully know what the first one did before we dropped the second. From what I've heard they basically ignored the initial reports because they didn't think such a thing was even possible.
Today, yes, killing civilians is a horrible thing to do. But that's pretty easy to say when you have the capability to fire a missile from hundreds of miles away and take out a single room of a building without harming anything around it. It's easy to criticize when you're 60 years away. But by your logic every single army in history, including those acting in defense, and civilian militias, are guilty of horrific and cowardly atrocities. In those days, when a nation went to war, _the entire nation_ went to war. There really were no civilians in the sense that there are today. Every single citizen was in some way involved in the war effort.
http://www.queenmary.com/index.php?page=scorpioninformation
You can go through the entire sub from front to end.
I have done this a couple times and take relatives down to it when they come in town, than you can go right next to the Queen Mary all here in Long Beach, CA.
Lots of ducking your head and pipes everywhere, a plumber would get a hard on walking through it all.
The Allies also had plenty of leading edge technology. It is hard to have a consistent edge across the entire spectrum. The Allies had more advanced technology in certain areas such as the cavity magnetron for radar, strategic bombers such as the B-17, Avro Lancaster and B-29, fighter aircraft such as the Spitfire, tanks such as the T-34 and IS-2, Bazooka, Katyusha MLRS, code breaking such as ULTRA and MAGIC intercepts. Victory at the Battle of Midway was possible because the USA knew of the attack beforehand from code breaking for example.
WWII fleet sub, pretty awesome to see. There's a Liberty ship right next to it, which is also pretty neat.
The USS Nautilus is in Groton, Connecticut.
Great book about salvaging the S-51, in 1926.
12:50 - press return.
You are either trolling or you don't understand the meaning of "history is written by the victors".
Even if you don't kill all your enemies and all who supported them in any way the winner still comes out on top with the loser subdued, guess which party is more powerful (hint: It's fucking obvious).
Also, just because there are books written on the subject doesn't mean they've received as much publicity as those describing the glorious victors (btw, this is the "guess which party is more powerful" bit in the previous paragraph.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
And now we have nukes. Bring me your masses indeed.
the world capital of porn production and general weirdness of all varieties
so its not surprising
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Weapons, blah blah, speed, blah blah (yawn).
It's not history. The real question here is: how much gold did they find on board?
A pragmatist might have pointed out that turbo shaft engines were really not practical in the 1940s for land vehicles (it was hard enough to use them in planes) and considerable time and expense was probably saved by not heavily researching them. Even today they're still problematic--the Abrams is a fuel hog with an enormous IR signature.
I read the internet for the articles.
You insensitive clod. Just thinking about being under the Arctic ice in a metal tube makes me think that perhaps there is a case for encouraging global warming after all.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Who cares about gold? How much booty did they find?
True. However, the post was present tense, so that was how I formed my reply. I will grant that at the time Whittle was working on his engine nobody was thinking of the various applications we have now.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
FTA:
I have doubts about this - with the Panama canal under Allied control, getting to the east coast USA from Japan would have been VERY far-ranging.
This is not my sig
As Stalin once said, quantity has a quality of its own. It's great it you can produce one tank that will kill five of the enemy's; until of course your enemy starts producing six tanks for every one of yours.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'd never heard before about a Japanese one. The german u-boat U480 that was apparently recently re-located used a rubberized coating intended to absorb sonar to make it less easy to detect. Other sources I've read claim it was covered in some sort of polyurethane that, as it cured, developed engineered-size air pockets that were tuned to absorb sonar pulses. I'm assuming they transferred the technology to Japan, because I've read some about the subject and there's a lot of literature on the German program but I'd never heard about the Japanese one before. One of the things I found interesting about it was that the USA and USSR sub designers apparently didn't try to develop this sort of technology for another 30 years after WWII, preferring to concentrate on making the subs quieter.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
American Generals refused to believe the early reports of the speed and agility of the Zero.
Surprising, considering it was stolen from Hughes Aircraft. The zero is a copy of the H-1, which the Japanese deny of course. But then again the Japanese copied a great many western things, like motorcycles and cars, for example. They were good at it, just like the Chinese are today.
I got modded troll, but I don't care. I guess we just have different definitions of "Geek". I wanted specifics.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
To be fair, the Zero's actual performance was pretty staggering compared to its contemporaries. Given the way war intelligence tends to exaggerate the abilities of the enemy it shouldn't be a surprise that allied planners took the Zero's numbers with a grain of salt. If you are curious, here are a couple of numbers on it and a contemporary allied design for comparison:
Zero: Maximum Speed: 533kph, Range: 3,105km, Rate of Climb: 15.7m/s
F4F-4 Wildcat: Maximum Speed: 515kph, Range: 1,240km, Rate of Climb: 9.9m/s (although to be fair, the F4F was much faster in a dive than a Zero)
The crazy thing is, Mitsubishi got that performance out of a plane with an engine that was only about 80% as powerful as the one in the F4F. Unfortunately, it required them to barely put any armor at all on the plane, leading to a very fragile fighter that tended to go down quickly if someone got a bead on it.
I read the internet for the articles.
I should research more before hitting reply: this forum has a lot more info about both the material and the history of the research & development, and has a comparison picture of one of the stealth boats compared to a normal one.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
The Allies also had plenty of leading edge technology. It is hard to have a consistent edge across the entire spectrum.
Of course the allies led in technology. That's why they won the war. There's a certain luxury to develop new technologies when you're fighting at arm's length (in the case of Britain post 1940 and the US) vs being right in the thick of things. The Soviets had already won the tank design part - as early as 1941 I believe it was von Rundstedt that commented, on inspecting a captured Soviet T-34: "If ever the Soviets can mass produce this tank, we've lost the war". Individually German tanks were far superior. However they were far more complex, resulting in engineering, maintenance and manufacturing difficulties. The Soviets had a good simple design that could take a beating and was easy to make and maintain.
Germany was, after the start of Barbarossa and the stall in the offensive, in a fight for her life. That leaves very little budget for R&D. And with 20-20 hind-sight too much of it went to tank and artillery development (a losing proposition because they were going to be beaten by sheer numbers anyway), and not enough of it to asymmetric warfare like U-Boats or aircraft. Imagine a Germany capable of sealing off the North Atlantic with hordes of type XXI U-boats, or bombing the Ural tank factories and the Norfolk shipyards with long range bombers (read about the Amerika Bomber project that got cancelled)/strategic rockets!
The Japanese were never going to win, period, unless Germany managed a complete victory in Europe and took on the US. Yamamoto even knew this before the war started. They were too small, and trying to grab too much of an empire.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, if you look at Japanese culture, the whole thing of permanence is frowned on... The Zero was the embodiment of Japanese thinking; fast, able, lethal, depending on pilot skill rather than heavy defenses. Worked well, too, until they started running out of seasoned pilots and the Allies fielded heavily armored aircraft that the Zero couldn't knock out of the sky.
The F4F was about the only plane that even came close to even with the Zero. The Buffalos, the Spitfires, were all toast. For the Buffalo, the kill ratio was something like 8:1 in favor of the Zero.
You're right - he owns the Wall St. Journal. Brain freeze. My bad.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
On June 20, 1942 a submarine also attacked a Lighthouse in Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It is the only attack on Canadian soil since the war of 1812, and I believe the only one since. While the attack was pretty useless it did cause all the lighthouses off the coast to be turned off. This was to prevent submarines from using them, but also created a nightmare for mariners. http://www.pinetreeline.org/rds/detail/rds99-34.html
Well, it's a teaser. It always amazes me at how advanced the Germans and Japanese were in some things, and just how arrogant and stupid the Americans were.
And still it was the primitive Russian Army that won the war. Technology is great, but in no way a recipe for success. Same still holds true today.
The F4F was about the only plane that even came close to even with the Zero.
You mean the F6F Hellcat? The F4F Wildcat, while it achieved an impressive kill ratio, was a pig of a plane to fly. But it was fast - much faster than the zero. Thus boom and zoom air combat was born.
The F6F, however, was a highly maneuverable plane and could turn with a zero as well as outrun it, much to the chagrin of many a Japanese pilot.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You might want to read Arthur Clarke's old story "Superiority."
The wonder weapon often has significant hidden flaws or doesn't make it to the battlefield in time be decisive.
A downed Zero was recovered from the Aleutians in July 42, rebuilt and flown for testing:
"The Zero had superior maneuverability only at the lower speeds used in dogfighting, with short turning radius and excellent aileron control at very low speeds. However, immediately apparent was the fact that the ailerons froze up at speeds above two hundred knots, so that rolling maneuvers at those speeds were slow and required much force on the control stick. It rolled to the left much easier than to the right. Also, its engine cut out under negative acceleration [as when nosing into a dive] due to its float-type carburetor.
"We now had an answer for our pilots who were unable to escape a pursuing Zero. We told them to go into a vertical power dive, using negative acceleration, if possible, to open the range quickly and gain advantageous speed while the Zero's engine was stopped. At about two hundred knots, we instructed them to roll hard right before the Zero pilot could get his sights lined up."
Advanced U.S. fighters produced toward the war's end still couldn't turn with the Zero, but they were faster and could outclimb and outdive it.
Without self-sealing fuel tanks, the Zero was easily flamed when hit in any of its three wing and fuselage tanks or its droppable belly tank. And without protective armor, its pilot was vulnerable.
Koga's Zero
You were in a long black tube in Bangor. The most memorable things were getting to feel a big vertical shaft and getting cream in your mouth?
All that homoerotic innuendo, and no reference to seamen? I am a little disappointed in you...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Arthur C. Clarke. "Superiority". First published in F&SF, 1951, and reprinted several times since then.
If you haven't read it yet, do so. It explains this lesson better than anything short of losing a world war can.
So basically you're an asshat, and you should just STFU.
They aren't the same at all. The clue is in the word "shaft" - which coincidentally is what you've just done to any credibility you might have had.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A) Believing every rumor is NOT the opposite of arrogance.
B) In fact, they had good reason to disbelieve the reports. Their only problem was that they made certain assumptions about how much of a death-trap the Japanese military were willing to make their planes... Get rid of all armor, and a plane can climb much faster. Of course it dives MUCH SLOWER, so upon figuring this out this fact, future dogfights became immensely one-sided.
High tech for high tech's sake is usually a bad move. German jets were just slightly faster than the fastest prop aircraft, and really diverted resources away from better uses of that money.
Not really true. Things like radar were also highly advanced military technologies, which the US/Brits had, and the Germans/Japanese did not.
In short, the Axis were only slightly more advanced than the Allies. Where the level of military technology is more disparate, it certainly can and does become an overwhelming advantage.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Every single citizen was in some way involved in the war effort.
Nice rationalization there. So yeah, those babies & children & people in hospitals & seniors with dementia & etc. etc. etc. Yeah they were all involved in the war and therefore deserved to be bombed. Nice rationalization.
When both the victor and the loser are free to publish and distribute information, there is a certain bias toward TRUTH. Often that is more powerful than propaganda or nationalism. You're neglecting the fact that reality does have a certain bias: Facts. It doesn't always overcome disinformation campaigns, but it can and has.
Best submarine joke:
180 guys go down, 90 couples come up.....
That was never their plan. The Japanese goal was always to force the US to a disadvantageous peace agreement where the Asian-Pacific region was ceded to them, not to cause some sort of Allies-style unconditional surrender.
This is not about propaganda and lies, this is about who's weapon systems the public considered more impressive and interesting which tends to be those of the winner. Of course, as time goes by people may start to develop more of an interest in the other side's systems, unless everyone just sort of plays along in the whole "their weapons sucked compared to ours".
Anyway, I'm rambling, the point was that "history is written by the victors" goes beyond just "...because they killed the losers" or "...because they forced everyone to accept their version of history at gunpoint".
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
And still it was the primitive Russian Army that won the war.
Yes and no. It was certainly a huge part, but you can't take one piece out of the complicated web of events and focus on that as the reason. If Britain had fallen or sued for peace, Germany would have gone from two fronts to one, and Russia's overwhelming manpower might not have won the war for them. Or, more simply, if Hitler had behaved more sensibly and less aggressively during the second half of the war. The 'primitive Russian Army' was able to overwhelm the German army in large part because the Germans overextended themselves.
So basically your saying that you wish people were killed to prevent the killing of other people. I suppose the irony is lost on you.
Like the other poster, I think you meant the F6F Hellcat. The F4F was slower than a Zero and couldn't come close to out-performing it. It had the advantage in the dives, and it was much tougher, which kept the carnage down to some extent, but performance-wise, no way.
You are right that the Zero greatly out-performed the Brewster Buffalo, but even at the start of the war a Spitfire would have been a very good match to the Zero head-to-head, and the later Marks of the Spitfire ran rings around the Zero. The only advantage the Zero had over the Spitfire was range, but that (as noted) was due to lack of armor, self-sealing tanks, etc. Not that they ever met much, head to head, but you certainly would prefer a Spitfire.
The Zero was pretty good in 1939 but not any better than other contemporary land-based fighters like the BF-109 or the Spitfire. It was better than almost all the carrier-based planes at the time, but not a lot in terms of kill ratio. The Wildcats held their own respectably well and the P-40 had a pretty good record, and they are both pretty doggy airplanes by later war standards. And the Zero never really got a lot better. By even 1941 was out-classed by most of the newer Allied airplanes and it's own stablemates. The Zero had a terrible record when it came up against the P-38 or later the F6F, Mustang, or Corsair. Although they didn't really meet, any model of the Zero would have been dead meat in 1943 against any front-line US, British, or Luftwaffe fighter.
Brett
Like the other poster, I think you meant the F6F Hellcat. The F4F was slower than a Zero and couldn't come close to out-performing it.
I was thinking of "when they first met over the Pacific".... You're absolutely right, the Allies eventually outproduced the Zero both in quantity and quality, and the Japanese lost too many seasoned pilots.
For much of the working world, Dilbert is documentary rather than comic strip. I wouldn't be surprised that in the absence of war, the upper echelons of the military will also become filled with PHBs - those whose primary skills are getting what they want politically (a straight ascent to the top of the hierarchy), rather than what is best for the organization. Those who have the skills and the desire to make the organization more effective will inherently rub the leadership up the wrong way (different goals). As a result, they often get marginalized, and only during times of intense need (e.g. a war) do their ideas get implemented.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The Allies also had plenty of leading edge technology. It is hard to have a consistent edge across the entire spectrum.
not enough of it to asymmetric warfare like U-Boats or aircraft.
WTF? Germany made the first jet aircraft and also primarily wood constructed / RADAR jamming aircraft... yeah they were too late in the war to make the difference, but they both flew.
Actually, they are quite similar in principle. There are some differences in how they are set up, but the front end is much the same.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
"Of course the allies led in technology. That's why they won the war. "
The Allies won the war because of Hitler's master plan:
10 Invade your neighbour
20 Goto 10
30 An empire which will exist for 1000 years!
The U.S. was fully prepared to declare Germany the winner in Europe and let life go on.
Technology did end the war in the Pacific though. But if Hitler didn't declare war on the U.S. and Russia, regardless of the Pacific, Europe would be a Nazi superpower. It was a strange time in history. The man was clearly insane.
Looking at the history, it seems like war was inevitable. Hitler started sabre-rattling and the USSR then Japan all followed suit. It was like all this new weapons technology came about just waiting for the nuts to take advantage of it. These aircraft, bombers and stuff existed in a world where people could clearly remember a time before aircraft or the automobile were invented.
And that makes me think about current changes in technology, and how we all remember a time when the government didn't have computers, cameras and all this new tech to track everyone's move and create/destroy mass information at a whim. What's going to happen in 10 years?
And don't forget the A-Bomb
Yet the countries with the advanced high-tech military hardware still fell to the swarming hordes that out-produced them materially.
It wasn't that simple.
If you look at Germany vs USSR, for example, it's a common myth that USSR won by "swarming hordes", human wave attacks, etc. The myth is also wrong. There are very few documented cases of human wave attacks by the USSR - it was well known by then that this simply doesn't work against machine guns (so what you've seen in e.g. "Enemy at the Gates" is pure bullshit).
Tech difference was also nowhere hear as great as some people make it out to be. To have a look at some points...
German tanks were generally better armored and had longer range guns, yes - but their mechanical complexity was such that they were much more likely to break down than Soviet counterparts; and, of course, sloped armor in T-34 was a major design and engineering breakthrough all of its own, and contributed towards making the cheap yet versatile killing machine that it become. IS-2 was a very successful design, too - capable of taking on German Tigers and Panthers on its own, and yet smaller than Tiger, and cheaper and more reliable than either Tiger or Panther.
In terms of infantry weapons, it was also not at all clear. German Mauser infantry rifles were slightly better than Mosin Nagant (knife bayo, non-rimmed ammunition, and often better construction), but not enough to make a difference. Soviets had semi-automatic rifles earlier than Germans (SVT), and they were of better quality, too (enough so to make sniper versions of them), compared to German G43 (G41 was pretty much unusable from the get go). Soviet SMGs were somewhat better (PPSh in particular, but also the later PPS). German MGs were clearly superior overall, though Soviet DP was lighter and closer to a modern LMG than any of the German ones. Soviet hand grenades were significantly better designed than the German "potato masher" (even accounting for design differences in offensive vs defensive grenades). German AT infantry weapons were much better than Russian small-caliber and mostly useless AT rifles.
In terms of combat planes, it was also a draw. Early Soviet designs were generally worse, later designs were on par, and better in some conditions.
To conclude: WW2 Eastern Front was not an instance of a "horde of barbarians" overrunning a high-tech but resource-limited army. Resource limits did play a part in it, but high tech was used by both sides of the conflict, and it is very unlikely that USSR would've won if it went for quantity alone.
Nice rationalization there. So yeah, those babies & children & people in hospitals & seniors with dementia & etc. etc. etc. Yeah they were all involved in the war and therefore deserved to be bombed. Nice rationalization.
"Deserved"? Not really, but this isn't about justice. It's about winning the damn war! It's why such a thing is called a "total war" in the first place.
And it wasn't Allies who introduced that term, I must add. But once you're dragged into such a thing, you fight until you win (whatever it takes) - or lose.
the dropping of atomic bombs on two civilian cities in one of the most cowardly attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in world history
More Japanese civilians died in the March 10th & 11th bombings of Tokyo than the August 6th and 9th bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nuclear weapons are not phantom-spooky-magical kill-everyone devices. Carpet bombing incendiaries and starting a firestorm strong enough to asphyxiate anyone hiding in a basement is a far more effective tool against urban civilians than making a big boom.
Technologically, the Japanese were not very advanced in the 1930s and 1940s. They were not as far behind as the Western powers had assumed, but they were behind nevertheless. However, they had that wonderful Japanese skill of achieving great results with very little. So if they lacked powerful aircraft engines, they compensated by making their aircraft lighter. There were downsides to that too, but given the available means, the results were very impressive.
That is why US commanders were surprised by the performance and agility of the A6M 'Zero'. The reports they received did not seem to make sense. They did not expect, and could not understand, that anyone would choose to go to war in a glorified sports aircraft, lightly built and lacking any armour. "An ideal sports aircraft for millionaires" was the verdict of US test pilots, when they got their hands onto one. And actually, they were right --- the vulnerability of the A6M cost the Japanese a lot of pilots they could not replace.
There is another lesson there. The Japanese knew their opponents could field superior technology, in almost any field, and would do it in superior numbers. They went to war nevertheless, in the belief that they could outsmart the US Navy and that sheer willpower and courage would bring victory. It didn't.
The F6F was actually designed from the start to counter the zero. A Zero crash landed in the Aleutian Islands almost completely intact (it flipped over). The analysis from this flyable Zero provided the design rationale for the Hellcat.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
The Germans and the Japanese had a penchant for attempting to produce super weapons as opposed to incremental improvements in existing stuff.
Then again from time to time a technological leap in weaponry does make a hit. Like oh, the Atomic Bomb that ended said war.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"for all the marvelous engineering and history surrounding the ship, it was a ship made for war and therefore AWESOME!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Turn radius was a big factor also, I have no numbers to post but a zero trying to follow a wildcat in a high speed turn had a very good chance of ripping off its wings. LOW speed turns on the other hand the zero could out-turn and get inside the wildcat. That low speed maneuverability was one of the very important discoveries made when a zero was captured, leading to training airmen to avoid situations advantageous to the zero.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Jet engines aren't much use to the army.
Yes, but is he supposed to know that the Royal Air Force has Air Marshals instead of Generals?
Anyway, his main point is an exaggeration. The RAF supported Whittle's work from about 1936 onwards, after having sponsored his engineering courses, first in the RAF, then at Cambridge. It was a mere trickle of money until the outbreak of war, but it was there. The scepticism about Whittle's work was fostered, ironically enough, by turbine specialists -- they did not believe a centrifugal compressor could be sufficiently efficient.
It is true that when the RAF decided to orders its first jet-powered aircraft, the experimental Gloster E.28/39, the German He 178 had already flown. But AFAIK they did not know that.
The submarine type mentioned, the one designed to carry folding aircraft and a catapult for launching, was actually used in the only aerial attack on the contiguous United States by the Japanese during WWII (both Alaska and Hawaii were attacked by aircraft) if one does not count the numerous attack balloons sent aloft by the Japanese.
One of these submarines surfaced off the coast of Oregon and launched one of it's folding aircraft. The plane then flew over forested tracts of land and dropped (by hand!) small incendiary bombs in an effort to start large-scale forest fires. One of these bombs landed on property NW of Langlois, Oregon, property that my Aunt and Uncle owned at the time. Fortunately, the Japanese had not taken into account just how damp the woods along that coast are during the summer months and they simply blew up a few trees. It is not unheard of for it to be raining there in June/July. The desired fires never happened.
It is unknown what became of the plane, but it is assumed it landed near the submarine (I believe they were float-equipped, but incapable of a water launch and thus needed the catapult), was folded up and stowed below deck again.
Though I do not recall the title, there is a book on the subject.
There was also an unverified report of a submarine off the coast of San Diego. An alarm was sounded but the sighting was later questioned.
Not really true. The Germans had radar -- in fact they deployed it in aircraft before the Brits. The Germans had radio-based naviagation systems on their bombers (unfortunately for the Germans, the Brits found out about this system and were able to subvert the system, causing the Germans to drop lots of bombs in the North sea and other sparsely populated areas).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"Yet the countries with the advanced high-tech military hardware still fell to the swarming hordes that out-produced them materially. A lesson the US probably should keep in mind going into the 21st century."
The "swarming hordes" had the tremendous asset of an industrial base and engineering outlook which could and did produce quality IN QUANTITY. Sure, the Germans and to a lesser extent the Japanese produced some impressive equipment, but so did the Allies and over a much broader range. An Allied advantage was that their systems were integrated effectively and they chose to produce much more wheeled transport than the Axis. Allied tanks were war winners because they were of a size and specification that made them excellent infantry support vehicles. Tigers were impressive, but good luck getting one over a Bailey bridge.
As for submarine warfare, the US did it better than anyone else and strangled Japanese maritime trade.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The war was about to end with or without the massacres at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Japanese were already starting to negotiate for peace. The use of nukes was more about intimidating Stalin, and justifying the expense of the Manhattan project, than about ending the war.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is an article about subs that launch airplanes. Fucking airplanes! We're talking about something that's on the same level as a gun that shoots swords instead of bullets. This sort of thing can cause nerdgasms.
Bullshit. Some people had no part in the war, and some of those were killed, nevermind the particulars. Perhaps the Jews went to war? How about the bombing of Dresden? Bullshit American revisionist politics.
I think you mean tora-tora-tora, unless you're talking about tuna.
And their war industries were located right in the middle of their major cities. We had no other choices.
Much of what you say is true, but I think this is misleading. Yes, the weapons were inaccurate, and yes sometimes vital industries were located near or amongst civilian populations but don't fool yourself for a second that the only reason civilians were bombed was because they were near war industry. All of the major combatants specifically targeted civilian populations at one time or another with carpet bombing campaigns. Bombing campaigns not designed to wipe out industry, but to wipe out people. Interestingly, in hindsight the general consensus on attacking civilian populations with strategic bombing is that it's relatively ineffective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II
...which completely explains why we had to drop two of them before they surrendered. Surely they were in no hurry to lose another major city.
The bombs were dropped because it was completely clear to all that the japanese of that time were going to dig in as deep as possible and were all willing to fight to the death. If you run the math, the number killed by those two bombs is far less than the casualties would have been on just the Allies side had we had to actually invade Japan. Imagine the scale of damage to Japan (the country and the populace) if the rest of the world had been forced to invade to put an end to it?
At first glance it may seem like an absurd conclusion, but really, those bombs did Japan a favor. In the long run they saved a lot more Japanese lives than they took. The emperor had the entire populace wound up to fight to the death and that's about the only thing that was going to change his mind.
Although surely actually nuking someone beats sabor rattling any day, but that was a positive side-effect, not the deciding factor, by a long shot.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I agree.
Like Japan wasn't bombing civilians? Or Germany? Or Britain? Or Russia? Or _ANYONE ELSE_?
That's how wars were fought in those days. Get over it. We didn't have smart bombs, we couldn't take out a specific building, or even a specific city block. And their war industries were located right in the middle of their major cities. We had no other choices. The only way to stop their military was to carpet bomb their cities, or though a direct ground assault. And do you realize how many _more_ people would have died had we not dropped those bombs? We would have kept carpet-bombing their cities (killing civilians), we would have been stuck in war taking these tiny little islands for _months_, possibly _years_ (killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and plenty more civilians), and with the Japanese mindset at the time we likely would have had to march our troops right up to the emperor's palace before they would have surrendered. These are the same people who were using Kamikaze aircraft. Do you really think they would have surrendered, ever? Yes, it was a horrible act, but it was the best option we had at the time - though I will admit we should have waited before dropping the second bomb - from what I've heard they didn't even fully know what the first one did before we dropped the second. From what I've heard they basically ignored the initial reports because they didn't think such a thing was even possible.
Today, yes, killing civilians is a horrible thing to do. But that's pretty easy to say when you have the capability to fire a missile from hundreds of miles away and take out a single room of a building without harming anything around it. It's easy to criticize when you're 60 years away. But by your logic every single army in history, including those acting in defense, and civilian militias, are guilty of horrific and cowardly atrocities. In those days, when a nation went to war, _the entire nation_ went to war. There really were no civilians in the sense that there are today. Every single citizen was in some way involved in the war effort.
I agree with you on the necessity of the atomic bombs, but only insofar as they were terror weapons, and they were effective.
Conventional city bombing, in the Second World War, simply didn't work. The Army (and later the Air Force) commissioned and undertook studies of the effectiveness of the Allied bombing campaigns. The studies are generally somewhat sugar-coated—interpreting data in the most favorable way possible—but even so, their conclusions are fairly clear. Bombing German cities didn't cripple German industry. Indeed, the Allies may well have lost more man hours to conducting the raids and manufacturing supplies for them than the Germans did dealing with them. Not in the long run, of course—Germany's cities were demolished. In the short run, however, people just ignored the rubble and got on with their lives. They went to work, waited on line for water, got more annoyed than frightened when the sirens went off. A RAND study of an arms factory hit several times over the course of the war found that production was stopped for less than twenty minutes during a typical bombing raid.
It is important to note that direct economic damage wasn't really the point behind city bombing—the idea that we were trying to blow up factories shows up much more in postwar sources than in wartime sources. At the time, the idea was to break the morale of the enemy civilian population, to so frighten workers they wouldn't brave the streets to get to their factories, maybe to provoke riots and rebellion. (We also knew quite well that trying to hit targets more specific than cities was pointless.) That's not what happens, of course. Nothing galvanizes a population against their common enemy like indiscriminate bombing.
It's not a politic conclusion; no one wants to think that all that bloodshed and fire was for naught. The Air Force in particular, newly created in the wake of the war, did not like the idea that one of their chief purposes was counterproductive. But the signs are there, if you look for them. The most honest studies, I think, are the ones concerned with formulation of nuclear policy in the early postwar years.
"The submarines were meant to threaten the United States directly, but none of the attacks occurred because the subs were developed too late in the war, and American intelligence was too good."
Being an engineer, it strikes me that "being too late in the war" and "the enemy intelligence was too good" are not likely to be unrelated facts. It sounds like a classic case of coming up with a brilliant piece of engineering to fix a hopeless situation you should never have been in.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Japanese forces were acclaimed as being very humane after the Japanese-Russian war. 20 years latter they had taken lessons from western forces. Still, I fail to see where Japan did anything worse than America or Russia in that war. Americans and Russians kept raping and killing civilians *after* the war.
During the war you kept anyone with Japanese blood on concentration camps.
To me it is okay to be happy because you won and didn't have your grandma raped by some freedom fighter, but morally your country was as depraved or more than the Japanese.
We also knew quite well that trying to hit targets more specific than cities was pointless.
While possibly true in the large scale of things, there were some quite precise missions flown, like Amiens prison and the dam busers...
A rechambered MG42 (MG3) is still in use in several countries as a LMG so calling the DP more modern is a bit misleading.
A rechambered MG42 (MG3) is still in use in several countries as a LMG so calling the DP more modern is a bit misleading.
I didn't call DP more modern. I said that it is closer to the modern LMG concept in terms of size. MG3 is a nice gun, but today the trend for LMGs is to also use smaller calibers, leading to lighter guns. MG3 (and MG42) weigh 11.5kg. DP weighs 9kg. For comparison, M249, the primary LMG of U.S. Army, weighs 7.5kg, and RPK weighs 4.8kg.
> Yet the countries with the advanced high-tech military hardware
> still fell to the swarming hordes that out-produced them materially
Have you ever played freeciv?
Production is indeed a very big deal. Technology only matters if you're *WAY* imbalanced (like, howitzers attacking pikemen) or if your production capacities are very comparable. Given one side with superior technology and the other side with superior production, the superior production will win every time. (Unless it's controlled by the AI. The AI can't win against an intelligent human player, of course.)
> A lesson the US probably should keep in mind going into the 21st century.
Because there's another country with an economy ten or twenty times larger than ours, like our economy was ten or twenty times larger than Japan's in WWII? Which country would that be?
Obviously, the international balance of power always changes over time, so at some point in the future another nation will be much more powerful than the US. Duh. But going into the 21st century, this event appears to lie beyond the foreseeable future. I would not care to hazard a guess as to which nation it will be, or when.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
> Things like radar were also highly advanced military technologies,
> which the US/Brits had, and the Germans/Japanese did not.
Not to mention signals intelligence and machine-assisted cryptanalysis.
> In short, the Axis were only slightly more advanced than the Allies.
I would say they were only *arguably* more advanced overall, though they were definitely more advanced in certain areas.
> Where the level of military technology is more disparate, it
> certainly can and does become an overwhelming advantage.
You mean like the US invasion of Iraq? (But, there was also a huge production and infrastructure imbalance there, which was probably an even bigger factor.)
Another thing that can make a huge difference is the level of training and readiness of the units that you do have. Any questions about that, look up the Six Day War. (Hint: it's called that for a reason. There was relatively little technology gap, but it was totally one-sided and over very fast; the basic outcome had become clear to all rational observers within twenty-four hours. Why? The guys on the one side knew what they were doing, and the guys on the other side very much didn't.)
And a really good general can make a pretty big difference too. The US civil war, all else being equal, should have been over in about three months; home-field advantage ("we're fighting for our homes" and all that) could have been expected to drag it out to maybe twice that long. But the south had most of the good generals, particularly Lee and Jackson, and darned if they didn't almost win, despite running out of ammunition, out of guns, out of gunpowder, out of food, out of cannons, out of important raw materials (e.g., iron), low on horses, and just about running out of fighting-age men.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Perhaps the most significant German advance in firearms during WWII was the "machine pistol", i.e., the assault rifle. (The name "machine pistol" make sit sound more like a submachine gun, along the lines of the Thompson. It wasn't.)
> Resource limits did play a part in it, but high tech was used by both sides of the
> conflict, and it is very unlikely that USSR would've won if it went for quantity alone.
Another important factor is that Germany was fighting a multi-front war.
On top of that, Hitler diverted significant resources from the German war effort toward the fulfillment of his twisted political agenda.
So yeah, there are a lot of reasons why Germany lost.
Whereas, with Japan, there was really two reason. First, they were outmatched, plain and simple. Japan did not have adequate economic and industrial infrastructure to sustain a long-term conflict against the United States. Second, their allies lost, which left them going it alone, which is usually not too helpful.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Perhaps the most significant German advance in firearms during WWII was the "machine pistol", i.e., the assault rifle. (The name "machine pistol" make sit sound more like a submachine gun, along the lines of the Thompson. It wasn't.)
Do you mean MP 40 (MP stands for "Maschinenpistole")? It was not an assault rifle at all, just a fairly typical machine gun, average in effectiveness.
Germans were the not first to design an assault rifle - defined as a rifle capable of fully automatic or burst fire using intermediate-caliber ammunition - or issue it to front line troops as a standard weapons. Avtomat Fedorova was both in 1915. However, Germans were the first to fully understand the breakthrough nature of the new weapon and its implications, and immediately started to mass-produce it. That was StG 44, or "Sturmgewehr", which literally means "assault rifle", and is where the English name for this class of weapons come from. It was called "MP" during development because there was no separate designation for that class at this point - did you mean that, perhaps?
And yes, it was a very nifty thing when it appeared, and Soviets used as many captured rifles as they could... but by mid-1944, when the German army received it, it was already way past the breaking point - Western Allies landed in Normandy, and Soviets steamrolling over Poland, with no chances to turn the tide back.
The emperor had the entire populace wound up to fight to the death and that's about the only thing that was going to change his mind
That was the army taking its own initiative, not the emperor. The emperor didn't want the war in the first place and was actively trying to end it by early 1945, but was worried that speaking publicly about doing so would lead to internal rebellion. There was in fact an attempted coup on August 14th (the day before his radio address ending hostilities), lending some credence to this belief.
The Japanese wanted terms that included the preservation of the Emperor's position. The U.S. demanded unconditional surrender -- and then not only granted this term most desired by the Japanese, but engaged in active cover-up up Japanese war crimes on the mainland.
No nation is going to decide to make an unconditional surrender in a matter of days: indeed, the idea that when two expansionist imperial powers get into conflict over colonies (which is the story of the Pacific conflict -- just how do you think the U.S. came to be in Hawaii and in the Philippines?), the losing side should cease to exist as an independent nation was historically unprecedented. From the start, Japan was expecting a WWI style armistice.
We didn't have to drop the second bomb, the political effects of the first were still in motion. But we had one uranium bomb, and one plutonium one...surely we should see the effects of both, after all the time and money spent? And it's not like we were dropping them on white people. We'd planned to use the bomb on the Japanese first -- not the Nazis -- from the start of the Manhattan project.
No. That's the myth, point for point, but it's absurd to suppose that an invasion would have been necessary to destroy Japan's ability to make war. We'd already pushed them back to the home islands: set up a blockade, lob a couple of bombs at military targets and ports every so often, and without the resources of the mainland Japan would have been starved of fuel and food in a matter of months. As the wik notes, "By August 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy effectively ceased to exist".
The greatest military commander of the Allies, Eisenhower, knew that Japan was defeated before the bombs dropped: "...I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
But more importantly, it was in fact known that the Japanese were ready to sue for peace.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood