9 ms·

This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories

This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and you're too politicized to integrate the lessons. Admiral Yamamoto didn't have to worry about upsetting US Navy top brass. He was able to benefit from our lessons, even if we weren't.

rjsw 5y ago
Japan also learned plenty of things from Taranto [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto
jabl 5y ago
In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the attack on Midway island starts. Don't know whether such a wargaming episode happened in reality.
- mcguire 5y ago
  Yes, it did. See Shattered Sword by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. (One additional feature often seen in the story is the part where the umpire "resurrects" the two Japanese carriers which were "sunk" in the attack---that part is usually overplayed, since it would be a waste of time to continue the game without the two carriers and there were still questions to be answered.)
  - jabl 5y ago
    I keep hearing good things about that book. Alas, my interest in Midway only seems to go so far and I'm finding myself unwilling to commit to actually reading that book. Oh well, maybe one day..
    - credit_guy 5y ago
      I don't have much time lately to actually read books, so I listen to them on my bike ride to and from work. I have had "Shattered Sword" as a paperback book for more than 10 years, and never read more than 2 pages in it. Once I started listening to the audiobook, I pretty much had to finish it. It's about 24 hours of audio. Longer than it would take to read it, but if you don't find time to read it, it's quite a good substitute.
      - dotancohen 5y ago
        I cannot recommend audio books highly enough. I've been promising my daughter to read Harry Potter for years, but only with the audiobook have I been able to fit it into my schedule. I also finished The Martian on audiobook, which was probably the most riveting book that I've read since childhood.
- enkid 5y ago
  I mean, if you know the adversaries plan, it's pretty easy to come up with something that wrecks it, which is what it sounds like that officer did. What the Japanese didn't know was that the Americans also knew the plan.
  - TwoNineA 5y ago
    Americans also got lucky that George Best and Wade McClusky were able to hit the carriers knowning that most attempts in the battle so far have utterly failed.
    - jabl 5y ago
      It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits were enough to doom the ships. Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was the cause of many WWII carriers burning).
      - SkyMarshal 5y ago
        The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty good and shows all the luck involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlkeZUj_gD_ACWGK6geCl-LMZx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlk...
        ghaff 5y ago
        You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack of essentially any success early on was a bit unlucky. But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a case of everything going right at a couple points for the US. Probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer to Japan than Hawaii was.
- cbm-vic-20 5y ago
  The "World War 2 in Real Time" series follows the events of the war 79 years after they happened. Midway happened 79 years ago this week, so this week's episode should be good.. https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldWarTwo/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldWarTwo/videos
- anamax 5y ago
  The big problem for the Japanese at Midway was that they only had 4 carriers. With 6 carriers, all of the the Japanese wouldn't have had to decide between protecting their carriers vs attacking US carriers vs attacking Midway. They could have done it all. Heck, even one more carrier, for a total of 5, would have significantly reduced the task-overload. That's why the original Japanese plan for Midway had 6 carriers. So, why didn't they follow the plan? The answer is the Battle of Coral Sea, a month earlier. While the US lost one carrier (Lexington) and almost lost Yorktown, one Japanese carrier was significantly damaged while another lost most of its aircrew. Japanese doctrine at the time didn't transfer pilots between carriers, so Coral Sea took two carriers from Midway. If the Japanese had transferred pilots from the damaged carrier to the carrier without an aircrew, the Japanese could have had 5 carriers. Five carriers would have likely resulted in a Japanese win at Midway. That said, the US would win the war in the Pacific as long as it sank a Japanese carrier for every 2-3 it lost.
rightbyte 5y ago
> The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. War games are not fair really. For either side. No-one know what the actual outcome of a manouver would be. Also, if Red's commander is way better, Blue's paper strategy might still be preferable. My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in logistics foremost.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  > My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in logistics foremost. Varies. Getting people familiar with command and control procedures is a key theme. In the UK, 'Army HQ' manages the process of ensuring that forces are ready for operations - which is where the training happens. When the country deploys troops on an operation, various units and sub-units are assembled into a mission-specific force which is ultimately under the control of a Joint Task Force HQ, not the Army's peacetime HQ. Exercises are a key part of the peacetime 'readiness cycle' through which the various force elements are prepared for ops. An exercise might test the staff of a battlegroup HQ to receive orders from a Brigade HQ ('Higher Control' in exercise-speak) and in turn generate orders that are given to its constituent sub-unit HQs. Such an exercise might last for a week and have separate phases for Planning and Execution activities. The different HQ elements need this type of training because the precise mission-specific C2 arrangements simply don't exist when the forces are in their peace-time barracks. Logistics are entirely simulated in such an exercise so that you don't need half the army around to train 50-100 staff. In fact there is such a thing as a Tactical Exercise Without Troops that totally focusses on HQ processes so as to avoid wasting the troops' time while the staff in the exercising HQ get their act together. Field exercises using laser-simulated weapons might involve 'last mile' logistics activities but there is no way they will involve the complex logistics supply chains of a real deployed force.
micropresident 5y ago
It's very likely that Pearl Harbor was intentional to get popular support for entering World War 2. There's evidence that the president had been briefed on the attack and they intentionally did not move the fleet.

rjsw 5y ago

Japan also learned plenty of things from Taranto [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto

jabl 5y ago

In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the attack on Midway island starts. Don't know whether such a wargaming episode happened in reality.

mcguire 5y ago
Yes, it did. See Shattered Sword by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. (One additional feature often seen in the story is the part where the umpire "resurrects" the two Japanese carriers which were "sunk" in the attack---that part is usually overplayed, since it would be a waste of time to continue the game without the two carriers and there were still questions to be answered.)
- jabl 5y ago
  I keep hearing good things about that book. Alas, my interest in Midway only seems to go so far and I'm finding myself unwilling to commit to actually reading that book. Oh well, maybe one day..
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    I don't have much time lately to actually read books, so I listen to them on my bike ride to and from work. I have had "Shattered Sword" as a paperback book for more than 10 years, and never read more than 2 pages in it. Once I started listening to the audiobook, I pretty much had to finish it. It's about 24 hours of audio. Longer than it would take to read it, but if you don't find time to read it, it's quite a good substitute.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      I cannot recommend audio books highly enough. I've been promising my daughter to read Harry Potter for years, but only with the audiobook have I been able to fit it into my schedule. I also finished The Martian on audiobook, which was probably the most riveting book that I've read since childhood.
enkid 5y ago
I mean, if you know the adversaries plan, it's pretty easy to come up with something that wrecks it, which is what it sounds like that officer did. What the Japanese didn't know was that the Americans also knew the plan.
- TwoNineA 5y ago
  Americans also got lucky that George Best and Wade McClusky were able to hit the carriers knowning that most attempts in the battle so far have utterly failed.
  - jabl 5y ago
    It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits were enough to doom the ships. Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was the cause of many WWII carriers burning).
    - SkyMarshal 5y ago
      The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty good and shows all the luck involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlkeZUj_gD_ACWGK6geCl-LMZx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlk...
      - ghaff 5y ago
        You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack of essentially any success early on was a bit unlucky. But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a case of everything going right at a couple points for the US. Probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer to Japan than Hawaii was.
cbm-vic-20 5y ago
The "World War 2 in Real Time" series follows the events of the war 79 years after they happened. Midway happened 79 years ago this week, so this week's episode should be good.. https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldWarTwo/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldWarTwo/videos
anamax 5y ago
The big problem for the Japanese at Midway was that they only had 4 carriers. With 6 carriers, all of the the Japanese wouldn't have had to decide between protecting their carriers vs attacking US carriers vs attacking Midway. They could have done it all. Heck, even one more carrier, for a total of 5, would have significantly reduced the task-overload. That's why the original Japanese plan for Midway had 6 carriers. So, why didn't they follow the plan? The answer is the Battle of Coral Sea, a month earlier. While the US lost one carrier (Lexington) and almost lost Yorktown, one Japanese carrier was significantly damaged while another lost most of its aircrew. Japanese doctrine at the time didn't transfer pilots between carriers, so Coral Sea took two carriers from Midway. If the Japanese had transferred pilots from the damaged carrier to the carrier without an aircrew, the Japanese could have had 5 carriers. Five carriers would have likely resulted in a Japanese win at Midway. That said, the US would win the war in the Pacific as long as it sank a Japanese carrier for every 2-3 it lost.

rightbyte 5y ago

> The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. War games are not fair really. For either side. No-one know what the actual outcome of a manouver would be. Also, if Red's commander is way better, Blue's paper strategy might still be preferable. My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in logistics foremost.

KineticLensman 5y ago
> My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in logistics foremost. Varies. Getting people familiar with command and control procedures is a key theme. In the UK, 'Army HQ' manages the process of ensuring that forces are ready for operations - which is where the training happens. When the country deploys troops on an operation, various units and sub-units are assembled into a mission-specific force which is ultimately under the control of a Joint Task Force HQ, not the Army's peacetime HQ. Exercises are a key part of the peacetime 'readiness cycle' through which the various force elements are prepared for ops. An exercise might test the staff of a battlegroup HQ to receive orders from a Brigade HQ ('Higher Control' in exercise-speak) and in turn generate orders that are given to its constituent sub-unit HQs. Such an exercise might last for a week and have separate phases for Planning and Execution activities. The different HQ elements need this type of training because the precise mission-specific C2 arrangements simply don't exist when the forces are in their peace-time barracks. Logistics are entirely simulated in such an exercise so that you don't need half the army around to train 50-100 staff. In fact there is such a thing as a Tactical Exercise Without Troops that totally focusses on HQ processes so as to avoid wasting the troops' time while the staff in the exercising HQ get their act together. Field exercises using laser-simulated weapons might involve 'last mile' logistics activities but there is no way they will involve the complex logistics supply chains of a real deployed force.

micropresident 5y ago

It's very likely that Pearl Harbor was intentional to get popular support for entering World War 2. There's evidence that the president had been briefed on the attack and they intentionally did not move the fleet.