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One has to wonder whether the Japanese would have thought up this strategy (or considered it feasible) had the Americans not practiced it and proved it for them

One has to wonder whether the Japanese would have thought up this strategy (or considered it feasible) had the Americans not practiced it and proved it for them. It seems worryingly common for this kind of simulation to ironically lead to disaster. Chernobyl would be another example (the explosion happened during a safety test). And it's possible that the coronavirus pandemic is another (the virus may have accidentally leaked from "gain of function" experiments designed to give us insight into how to respond should such a virus evolve naturally).

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Alternatively, the weakness was obvious to anyone with a brain, noone fixed it, so the enemy exploited it. UK government issued a pandemic readyness report. Report said the country has no protective equipment and will get rekt. This is exactly what happened. Blaming the messenger is very misguided. Negligence is endemic and always comes back to haunt you
lucas_membrane 5y ago
From some time around that first simulation (early 1930's), the "plan an attack on Pearl Harbor" problem was in the curriculum of the Japanese naval academy. Hawaii was known to be teeming with Japanese intelligence assets at least since the time of WW1, and its strategic importance had been well known at least since the US had made a point of acquiring the place.
short_sells_poo 5y ago
I'm not sure you can assign blame to the safety test in precipitating the disaster (perhaps this wasn't even your intention). The overarching theme in the examples you mention is that the weakness was always there, safety test or not. I'd posit that Chernobyl would've happened eventually for example. It was a design with unstable boundary conditions operated in an environment of secrecy and disregard for safety. That's basically a situation where disasters are guarantee to happen. Nobody knows anything, the default operating procedure is to withhold crucial information and everyone is working under a "don't question your orders" mindset.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  It could have happened but they did blatantly disregard a lot of safety procedures in the name of the test. I should hope that would but be done during normal operation. Ps I read the book from Adam Higginbotham, I didn't just watch the show :) He also said it would have happened eventually but I doubt it would have in normal operation. In a power loss situation similar to what they were testing perhaps...
- jjk166 5y ago
  No, Chernobyl was only possible because so many design features specifically meant to prevent exactly this scenario were deliberately disabled, and then on top of this many more failures both technological and human had to coincide. Seriously, if you did not know it really happened, the reports would read like bad fiction given the huge numbers of obviously bad decisions and ridiculously improbable coincidences.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Fukushima Daiichi only needed a giant wave though.
    - jjk166 5y ago
      Fukushima Daiichi was a dramatically less severe disaster
  - short_sells_poo 5y ago
    Again I'd posit that those steps were a consequence of a much deeper rooted issue. Yes the people doing the test were directly responsible by virtue of being in the control room at the time and making these decisions but in a culture of secrecy and bootlicking, what else do you expect? We can argue about technicalities all day long, but in my mind Chernobyl had the following critical issues: - The crew was kept deliberately in the dark about the weaknesses of the design. - The crew had the ability to disable all the safety measures and bring the reactor into a very unstable condition. Are you seriously going to place the main blame on the crew? They were pawns who made bad decisions in an environment where they were missing crucial information. In my mind, the buck stops with the people in power who discouraged the questioning of superiors, encouraged checkbox ticking exercises and withheld information by default.
curiousllama 5y ago
In general, I think people test obvious points of failure. “Surprise attack on our largest pacific navy base” is a pretty obvious point of failure. I think it’s more likely that when you don’t fix obvious points of failure, the system will tend to fail in that way.
CountDrewku 5y ago
If our military thought of it during practice then you can pretty much guarantee that some military would have come up with the plan eventually. The Japanese military wasn't inept.
throwanem 5y ago
> One has to wonder whether the Japanese would have thought up this strategy (or considered it feasible) had the Americans not practiced it and proved it for them. I don't think one does. The imperial Japanese planning staff had strongly favored the doctrine of decisive battle since at least the Tsushima Strait, when it worked splendidly for them against the Russian imperial navy - a much weaker adversary than the US, true, but this was well understood and only made more pointed the need to immediately disable the US navy's ability to conduct significant operations in the intended sphere of Japanese imperial influence. Too, it's not as if the Imperial Japanese general staff was anything less than world-class. The British made the mistake of assuming otherwise, even ignoring reports from their own observers that Japan needed to be taken seriously as an opponent. That mistake cost them Singapore and Malaya at the outset of the war, and depending on whose arguments you buy, eventually India as well. In light of that and other related history, it verges upon the absurd to repeat the mistake now. (Really, it was entirely the other way around from what you're positing here; rather than the IJN taking a cue from US war games, we followed the Pearl Harbor attack with our entirely symbolic "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo a year later.)
- jcranmer 5y ago
  It should be noted that Pearl Harbor has nothing to do with the decisive battle doctrine. Indeed, from a strategic perspective, Pearl Harbor actually ruined the ability of the IJN to achieve a decisive battle, since the USN would be highly unlikely to risk any remaining fleet forces to seek the decisive battle that Japanese wanted, much less the Japanese model scenario of steaming en masse to somewhere near Japan. That illustrates the strategic incompetence of the IJN. They had, without a decisive battle, won control of the seas--which is why you want the decisive battle. But they didn't exploit their control of the seas (to some degree, they couldn't--the core interests of Britain and the US were outside of the range of Japan to plausibly threaten). And by the Guadalcanal campaign, the USN wrested control of the seas (at least around Guadalcanal) away from Japan--without a decisive battle, still--and used that to devastating effect: the Japanese garrison on Guadalcanal was unable to be receive sufficient supplies because of it. And still, the Japanese fretted about not having their decisive battle. It's not for nothing that Pearl Harbor is often considered an example of simultaneous spectacular tactical success and ruinous strategic failure.
mempko 5y ago
> it's possible that the coronavirus pandemic is another (the virus may have accidentally leaked from "gain of function" experiments designed to give us insight into how to respond should such a virus evolve naturally). Sure it's possible. But at least, according to US intelligence, it's highly unlikely. Much more likely is the virus was of natural origin.
cdot2 5y ago
This is essentially the same strategy that the Japanese used in the 1904 Russo-Japanese war. They launched a surprise attack on Russian forces at Port Arthur (where the Russian Pacific fleet was based) with the (successful) intention of destroying the Russian forces in the Pacific before the Russians could mobilize and provide a defense.
phkahler 5y ago
>> And it's possible that the coronavirus pandemic is another (the virus may have accidentally leaked from "gain of function" experiments designed to give us insight into how to respond should such a virus evolve naturally). Another interesting thing is that a bunch of US agencies did a similar exercise - a pandemic - as recently as 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion Just as the Covid-19 virus was taking off in China. Coincidence?
stanrivers 5y ago
Agreed on whether or not the Japanese would have come up with their own strategy like this; it seems like the Japanese admiral was focused on air superiority anyway / if anyone studied the island for an extended period of time, the direction of the attack would make sense.
ch4s3 5y ago
Chernobyl happened during an event of staggering operational malfeasance. The design was 30 years out date when built and know the world over to be dangerous. It was particularly know to be dangerous in low power situations. The brain dead party appointees installed a lever to put the reactor into a know worst case possible state artificially for the “test”. They build a water holding tank under the reactor ensuring a steam explosion in a meltdown and didn’t build a containment building. They were also forbidden by the state from sharing accident information with other plants, which could have prevented the incident. The whole thing was an engineered tragedy. To called the act of depraved hubris a “test” seems incorrect to me.
Jeema101 5y ago
It's possible, but they were also influenced by the British attack on Taranto [1] the previous year in 1940. That battle kind of proved out one of the concepts that the Japanese used later at Pearl Harbor: namely using ship-launched torpedo bombers to attack other ships in shallow water. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto#Influence_on_Pearl_Harbor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto#Influence_on...

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Alternatively, the weakness was obvious to anyone with a brain, noone fixed it, so the enemy exploited it. UK government issued a pandemic readyness report. Report said the country has no protective equipment and will get rekt. This is exactly what happened. Blaming the messenger is very misguided. Negligence is endemic and always comes back to haunt you

lucas_membrane 5y ago

From some time around that first simulation (early 1930's), the "plan an attack on Pearl Harbor" problem was in the curriculum of the Japanese naval academy. Hawaii was known to be teeming with Japanese intelligence assets at least since the time of WW1, and its strategic importance had been well known at least since the US had made a point of acquiring the place.

short_sells_poo 5y ago

I'm not sure you can assign blame to the safety test in precipitating the disaster (perhaps this wasn't even your intention). The overarching theme in the examples you mention is that the weakness was always there, safety test or not. I'd posit that Chernobyl would've happened eventually for example. It was a design with unstable boundary conditions operated in an environment of secrecy and disregard for safety. That's basically a situation where disasters are guarantee to happen. Nobody knows anything, the default operating procedure is to withhold crucial information and everyone is working under a "don't question your orders" mindset.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
It could have happened but they did blatantly disregard a lot of safety procedures in the name of the test. I should hope that would but be done during normal operation. Ps I read the book from Adam Higginbotham, I didn't just watch the show :) He also said it would have happened eventually but I doubt it would have in normal operation. In a power loss situation similar to what they were testing perhaps...
jjk166 5y ago
No, Chernobyl was only possible because so many design features specifically meant to prevent exactly this scenario were deliberately disabled, and then on top of this many more failures both technological and human had to coincide. Seriously, if you did not know it really happened, the reports would read like bad fiction given the huge numbers of obviously bad decisions and ridiculously improbable coincidences.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Fukushima Daiichi only needed a giant wave though.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    Fukushima Daiichi was a dramatically less severe disaster
- short_sells_poo 5y ago
  Again I'd posit that those steps were a consequence of a much deeper rooted issue. Yes the people doing the test were directly responsible by virtue of being in the control room at the time and making these decisions but in a culture of secrecy and bootlicking, what else do you expect? We can argue about technicalities all day long, but in my mind Chernobyl had the following critical issues: - The crew was kept deliberately in the dark about the weaknesses of the design. - The crew had the ability to disable all the safety measures and bring the reactor into a very unstable condition. Are you seriously going to place the main blame on the crew? They were pawns who made bad decisions in an environment where they were missing crucial information. In my mind, the buck stops with the people in power who discouraged the questioning of superiors, encouraged checkbox ticking exercises and withheld information by default.

curiousllama 5y ago

In general, I think people test obvious points of failure. “Surprise attack on our largest pacific navy base” is a pretty obvious point of failure. I think it’s more likely that when you don’t fix obvious points of failure, the system will tend to fail in that way.

CountDrewku 5y ago

If our military thought of it during practice then you can pretty much guarantee that some military would have come up with the plan eventually. The Japanese military wasn't inept.

throwanem 5y ago

> One has to wonder whether the Japanese would have thought up this strategy (or considered it feasible) had the Americans not practiced it and proved it for them. I don't think one does. The imperial Japanese planning staff had strongly favored the doctrine of decisive battle since at least the Tsushima Strait, when it worked splendidly for them against the Russian imperial navy - a much weaker adversary than the US, true, but this was well understood and only made more pointed the need to immediately disable the US navy's ability to conduct significant operations in the intended sphere of Japanese imperial influence. Too, it's not as if the Imperial Japanese general staff was anything less than world-class. The British made the mistake of assuming otherwise, even ignoring reports from their own observers that Japan needed to be taken seriously as an opponent. That mistake cost them Singapore and Malaya at the outset of the war, and depending on whose arguments you buy, eventually India as well. In light of that and other related history, it verges upon the absurd to repeat the mistake now. (Really, it was entirely the other way around from what you're positing here; rather than the IJN taking a cue from US war games, we followed the Pearl Harbor attack with our entirely symbolic "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo a year later.)

jcranmer 5y ago
It should be noted that Pearl Harbor has nothing to do with the decisive battle doctrine. Indeed, from a strategic perspective, Pearl Harbor actually ruined the ability of the IJN to achieve a decisive battle, since the USN would be highly unlikely to risk any remaining fleet forces to seek the decisive battle that Japanese wanted, much less the Japanese model scenario of steaming en masse to somewhere near Japan. That illustrates the strategic incompetence of the IJN. They had, without a decisive battle, won control of the seas--which is why you want the decisive battle. But they didn't exploit their control of the seas (to some degree, they couldn't--the core interests of Britain and the US were outside of the range of Japan to plausibly threaten). And by the Guadalcanal campaign, the USN wrested control of the seas (at least around Guadalcanal) away from Japan--without a decisive battle, still--and used that to devastating effect: the Japanese garrison on Guadalcanal was unable to be receive sufficient supplies because of it. And still, the Japanese fretted about not having their decisive battle. It's not for nothing that Pearl Harbor is often considered an example of simultaneous spectacular tactical success and ruinous strategic failure.

mempko 5y ago

> it's possible that the coronavirus pandemic is another (the virus may have accidentally leaked from "gain of function" experiments designed to give us insight into how to respond should such a virus evolve naturally). Sure it's possible. But at least, according to US intelligence, it's highly unlikely. Much more likely is the virus was of natural origin.

cdot2 5y ago

This is essentially the same strategy that the Japanese used in the 1904 Russo-Japanese war. They launched a surprise attack on Russian forces at Port Arthur (where the Russian Pacific fleet was based) with the (successful) intention of destroying the Russian forces in the Pacific before the Russians could mobilize and provide a defense.

phkahler 5y ago

>> And it's possible that the coronavirus pandemic is another (the virus may have accidentally leaked from "gain of function" experiments designed to give us insight into how to respond should such a virus evolve naturally). Another interesting thing is that a bunch of US agencies did a similar exercise - a pandemic - as recently as 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion Just as the Covid-19 virus was taking off in China. Coincidence?

stanrivers 5y ago

Agreed on whether or not the Japanese would have come up with their own strategy like this; it seems like the Japanese admiral was focused on air superiority anyway / if anyone studied the island for an extended period of time, the direction of the attack would make sense.

ch4s3 5y ago

Chernobyl happened during an event of staggering operational malfeasance. The design was 30 years out date when built and know the world over to be dangerous. It was particularly know to be dangerous in low power situations. The brain dead party appointees installed a lever to put the reactor into a know worst case possible state artificially for the “test”. They build a water holding tank under the reactor ensuring a steam explosion in a meltdown and didn’t build a containment building. They were also forbidden by the state from sharing accident information with other plants, which could have prevented the incident. The whole thing was an engineered tragedy. To called the act of depraved hubris a “test” seems incorrect to me.

Jeema101 5y ago

It's possible, but they were also influenced by the British attack on Taranto [1] the previous year in 1940. That battle kind of proved out one of the concepts that the Japanese used later at Pearl Harbor: namely using ship-launched torpedo bombers to attack other ships in shallow water. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto#Influence_on_Pearl_Harbor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto#Influence_on...