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> Swentzel was later awarded the Navy Cross for relentlessly pressing the attack against overwhelming odds. His actions were in accordance to the highest tradit

> Swentzel was later awarded the Navy Cross for relentlessly pressing the attack against overwhelming odds. His actions were in accordance to the highest traditions of the United States Navy. I never cease to be amazed of the performance of the US Navy in WW2. How did these "highest traditions" come about? America did not really fight naval battles in WW1. Before that they won a quick naval war against the Spanish in 1898, but arguably the Spanish were well behind technologically, in an era when technology was evolving by leaps and bounds. In WW2 though, the US sailors were simply incredible. And the absolute majority of them (maybe 99.9%) did not have any prior combat experience. How did the US Navy turn from an inexperienced Navy into the most fierce-some naval force ever assembled in history? And it's not just the industrial might of the US. Sure, in many encounters the US Navy just had more and better warships. But at least until 1943, there were plenty of encounters where it didn't, Midway being obviously the most famous. There was something about the fighting spirit of the US Navy, but how did that get nurtured, considering that the US was a nation at peace? I genuinely have no idea.

vkou 4y ago
> How did the US Navy turn from an inexperienced Navy into the most fierce-some naval force ever assembled in history? Numbers[1], technology, practice in the interwar years[2], and a lot of trial and error. Also, the war in the Pacific was largely an air war, where both of the two belligerents were more-or-less figuring both doctrine and how to implement it from scratch. Also, it helped that Japan could not take advantage many of its victories early in the war, due to lack of numbers, supply shortages, and an absolutely rotten command culture (It had a habit of firing competent admirals because they didn't win hard enough.) [1] By the end of the war, American shipyards were building an aircraft carrier, two escort carriers, two heavy cruisers, and ten destroyers every month. [2] Being surrounded by two oceans, the US has always depended on its navy in its ability to wage war.
sonofhans 4y ago
I have a few ideas, and I’ve read about this for years, fascinated and frustrated that my dad was in WW2 but never talked about it. Most recently I’ve read The Pacific War[1], a comprehensive classic. The USA had two huge long-term advantages that Japan could not match: intelligence and production. For most of the war we were reading most of the Japanese encrypted communications. It’s one reason that we won the battle of Midway, for instance. In terms of production, the US moved its economy into a war-footing quickly and nearly completely. People were planting Victory Gardens so that food producers could use less petroleum for farming and fertilization; tires were rationed. Over the long term it’s impossible to see the relatively small island of Japan standing toe-to-toe with the USA. E.g., I found a 50-year-old dissertation [2] on the subject which claims that in 1939 over 90% of Japanese imports of petroleum, copper, and several iron and steel products were from the USA. It’s one reason they kept expanding during the war, despite the risk of being unable to hold territory: they needed the resources. Certainly there are other factors, but these have always stood out to me as incontrovertible advantages. 1. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/437549.The_Pacific_War https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/437549.The_Pacific_Wa... 2. https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/23634/Thesis-1972-K91i.pdf https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/23634/Thesis-1972...
- ghaff 4y ago
  And Midway still ended up with a number of cards falling the US way to be the decisive victory that it was. Might not have made a difference at the end of the day--but it turned the US to a much more offensive position earlier than it might otherwise have had. And greatly weakened Japanese options for a negotiated peace.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Not to forget, Yamamoto predicted a six months time window for Japan after Pearl Habour. After these six months, he knew Japan has lost. And the Japanese carried on for qyite a bot longer than that. But yeah, the US Navy played the cards they had incredibly well. They got somewhat lucky with the promotion of Nimitz. The proboem so is, as it is with the Soviets in WW2 and every single WW2 general who managed to write a well selling book about hinself, to see past the individual hero stories at the bigger picture. Personnaly, I think the biggest plunder of the Japanese was to not take out the harbour infrastructure at Pearl Habour. Not that it wouod have changed anything in the long run so. That, and that they failed abysmally at submarine and anti-submarine warfare.
- julienchastang 4y ago
  > It’s one reason that we won the battle of Midway Interesting story here that Nimitz had to make an extraordinary gamble the intercepted Japanese communications were talking about Midway island and not somewhere in the Aleutians (the other possible candidate). The gamble paid off and the Japanese navy was always on the defensive after that point.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Interesting story here that Nimitz had to make an extraordinary gamble the intercepted Japanese communications were talking about Midway island and not somewhere in the Aleutians (the other possible candidate). They were rather more certain of that. https://www.history.com/news/battle-midway-codebreakers-allies-pacific-theater https://www.history.com/news/battle-midway-codebreakers-alli... > Determined to dispel such doubts, Rochefort’s team famously devised a ruse. Via submarine, they sent a message to the base on Midway instructing personnel there to radio Pearl Harbor that the salt-water evaporators on the base had broken down. Two days later, a Japanese message was intercepted that reported “AF” was running out of fresh drinking water.
ceejayoz 4y ago
One key difference was in damage control. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unw3d/why_was_japanese_naval_damage_control_in_ww2_so/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unw3d/why_wa...
throwawaymaths 4y ago
Maybe my headcanon is wrong but my understanding is that the us navy utterly sucked at the beginning of WWII (e.g. torpedoes that didn't work, Halsey) - and it was very likely through a combination of "figure your shit out", natural selection, and at the top promoting a handful of amazing no bullshit admirals (king, ching lee) that got the US out of it. There was still incompetence in the later years (cough cough Halsey) One of the actually longstanding traditions on the US navy is irreverence to decorum or the chain of command when it matters, too, so that sort of operational agility probably was a big factor.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Halsey was mediocre but honestly I only think mediocre in comparison to the talent that otherwise surrounded him.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Uh didn't he sail his fleet into a typhoon?
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      He did. Two typhoons actually. He also fell for the Japanese faint at Leyte Gulf. But he led the successful raids against the Japanese in February and March '42, and then launched Doolittle's planes in April. But most importantly, he replaced Admiral Ghormley as the theater commander for Guadalcanal, and changed the fortunes of that most crucial campaign. A loss at Guadalcanal would have undone the victory at Midway. Conversely, the victory at Guadalcanal, in pretty much every historian's mind, spelled the end of the IJN's dominance in the Pacific. For that, Halsey should get the tribute. But I personally also applaud Nimitz who visited Guadalcanal, assessed the situation and decided Ghormley had to go. And who also figured out that Halsey, who until then was just a raider, would be able to switch to an administrator and be an excellent one at that.
- squaresmile 4y ago
  Yeah I feel like the overwhelming naval victory at Midway and in the overall war kind of masked the flaws and mistakes of the WWII US navy in the public perception. The WWII US navy made many operational and tactical mistakes. For example, even with the major intelligence advantage, the Battle of Midway was pretty dicey and a lot of luck was required to achieve the unthinkable result of sinking 4 carriers. Don't get me wrong, the US probably would have won the naval war regardless due to the materiel advantage. I think a big part of the "fighting spirit" the OOP mentioned came from the Pearl Harbor attack. It galvanized everyone into action and lessons were learnt and mistakes were fixed very quickly, at all level of the military. For example, after the lost of Lexington, fuel lines were drained and filled with inert gas and that lesson was propagated quickly through the fleet. The fast turnaround between mistakes and lessons learnt probably also came hand in hand with how individuals were empowered to make decisions and took responsibility. On other side of the coin, I think the IJN incompetence got highlighted and not enough credits were given. Their carrier divisions were very very highly trained and operated at a much higher tempo than the US at the start of war. The IJN night battle tactics were also very deadly. Even after Midway, they still went toe to toe with the USN during the attritional Guadalcanal campaigns. Despite their doctrine and culture giving them plenty of weaknesses and blind spots, it also gave them many strengths. I dare say during the preparation for the war, the "fighting spirit" and the effectiveness of the IJN was just as high. In my opinion, the myths surrounding the Pacific naval war obscure very interesting stories from both sides with plenty of lessons that are still applicable today.
mcfunley 4y ago
The war was over after the Marianas were taken, if not at Midway. It doesn’t seem right to discount the industrial might like you do when the US produced dozens and dozens of carriers and escort carriers while the Japanese produced four or five more. But beyond that lots of reasons, - Intelligence and damage control (mentioned elsewhere) - The air war of attrition started early, with the Japanese sending flights 600 miles from Rabaul to the Coral Sea. They didn’t rotate their pilots out to recuperate as the Americans did. The average Japanese pilot was a novice compared to his more numerous American adversaries by 44, and flying a very inferior plane compared to the newer F6F’s. And he could expect to fly sorties until he was killed, which by the end of the war was not much longer than one flight. - Despite starting the war with Pearl Harbor, Japanese doctrine at the top never really moved on beyond Mahan and their plans tended to obsess with engineering a repeat of Tsushima. Yamamoto’s Midway disaster was an attempt to do just this. Compare to the American carrier raid tactics from Doolittle onwards. - The Japanese were successfully starved of fuel, and for that reason couldn’t even get their big ships out of port before Leyte, which was a doomed banzai charge at sea.
- dforrestwilson 4y ago
  Incidentally I have been reading an excellent background on the subject. https://www.amazon.com/Kaigun-Strategy-Technology-Imperial-1887-1941/dp/159114244X/ref=asc_df_159114244X_nodl?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312087807240&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2270927600047686749&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1027691&hvtargid=pla-460549084475&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316180119&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312087807240&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2270927600047686749&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1027691&hvtargid=pla-460549084475&dplnkId=f58b12cc-3e4a-4662-9b1d-4b9a06c5d701 https://www.amazon.com/Kaigun-Strategy-Technology-Imperial-1... It doesn’t answer the question on USN motivations but does a great job explaining why the Japanese were stuck in a rut and rapidly surpassed in terms of tactics, morale, and skill.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I'd recommend Morison's Two-Ocean War: https://www.amazon.com/Two-Ocean-War-History-United-States/dp/1578660033/ https://www.amazon.com/Two-Ocean-War-History-United-States/d...
ransom1538 4y ago
One. Man. A navel god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W._Nimitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W._Nimitz Nimitz faced superior Japanese forces at the crucial defensive actions of the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway. The US navy has so much respect for him, a construction project was haulted because it could cast a shadow on this mans house. "In 1998, the house became a bizarre flashpoint in the construction of the new Bay Bridge when the Navy refused to let Caltrans engineers onto Yerba Buena Island. Why? Their design called for a span that would cast a shadow on the Nimitz House."
- credit_guy 4y ago
  I do consider Nimitz to be the greatest American warrior ever, but the question is, how come a man like him got in the position where he could add so much value? In WW1, the British, who had hundreds of years of actual naval tradition, managed to find themselves with John Jellicoe in operational command. With all the chips on his side, Jellicoe managed to botch the battle of Jutland. A victory there would have shortened WW1 by 2 years. Somehow, almost magically, it looks to me, the US Navy had the right promotion criteria in the inter-war period. But how did that happen? Peacetime nations tend to promote people that don't turn out to be quite the best in wartime, Jellicoe being a prime example. The US Navy unlocked the secret. But what secret exactly?
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    I think the secret was that the rapid growth of the Navy ensured lots of promotional opportunities to replace the WW1 people who had ossified in place. You had lots of mid-grade officers who had to compete to be promoted, an influx of new blood, and plenty of places to stuff idiots with political juice. The key thing was the timeline between 1918 and 1942. If you compare early WW2 to the Civil War, in the civil war you were only 13-15 years removed from the Mexican War. Lots of old Napoleonic ideas were still in the heads of the officer corps, and it took a lot of blood and guts for officers like Sherman and Grant to work their way up and adapt. (The Confederates never figured it out) We glorify the feats of our fighting men and women, but the reality is that a modern military is perhaps the greatest bureaucracy devised. Bureaucracy rewards the embrace of inertia, and only talented leaders AND timing/luck can break it.
mandevil 4y ago
The USN was the largest navy in the world (technically tied for it with the RN) for the entirety of the Washington Naval Treaty system. When the naval arms limitation treaties broke down, circa 1936, their spending ramped up at about the same pace as the other two nations that matter (IJN and RN), e.g. the first battleship commissioned by any of those 3 navies after the breakdown was HMS KGV (Oct 1, 1940), the second was HMS PoW (Jan 19, 41) but the third was USS North Carolina (April 41). They had actually spent an awful lot on naval technology during the 1930's- e.g. they had the best engineering plants in the world thanks to their small tube high pressure boilers that enabled unitized machinery. As for combat experience, of those three navies, the only one with serious battle experience was the RN- and Jutland was so unlike the aero-naval war that actually occurred 1939-1945 that it is actively misleading (e.g. for Jutland the RN apparently forgot to signal to HMS Campania, the only seaplane carrier in the Grand Fleet, to make steam, so she was left behind. Such a mistake would have been unthinkable during WW2). What might be confusing you is that while the US spent a large amount of money on its navy, and quite a bit on its air force (at the time technically still a part of the US Army as the US Army Air Corps), it spent very very little on its ground forces- in 1937 the US Army ground forces were smaller than that Yugoslavia! That was the branch that came from nothing, with very little experience, and grew exceptionally fast. It did indeed lead to problems during the war, as a whole lot of people got a whole lot of promotions very fast- e.g. General Mark Clark made O5 July 1, 1940, and was made O10 March 10, 1945. The 1937 UK army was larger than the 1937 US Army, and the US Army at its peak was about 3 and a half times larger than the UK Army at its peak, so this rapid expansion is much more notable in the US Army than in the UK. If you look at Army Group commanders during the war, all of the British ones except Leese had at least 1 star on Sep 1 1939; all of the Americans who would go on to command Army Groups were Majors/Lt. Col's except for Devers who was a full Colonel.
jandrewrogers 4y ago
My own view, and with multiple ancestors that were in the Pacific Naval theater and survived. The US military invested, and still does, a lot in damage control and survivability. Everything is designed to maximize the equipment and people that can survive to fight another day. This has a significant cost, but the US has always leaned into their prodigious production capacity in support of this objective. This is doctrinal and fundamental, the US really goes to great lengths to make sure every soldier comes home, preferably with minimal damage. In a long war, experience compounds. You can build a core of savvy battle-hardened veterans in a matter of months if your soldiers can learn the necessary lessons of the conflict without dying in the process. Experienced savvy soldiers are effective and difficult to kill. In many military traditions, these lessons are learned immediately before dying. US doctrine is that they learn their lessons quickly, survive, and adapt. That may not always come off, but that is the approach and has worked well for the US. There is no substitute for contact with the adversary when it comes to learning; how quickly you can adapt to those learnings determines outcomes. No country's military is ever prepared for real war. US doctrine has been that they will survive their hard lessons, unpleasant as they usually are, and leverage that experience behind their vast productive capabilities. With respect to the US Navy specifically, the US has always had a strong naval traditions, by virtue of their location in the world. Even when they aren't at their peak, they've always known what they are doing.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  And US torpedoes didn't work for the first two years. Meaning, they bounced and sank. Almost always. Two years. Apparently at some point somebody noticed that one that worked had hit at a shallow angle, and arranged for that until they got fixed torpedoes. My impression was that this was not communicated to other submariners. I don't know how long the trick was used.
- DownGoat 4y ago
  Another important aspect of suitability is the building time for new ships, in most cases you will only be able to fight the current war with the ships that you already have or are currently under construction. So having ships survive is important, and it is why so many of the WW1/2 navies were so afraid of using them.
nl 4y ago
> How did these "highest traditions" come about? The US Navy really did have a long, strong history. If you read the Patrick O'Brien historical novels set in the Napoleonic wars you can get a good feel for how the British Royal Navy saw the US Navy as a serious force, although mostly concentrated in US waters at that time. The US Navy was smaller than the British Navy, but they built bigger frigates (eg, the British frigates were mostly armed with 36 18-pounder cannons, while the US frigates carried 44 24-pounders). This caused significant problems for the British in the War of 1812. Military "traditions" are a weird thing, but old battles definitely count, especially when you win some against a bigger opponent. Also, as mentioned elsewhere the Washington Treaty gave the US and Britain the equal biggest navies in the world throughout the 1930s. For a while during the 1920s and 30s Britain and the US were serious naval rivals too, and the affected how the US Navy thought about itself.
ww2navybook 4y ago
[Blatant advertisement] If you're interested in knowing how the Navy's dominating performance in WW2 came to be, read my 102-year-old father's memoir of the war, completed a couple years ago [0]. He started as a greener-than-green ensign shortly before the war began, but you can see from the book how he made the effort to think about every little thing, and just got better and better. I suspect that was the secret, but the book quotes no less than Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, who was also stumped as to how this group of average folks did what they ultimately did. Plus, I think they were aggressive as hell. And so, a month after the war ended, the one-time green ensign was not only captain of his ship, but also a squadron commander ("commodore") -- "the old man" at age 25. Repeat this in a few thousand instances and you've really got a navy. [0] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0981819397/ https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0981819397/
fmajid 4y ago
Clearly the USN was highly effective at inculcating its institutional memory. Look at Commander Ernest Evans, a Native American with no family tradition of naval service, who earned a posthumous Medal of Honor at the incredible battle of Samar (the “Last Stand of the Tin-can Sailors”): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_E._Evans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_E._Evans
kensai 4y ago
Could it be that Midway was simply that lucky spell that started the whole tradition? I don't mean to be provocative or anything, it's a genuine question of mine. I've read many times about the Battle of Midway and how it could have easily gone the other way (there are even several YouTube videos that show the whole thing nicely animated from both sides with fog of war). If Japan had prevailed in Midway, supposedly inflicting to the US an equally devastating tally: even if the USA would have eventually won the war out of sheer productive capabilities, the traditions would have probably be written much latter if at all. Up until Midway both powers were equally fearsome. One could even argue that Japan had MORE experience given it had already won against a superior enemy in 1905 (Imperial Russia).
- ethbr0 4y ago
  The problem with victory is that the victors fail to learn. In hindsight, Tsushima was more instructive to other navies than to the IJN itself.
pasabagi 4y ago
One factor could be that industrial might quite likely correlates with crew performance. The job of a sailor is essentially to maintain and operate a large floating industrial complex. Engineering skills are not always necessary, but experience working on a factory floor would directly translate to the psychological conditions and technical problems a sailor would encounter within a warship. For an example of the opposite dynamic in action, look at the largely agrarian Russia's naval performance in the Russo-Japanese war, where the incompetence of the officers was almost matched by the incompetence of the sailors. If you've grown up working on a farm, you're unlikely to adjust smoothly to working in an engine room.

vkou 4y ago

> How did the US Navy turn from an inexperienced Navy into the most fierce-some naval force ever assembled in history? Numbers[1], technology, practice in the interwar years[2], and a lot of trial and error. Also, the war in the Pacific was largely an air war, where both of the two belligerents were more-or-less figuring both doctrine and how to implement it from scratch. Also, it helped that Japan could not take advantage many of its victories early in the war, due to lack of numbers, supply shortages, and an absolutely rotten command culture (It had a habit of firing competent admirals because they didn't win hard enough.) [1] By the end of the war, American shipyards were building an aircraft carrier, two escort carriers, two heavy cruisers, and ten destroyers every month. [2] Being surrounded by two oceans, the US has always depended on its navy in its ability to wage war.

sonofhans 4y ago

I have a few ideas, and I’ve read about this for years, fascinated and frustrated that my dad was in WW2 but never talked about it. Most recently I’ve read The Pacific War[1], a comprehensive classic. The USA had two huge long-term advantages that Japan could not match: intelligence and production. For most of the war we were reading most of the Japanese encrypted communications. It’s one reason that we won the battle of Midway, for instance. In terms of production, the US moved its economy into a war-footing quickly and nearly completely. People were planting Victory Gardens so that food producers could use less petroleum for farming and fertilization; tires were rationed. Over the long term it’s impossible to see the relatively small island of Japan standing toe-to-toe with the USA. E.g., I found a 50-year-old dissertation [2] on the subject which claims that in 1939 over 90% of Japanese imports of petroleum, copper, and several iron and steel products were from the USA. It’s one reason they kept expanding during the war, despite the risk of being unable to hold territory: they needed the resources. Certainly there are other factors, but these have always stood out to me as incontrovertible advantages. 1. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/437549.The_Pacific_War https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/437549.The_Pacific_Wa... 2. https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/23634/Thesis-1972-K91i.pdf https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/23634/Thesis-1972...

ghaff 4y ago
And Midway still ended up with a number of cards falling the US way to be the decisive victory that it was. Might not have made a difference at the end of the day--but it turned the US to a much more offensive position earlier than it might otherwise have had. And greatly weakened Japanese options for a negotiated peace.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Not to forget, Yamamoto predicted a six months time window for Japan after Pearl Habour. After these six months, he knew Japan has lost. And the Japanese carried on for qyite a bot longer than that. But yeah, the US Navy played the cards they had incredibly well. They got somewhat lucky with the promotion of Nimitz. The proboem so is, as it is with the Soviets in WW2 and every single WW2 general who managed to write a well selling book about hinself, to see past the individual hero stories at the bigger picture. Personnaly, I think the biggest plunder of the Japanese was to not take out the harbour infrastructure at Pearl Habour. Not that it wouod have changed anything in the long run so. That, and that they failed abysmally at submarine and anti-submarine warfare.
julienchastang 4y ago
> It’s one reason that we won the battle of Midway Interesting story here that Nimitz had to make an extraordinary gamble the intercepted Japanese communications were talking about Midway island and not somewhere in the Aleutians (the other possible candidate). The gamble paid off and the Japanese navy was always on the defensive after that point.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Interesting story here that Nimitz had to make an extraordinary gamble the intercepted Japanese communications were talking about Midway island and not somewhere in the Aleutians (the other possible candidate). They were rather more certain of that. https://www.history.com/news/battle-midway-codebreakers-allies-pacific-theater https://www.history.com/news/battle-midway-codebreakers-alli... > Determined to dispel such doubts, Rochefort’s team famously devised a ruse. Via submarine, they sent a message to the base on Midway instructing personnel there to radio Pearl Harbor that the salt-water evaporators on the base had broken down. Two days later, a Japanese message was intercepted that reported “AF” was running out of fresh drinking water.

ceejayoz 4y ago

One key difference was in damage control. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unw3d/why_was_japanese_naval_damage_control_in_ww2_so/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unw3d/why_wa...

throwawaymaths 4y ago

Maybe my headcanon is wrong but my understanding is that the us navy utterly sucked at the beginning of WWII (e.g. torpedoes that didn't work, Halsey) - and it was very likely through a combination of "figure your shit out", natural selection, and at the top promoting a handful of amazing no bullshit admirals (king, ching lee) that got the US out of it. There was still incompetence in the later years (cough cough Halsey) One of the actually longstanding traditions on the US navy is irreverence to decorum or the chain of command when it matters, too, so that sort of operational agility probably was a big factor.

bpodgursky 4y ago
Halsey was mediocre but honestly I only think mediocre in comparison to the talent that otherwise surrounded him.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Uh didn't he sail his fleet into a typhoon?
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    He did. Two typhoons actually. He also fell for the Japanese faint at Leyte Gulf. But he led the successful raids against the Japanese in February and March '42, and then launched Doolittle's planes in April. But most importantly, he replaced Admiral Ghormley as the theater commander for Guadalcanal, and changed the fortunes of that most crucial campaign. A loss at Guadalcanal would have undone the victory at Midway. Conversely, the victory at Guadalcanal, in pretty much every historian's mind, spelled the end of the IJN's dominance in the Pacific. For that, Halsey should get the tribute. But I personally also applaud Nimitz who visited Guadalcanal, assessed the situation and decided Ghormley had to go. And who also figured out that Halsey, who until then was just a raider, would be able to switch to an administrator and be an excellent one at that.
squaresmile 4y ago
Yeah I feel like the overwhelming naval victory at Midway and in the overall war kind of masked the flaws and mistakes of the WWII US navy in the public perception. The WWII US navy made many operational and tactical mistakes. For example, even with the major intelligence advantage, the Battle of Midway was pretty dicey and a lot of luck was required to achieve the unthinkable result of sinking 4 carriers. Don't get me wrong, the US probably would have won the naval war regardless due to the materiel advantage. I think a big part of the "fighting spirit" the OOP mentioned came from the Pearl Harbor attack. It galvanized everyone into action and lessons were learnt and mistakes were fixed very quickly, at all level of the military. For example, after the lost of Lexington, fuel lines were drained and filled with inert gas and that lesson was propagated quickly through the fleet. The fast turnaround between mistakes and lessons learnt probably also came hand in hand with how individuals were empowered to make decisions and took responsibility. On other side of the coin, I think the IJN incompetence got highlighted and not enough credits were given. Their carrier divisions were very very highly trained and operated at a much higher tempo than the US at the start of war. The IJN night battle tactics were also very deadly. Even after Midway, they still went toe to toe with the USN during the attritional Guadalcanal campaigns. Despite their doctrine and culture giving them plenty of weaknesses and blind spots, it also gave them many strengths. I dare say during the preparation for the war, the "fighting spirit" and the effectiveness of the IJN was just as high. In my opinion, the myths surrounding the Pacific naval war obscure very interesting stories from both sides with plenty of lessons that are still applicable today.

mcfunley 4y ago

The war was over after the Marianas were taken, if not at Midway. It doesn’t seem right to discount the industrial might like you do when the US produced dozens and dozens of carriers and escort carriers while the Japanese produced four or five more. But beyond that lots of reasons, - Intelligence and damage control (mentioned elsewhere) - The air war of attrition started early, with the Japanese sending flights 600 miles from Rabaul to the Coral Sea. They didn’t rotate their pilots out to recuperate as the Americans did. The average Japanese pilot was a novice compared to his more numerous American adversaries by 44, and flying a very inferior plane compared to the newer F6F’s. And he could expect to fly sorties until he was killed, which by the end of the war was not much longer than one flight. - Despite starting the war with Pearl Harbor, Japanese doctrine at the top never really moved on beyond Mahan and their plans tended to obsess with engineering a repeat of Tsushima. Yamamoto’s Midway disaster was an attempt to do just this. Compare to the American carrier raid tactics from Doolittle onwards. - The Japanese were successfully starved of fuel, and for that reason couldn’t even get their big ships out of port before Leyte, which was a doomed banzai charge at sea.

dforrestwilson 4y ago
Incidentally I have been reading an excellent background on the subject. https://www.amazon.com/Kaigun-Strategy-Technology-Imperial-1887-1941/dp/159114244X/ref=asc_df_159114244X_nodl?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312087807240&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2270927600047686749&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1027691&hvtargid=pla-460549084475&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316180119&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312087807240&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2270927600047686749&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1027691&hvtargid=pla-460549084475&dplnkId=f58b12cc-3e4a-4662-9b1d-4b9a06c5d701 https://www.amazon.com/Kaigun-Strategy-Technology-Imperial-1... It doesn’t answer the question on USN motivations but does a great job explaining why the Japanese were stuck in a rut and rapidly surpassed in terms of tactics, morale, and skill.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I'd recommend Morison's Two-Ocean War: https://www.amazon.com/Two-Ocean-War-History-United-States/dp/1578660033/ https://www.amazon.com/Two-Ocean-War-History-United-States/d...

ransom1538 4y ago

One. Man. A navel god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W._Nimitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W._Nimitz Nimitz faced superior Japanese forces at the crucial defensive actions of the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway. The US navy has so much respect for him, a construction project was haulted because it could cast a shadow on this mans house. "In 1998, the house became a bizarre flashpoint in the construction of the new Bay Bridge when the Navy refused to let Caltrans engineers onto Yerba Buena Island. Why? Their design called for a span that would cast a shadow on the Nimitz House."

credit_guy 4y ago
I do consider Nimitz to be the greatest American warrior ever, but the question is, how come a man like him got in the position where he could add so much value? In WW1, the British, who had hundreds of years of actual naval tradition, managed to find themselves with John Jellicoe in operational command. With all the chips on his side, Jellicoe managed to botch the battle of Jutland. A victory there would have shortened WW1 by 2 years. Somehow, almost magically, it looks to me, the US Navy had the right promotion criteria in the inter-war period. But how did that happen? Peacetime nations tend to promote people that don't turn out to be quite the best in wartime, Jellicoe being a prime example. The US Navy unlocked the secret. But what secret exactly?
- Spooky23 4y ago
  I think the secret was that the rapid growth of the Navy ensured lots of promotional opportunities to replace the WW1 people who had ossified in place. You had lots of mid-grade officers who had to compete to be promoted, an influx of new blood, and plenty of places to stuff idiots with political juice. The key thing was the timeline between 1918 and 1942. If you compare early WW2 to the Civil War, in the civil war you were only 13-15 years removed from the Mexican War. Lots of old Napoleonic ideas were still in the heads of the officer corps, and it took a lot of blood and guts for officers like Sherman and Grant to work their way up and adapt. (The Confederates never figured it out) We glorify the feats of our fighting men and women, but the reality is that a modern military is perhaps the greatest bureaucracy devised. Bureaucracy rewards the embrace of inertia, and only talented leaders AND timing/luck can break it.

mandevil 4y ago

The USN was the largest navy in the world (technically tied for it with the RN) for the entirety of the Washington Naval Treaty system. When the naval arms limitation treaties broke down, circa 1936, their spending ramped up at about the same pace as the other two nations that matter (IJN and RN), e.g. the first battleship commissioned by any of those 3 navies after the breakdown was HMS KGV (Oct 1, 1940), the second was HMS PoW (Jan 19, 41) but the third was USS North Carolina (April 41). They had actually spent an awful lot on naval technology during the 1930's- e.g. they had the best engineering plants in the world thanks to their small tube high pressure boilers that enabled unitized machinery. As for combat experience, of those three navies, the only one with serious battle experience was the RN- and Jutland was so unlike the aero-naval war that actually occurred 1939-1945 that it is actively misleading (e.g. for Jutland the RN apparently forgot to signal to HMS Campania, the only seaplane carrier in the Grand Fleet, to make steam, so she was left behind. Such a mistake would have been unthinkable during WW2). What might be confusing you is that while the US spent a large amount of money on its navy, and quite a bit on its air force (at the time technically still a part of the US Army as the US Army Air Corps), it spent very very little on its ground forces- in 1937 the US Army ground forces were smaller than that Yugoslavia! That was the branch that came from nothing, with very little experience, and grew exceptionally fast. It did indeed lead to problems during the war, as a whole lot of people got a whole lot of promotions very fast- e.g. General Mark Clark made O5 July 1, 1940, and was made O10 March 10, 1945. The 1937 UK army was larger than the 1937 US Army, and the US Army at its peak was about 3 and a half times larger than the UK Army at its peak, so this rapid expansion is much more notable in the US Army than in the UK. If you look at Army Group commanders during the war, all of the British ones except Leese had at least 1 star on Sep 1 1939; all of the Americans who would go on to command Army Groups were Majors/Lt. Col's except for Devers who was a full Colonel.

jandrewrogers 4y ago

My own view, and with multiple ancestors that were in the Pacific Naval theater and survived. The US military invested, and still does, a lot in damage control and survivability. Everything is designed to maximize the equipment and people that can survive to fight another day. This has a significant cost, but the US has always leaned into their prodigious production capacity in support of this objective. This is doctrinal and fundamental, the US really goes to great lengths to make sure every soldier comes home, preferably with minimal damage. In a long war, experience compounds. You can build a core of savvy battle-hardened veterans in a matter of months if your soldiers can learn the necessary lessons of the conflict without dying in the process. Experienced savvy soldiers are effective and difficult to kill. In many military traditions, these lessons are learned immediately before dying. US doctrine is that they learn their lessons quickly, survive, and adapt. That may not always come off, but that is the approach and has worked well for the US. There is no substitute for contact with the adversary when it comes to learning; how quickly you can adapt to those learnings determines outcomes. No country's military is ever prepared for real war. US doctrine has been that they will survive their hard lessons, unpleasant as they usually are, and leverage that experience behind their vast productive capabilities. With respect to the US Navy specifically, the US has always had a strong naval traditions, by virtue of their location in the world. Even when they aren't at their peak, they've always known what they are doing.

ncmncm 4y ago
And US torpedoes didn't work for the first two years. Meaning, they bounced and sank. Almost always. Two years. Apparently at some point somebody noticed that one that worked had hit at a shallow angle, and arranged for that until they got fixed torpedoes. My impression was that this was not communicated to other submariners. I don't know how long the trick was used.
DownGoat 4y ago
Another important aspect of suitability is the building time for new ships, in most cases you will only be able to fight the current war with the ships that you already have or are currently under construction. So having ships survive is important, and it is why so many of the WW1/2 navies were so afraid of using them.

nl 4y ago

> How did these "highest traditions" come about? The US Navy really did have a long, strong history. If you read the Patrick O'Brien historical novels set in the Napoleonic wars you can get a good feel for how the British Royal Navy saw the US Navy as a serious force, although mostly concentrated in US waters at that time. The US Navy was smaller than the British Navy, but they built bigger frigates (eg, the British frigates were mostly armed with 36 18-pounder cannons, while the US frigates carried 44 24-pounders). This caused significant problems for the British in the War of 1812. Military "traditions" are a weird thing, but old battles definitely count, especially when you win some against a bigger opponent. Also, as mentioned elsewhere the Washington Treaty gave the US and Britain the equal biggest navies in the world throughout the 1930s. For a while during the 1920s and 30s Britain and the US were serious naval rivals too, and the affected how the US Navy thought about itself.

ww2navybook 4y ago

[Blatant advertisement] If you're interested in knowing how the Navy's dominating performance in WW2 came to be, read my 102-year-old father's memoir of the war, completed a couple years ago [0]. He started as a greener-than-green ensign shortly before the war began, but you can see from the book how he made the effort to think about every little thing, and just got better and better. I suspect that was the secret, but the book quotes no less than Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, who was also stumped as to how this group of average folks did what they ultimately did. Plus, I think they were aggressive as hell. And so, a month after the war ended, the one-time green ensign was not only captain of his ship, but also a squadron commander ("commodore") -- "the old man" at age 25. Repeat this in a few thousand instances and you've really got a navy. [0] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0981819397/ https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0981819397/

fmajid 4y ago

Clearly the USN was highly effective at inculcating its institutional memory. Look at Commander Ernest Evans, a Native American with no family tradition of naval service, who earned a posthumous Medal of Honor at the incredible battle of Samar (the “Last Stand of the Tin-can Sailors”): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_E._Evans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_E._Evans

kensai 4y ago

Could it be that Midway was simply that lucky spell that started the whole tradition? I don't mean to be provocative or anything, it's a genuine question of mine. I've read many times about the Battle of Midway and how it could have easily gone the other way (there are even several YouTube videos that show the whole thing nicely animated from both sides with fog of war). If Japan had prevailed in Midway, supposedly inflicting to the US an equally devastating tally: even if the USA would have eventually won the war out of sheer productive capabilities, the traditions would have probably be written much latter if at all. Up until Midway both powers were equally fearsome. One could even argue that Japan had MORE experience given it had already won against a superior enemy in 1905 (Imperial Russia).

ethbr0 4y ago
The problem with victory is that the victors fail to learn. In hindsight, Tsushima was more instructive to other navies than to the IJN itself.

pasabagi 4y ago

One factor could be that industrial might quite likely correlates with crew performance. The job of a sailor is essentially to maintain and operate a large floating industrial complex. Engineering skills are not always necessary, but experience working on a factory floor would directly translate to the psychological conditions and technical problems a sailor would encounter within a warship. For an example of the opposite dynamic in action, look at the largely agrarian Russia's naval performance in the Russo-Japanese war, where the incompetence of the officers was almost matched by the incompetence of the sailors. If you've grown up working on a farm, you're unlikely to adjust smoothly to working in an engine room.