Though thinking back on it – P-51 was our best fighter. But was it THE best fighter.
My favorite U-2 is “Beautiful day” --and I saw u-2 at Stonehenge 15 years ago. Now that was a concert.
I feel like I hijacked the Grognard’s thread when in truth I love to watch it. Let me bow out with apologies.
(No way would I think a pacific game (cpu or board) that didn’t have a sub content as an element of battle to be realistic in any way)
Carry on – sry to intrude.
Don’t make me post more. I’ll gif that entire damn beautiful movie.
Hmm I was just looking at Best fighters. I know I said I would leave off but…Canned that looks like a hellcat.
Mitsubishi zero == how we even won the war with that plane. There was a difference In training and experience. The Americans got lucky and moved their experienced pilots back. It is a bloody miracle we were able to beat them.
There is no doubt we could have lost that war in a blink of an eye. The Japanese had the better ships, the better planes, the better admirals. Pearl harbor hardly mattered.
Really? I thought the Zero was overhyped.
The Zero was really good early war when it was up against Wildcats, but was fairly quickly made obsolete by the power and armour of the later war Hellcats and Corsairs.
You know after seeing that great print of the California a few days ago it actually got me thinking pre-dreadnaught, And I found this great photo.
Great White fleet. What a crazy thing that was for us then. Look at those marvelous pre dreadnaught battleships.
As for the zero? Let us discuss. It was a masterful fighter design that if pushed correctly would have been the end of us. BUT — they lost so many experienced pilots early on while we pulled our pilots back into training.
Wildcats and corsairs were obviously great heavy fighters (and p-38s in the pacific) but I stand by my initial point: We (the US/Australia/NZ) almost lost it to no small part from that one fighter.
I have to disagree, merits of the Zero entirely aside. Given the relative industrial bases of the US and Japan, there was essentially no way that Japan could have won the war once the US decided it wanted to win.
+1. The war was over the day it was declared. Yamamoto was of the same opinion.
Pretty much the entire Japanese government/armed forces, oddly. Eri Hotta’s Countdown to Infamy is a very good look at how a government made what it universally suspected would be a disastrous decision rather than confront the effects of the policy choices earlier made and back down.
(Reading this as a British person facing Brexit felt uncomfortably close).
Thanks for sharing. I don’t remember ever seeing any photos of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet before.
That’s interesting political science I had not thought of before. My political science training was in the 90s, in the era where in international security political science teaching everyone was a “rational actor” (not sure if this is still how it is taught anymore).
I’ve never really considered the notion that a nation state could instead be the equivalent of the guy at a bar who has picked a fight with a guy who will clearly absolutely destroy him, but can’t back down because he can’t figure out a way to get out of it without losing face.
It’s an interesting theory that a nation state might knowingly destroy itself because the people in charge literally cannot accept embarrassing themselves on a personal level.
Yet in today’s world, it actually seems kind of obvious.
I’m perhaps a bit crude in my summarisation, but the book also points out that everyone with a degree of rationality was in a position where grandstanding cost very little on a personal basis, and there were hardcore true believers just waiting to step into the wings, so almost every time, the less immediately personally costly step was taken, and nobody wanted to be the person who stopped the whole shebang.
(This is a pretty good review summarising the core thesis. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/high-stakes-gamble-jeff-kingston-eri-hottas-japan-1941/ )
One of the interesting things about the Zero and early war air combat was how important tactics factored into it. The Zero had no hydraulic power of rudders and flaps, and pilots moved the aircraft control surfaces with strength alone. Amazing since I need power steering in my car.
The aircraft’s light weight made it extremely maneuverable at low speeds, but at high speeds it was impossible for human-strength to get it to change direction rapidly. Over Pearl Harbor and in close battles over airstrips and fleets the Zero would easily turn and get sights on aircraft unable to turn as quickly. The tactical lesson to US pilots was a really difficult one to teach: don’t turn to engage, just keep flying fast and let someone else deal with it. Tough to tell that to an eager pilot defending his friends below. Later, better surveillance allowed interception of fighters in open skies and US pilots simply kept their speeds higher, choosing not to engage, and later US aircraft were faster, better armored, better gunned, flew by better pilots rather than kids with a couple of days training… culminated in the Marianas Turkey Shoot.
William Slim in Defeat into Victory makes a very similar point about the Japanese down to their lower-level military commanders:
Quoted in H.P. Willmott’s Empires in the Balance, a superlative book if there ever was one.
Frank’s Downfall recounts the same personages looking back at the disastrous decisions while looking straight into the abyss in 1945.
(Brexit = Japanese War with the West in 1941?? Hyperbole much, @PreachyPreach? :) )
The best recent work to really dig into the details and nuances of the attack being launched with foreknowledge (or severe foreboding, at least) of defeat is Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy by Eri Hotta. I highly recommend it.
