I'm working today directly across the river from the USS New Jersey. T-6 Texans are going to fly up the river at 9:00 AM. In addition, a wreath will be cast into the river for those fallen followed by the sounding of "Taps." At 1:45 there will be a launch ceremony commemorating the Jersey's day it left Philadelphia's shipyard one year later on the same day. The same tugboat that pulled the Jersey will be alongside of her. At 2:15 a 40mm anti-aircraft gun which was restored will be fired of her portside. I'm currently working on a 25 story building and I'm going floor to floor. The Jersey is only visible to me from 14 on up. Our crew of guys will be taking a moment of silence. KenThat's awesome Ken. While I was on active duty stationed at Dam Neck VA a group of us went into Norfolk and toured the USS New Jersey. Massive and impressive firepower. She was still active in the fleet at that time. I was surprised to see it had wooden decks. The 16" guns were a sight to see. On another note I attended the funerals of 2 of the sailors killed in the USS Iowa turret explosion. I was home on leave in MI shortly after the incident and went to pay my respects. Many have paid the ultimate price for the freedoms we enjoy in this country and deserve recognition for their sacrifice.
God bless all who died at Pearl Harbor as well as those who have died defending our country and all of us veterans. We belong here!
What is the problem with those who kneel or turn their backs at our National Anthem?
They have given NOTHING for our country and can leave at any time!
I agree with you, but they think they are protesting the "common practice" of police hunting down and shooting completely innocent people for racist reasons. Of course that entire narrative is complete and utter nonsense, entirely made up to create exactly this reaction in those who don't bother to research the facts of the matter and to race bait people for political purposes.
If I thought that the cops were intentionally assassinating black kids (or anyone else, for that matter), I would be right there with them trying to stop it, such a thing would be monstrous and completely and utterly unAmerican. I would try to do something more useful than disrespecting the flag and the country, but if you actually believe the premise, the doing *something* would be perfectly reasonable.
You can tell that the people stirring this up don't care one whit about the lives of black people, because if they did, they would be rushing to Detroit and Chicago to stop the utterly obscene indiscriminate murders of black people (and anyone else) that is occurring there on a daily/hourly basis. That they don't seem to care about that at all tells you all you need to know - if there is not political hay/concessions/handouts/indignation associated with it, they don't care even a little bit about the lives being destroyed.
Brett
When I think of Pearl Harbor is always think:
"So much firepower, so little preparedness".
No wonder the commanding admiral was court-martialled and relieved of command. Five or ten minutes would have changed the war in our favor.
It's difficult to believe that reasonably intelligent people, like college graduate "Professional" sports participants, living in multi million dollar "Digs" can't understand that! In fact it implies that they do in fact understand it but simply use it for self aggrandizement and political purposes. Perhaps even for money for payment for doing it.
I agree with you, but they think they are protesting the "common practice" of police hunting down and shooting completely innocent people for racist reasons.
Brett
For those people Brett speaks of they may need to watch this clip and follow the easy steps
If anyone should have been court-martialled that wasn't, it was MacArthur. The day after Pearl Harbor, it was clear to everyone that the Japanese were trying to knock us out in surprise attack. After having repeatedly assured Roosevelt, etc, that he was prepared for any action, forces in the Phillipines were caught on the ground just as badly as Pearl Harbor.* * * * *
Short and Kimmel were really just scapegoats. They had some vague orders about being prepared, but not with any specific threat or any detail about what to expect. Kimmel was later absolved of any guilt/culpability. Even Nimitz said it was a "godsend" that the fleet got sunk in the harbor instead at sea (where they would have been had the most aggressive posture been taken), since in a battle of battleships VS *6* carriers they would have all been sunk rapidly with massive loss of life and irretrievable. As it was, almost all of the ships "sunk" at Pearl Harbor were raised and repaired (the Arizona being the notable exception).
The entire US Pacific Fleet at the time would have been at most a match for the IJN Task group, but it would have been catastrophic to try to get into an extended slugfest/battle of attrition with them at that time. The very best that could have happened was to have fighters scrambled and the ships underway, but strictly for defense, and such an overwhelming force would certainly have inflicted serious harm even with every guy with a Wildcat or Brewster Buffalo to intercept them.
The IJN was vastly superior to the Pacific Fleet at the time, and while Pearl Harbor was appalling, it's certainly not the worst case. Ultimately, their own failures and adherence to a faulty doctrine (Mahan's "decisive battle") stalled their efforts, Midway (where we decisively won a battle where were heavily outgunned) put them back on their heels, and just as they themselves had predicted, when we recovered, we just overwhelmed them with men, materials, and industrial might.
Brett
It is incredibly sad to say that I did not hear one person mention Pearl yesterday
Guess the clown in North Korea has not studied history. How many countries have threatened or attacked the good ole USA and wished they hadn't. I remember the Libyan pilots that they could take on our US Navy pilots. They wound up fish bait if I remember correctly.
* * * * *
Brett is right on target. MacArthur was handed a "Get out of Jail Free" card by FDR and remained in command despite his disastrous decisions on the first day of war. The following retreat into Bataan resulted in a debacle largely due to mistakes and oversights committed by MacArthur and his staff.
Kimmel and Short were indeed scapegoats. The US Senate, in 1999, voted to clear their names after extensive hearings and investigations. Curiously, the US Navy refused to hand over 50+ year old records from WW2 having to do with the pre-war and early war efforts to decipher JN-25, the Imperial Japanese Navy secret code. They cited "national security" as the reason. As might be expected, that generated considerable speculation that these records may have revealed a higher level of code breaking prior to the Pearl Harbor attack than was otherwise known to historians.
A top secret USN team of cryptologists, known as CAST, operated codebreaking equipment from a tunnel on Corregidor Island in Manila Bay until they were evacuated on April 8, 1942, less than a month before Corregidor fell. Their mission was to intercept, decipher, and relay JN-25 as well as Japanese diplomatic communications. In recent years it has been discovered that MacArthur left orders that CAST personnel were "not to be captured alive" by Japanese forces.
CAST personnel were originally sworn to lifetime oaths of secrecy, but several made anonymous, unauthorized disclosures to Clay Blair in his 1975 book, "Silent Victory". In 1983, the US Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association wished to interview and quote CAST survivors for a new book called "Intercept Station C". However, they were required to secure permission from what was then known as NAVSECGRU (Naval Security Group, part of the NSA). Certain questions were deemed to be off limits to the veterans. The book has several passages noting that NAVSECGRU cleared it for publication. A second edition of this book, published in 2003, still contains these notes.
Not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here, but why are some of these things still classified?
I have often fantasized/dream that GW Bush should have videotaped the Nuclear Test Treaty and just noticed CNN we were going to detonate ONE more on a Alaska Island..... just to get rid of it (sic) safely
The let CNN show the world a 50 square mile Island evaporating.... Simply to remind the world....who mostly HAVE NOT seen the 1950s tests just how FUBAR a Nuke Iran or others is a very bad idea
I would guess the NK missile threat could be ended in about 5 minutes, and before they even knew what was happening. Send in F-35 and B-2s to knock down every launcher with precision-guided conventional munitions, all with the same time of arrival. They would never know what took them out, the launch pads would just mysteriously explode, more-or-less all at once. No nukes required.
The problem comes after, when the NK starts the artillery barrage on Seoul. If they try to invade, they will fail, because the DMZ will look like the road out of Basra, far too much close-air support will be brought to bear. It will be like a human wave attack from WW-I, except there are also A-10s, F-15 Strike Eagles, etc. But there's no way to knock out every single cannon ahead of time, short of nuclear "carpet bombing".
If there was a solution at hand to provide acceptable civilian casualties in Seoul, this would have already happened, because the majority of this seems pretty simple. The nukes themselves are useless without a viable delivery system, I am sure that they cannot make a nuclear artillery shell.
This is fundamentally different from, say, Iraq, because your first hit should be the missile sites, and you don't care that much about the command and control. You can assume that everyone down the platoon level knows that if anything happens, the orders are strike out to the south immediately.
Brett
Well the theory that seems to hold the most water is that people within the government (including the President and most of congress) wanted the Japanese to attack to give the US a political reason to enter the War. I believe that is true I just also believe they didn't expect the attack to be so devastating. Another "Screw Up" by the idiots in charge at the time.
I decline to comment on the classification associated with the cryptography observations, but I doubt that it was allowed to happen or Roosevelt or anyone else conspired to cause the attacks.
Occam's razor seems to apply, we had cut off Japanese supplies and trade, which was fatal to their plans, so they had to do something and hope that they could reach a stalemate. The only plausible scenario that they come out of it intact is that we didn't have the stomach for it, and we would form a defensible perimeter and leave them alone with East Asia.
Of course that was a huge miscalculation, even without the minor detail of the "sneak" attack (that they didn't intend, either), they were going to lose eventually and there was no way on Earth that we were going to compromise with them. They at least partially believed their own bullshit about how weak and decadent we were. And it's not like the US general public was any more realistic.
Unfortunately it took a lot of people dying to correct everyone's mistaken impressions and get where we got today - where the Japanese are world leaders, and one of our greatest allies, and generally very well-respected by all involved.
Brett
God bless all who died at Pearl Harbor as well as those who have died defending our country and all of us veterans. We belong here!
What is the problem with those who kneel or turn their backs at our National Anthem?
They have given NOTHING for our country and can leave at any time!
Ssgt. James D. Boka US 55741329.retired.
551st MP Co. Ft. Polk,La.
US Army.
AKA Don Boka.
AMA 7219
I'm sadly talking about the Princeton TX Walmart where I work in the hardware Dept. Not a word!
Yes, we put the Germans and Japanese back on their feet after the war, but look at their economies since WWII until now ,both have kicked our ass for a very long time . Until we start making stuff and selling it to "them"....we lost. Cheers,Skip
Not sure about the "Germans Won" on any significant level -----but I am certain if the British and Americans did not have such a large foot print in that country they would probably be still trying to recover from the devastation of WWII
They look really sharp are a throwback to arguably the greatest period in our military history. From some of the other pictures I've seen, they're almost an exact recreation of the uniform of the 40s right down to the brown leather shoes and the service cap with the omitted stiffener for the "50 mission crush" look.