Topic: For the WWII history fans.

[Sirgod]

just click the link, you won't be disappointing. (Large amount of pictures warning for those on slower connections warning.)

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1FvuKi/stories-etc.com/hidden.htm

Stephen

[Brush Wolf]

Nice find there. I had seen the first two pictures but not the others. The Germans actually camouflaged a port to throw off the allied bombers although unfortunately I can't find a link to that at this time. 

[Sirgod]

I believe I have seen what you referred to here Brush. Alas, I am unsure of a link also.

It's kind of funny, The way this was found, was due to a lengthy Discussion, (read Flame war) between a Texan, a guy from NJ, and me the okie, over No-euclidean Geometry.  Needless to say, the topic devolved, and I was introduced to this page.

Stephen

[762_XC]

That's pretty cool...a lot of effort to guard against something the Japanese never could have pulled off (course they thought that about Pearl Harbor).

[Lono]

AMAZING!!!

 

Very very cool - thanks for sharing that!

(reminds me of that new PC game R.U.S.E. I just picked up on steam)

[knightstorm]

That's pretty cool...a lot of effort to guard against something the Japanese never could have pulled off (course they thought that about Pearl Harbor).

Actually, the Japanese did launch one air attack against the continental United States using a float plane deployed from a submarine.  Their target was a forest since they felt that a forest fire would force the US to divert resources away from the war.  But an attack on the Lockheed factory could have been possible.

[762_XC]

Germans landed on the east end of Long Island too, but I would hardly call that an invasion. The IJN could never have dreamed of mounting any sort of large scale raid on the west coast without capturing Pearl first.

The Doolittle raid was a far greater undertaking, yet in terms of actual damage (morale notwithstanding) was militarily insignificant.

[Kreeargh]

That's pretty cool...a lot of effort to guard against something the Japanese never could have pulled off (course they thought that about Pearl Harbor).

Actually, the Japanese did launch one air attack against the continental United States using a float plane deployed from a submarine.  Their target was a forest since they felt that a forest fire would force the US to divert resources away from the war.  But an attack on the Lockheed factory could have been possible.

There was a spoof movie made about this event i dont recall the name but it was funny Japs attacking a amusement park thinking it was a factory. The local puplic ended the issue.

[knightstorm]

Germans landed on the east end of Long Island too, but I would hardly call that an invasion. The IJN could never have dreamed of mounting any sort of large scale raid on the west coast without capturing Pearl first.

The Doolittle raid was a far greater undertaking, yet in terms of actual damage (morale notwithstanding) was militarily insignificant.

How would you know that?  A major part of Japan's "strategy" involved trying to demoralize the US.  A risky attack on the continental US would fit right in with that.

[762_XC]

How would I know that? Because I understand naval logistics from that period.

Pearl Harbor was a severe stretch for them (hence why naval planners in the U.S. didn't think it could happen). California would be simply impossible.

[Starfox1701]

That was pretty damn cool thanks man

[Lieutenant_Q]

It may have been a good strategy.  But ships of that time were limited in how far they could range from their bases.  Ships could only carry so much fuel.  Pearl Harbor was at the outer edge of their range limit.  Now, had they captured Pearl, all bets were off and strikes at the California coast were not only possible, but in fact guaranteed.

We get kinda spoiled today by the fact that Nuclear powered craft can sail for months without stopping (and they need to stop to take on fresh food supplies, not to refuel), but back in the World War II era, ships could only range as far as their oil tanks allowed, sailing across the Atlantic was hard enough, going across the Pacific with out a stop was impossible.  (and Combat Operations has to include the return trip)

[762_XC]

Their overall strategic objective was to prevent U.S. interference with their expansion into the "Southern Resource Area" (aka southeast Asia). It was, oddly enough, a defensive strategy in the sense that they were only concerned with protecting the assets that they had seized and planned to seize, and their sea lines of communication. Pearl Harbor was well outside the defensive cordon they had marked out for themselves. California might as well have been the other side of the world.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was designed to do one thing, and that was cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet and give them six months of "running wild" as Yamamoto put it. Their unrealistic hope was that once that was accomplished the U.S. would negotiate a peace favorable to Japan.

Once they realized they had missed the carriers at Pearl, and Coral Sea underscored how problematic that would be for them, destroying them became their new operational focus, culminating in the Midway campaign (which was designed to do just that). The west coast was never even on the drawing board, and nor was capturing Pearl.

[knightstorm]

California was within range of a Japanese Submarine.

As for Japan's strategy, they were trying to re-fight the Russo-Japanese war, or at least how they perceived that war to have been thought after decades of propaganda.

[762_XC]

A submarine is not a carrier fleet. And logistics entails more than steaming range.

U-boats operated in the Gulf of Mexico. That doesn't mean the Kreigsmarine could have put a fleet there.

[knightstorm]

Who said anything about putting a fleet?  The Japanese had submarines that could deploy float planes.  I'm arguing that it wouldn't have been beyond their capabilities to use them to launch a few air attacks against the west coast in an attempt to instill panic, and that the Lockheed plant would have been a target.

[762_XC]

That would have been insignificant beyond belief. They had only a few of these things, and the planes could carry one bomb each of <2000 lbs. It would have made the Doolittle raid look massive by comparison, which as I said, was materially insignificant. These were small torpedo planes, not B-25's. Airpower then was not like today, where a handful of fighter-bombers can do significant damage with precision-guided munitions.

The operation they had planned against the Panama Canal would have probably yielded a much greater result, had they gotten it off in time, and had they used kamikaze attacks as they decided to do later in the war. The operation called for ten planes, the most they could conceivably get into the air off of submarines, and the canal was probably the only target that ten planes could do enough damage to to matter.

[knightstorm]

Like I said, the real damage would have been its potential to cause panic.  The entire Japanese war plan was based on the US becoming demoralized and suing for peace.  If they could have caused a brief interruption in the Lockheed plant's operation so much the better.

[762_XC]

That was their war plan in 1941-2. After Midway their war plan was based on desperately trying to hold ground, and damage the U.S. fleet in any way they could.

The I-400 class wasn't even in service until 1945.

[knightstorm]

They did have smaller aircraft carrying submarines, which were in service as early as 1940.