Shit happens!

I apologise for the rather crude title whilst confessing my weakness for American argot which is, somehow, so very accurate.  I was reminded of the phrase by the talk I gave last week on the subject of three naval battles, one of which was Midway.  I think that all Marxists should be made to study military history instead of that tedious and mostly useless social history that has been designed in sundry Polytechnics to bolster the silly notion that you can create entirely spurious classes of people and then ram them all in willy-nilly, plus, the even sillier notion that such a thing as 'historical inevitability' actually exists.  Even the briefest skim across most military campaigns will instantly inform you that, indeed, 'shit happens'!

Take Midway for starters!  In late 1941(*), the Japanese sneaked up to Pearl Harbour with their magnificent and ultra-modern aircraft carriers and unleashed a terrific attack on the American fleet moored in harbour.  The media of the day flashed the story round the world complete with pictures of rows of sunken Yankee battleships and immediately declared it to be a stunning Japanese success.  Anyone today who suspects the media is less than an accurate reporter of events need look no further than this event for proof because, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbour was a stunning Japanese disaster.  Quite apart from the crass stupidity of poking a giant in the eye with a sharp stick whilst he is desperately trying to look away, the folly was compounded by the metaphorical 'shit happens' that I refer to in my title in that the American aircraft carriers, by a complete fluke, had sailed away the day before on an exercise.

Most Japanese thought the raid had been a marvellous victory but not the cold-eyed strategist, Admiral Yamamoto, who knew that it was now crucial in 1942(*) for him to provoke the Americans into a battle in which they would be forced to commit their aircraft carriers so that he could put right the glaring error from the Pearl Harbour raid by finally destroying them as a fighting force.  Oddly enough, Yamamoto, whilst appreciating the enormous importance of naval air power, was still a big battleship man at heart and probably failed to appreciate that by sinking all those useless American battleships the Japanese had actually done the Americans a favour!

He chose Midway as the target knowing that those two tiny atolls almost literally in the middle of the Pacific were absolutely crucial to the American defence of Hawaii.  They stood as an early-warning outpost for any Japanese fleet movements, and, as a refuelling base for American subs who would then range westwards to ravage supply ships feeding and fuelling the extended Jap armies round the western Pacific rim.  Any thrust at Midway would have to be parried and when the American carriers appeared, Yamamoto would crush them.  His plan was, arguably, too intricate and he wasted resources in a futile diversionary raid northwards into the Aleutians which fooled no-one.  For the attack on Midway he had a 4-carrier task force coming in from the NW and an invasion force coming in from the SW.  He and his battleship task force lurked back to the west waiting for the American forces to appear at which time he would pounce.

"Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted", said Bonaparte, a lesson well learnt by Yamamoto who arranged for a long-range seaplane to be met at an RV amongst some sandy shoals by a sub, there to be refuelled to give it the range to reach Pearl Harbour and see if the American carriers had sailed.  The first 'shit happened'!  The Japanese sub reported that two Yankee seaplane tenders were already anchored there so the Japanese recce was cancelled.  Yamamoto had also arranged for a line of subs to be placed along the likely routes of the American fleet but then the second 'shit happened' because there was a delay in the maintenance service of the subs and they were delayed.  The Americans, having broken the Jap naval codes and realising the urgency, had already sailed and were the other side of the sub line before it was in place.  Thus the Japanese had no idea that the US carriers were already close to Midway.

Nagumo was the commander of the Jap carrier task force with four huge, modern aircraft carriers capable of carrying 80+ aircraft each.  On the morning of the attack he arranged for his recce aircraft to take off early and fly a very specific series of flight paths that would allow them to cover an enormous area of Pacific to the east.  And here the third, the final and the most devastating piece of 'shit happens', happened!  One of the planes had engine trouble and took off 30 minutes late.  If it had left on time it would have flown over the US carriers but in the delay the Americans had moved on and were completely missed.  Nagumo had split his attack force into two waves.  The first, armed with anti-airfield ordinance hit Midway to soften it up for the invasion; the second, remained on board armed with anti-ship ordinance in case the Americans appeared (although this looked unlikely given the recce reports of no sightings!)  The first wave returned reporting success but insisting that Midway needed another pasting to make it safe for the invasion fleet to come in.  Nagumo, having no reports of any American ships, ordered the second wave to have their ordinance changed to anti-airfield.  This had nearly been completed when the first flight of American carrier aircraft arrived in the form of a flight of torpedo-attack planes.  These poor men had to fly low, straight and slow in order to launch their weapons,  making them an easy target for Nagumo's anti-aircraft gunners.  To add to their woes, the CAPs (Combat Air Patrols) always maintained above every carrier, swooped down like hawks on sparrows.  The Americans never stood a chance but with unbelievable courage every plane tried - and every plane was shot down without causing the Japs even a scratch on their paintwork!  But the effect they had was electrifying.  Nagumo knew these were carrier aircraft which meant the US fleet was nearby.  In a panic he countermanded his order to the armourers, telling them to take off the anti-airfield weaponry and reload with anti-ship.  By this time his first wave was landing and being re-fuelled and re-armed on deck.  At just that moment, a flight of American dive bombers at the very limit of their fuel range quite literally stumbled over the Japanese carriers.  They dived in relative safety because the CAPs had all come down low to deal with the torpedo attackers earlier and were low on fuel and ammo.  All the Jap carriers were crammed with planes, fuel lines and loose ammo.  It only needed one hit from a bomb and the whole lot would go up in an instant.  That is exactly what happened; first one, then two, then three blew up and sank, and the fourth was caught later in the day and was also sunk.

The heart had been ripped out of the Japanese fleet, not just in terms of carriers, but even more in the loss of hundreds of experienced aircrew which the Japanese navy was never able to replace adequately.  You could say that seven months after they started their war, the Japanese lost it - but then took four(*) more years and two atomic bombs before they owned up.  And all because an engine went faulty for half an hour!  The historicism of Marxism is always an indication of its total stupidity and brings to my mind the very wise words of another American, Benjamin Franklin, to which I add my own words at the end:

• "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse," the General was lost; and for want of a General, the war was lost!

It's the missing nails that always get 'em!

(*) Correction: I am grateful to John (see comments below) for pointing out (yet another) howler of mine concerning dates, which have now been corrected, thus invoking the shade of the late Miss Purves (History, 1950-55) whose constant refrain, "Details, Duff, details!" will be inscribed on my headstone along, probably, with my incorrect dates of birth and death!  My blustering reply to her that I was a 'big picture man' deserved the withering scorn it drew down on itself! 

Comments

[John]

David, I'll assume that your mix-up over dates was an uncharacteristic error - even I know that Pearl Harbor was 7 December 1941, not 1940. It is also well documented that Roosevelt all but gave Japan a cash inducement to attack, as a way of engineering American public opinion behind US entry into the war. Lessons from military history, indeed.

[Hank_]

David

Nice post.

While missing the carriers was not good from the Japanese point of view the biggest mistake was not destroying the harbor facilites.

While it may have been something of an inconvenience to the Battle of the Atlantic the loss of every ship in the Pacific fleet could have pretty much been made up ship for ship from the Atlantic Fleet. Pearl Harbor was still a base from which naval operations could be based. To say nothing of damaging a ship next to a dry dock where it will be repaired and leaving the dry dock untouched is not a long-term proposition.

My understanding is that the navy’s tactics called the dive bombers to cause the CAP and AA guns to be tuned to high attitude to oppose the the dive bombers while the torpedo bombers came in low and did the job. Stuff happens, at Midway it happened the other way around. But sometimes stuff doesn’t happen, the torpedo design was defective, if the torpedo bombers had gotten in and released the torpedoes there would likely have been four undamaged Japanese carriers.

[David Duff]

John, you are kinder to me than I deserve! Why, oh, why, do I never get my dates right? I blame the gin. Mea culpa! I am intrigued by your comment which I have never heard of before concerning a cash inducement for them to attack!!!! Sources, please.

Hank, good to hear from you again. Part of the Japanese error lay, I think, in only sending in one wave against Pearl Harbour. despite the warnings of the flight commander that it needed a second attack. Presumably if that had taken place the aircraft would have been armed with HE for effect against port installations. Fortunately Nagumo decided not to push his luck and sailed away leaving a job half done.

I have to say, in my not very expert opinion, that in the annals of warfare the courage of those torpedo bomber crews in pressing home their attacks against overwhelming opposition has rarely been equaled.

[Hilary Wade]

Thought this link might interest - it's an older cousin of mine, buried with full military honours at Arlington early last year. (If you picture Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, that was more or less him.)

His grave's on a slope, looking down at the walls of the Pentagon. And what he thinks of the current administration's military efforts, heaven only knows.

http://www.travelforums.org/forums/printthread.php?t=14129

[David Duff]

Fascinating, Hilary, thanks. You can picture the man without ever having met him.

[genghis]

David,

There was indeed a third wave planned against the port facilities at Pearl, but Nagumo chickened out when he received word that the Americans had actually managed to get a couple of fighter aircraft up, and they had had a few successes against the Japanese fighter-bombers. The surprise factor was blown, his destroyers lacked the extra fuel needed for the extra loiter-time, and he weighed the possibilities of the missing bombers from the two big American flat-tops searching and finding his vulnerable task-force against the tempting targets of the dry-docks and ammo-dumps scattered all around Pearl and the islands!

The American victory at Midway was due to many things and actions meshing together: the fantastic luck of the Task force commander in botching the despatch orders of the two strike forces; the Intelligence gained by the American decodes of the Japanese Naval codes; the chance appearance of the Yankee dive bombers when all the Jap bombers were struck below to re-arm and the Japaneses C.A.P. were all at low level after engaging the American torpedo aircraft; and lastly the heroic actions of those same torpedo crews who flew towards certain death because it was their DUTY! The men of Torpedo Three, Six and Eight who drove in against overwhelming odds, with only one survivor from Torpedo Eight's thirty fliers giving some idea of the losses suffered by the slow torpedo squadrons.

Your header says it all, but the "shit" eventually fell on the heads of the Japanese, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch!