Quote:
Originally Posted by EddieLyons
Well, I'm a sucker for punishment! And, the period I'm most fascinated by is the early war period. So, it'll be back to the Asiatic Fleet in an S-class boat.
What is also fascinating is the immediate pre-Pearl Harbor period, 1940-41, in the Pacific. The Roosevelt administration was sure that a showdown with Japan was coming, just not sure of exactly when and how it would start. But they got the basics right -- the Japanese offensive southwards. (The one bit they missed, of course was Pearl Harbor.) But they were already committing resources to beefing up defences across the Pacific, in the minor outlying American island territories like Wake, Midway, Palmyra, etc, and securing the maritime lines of communication to Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand.
But what I've never heard about is what sort of operations the USN's submarine force was doing during that time, apart from sending extra subs to the Asiatic Fleet. The AF, especially, had a mission to protect American interests in China, especially in those areas affected by the Sino Japanese conflict. So AF subs were deployed to Chinese waters and ports on many occasions from 1937 to 1941. Presumably some of these included intelligence gathering to identify and record IJN forces engaged against the Chinese. (For instance, in October 1938 the British Royal Navy very cheekily sent the light cruiser HMS Birmingham unannounced into Amoy harbour, where a Japanese fleet of seven battleships, eight cruisers, plus destroyers and minelayers were deployed, most of which had never been seen by western observers because of Japanese naval secrecy since the 1920s. Every sailor on board who had a camera, or who could make decent sketches or drawings, lined the gunnels to record every possible detail of the Japanese ships, who's crews had most definitely been caught with their pants down!)
There were also the Japanese occupations of the Paracel Islands in April 1939, and their involvement in the Spratlys from July 1937 leading to their occupation in March 1939, both in the South China Sea, the latter immediately adjacent to the Philippines. Surely the AF must have been interested in reconnoitring what the IJN was doing there.
Similarly, the USN knew about Japanese naval deployments to, and naval facilities, in the Marshalls and Carolines and other island groups of the Japanese Mandate. Apart from the submarine "war patrols" from Pearl Harbor to Midway and Wake in 1941 in the weeks before the Japanese offensive, I do wonder if there were any intelligence gathering missions sent to reconnoitre such locations in 1941 especially.
These could be interesting scenarios to play out in any pre-Pearl Harbor campaign starts in the next update to TMO. I've always felt it is very artificial that the game starts only on 7 Dec 1941. At the very least there should have been an option for a pre-war training campaign.
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On that... it had already been well doc'ed... that Pearl, was inately well vulnerable, to what had gone down with the BB's in Taranto(sp? at best) when th Brit's I think it was... had sunk 3 Italian BB's... in a shallw water harbor, very similar in aspects to Pearl.
That point had been attempted to be driven home, several time... the last iirc, was by Mitchell... the same guy that the B-25 bomber, was named for... like... 5 or so years, well before Pearl happened...
Yeah, Pearl happened... *snorts*
Pearl, was a definitive Bent over wearing a "come kick Me" written sheet of paper, scotch taped to the back of the Pac fleet anchored there... & am a firm believer, in that it was sent there, to exact such a reaction from IJN... in short, it was a deliberate poke the bear move. On the tail end of all the sanctioning that was leveled against Japan, already by that point.
May have not been Roosevelt, himself... but someone in the higher ups... was the orchestrator of it... & Roosevelt, didn't quash it from happening.
Is no way, He couldn't have known, otherwise...
M. M.