Why the Submarine is the unsung hero at Midway -- true story.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by WernherVonTrapp

@Dread Knot:
As to my ealier reference involving John Toland's book, as I alluded, I don't believe in the conspiracy theory either. BTW, Toland was a graduate of Williams College (undergraduate degree ) and did win a Pulitzer Prize for "The Rising Sun". Yes, "Infamy" was controversial when it first came out 30 years ago (also when I first read it). Books like this inevitably will be controversial. But Toland is, by no means, the picture you have painted of him. I suppose Billy Mitchell was deemed just as controversial when he said that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor.
As my English Lit professor used to say, "Bad reviews are not necessarily a bad thing for a writer. It is when your work receives no reviews, that you should start to worry".

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you were a PH conspiracy believer. I've read Toland's Rising Sun tome as well. I recall it was in two hardcover volumes when it was first published. His literary style makes for great and fast paced reading although he did tend to concentrate on some parts of the war and skim on others.

As regards Infamy, I know that other students of the Pearl harbor attack have criticized his thesis severely. David Kahn, a well-known authority on the history of intelligence questions the reliability of Toland's evidence. Kahn points out that the Japanese Pearl Harbor striking force maintained complete radio silence from the time it left harbor in the Kuriles. It never transmitted any messages, even on low-power ship to ship channels. Toland's informants had, in all likelyhood, picked up naval transmissions originating from Japan and nearby waters. Shipboard direction finding was notoriously unreliable then, with a likely error of 11 to 20 degrees in a bearing. Enough to throw of the calculations of the SS Lurline radio men.

I guess it just points out while that there will always be tantalizing clues and coincidences, in the absence of real smoking gun evidence we'll never be sure.