1 Sauerkraut is shredded, fermented cabbage. The "shredded" part is what he's talking about, I think.

2 Yes, I know, Steven... my family is Polish, so sauerkraut was something of a staple growing up (I can't stand it now).

I was more reacting to the very presence of the comment in the broadcast itself.

3 My apologies.

4 That's what I love about DW, you just never know what's gonna come out of his mouth. That's why he makes such an entertaining commentator. He has inside knowledge, passion for the sport, and can be unabashedly "goofy". Now that the season opening events at Daytona are over, we can look forward to the new F1 season! I think I'm going to need to brush up on my Italian so I can keep up with singing that anthem!

A couple of years ago, IKEA was selling a pack of postcards and I immediately saw them as wall-art.  It just took me forever to get around to picking up frames for 'em. 

So that's a glimpse into the sort of place Pond Central is.

1

Well, that's definitely geeky, but not as bad as it could be. A true fanatic would go through the whole Azumanga Daioh series and find that frame, framegrab it, and post it along with your photograph.

So feel good: you're not totally off the edge yet.

2

The drawing is from the back half of the series, I know that.  You can tell from the position of Chiyo-chan's pigtails. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to find the scene yet.

(Yup, the ledge was left behind a loooooong time ago...)

3 I was going to suggest that I, too, thought it was later in the series. Not because of the pigtails, however, but because early in the series Chiyo-chan would never have expressed that kind of feeling. It's only later that she's more comfortable with her friends and feels like one of the "big girls" that she's willing to be more frank like that.

4 A valid point, and absolutely correct.  It's also one of the "fall" episodes, since they're in the long-sleeved (pink) seifuku.  Those combinations probably narrow it down to about seven or eight different eps.

Wow, forensic anime.

5 Pete is the uber-geek.

Earlier today, a man with a shotgun, a handgun, and (some reports suggest) a third weapon, walked into a classroom on the campus of Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Illinois.  He proceeded to open fire, killing four and wounding 15 (some reports say 17).

NIU is about 25 miles from Duckford, and I've spent many a happy day in the library, and a few very happy nights on the campus itself (none of your business exactly where, if you know what I mean).

Because of this tragedy, Duck U. had a few tense moments... nobody really knew what was going on when it started, so there was some concern about the safety of OUR students as you can imagine.  Safety first... and the Duck U. security team is quite good (I may owe my life to them, actually, but that's a story oft told).

The Virginia Tech shooting was bad enough... but this is closer to home.  I had a Valentine's Day post in mind, but I suddenly have no interest in it.

Stay safe, my friends, and give your mom a call if you can.  Just because.

1

They just announced the shooter's identity, and it sounds like he was just plain crazy. No sign yet of a motive.

May he burn in hell.

2

Or maybe not burn. One report said this:

The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University before killing himself had become erratic after failing to take his medication and carried a shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said yesterday.

I haven't seen any other mention of that, so your guess is as good as mine. If more comes out though, it may begin to explain what in hell happened.

3 I've heard the same reports, Steven, and it sounds like it's probably the case.  The question becomes why a former NIU student that was practically worshipped by his professors went off his meds.

From where I'm sitting, seeing the anguish he caused (this is just about the only news story in Duckford these days), knowing that a couple of the most critically injured were helicoptered to the same hospital emergency room that I was taken to during The Incident (one of whom subsequently died), and seeing Duck U.'s flags flying at half-mast, I'm not particularly in the mood to be generous.

Today was a very quiet day at Duck U., with a lot of pensive students.   One of my favorite kids amongst the student body, a living embodiment of the genki girl trope, looked like she'd been crying off-and-on since the reports came out.  She told me she'd not slept, either. 

I've seen the news crews crawling around Duck U. and the Duckford Junior College, looking for students in pain to interview.  Friggin' vultures... and we're not even where the tragedy occurred, we're just nearby.  I don't even want to see what the media is doing at NIU.

So forgive me if I'm not feeling charitable towards this bastard.

1 Here in the "southlands" it has only just started snowing, which suggests to me that perhaps God has it out for the ducks.

Of course we've gotten our fair share of snow this winter, too. Pretty much looks like "luck of the draw", actually. I thought we were supposed to have a "mild" winter, though; instead it's like the 5th snowiest winter on record.

So much for "global warming". If they can't even predict what the next few months will be like, why do we believe them when they tell us what the next few decades will be like?

Oh well. Enjoy the snow day. Watch Kanon or something.

2 Ed, if The Librarian and I hadn't just finished Kanon recently, I'm sure I would watch it.  Instead, I'm watching ARIA the Natural.  Not much snow in it, but it matches the mood of the day.

Later tonight, I'll be catching up with KimiKiss, as I've let the last four episodes slip... but for now, I'm back to Mars Aqua.

1 The link doesn't work.

2 I had a problem getting to metacafe, but once I did, it loaded up fine.

1

Heh. "Sick duck" always makes me think of that old SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketch.

Get better. The forces of Anatidae liberty need leadership.

2 I didn't think that the moniker "Wonderduck" was just for show. This proves that.  

3

Sick sucks. Ick sucks. Sick ick sucks more.

Still getting over my ick sick, so I know what suck I speak.

Get better soon.

Well, Dr. Seuss it isn't, but such is my alleged humor at the moment. 

1 Step 5) Wonder just what the h*ll is wrong with Wonderduck.

Believe me, I was already there.

Just kidding, LOL etc.

1 All else being equal, though, the atomic bomb was ready in August of 1945, so that would have still led to a relatively quick end.

A carrier battle group, steaming in formation, would have been a sweet target for a 20kt nuclear weapon. One bomb per CBG and Japan would have found itself without a navy in relatively short order. The limiting factor would then be how quickly the US could make atom bombs.

...which, if I recall Rhodes (Making of the Atomic Bomb) correctly, meant about 1-2 bombs per month in 1945-46.

2

Not quite that straightforward. The bomb was carried by a B-29 launched from Tinian. That was extreme range for B-29's. If the bomb was ready in August 1945, but there were no B-29 bases within range of the home islands, then what do you use it on? The idea of using it on enemy fleets is naive; they move and are hard to find for a long range bomber flying in from a base many hours away. B-29's were not a tactical weapon.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I believe the loss of the Enterprise on the first day would have had quite the catastrophic consequences described here.

Honestly, losing Halsey would have been more critical, but it's not certain he'd die in such an attack.

3

4 Sorry about that.

What I meant to say is that although I'm really not an expert on the Pacific war, the "Lost Orders" counterfactual is a guarantee to pull me out of my cave and rant a bit. 

Firstly, the famous lost orders were the *sixth* set of operational orders lost by either side in the late summer of 1862.  The fluidity of the Rapidan-to-Pennsylvania operations meant that various divisional and army headquarters got overrun or otherwise compromised on a regular basis.  Both Stuart and Pope's staff were scattered and overrun on separate occasions, both times losing their paperwork to the other side's benefit.

Secondly, it's been recently argued that the Union advance was actually *slowed* by the discovery, as it occasioned an additional iteration of McClellan's OODA loop, and perhaps cost him an extra six to eight hours as he paused to figure out what the discovery meant - and more importantly, whether it was real or a trick.  He had already put his scratch force on the move - this is how they found the lost orders in the first place - and because of Stuart & the cavalry's poor showing in screening against this advance, he would have caught the Confederates scattered and unprepared regardless of the intel bonanza.

A far more interesting what-if is a situation where McClellan is *not* in control of the Union forces around Washington at the time of the Potomac crossings.  The tenuousness of McClellan's authority in making the advance into western Maryland is often understated.  A situation where Stanton & Halleck get crosswise with McClellan & put him under arrest for something untoward said by one of his hot-head subordinates like Fitz Porter or Franklin in the heat of the moment, post-Second-Bull-Run - I could see a situation where command chaos in Washington could have resulted in an indecisive fall campaign.

The key in the September 1862 campaign was what led up to the capture of DH Hill's superfluous operational orders in Frederick, not the contents of those orders.  It was the fact that there *were* Union infantry in Frederick rummaging for cigars through the clutter of an abandoned Rebel camp, and not cooling their heels in front of the Washington defenses.

5 Steven, that's the joy of counterfactuals: there's no way to be sure what would happen.  I do feel secure in claiming that there'd be no attack on Midway without the Doolittle Raid, however, and without basically abandoning the lines of communication with Australia, there just wasn't a carrier available to escort the Hornet. 

No battle of Midway, no four Japanese carriers sunk in one day.  No destruction of Kido Butai and the Japanese continue to outnumber the US in the only manner that matters in the Pacific until sometime in 1943.

Yes, the A-bombs would be available in August '45, no question.  Would the US have an airfield near enough to Japan that a B-29 could use by then?  If you posit a year's delay in the arc of the Pacific War, Tinian wouldn't be invaded until August of 1945, let alone have the busiest airfield in the world.

It's all speculation, of course, and I don't claim to be able to read tea leaves... but the contents of this post have been bugging me for a couple of days, and I finally got a couple-three hours to put it on 'paper'.

Mitch, would any of those previous 'lost orders' be the plans for an entire season's campaign, like THE lost orders were?  Please note that I honestly don't know; the Civil War has never interested me enough to study such details.  Weak, I know, but what can I do?

6 Oh, and Ed?  A nuke the size and yield of the ones used against Japan may not be as effective against a fleet as you might think.  Take a look at Operation Crossroads Able.  23kt, 500ft airburst above an anchored fleet.  The bomb exploded about 2000ft off-target (the center of the anchored formation)... and this was on a STATIONARY target, not a moving fleet.

The result?  Five ships of the target fleet sunk: two APAs, two DDs, and a CL.  The Saratoga (CV-3) was more-or-less undamaged, though we know her electronics would have been zorched and any exposed planes would likely have been blown away.

So unless the US got lucky and dropped the bomb right above a Japanese carrier, it's not sure that it would have completely killed it.  If it was dropped dead-center in the usual Japanese carrier formation, they'd be damaged, but probably not sunk.

It wasn't until Crossroads Baker that the Sara was sunk, and that was an underwater burst, which carry more shock power than airbursts.

7 Good points all. Still, I wouldn't want to be in a carrier battle group when someone set off a nuke nearby. That would ruin my day, whether the ship sank or not. Electronic machinery in 1945 was "nuke hardened" simply by virtue of not being all that intricate; it could stand more radiation than people could. Even a near miss with a nuke would cause a lot of Japanese sailors to get sick and die, and if you got enough of them, it would effectively kill the CBG until it could be remanned.

The B-29's range is the real limiting factor here, IMHO. The Pacific is a big ocean and the thing's combat range of 3,250 miles is not that great. And, of course, you couldn't get a satellite image to show you where the ships were.

Still, while my initial thoughts might be overly optimistic, I think the nuclear bomb option would make pretty quick hash out of the Japanese effort in the Pacific in 1945.

8 Ed:

You wrote: Even a near miss with a nuke would cause a lot of Japanese sailors to get sick and die, and if you got enough of them, it would effectively kill the CBG until it could be remanned.

True.  The thing is, the Japanese couldn't have remanned very quickly, if at all, because they lacked the skilled manpower.  In prewar Japanese society, mechanical skill and technological experience--the prerequisites for a trained air department--were relatively rare.  If Japan had had the ships to replace the four carriers lost at Midway a week after the fleet returned home, they wouldn't have had the air department personnel to crew them with.  (There's a long discussion of this point in the recent Midway book Shattered Sword, which I highly recommend.) 

On the other hand, Americans had mechanical skill and technological experience in abundance.  It's been said that in every deuce-and-a-half full of American infantry--the ones left over after all the skilled gearheads were siphoned off by the Navy and Air Corps--there were at least two or three guys who could fix the truck if it broke down.

9

Few ships have ever been as pivotal as the Enterprise. The scenario that Wonderduck outlines is actually qute likely IMHO. Enterprise was for a time the ONLY CV in the Pacific. Without her there is no aircover during that crucial time.

WD is also right that the capture of Tinian is what made the Atom Bombing possible.

Even if Midawy is fought, keep in mind  that historically, Midway was an incredibally close run thing with 2.5 American CVs...With just 1 fully operational carrier plus,Yorktown the American long odds become quite dismaying. Also, Hornet was fairly ineffective in that most important battle, the kills were largely made by the planes from Enterprise and Yorktown. Take Enterprise out of the equation and the Japanese almost certainly win.

Without having half their air crew killed at a stroke, the IJN does not suffer from the acute experience shortage they did historically, they can afford to rotate some veterans for training and the smaller holes in their order of battle could probabnly be filled even given their slow training procedures.

If, due to the reasons Wonderduck gives the Japanese ignore Midway, then they likely concentrate on the Indian Ocean and actually execute the planned joint operation with Germany on Madagasgar. With 2-4 german heavies, (the "twins" plus a pocket BB or 2)  plus a few detached IJN carriers the Indian ocean becomes an axis lake, leaving more than enough IJN assets to deal with the US for a time. The ANZAC convoys are swept from the seas, India almost certainly falls to revolution, insurgency and invasion, the Suez is threatened from the EAST and it is likely that an amphibiouys assault would be made to ensure that the vital minerals from South Africa go to the Axis.

IJN aircrews are even less deplested in this scenario.

Straying farther from the path, close cooperation with the IJN might  convince the Germans to finish Graf Zeppellin and Peter Strasser which could complicate the Home fleets problem even more.

All in all a bad thing.

Thank you for that ray of sunshine Wonderduck.

10

Muppet, it gets worse.  Assuming the war doesn't end in 1945 as it does, the USA wouldn't be in position to tell the Soviets to stay away from an invasion of Hokkaido.

Japan may very well have ended up like Berlin in the Cold War.

11

This assumes things go as well for the USSR as they did historically....if recious minerals are obtained by the Germans in abundance they would not be out of fuel. Chromium for their jet engines would have made a big difference in a bad way and if the middle east fell....the pressure on the USSR would have been very great indeed.

Yeesh...

12

Comments here.

13 Here's an interesting nugget - what would happen if Adm. Kurita hadn't blown it at Leyte Gulf? That's the only point where the "decisive battle" doctrine the Japanese were using to force the US to negotiate a peace could possibly have worked...

14 Steven sez (in #12): "And as to the question of when Tinian gets taken, to be used as a B-29 base, if it isn't in time for August 1945, then the first atom bomb would have been dropped by a B-29 flying from a base in China."

Not a chance.  The chance that the plane carrying the bomb would have a malfunction and crash-land someplace the Japanese could get their hands on it wouldn't be taken under ANY circumstances.  We barely let our friends know what was going on with the bomb, after all.  The flight from Tinian, on the other hand, was completely over water... perfect for jettisoning the bomb where nobody untoward could get their hands on it.

The logistical problems with flying B-29s from China are well-documented as well.  Throw in the added headaches of trying to get the various pieces of the bomb to the Chinese base, and it seems even less likely.

"Also, nothing about this scenario affects the new Navy scheduled to start coming off the blocks late 1943."

Granted, and mentioned in the body of the post.  The first Essex came into the field in mid-'43, by the end of the year there were four.

And the submarine war could have been effected by the loss of the Enterprise.  In 1942, the US moved a large number of subs to Australia.  If Japan made their move towards Australia, that could have put a serious crimp in the sub campaign.

Nothing could have saved the day for Japan, really... just prolonged the bleeding.

15

(From a lecture I had years ago at Air War College) This itself may be counterintuituive, but Pearl Harbor was actually a blessing for the US Navy.  The Navy was still dominated by  battleship admirals; Navy doctrine still favored the "decisive engagement" of capital ships slugging it out.

Pearl Harbor took the battleships off the table, leaving only the carriers as our remaining tools. Luckily for the Navy, the naval aviators had long been experimenting and thinking about using carriers for more than scouting and fleet defense (which was their assumed normal role).  Thus, the Navy was forced to adapt to carrier-centric battle, which, thanks to the forward thinking of it naval aviators, was not as wrenching as it might otherwise have been. 

Had the Enterprise been in Pearl during the attack, there arguably would have been no carrier force to turn to, and the battleship admirals might still have prevailed.  A counter-attack might have waitied until enough battleships were on line.  Then, an American battleship fleet (with carriers only in their usual scouting role) might have sailed out, seeking to "cross the T" with the Japanese Navy, only to get pulverised by Japanese carriers.  Thus, the US Navy might have been delayed even longer in switching to carrier strategy, and the Pacific war might have thus lasted even longer.

Another lesson from Pearl Harbor:  prior to the attack, US Navy ships had only a modest number of anti-aircraft guns sprinkled on the decks.  After Pearl, all ships bristled with AAA guns of all calibers.  Battleships  became floating AAA batteries, and in an ironic twist, were assigned to help defend carriers when they weren't supporting Marine landings.

16 One thing about the internet is that frequently somebody else has already done the analysis we want.  In this case it is the wonderful page on the Nihon Kaigun:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
The only way japan could have avoided losing the war was to never start it.  The imbalance was that great.  Also after the  actions at the beginning of the war the Kido Butai  was limited by logistics.  The  Japanese never developed a forward refueling strategy and this severely limited their operational flexibility.  For instance the Kido Butai could not operate off the US coast as Enterprise and Hornet could operate off the coast of Japan even early in the war.  Loss of the Enterprise would probably mean that Wasp would be transferred to the Pacific earlier to replace her.  Replacing Halsey would probably have been more difficult but I imagine that Nimitz would have found somebody, probably sooner rather than later.

17 Please note that the link J Carlton gave is authored by Tully and Parshall, the writers of "Shattered Sword", one of the best history books out there, and in many ways, the genesis of this post.

The Combined Fleet website is fantastic, by the way.

18 Wonderduck, here's Dimitri Rotov's FAQ on the lost orders. I was overstating things a bit, it was the fifth set of lost orders in a month, not the sixth.

As for the loss of the Enterprise, I surprised that no-one's made the obvious linkage: the American prioritization of the European theatres over the Pacific. In a context where the airpower assets were that badly unbalanced and the Pacific coast & Australia were effectively exposed, I can't see King agreeing to the historic compromise which gave priority to the war against the Germans and Italians. At the least, I'd guess that the North African and Med campaigns would have been shelved, and any diversion of resources from the Battle of the Atlantic might have been the last straw for the build-up in Britain.

Without the Enterprise, Guadalcanal wasn't happening, which probably would have resulted in the total loss of New Guinea. With resources as thin as they would have been without the Enterprise, would they have exposed the Lexington and Yorktown in the Coral Sea? Mightn't we have seen a re-trial of the Battle of Midway with an intact Yorktown and the Lexington in place of the lost Enterprise while the Australians get pinned into the Indian Ocean by a barrier of fortified bases across New Guinea and the Solomons?

I can't see an actual Australian front, if only because the Japanese Army just didn't have the resources to pour into another continental campaign.

19 I love this stuff...

It seems amazing in retrospect, that Japan would have started a conflict against such odds that even given near-perfect military successes, that it could not have won unless we were convinced to stop fighting.  Yet, such things are often not defined by rationality, no matter how much men in suits sitting around tables may think otherwise.  Not to de-rail the thread to modern times, but I suspect such an attack today would have a greater chance of success than it did then.

One of my favorite counterfactuals was actually posited by Rev. Sensing (http://www.donaldsensing.com/2003_10_01_archive.html#106729189888046907).  What if WWI had ended early with a German victory?  What if Moltke had not stripped troops from the western front prematurely, and had pressed the plan to its original design?

The world might have been a much better place.  Given what we see today, I think that you could make the claim that maybe Western Civilization was mortally wounded in those trenches.

20 Mitch points out one affect this might have had on the War in Europe, ie not transferring the bulk of material there at first That would have tremendous ripple effects for the European theater even if it otherwise proceeded as it did historically. 

However, history is a malicious pachinko machine and things might not.

Given a successful Madagascar operation (and there is no reason to believe that Scharhorst, Gneisenau Prinz Eugen and select elements of Kido Butai could not have conquered the Indian Ocean) then the European front looks VERY different.  Suez is threatened, this threatens Egypt from the EAST. The North Africa campaign suddenly looks different. IF Suez falls (and is useable) then Germany and Italy have DIRECT access to tremendous resources like the chromium and other minerals from Africa (say...Namibian cryolite).  Burma and possibly India falling (bad) Even if Suez holds out or is rendered impassible, Madagascar is a staging area that allows, say 30 I boats to be added to the Battle of the Atlantic during the dark days of '42. The Japanese submariners and kit were actually pretty good, they were handicapped by doctrine....doctrine which would not apply if they were TAD with their German allies.
It gets worse...there is the specter of (unlikely, but possible) two IJN CV's added to the North Atlantic blockade to assist the German cruisers in scattering the convoys for their wolf packs. Remember PQ17? Imagine that 20 times over.  Additionally, the "Twins" would make fine complements to the Kongo class in the Pacific, screening the IJN carriers.
The European Theater is going to be way harder for the allies even if the US agrees to Churchill's plea. Turkey probably turns to the Axis. (suck!)
This reduces the logistical chain on the German Panzers in the USSR. (suckity suck!)
Without Midway an important US submarine refueling/repair base is off the table. The effect of a successful blockade of OZ has already been mentioned.
The submarine campaign is harder and less effective until, perhaps '44.

Things would begin to turn around '43-44 but more slowly...possibly accelerating as the intrinsic racism in the upper levels of the two main Axis powers begins to unravel their alliance.  

It is still a mess. The US is not building against Japan, but Japan, and a Germany un hobbled by strategic materiel shortages. The Eastern front might be rather different.

If things went this far south before turning around, does FDR even WIN in '44?

If he does not, then Dewey will likely find the State Department riddled with commie spies...and get rid of them.
Thus No Atom bomb secrets to the Russians. No sell out at Yalta.
If the USSR DOES survive as the USSR, then Eastern Europe doesn't fall behind the Iron curtain.
Hiss is in prison or gets a well deserved bullet in the head and so he doesn't get to keep putting Nagasaki on the nuke list, so all those allied prisoners (and the citizens of Nagasaki) don't die. (With no Hiss, Kyoto and Nara would not have been on the nuke list either.)
Perhaps the Cold War never really gets started. The benefits of that are incalculable.

However, that silver lining is tarnished by the fact that millions more die in WW2 proper. The Holocaust lasts longer killing several million more Jews. With a year or two of breathing room, perhaps the CCP gets hit by the Japanese rather than ignored. Or perhaps Chang Kai Sheck is finished off as here is no Burma road to supply him. If Mao and he CCP are destroyed, then perhaps tens of millions actually live...a net gain that would never be appreciated as the horrors perpetrated by that evil regime never come to pass. 

WW2 could have been immensely longer and more costly, some of the more exotic German weapons might have made it to service. Would NY or DC have been hit by a dirty bomb?  

How many readers of this post would never have been born if the war had accounted for millions more people?
Would there be, in the early years of the 21st century a duckbilled blogger who would post some spectacularly speculative revisionist post concerning  some US carrier (an ignomimious footnote in history) and what might have happened if only she had been a bit late on what was historically her last voyage...to Pearl Harbor? 

21 I love this thread SO very much... this post has generated more comments than any other in the history of The Pond!

Big D, it's interesting you should mention the good Rev's post, because I was just reading a very similar article in the book "What If? 2"... the writer of that one basically says "Germany wins WWI, the world becomes a very happy place full of rye bread and rainbows."

Brickmuppet, for good or evil, it's almost a guarantee that yours truly would NOT be here if the war carried on for another year or two.  My paternal grandfather was in one of the divisions slated to be the first wave in Operation Olympic (the invasion of Japan proper).  He was a platoon leader as well, so it seems somewhat unlikely that he'd come out of the campaign unharmed.

If Grampa Mallard never made it off the beaches, my father (who was born in 1947, I believe) would never have been hatched... thereby depriving the world of the Wonderduck.

22 Neat... I've got the original "What If", and it has some rather interesting scenarios (like US losing Midway and having to advance along a northern route from Dutch Harbor).

I've really wanted to see the Rev's one wargamed out more... I can see a chance that Lenin would find fertile ground without ever leaving Paris, thus resulting in (possibly) yet another French attempt at empire, but it's sorta iffy--France is in a much weaker position geopolitically by 1900 than it is in 1800, and doesn't have the wits and luck of Napoleon in his early days to bail them out.  In addition, in any kind of Red/White battle, there's a chance the Brits and/or Germans would intervene against Lenin in the first place.

OTOH, The Great Game would still be in full swing come 1918.  Who knows what mischief they could have come up with (it'd be hard to top reality, though)?

Here's a cute idea... with no WWI, Britannia rules the waves with no loss of a generation, and remains our greatest rival.  We end up siding with Japan *against* England around 1940 in an all-out naval war (this would require Japan to make concessions like "no raping, pillaging, or mass murder", of course).

23 I can't imagine a "northern route" scenario playing out. I mean, what, you're gonna base planes out of Dutch Harbor? You're gonna put your logistics in Dutch Harbor? Forget lack of facilities, it's actually a worse choice than tropical jungle as far as climate, and that's -hard-.

I'm not even sure a US loss at Midway would have been that significant. Oh, sure, screws up the operations pattern for everything following. But while the US certainly took territory and defeated Japanese garrisons, it's entirely plausible that the war could have been won exclusively with logistics warfare, and the destruction of the Japanese carriers and pilots at Midway isn't a major contributor to that aspect of the war. If anything, lack of offensive fleet action would probably have spurred the US to a greater submarine effort...

Then again, the US didn't KNOW that at the time - while we can sit back on historical records of overpowering material warfare, there was a little more urgency felt by the actual participants.

In the end, though, nothing affects the timing for Manhattan, and it's not like there's any way to defend against it. (Well, aside from shooting down the bomber, good luck.) I don't know how you can plausibly rewrite WW2 and get around a quick end after Trinity...

24

I don't know how you can plausibly rewrite WW2 and get around a quick end after Trinity...

You can't get the bomber in range.

Of course, if China falls due to a lack of the Burma road then the first nation to have nukes used on them is Germany. Given ramping up of production on the nukes by the time Tinian or Iwo Jima are occupied there might be an attempt to have multiple Japanese cities hit by nukes simoultaneoulsly...though it is unlikely that even 5 simultaneous atomic attacks on Japanese cities would have cost as many lives as the firebombings did.

OTOH if the war goes into 46'-47perhaps the Japanese are so starved by the submarine offensive that they just give up. IIRC the USN felt that was the most likely scenario and opposed the firebombing for that reason.

25 ISTR that we had to ship massive amounts of food into Japan in the winter of '45 just to keep people from starving.  A strong blockade (which could have been done largely with submarine-deployed mines, if it had to be) could have really messed with them.

I can't see the war cabinet surrendering, since a good chunk of them wanted to fight to the death IRL; but, I don't think it's impossible that starving citizens might not have revolted.  That would have been an ugly way to end the war, though--millions dead from starvation, and parts of the military continuing to fight.

26

It should probably be pointed out that Nimitz's performance in the first six months of the war was considered miraculous -- and so it was. By 9 months after Pearl Harbor he'd stopped the Japanese advance and gone on the offensive himself.

That wasn't expected, and it wasn't according to plan. The expectation at the beginning of the war was that it would probably take until 1947 to beat Japan. Germany was rightly seen as the worse opponent, which had to be taken out soonest, so the situation in the Pacific was expected to stagnate for several years before enough production could be spared for anything like a major offensive there.

Loss of the Enterprise and a failure to win at Midway would have been approximately according to plan. If things could have been stabilized with Australia and New Zealand still secure, and Hawaii safe, that was about all the plan really required.

As it turned out, Nimitz did far better than anyone had any right to expect, and this actually made life harder for top command because he, and even more so MacArthur, kept clamoring for more resources to be able to follow up on those early successes.

27 I just bought and read "Shattered Sword."  Wow.  It change my opinion of Nagumo and Yamamoto.  I had always assumed that it was Nagumo's dithering that lost the battle of Midway.  But according to the book Nagumo was doomed by poor defensive doctrine, ie dispersing CAP duties to all the carriers rather than having one carrier assigned to that function,  poor ship designs with the worst elements of all carriers built in(wooden flight decks and enclosed hangers), underemphasized damage control training and the continuous ineffective attacks keeping the second strike off Nagumo's decks and in the hangers where the strike made the perfect kindling.  Yamamoto's politiking and infighting with the general staff for Midway as the target, the IJN general staff not having a strategic plan, diffusing the carrier force for secondary objectives(Coral Sea), the ignored warnings of the before action war games all contributed to the disaster.  The biggest problem was six months of being on the offensive against targets that could not defend themselves against carrier attacks never forced the IJN to develop effective defenses until it was over.

28 J, you might be interested in my post from last June, "Midway Myths Debunked."  I draw a lot of it from Shattered Sword, which I got the day it was released.

I've read it, oh, six times since then...

As he says, not something you want to see just before you eat. 

1 You know, you could have put that below the fold, you know.

2 Forbidden love-child of Harry and his owl?

3 Of course I could have, Steven, of course.  

So we finished up rush week in fine fashion, blowing last year's numbers out of the water, and making the year at the same time.  Can't complain about that, that's for sure.

And I got my boss hooked on Kanon '06, to boot.  She hasn't watched anime for about six years, and not much of that, either.  Here's a conversation we had a week or so ago:

Her: I saw a movie about a machine...
Me: Ghost In The Shell?
Her: Nooo...
Me: (thinking) Howl's Moving Castle?
Her: Nooo... it had a guy with a motorcycle in it.
Me: Akira?
Her: YES!  I didn't like it though.
Me: Believe me, Kanon is nothing like Akira.
Her: Are you sure?
Me: Pretty sure.

As I was leaving today, she asked me "So what's up with Ayu disappearing like that?"  My job here is done.

Now, a few days to relax, and not go outside... Saturday's high is supposed to be 5 degrees F. (That's -3107degrees Celcius to my Euroreaders)  And sleep.

1 Sweet. Now we can look forward to that Zipang post you promised? *wink**wink**nudge**nudge*

1

Back at the hobby shop, Black Friday was nothing. The Saturday before Christmas was always the worst. 10-9 shift with two half-hour breaks to grab a lunch and dinner. The store wasn't very big, and there were times I was afraid we were over Fire Marshal capacity. We had two registers running non-stop for those eleven hours, and the line always filled an aisle all the way to the back of the store.

I unfortunately was working there right at the time checks were on the way out, but we still hadn't stopped accepting them. So every fourth customer (usually a grouchy retiree on fixed-income) I had stop hold everything up while I got their drivers license, check, and then phoned it all in to a verification service. God I hated that. It didn't really get better the next year when we stopped taking checks. Instead of wasting time with verification, the whole store got treated to a tirade of equal length.

2

Thank heavens for automated check verification services and external bad check recovery companies... otherwise we'd lose out on a buncha business!

Tuesday wasn't as bad as Monday... still long as crepe (well, 9-1/2 hours as opposed to 10), but only about half as much business, dollar-wise.  Mind you, the day still beat our usual day in the store by a factor of about 20...

So it's probably going to stay slower than normal around here for a few more days, but I've still got posts on Zipang!, Bamboo Blade, and Clannad coming, and I'll stay on top of the F1 Pr0n as the rollouts continue (on a related note, Honda is ditching the "ourearthdream" livery).

If nothing else, though, I'll still try and stick a picture up every day.  Maybe.  I hope.

1 Are you still understaffed at the store? If so, my condolences.

2 Steven, we're in marginally better shape than we were, but it won't get any better... we're payroll-strapped.  Just makes for some long days... at least I'm not on the edge of complete burnout, like I was just before Christmas, thanks to the 11-day vacation I took from the Friday before Xmas to January 2nd.

So another year draws to a close.  2007 will go down as quite the interesting one for The Pond.  Consider:

1 I'm no particular fan of anime (though I am trying to learn enough to keep up with my teenager) or F1 racing, but you're one of my regular reads because of the quality of your writing.  (Well, that and the ducks.)  Keep up the good work!

2 "...you're one of my regular reads because of the quality of your writing."

Are you sure you're at the right blog, Mike?  (Seriously though, thank you very much!)

1

An Aegis destroyer in that era would do really well -- until it ran out of ammunition. Then it's just a hull. No way they can get any reloads. They do carry quite a lot of ammunition, but not enough to win a war. At least not that war.

Interestingly, an Aegis destroyer would be vulnerable to attack by the SB2C Helldiver. The Phalanx can't elevate high enough to shoot at something coming down at that steep of an angle, and an Aegis doesn't carry enough SAMs to defend itself against 30 or 40 of them. Add to that a swarm of TBF Avengers and F6F Hellcats carrying bombs, and if the attackers were willing to accept losses they could overwhelm the defenses of a single Aegis cruiser and hit it multiple times with 500 and 1000 pound bombs -- which are huge and deadly.

2

Phalanx can elevate to +70degrees, but you're pretty much right: a dive bomber like the Val or Dauntless (the Helldiver wasn't in squadron service in1942) would be dangerous.  Yes, the Val.  The Mirai is a Japanese ship, but not an IJN ship... and the intrigue is thick on the ground.

Of course, divebombers were dangerous to even the heavily armored ships of the time, too, so...

FWIW, the crew of the Mirai ARE concerned about the lack of reloads, and admit that they're screwed if they get into a fight... which makes things even more tenuous for them.

3

You bet your sweet ass they were dangerous. Post analysis of the damage done to Yamato concluded that even though it was hit about a dozen times by torpedoes, it was a dive bomb that actually destroyed it.

One of the earliest hits by a dive bomb started uncontrollable fires which eventually set off the magazine under #2 turret, blowing the ship in half.

4 Given that the crew of the Mirai want to stay out of trouble, and also given that either side could attack them, shouldn't they avoid contact with anyone? I know it would make for a boring show, but running away may be their best short-term option, and they may be in good shape to do that. The Aegis radar would be quite useful for detecting patrol aircraft from far away, and modern passive sonar would also help them avoid being sighted by submarines. As well, they could use their knowledge of WWII history to head for parts of the Pacific where not much was happening. (Would the Mirai have a significant speed advantage over WWII-era surface ships? If so, that would be useful, too.)

OTOH, even the slowest WWII-era patrol aircraft could outrun a modern destroyer; as callous as it seems, I suppose the Mirai would have to shoot down a patrol plane before it made visual contact, and hope that the crew didn't have a chance to make a Mayday call before going into the drink. As well, heading for the Antarctic may help them avoid battle and save their ammo, but running out of fuel (and food) would then become their main problem.

5

Peter, I'll answer those questions in my post on Zipang!, but history stopped applying in episode 2, when they rescued the passenger of a shot-down floatplane...

The Mirai doesn't have a huge speed advantage over similar-sized WWII era ships, it has an acceleration advantage.  Gas turbine engines get to full power very quickly (in nautical terms, at least).  Unfortunately, they also swallow fuel at a prodigious rate... which forces them to stay in the Greater East-Asia Prosperity sphere. 

In fact, much of the first 8 episodes involves them trying to scam food and fuel.

6

Interesting, so they animated The Final Countdown from a Japanese perspective.

The Nimitz would run into a similar problem for ammo and rations, but the nuclear reactor would be good for the entire war and then some. (and that whole class of carriers are faster than they have any business being)

I always enjoyed the scene of the Tomcats blasting by a couple Japanese scout aircraft.

7

It turns out that there are reasons having to do with fluid dynamics why trying to move a traditiona hull through the water at faster than about 35 knots is really difficult. The problem is that the resistance rises a lot faster than exponentially, so it takes huge amounts of power, far more than is practical to put even in most warships.

If you want to go fast, you have to use a different hull shape -- either a multihull or something that hydroplanes or has hydrofoils.

And propulsion is a problem, too. When you try to move water too fast with a screw propeller, you start getting cavitation. This not only reduces the efficiency of the propellor, it also makes a lot of noise, which makes you stand out on enemy passive sonar. Surface ships aren't stealthy, but making excessive noise is never a good thing.

Cavitation is the reason for something I long suspected but only recently learned was true: our nuclear submarines are faster when deep than they are on the surface. When they're deep the water pressure is higher, so they can run the props faster without cavitation. When they're on the surface, if they run the props full power all they do is kick up a lot of spray behind the sub.

So no, Aegis cruisers don't have a speed advantage over WWII ships of that size or smaller. Or not much, anyway.

8 Rats. I meant to say that the resistance rises a lot faster than linearly. I don't know if it's exponential, but I know that there's a point where it gets extreme.

9

If a modern ship has a speed advantage, it's only because of the power/weight ratio... more grunt per pound always works, though it does eventually hit a point of diminishing returns.  

Will, that's exactly right, except (so far) without the time-travelling ship helping "their side".  Imagine the difference an Aegis ship would have made at Midway... 

10

One of my friends is a Jane's-junkie when it come to naval stuff. He's also got an impressive catalog of anecdotal evidence putting the real maximum speed of the early Nimitz carriers somewhere in the 45 knots range.

I'll have to ask him to jog my memory on which emergency it was exactly, but one story he told me involved one of our carriers taking off out of Norfolk and beating-cheeks down the East Coast (within sight of land) fast enough that it was outpacing coastal highway traffic. But he also mentioned that they nearly twisted a screw off in the process. At "something less than" full power each prop shaft is deformed one full rotation by the torque, and any more risks damage.

Imagine the difference an Aegis ship would have made at Midway...

Exactly the kind of difference a Late Cold War Era Supercarrier would have made at Pearl and throughout the entire Pacific campaign. Over the horizon radar, ore command & control / computing capabilities than the entire fleet in one ship, and an airwing (likely nuke-armed) capable of kicking in Hirohito's door and leveling Tokyo days after Pearl.

And I love the last exchange in the IMDB quotes page.

 

11

I've heard those kinds of stories about the top speed of the Nimitz carriers, but I'm not sure how much I believe them. There's plenty of power inside the ship; the problem is using it.

That issue of the strength of the shaft is a very real one. The De Gaulle dropped one of its props into the Med when it was new, and had to be towed back to port.

12

I'm wrong. The De Gaulle dropped a prop into the Atlantic.

During the night of 9 November–10 November 2000, in the Western Atlantic, en route toward Norfolk, Virginia, the port propeller broke and the ship had to return to Toulon to replace the faulty element. The investigations that followed showed similar structural faults in the other propeller and in the spare propellers: bubbles in the one-piece copper-aluminium alloy propellers near the center. The fault was blamed on the supplier, Atlantic Industries, which had already gone bankrupt. To make matters worse, all documents relating to the design and fabrication of the propellers had been lost in a fire. As a temporary solution, the less advanced spare propellers of Clemenceau and Foch were used, limiting the maximum speed to 24 knots (44 km/h) instead of the contractual 27 knots (50 km/h).

13

It may have been Enterpise I was thinking of, not a Nimitz class. She was in Norfolk when the Cuban Missile Crisis kicked off and had to get to Cuba in a hurry. She had 8 smaller A2W reactors instead of the 2 larger A4W reactors of the Nimitz and is reportedly the fastest of the super carriers (if her motto is to be believed).

1 You should write-up Umisho. I've seen it, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on Weapons-grade Fan-service (and perpetual blush syndrome). 

2 Never heard if you picked up Princess Tutu after all, and it does star a duck. Otherwise, maybe one of the sports ones - don't see enough of those. Hajime no Ippo, maybe, or Hikaru no Go.

3 It was due to your little mention of "Sketchbook" that I went out and found the fansubs and have to say I've only seen two episodes, but found it enchanting. Are you still fired up on this anime? Write what you love.

4

Mazinger Z (Or TranZor Z)

Brave Raideen

Getter Robo

Grendaizer (or Golderack if you prefer French)

 

The possibilities are ENDLESS!

 

1 You'd think people in that neck of the woods would have some experience with it. It's not like snow is all that rare a thing there. (Not like here, where it snows enough to accumulate maybe once every two years.)

2 Steven, particularly with the first snow of the season (which this is, really), people think that the streets are suddenly made out of white concrete.

Later, after they get used to having it on the ground, they act like snow is a natural adhesive.

I swear, people here haven't the faintest.  No, I can't explain it, either... as you point out, it's not like it's uncommon or anything.