Shattered Sword, Book, Print, Dio (1 Viewer)

Terp152

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Recently finished Shattered Sword, the book about the Battle Of Midway from the Japanese perspective. Told with references from IJN records and interviews. A fascinating study. Here are a print by RG Smith depicting the attack by LT Dick Best and his wingmen which doomed flagship Akagi, and my own poor rendition. Chris



 
Recently finished Shattered Sword, the book about the Battle Of Midway from the Japanese perspective. Told with references from IJN records and interviews. A fascinating study. Here are a print by RG Smith depicting the attack by LT Dick Best and his wingmen which doomed flagship Akagi, and my own poor rendition. Chris



Great book and a great dio, Chris. Gotta love the old Douglas Dauntless. Where would the USN have been without it? It turned the tide of the naval war. -- Al
 
Chris...I don't know a thing about the book...it's out of my realm of collecting or studying history...but I love your set up...^&grin
 
Great book and a great dio, Chris. Gotta love the old Douglas Dauntless. Where would the USN have been without it? It turned the tide of the naval war. -- Al

Chris...I don't know a thing about the book...it's out of my realm of collecting or studying history...but I love your set up...^&grin

Many thanks Al and Mike, glad you liked the dio. :salute:: Chris
 
Chris,

You did an awesome job in replicating the scene!! Fantastic!! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Mark
 
Chris...I don't know a thing about the book...it's out of my realm of collecting or studying history...but I love your set up...^&grin

Hi Mike,

It's a very eye-opening account of the battle. SS sort of blows up books in the tradition of Lord's Miracle at Midway and Fuchida's Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan. Remember the docu-drama/movie, Midway, from the seventies? Can you recall the Japanese carriers being poised to strike the American fleet just as the dive-bombers swooped in? That widely accepted rendition of the battle has it's roots in Fuchida's book.

Well, the authors decided to dig into Japanese witness accounts and other records after the publication of Lundstrom's The First Team. Lundstrom's work had pointed out that pics taken by B-17 of IJN carriers dodging bombs showed no sign of a strike being spotted on their decks. In digging through the records and interviewing Japanese survivors, Parshall and Tully reach the conclusion that no such strike was poised to strike the USN carriers. Their research indicates that the strike couldn't be spotted because the decks were constantly in use launching and recovering Japanese fighters. The authors attribute the fabrication to Fuchida, who they claim sought to deflect criticism away from the IJN and himself. Instead, he claims that the defeat was attributable to "fate," (aka luck) and was beyond the control of the Japanese participants.

Fuchida's deception is but one of the revelations in the book. For instance, I learned that the action at Midway wasn't the first time that bombers had arrived over the Kido Butai, or carrier strike force, unannounced. During the operation against Ceylon, a group of Blenheims had attacked the same carriers and weren't detected until geysers of water were sprouting up all around the ships. I also learned that the Japanese lacked even the most primitive form of fighter direction for its combat air patrol. Fighters assigned to CAP took off, and flew around until either their fuel or ammunition was exhausted. By and large, they did so without ever communicating anything to a ship below. The single-channel radios available for the Zero were usually left on the ground to save weigh, BTW!

Perhaps most telling of the authors conclusions is that the demise of the Kido Butai was a train-wreck waiting to happen. It was a mighty weapon, but also one that was hopelessly vulnerable and brittle. Anyone who's interested in WW2 ought to read Shattered Sword, primarily as a means of expunging the several falsehoods attendant to the older books (and that stupid movie) from their mind. It will completely rearrange your understanding of the Battle of Midway.

-Moe
 

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