VanguardFC007
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Currently going through Knight's Cross (Erwin Rommel) by David Fraser when not reading college textbooks.
What are the Forum members reading (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Deitz
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The Fuchida question is fascinating. My college history prof was Gordon Prange, who, amongst many things, was head of MacArthur's historical branch in post-war occupied Japan. Needless to say he had access to many of Japan's major players and he accumulated a huge amount of info on Japanese policies, military and civilian. He and Fuchida became good friends and Prange "debriefed" him many times regarding PH and Midway. Fuchida even came to Prange's house in Maryland for a couple of weeks at one point. Prange thought a great deal of Fuchida and put great store in Fuchida's version of history. "Shattered Sword" calls a great deal of what Fuchida recounts into question and opens a whole new interpretation that Prange probably never considered. Fuchida's accounts may be a classic case of telling the victor's what they wanted to here. At any rate, "S.S.", combined with Prange's "Miracle At Midway" gives a very complete account of the battle, even if they differ on certain points. Heck, what wriiten histories on a given subject don't differ at some point? "S.S." is a great read and a very exciting account of the pivotal battle and is also on my repeat read list. -- Al
theBaron
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That is interesting to know, Al, that you studied history with Prange. Besides his "Miracle at Midway," I have his other books, "At Dawn We Slept", "Pearl Harbor-The Verdict of History", and "Target: Tokyo", about Allied espionage in Japan during the war.
The authors of "Shattered Sword" discuss Prange's friendship with Fuchida, and their conclusion is that it may have disinclined Prange from approaching Fuchida's material more skeptically. But they're generally positive about the depth of his work.
The major point Fuchida made about the battle, specifically about the American dive bomber attack, is that Nagumo's indecision, based on spotty intelligence, left the Japanese minutes away from launching a strike against TF 16 and 17, and hence, the miracle, that it was a matter of minutes either way. The authors disprove this, by discussing Japanese carrier operations, and Japanese doctrine, and we find that actually, for the Japanese to have had a strike ready to launch at the time that the SBD's found them, they would have to have started spotting their aircraft almost an hour before.
The Japanese armed and serviced their aircraft in the hangar decks, which was a long, drawn-out process. For example, to arm their torpedo planes, each carrier had only 4 or 5 of the carts necessary to move the ordnance, which had to be moved off hoists from the magazines. Fittings on the aircraft had to be changed, to accept the ordnance, and the result was that crews stood around waiting for their turn to arm their assigned aircraft.
Also, the way they balanced their air strikes with dive bombers, horizontal bombers or torpedo planes, and fighters, taking into account the numbers of each type coming from one carrier or another, was prone to disruption if something unexpected happened to interfere with their logistical ballet.
And they really didn't have an effective method of directing their combat air patrols. As the first American attacks from Midway attacked the Japanese, all CAP fighters swarmed the attackers, leaving all other sectors uncovered. The sacrifice of the American torpedo planes wasn't that they pulled the CAP down to the deck--in fact, Torpedo 3 attacked while Bombing 6, Bombing 3 and Scouting 5 all attacked--because the Zeros had plenty of time to get back to altitude. But their sacrifice was part of the general disruption that the series of uncoordinated attacks caused in the Japanese process. Because their aircraft were being serviced below, and because the CAP fighters were taking off and landing, and because they had just recovered the first Midway strike, they couldn't prepare the strike, according to their training, procedures and accepted doctrine.
They also had nothing like a combat information center, which was in its infancy in the US Navy. Their methods of handing incoming attack data were almost unchanged from the methods used in the First World War.
These details were not really known in the West, until the 80's, in large part because almost no Western scholars studied the Japanese records.
Fuchida also implied that once the Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were out of action, Nagumo lost all heart for the fight. As it turned out, he rallied the vessels of his screen, and was leading them on a course towards the Americans, as the old cruiser torpedoman that he was. With one intact carrier, the Hiryu, he thought that he still had a fair chance of sinking what was thought to be 2 US carriers, and a fair chance of catching our force on the surface, where the Japanese would have an advantage. That is, in the midst of the biggest carrier battle to that time, Nagumo was still full of fight, but looking for his own Jutland. His tactical error was in not ordering the Hiryu to retire to a safer distance, where she could still attack our ships, but be less likely to suffer a counterattack.
Fuchida's portrayal of Nagumo's actions fit in with the opinions of some officers in the IJN's operations staff, who did not think Nagumo had been a fit choice to lead Kido Butai, going back before Pearl Harbor. In fact, some, including Fuchida, felt he should have launched a third strike against Pearl, and there were accusations that he was not as brave, perhaps, as he should of been. And since he had killed himself during the defense of Saipan, Nagumo wasn't around after the war to defend himself or discuss the battle (though his action log, with annotations, did survive).
Wow, sorry to have gone on so long! I'll sum up by saying I recommend "Shatterd Sword" highly, especially for those interested in the Battle of Midway, carrier warfare or the whole war in the Pacific. It represents a very clear and thorough review of new information, not available to earlier scholars, and makes some better conclusions about the battle, without subtracting anything from the credit and courage of the men, on both sides, who fought each other from the 3rd through the 7th of June in 1942.
Prost!
Brad
The authors of "Shattered Sword" discuss Prange's friendship with Fuchida, and their conclusion is that it may have disinclined Prange from approaching Fuchida's material more skeptically. But they're generally positive about the depth of his work.
The major point Fuchida made about the battle, specifically about the American dive bomber attack, is that Nagumo's indecision, based on spotty intelligence, left the Japanese minutes away from launching a strike against TF 16 and 17, and hence, the miracle, that it was a matter of minutes either way. The authors disprove this, by discussing Japanese carrier operations, and Japanese doctrine, and we find that actually, for the Japanese to have had a strike ready to launch at the time that the SBD's found them, they would have to have started spotting their aircraft almost an hour before.
The Japanese armed and serviced their aircraft in the hangar decks, which was a long, drawn-out process. For example, to arm their torpedo planes, each carrier had only 4 or 5 of the carts necessary to move the ordnance, which had to be moved off hoists from the magazines. Fittings on the aircraft had to be changed, to accept the ordnance, and the result was that crews stood around waiting for their turn to arm their assigned aircraft.
Also, the way they balanced their air strikes with dive bombers, horizontal bombers or torpedo planes, and fighters, taking into account the numbers of each type coming from one carrier or another, was prone to disruption if something unexpected happened to interfere with their logistical ballet.
And they really didn't have an effective method of directing their combat air patrols. As the first American attacks from Midway attacked the Japanese, all CAP fighters swarmed the attackers, leaving all other sectors uncovered. The sacrifice of the American torpedo planes wasn't that they pulled the CAP down to the deck--in fact, Torpedo 3 attacked while Bombing 6, Bombing 3 and Scouting 5 all attacked--because the Zeros had plenty of time to get back to altitude. But their sacrifice was part of the general disruption that the series of uncoordinated attacks caused in the Japanese process. Because their aircraft were being serviced below, and because the CAP fighters were taking off and landing, and because they had just recovered the first Midway strike, they couldn't prepare the strike, according to their training, procedures and accepted doctrine.
They also had nothing like a combat information center, which was in its infancy in the US Navy. Their methods of handing incoming attack data were almost unchanged from the methods used in the First World War.
These details were not really known in the West, until the 80's, in large part because almost no Western scholars studied the Japanese records.
Fuchida also implied that once the Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were out of action, Nagumo lost all heart for the fight. As it turned out, he rallied the vessels of his screen, and was leading them on a course towards the Americans, as the old cruiser torpedoman that he was. With one intact carrier, the Hiryu, he thought that he still had a fair chance of sinking what was thought to be 2 US carriers, and a fair chance of catching our force on the surface, where the Japanese would have an advantage. That is, in the midst of the biggest carrier battle to that time, Nagumo was still full of fight, but looking for his own Jutland. His tactical error was in not ordering the Hiryu to retire to a safer distance, where she could still attack our ships, but be less likely to suffer a counterattack.
Fuchida's portrayal of Nagumo's actions fit in with the opinions of some officers in the IJN's operations staff, who did not think Nagumo had been a fit choice to lead Kido Butai, going back before Pearl Harbor. In fact, some, including Fuchida, felt he should have launched a third strike against Pearl, and there were accusations that he was not as brave, perhaps, as he should of been. And since he had killed himself during the defense of Saipan, Nagumo wasn't around after the war to defend himself or discuss the battle (though his action log, with annotations, did survive).
Wow, sorry to have gone on so long! I'll sum up by saying I recommend "Shatterd Sword" highly, especially for those interested in the Battle of Midway, carrier warfare or the whole war in the Pacific. It represents a very clear and thorough review of new information, not available to earlier scholars, and makes some better conclusions about the battle, without subtracting anything from the credit and courage of the men, on both sides, who fought each other from the 3rd through the 7th of June in 1942.
Prost!
Brad
Great post, Brad. Prange's knowledge on PH is unsupassed. If memory serves, he contracted to write a history of it back in the '50's. It was the passion of his life and he was never able to finish the fine tuning and get it published during his life. A couple of former grad students of his finally got the various books published, but not in the form Prange envisioned. Prange's work was some 5 volumes long, and unfinished, when he died. We are lucky the works got published at all. I studied WW1 and WW2 under him over a span of 2 years in the early '70's at UMd. The man was astounding. He used to tell us the stories of his time spent studying in Germany during the rise of Hitler, and of his time in Japan with the various interviews, etc. He was a great teacher, too. Taught me to look into the reasons and motivations. -- Al
theBaron
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Al, Prange's "Verdict of History" is proving a good companion and followup to "At Dawn We Slept". I'm finding it interesting for the detailed look at all of the activities of the various players in the months, weeks and days before the attack (much the same kind of narrative as in "Tora! Tora! Tora!"), and also in the recriminations and investigations, in the immediate aftermath, later during the war, and afterwards. There are parallels to be found, I think with the similar miscalculations made about Islamo-fascism in the 70s, 80s and 90s, with similar results. We never seem to see the signs, because we never seem to believe that such attacks could even occur. Very good book. I envy for having been able to study under Professor Prange.
Prost!
Brad
Prost!
Brad
theBaron
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On Bromhead's recommendation, I've ordered a copy of "Doomed at the Start" from my local Barnes & Noble, should be delivered in a couple of days.
Prost!
Brad
Brad, you will enjoy the above title. I read it a year or so ago and found it a great read, as Bromhead did. I love the early Pacific War history with it's many relatively unknown (compared to the ETO) battles, land, naval, and air. And yeah, I was lucky to study under Prange. He was a real hoot to listen to, not at all your typical boring, dry, lecturer. Had more anecdotes than was legal. He once called a special night lecture, got some 150 or so students together, passed out WW1 songsheets, and had us singing "Over There", "Keep the Home Fires Burning", etc. for almost 2 hours. I wasn't amused at the time, but on reflection, never had an experience at school like it before or after. Ah, memories.
Enjoy the book. --Al
BeaconsAl
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For Napoleonic fans RIFLES by Mark Urban is a fantastic read. Very well researched, about 5 different characters that fought with the 95th during the Peninsular campaign.
He has also written FUSILIERS about the 23rd Foot [Royal Welch] who fought right through the American war of Independence. This book really educated me about that war.
Alan
He has also written FUSILIERS about the 23rd Foot [Royal Welch] who fought right through the American war of Independence. This book really educated me about that war.
Alan
Rereading a book called "Once An Eagle" by Anton Myrer. Originally done in 1968, it has been reprinted several times and is still available, I believe. At any rate it can be gotten off secondary markets. It is, IMHO, one of the two best war novels I have read (All Quiet on the Western Front being the other). Many of you know this book and it was done as a mini-series long ago. It is about Sam Damon who joins the military during WW1 as a private and it follows his rise through the ranks and the wars including Vietnam. It is a great story with many characters to know and many battles fought. Can't recommend it highly enough. Read it, you won't be sorry. -- lancer
cantinetozzo
First Sergeant
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Really one of my favourite authors, Mark Urban gave me an understanding of Napoleonic Wars like i never thought was possible..i read all of his books and the other two not mentioned "The man who broke Napoleon's codes" and "Generals" are really good too.Now i'm readin "Tonight we die as men" by Ian Gardner , very enjoyable story of the 3rd battalion 506th Regiment 101st Airborne Division and its actions in the Normandy Landings.Reccomended.
BeaconsAl
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I'm now reading 'The making of the British Army' by Allan Mallinson. I enjoyed his fictional books on the early 19th century character Matthew Hervey. I'm still in the early stages but it's a good general account of British army history but because of it's time span starting from the English civil war to present it is not too detailed. Still a good read so far.
Alan
Alan
Spitfrnd
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Re: Sword Song
It is no secret I am a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell and especially his Warlord (Arthur) and Sharpe series. His books feature a passion and simple eloquence that I have yet to see outdone by an historical novelist. They are also painfully researched, very exciting and feature rough but venerable main characters whose moral strength, while quite flawed at times, stands in sharp contrast to the majority of their peers. They are the epitome of the lovable rogue. Sharpe of course is near legendary and the lesser known Derfel Cardarn of the Warlord Chronicles is every much as impressive. I have also enjoyed his Saxon Stories with its somewhat darker hero, Uhtred, an English boy captured and raised a Viking who ends up fighting for Edward of Wessex but retains much of his North-man character (including his bond with his Danish blood brother). Like Derfel, Uhtred rises above his childhood torments and attains great reputation and success with his cleverness, honor, audacity and his sword (Serpent Breath). I was less taken with Uhtred through the first two books but the character matured in The Lords of the North and has hit his stride in Sword Song, which I just finished. Both of these, like my other two Cornwell favorites, left me aching for the next installment, which for Uhtred, will be the upcoming The Burning Land. I highly recommend The Saxon Stories and especially the last two installments to anyone who enjoys a well written and exciting warrior tale. Unless you live on another planet you likely know the Sharpe series is cool but I also heartedly recommend the Warlord Chronicles.
It is no secret I am a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell and especially his Warlord (Arthur) and Sharpe series. His books feature a passion and simple eloquence that I have yet to see outdone by an historical novelist. They are also painfully researched, very exciting and feature rough but venerable main characters whose moral strength, while quite flawed at times, stands in sharp contrast to the majority of their peers. They are the epitome of the lovable rogue. Sharpe of course is near legendary and the lesser known Derfel Cardarn of the Warlord Chronicles is every much as impressive. I have also enjoyed his Saxon Stories with its somewhat darker hero, Uhtred, an English boy captured and raised a Viking who ends up fighting for Edward of Wessex but retains much of his North-man character (including his bond with his Danish blood brother). Like Derfel, Uhtred rises above his childhood torments and attains great reputation and success with his cleverness, honor, audacity and his sword (Serpent Breath). I was less taken with Uhtred through the first two books but the character matured in The Lords of the North and has hit his stride in Sword Song, which I just finished. Both of these, like my other two Cornwell favorites, left me aching for the next installment, which for Uhtred, will be the upcoming The Burning Land. I highly recommend The Saxon Stories and especially the last two installments to anyone who enjoys a well written and exciting warrior tale.
Unless you live on another planet you likely know the Sharpe series is cool but I also heartedly recommend the Warlord Chronicles.
aujj65
Colonel
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Re: Sword Song
I have all of Bernard's books and I am currently reading the latest, The Burning Land, continuing the exploits of Uhtred.
Jeff
It is no secret I am a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell and especially his Warlord (Arthur) and Sharpe series. His books feature a passion and simple eloquence that I have yet to see outdone by an historical novelist. They are also painfully researched, very exciting and feature rough but venerable main characters whose moral strength, while quite flawed at times, stands in sharp contrast to the majority of their peers. They are the epitome of the lovable rogue. Sharpe of course is near legendary and the lesser known Derfel Cardarn of the Warlord Chronicles is every much as impressive. I have also enjoyed his Saxon Stories with its somewhat darker hero, Uhtred, an English boy captured and raised a Viking who ends up fighting for Edward of Wessex but retains much of his North-man character (including his bond with his Danish blood brother). Like Derfel, Uhtred rises above his childhood torments and attains great reputation and success with his cleverness, honor, audacity and his sword (Serpent Breath). I was less taken with Uhtred through the first two books but the character matured in The Lords of the North and has hit his stride in Sword Song, which I just finished. Both of these, like my other two Cornwell favorites, left me aching for the next installment, which for Uhtred, will be the upcoming The Burning Land. I highly recommend The Saxon Stories and especially the last two installments to anyone who enjoys a well written and exciting warrior tale.
I have all of Bernard's books and I am currently reading the latest, The Burning Land, continuing the exploits of Uhtred.
Jeff
bromhead
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Brad, you will enjoy the above title. I read it a year or so ago and found it a great read, as Bromhead did. I love the early Pacific War history with it's many relatively unknown (compared to the ETO) battles, land, naval, and air. And yeah, I was lucky to study under Prange. He was a real hoot to listen to, not at all your typical boring, dry, lecturer. Had more anecdotes than was legal. He once called a special night lecture, got some 150 or so students together, passed out WW1 songsheets, and had us singing "Over There", "Keep the Home Fires Burning", etc. for almost 2 hours. I wasn't amused at the time, but on reflection, never had an experience at school like it before or after. Ah, memories.
(Officers and gentlemen thank you for the mention,,I believe the General will find the Book outstanding in a detailed tragic way. I am re reading for the ? time-But not in Shame by Toland,just finished Pranges Dec 7th,,wonderful to have my book collection re assembled again. Also agreed about the early pacific war,recently watched my copy of William Bendix defending Wake island. At a tender age I took advantage of a military delay en route west and toured P. Harbor,Hickam,wheeler and a week at Schofield Barracks.
Spitfrnd
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Re: Sword Song
I didn't realize it was out yet, I will have to track it down especially since Sword Song leaves things hanging a bit.
I am much less taken with Grail Quest. I never really warmed up to the main character, or archers in general. I kept finding myself routing for the knights.
Great minds eh Jeff.
I didn't realize it was out yet, I will have to track it down especially since Sword Song leaves things hanging a bit. I am much less taken with Grail Quest. I never really warmed up to the main character, or archers in general. I kept finding myself routing for the knights.
aujj65
Colonel
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Re: Sword Song
It has been out for a few weeks over here. The other book which is quite good if you like knights and archers is Azincourt which is Bernard's version of that famous battle and the lead up to it.
Jeff
Great minds eh Jeff.
I am much less taken with Grail Quest. I never really warmed up to the main character, or archers in general. I kept finding myself routing for the knights.
It has been out for a few weeks over here. The other book which is quite good if you like knights and archers is Azincourt which is Bernard's version of that famous battle and the lead up to it.
Jeff
Spitfrnd
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Re: Sword Song
Just to be clear, I like knights, not so much archers, at least until there were other archers to make it even.
Ah thanks Jeff. It looks like it will not be released here until January. Apparently English publishers like new books for Christmas while American publishers like them for New Years to better make the NY Times list. It seems I can get it in unabridged Ipod format from Audible UK; I really love listening to Bernard's books and I am an avid US Audible member.
Just to be clear, I like knights, not so much archers, at least until there were other archers to make it even.
Evzone
Corporal
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Snap, I agree with all of the above as I'm reading this book too and finding it an absorbing general march through the trials and tribulations of the British Army. I'd recommend it if you don't want something to detailed and need a chronological account.
cantinetozzo
First Sergeant
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Finished "Tonight We Die As Men"..the story of the unfortunate Col.Wolverton and his battalion in Normandy airborne landings,portrays the sense of loneliness and terror many of the 101st guys felt that night of 6 june,and finished too "Pegasus Bridge" by Ambrose..this last is really a book you can't put it down, clear funny at moments and very informative and describes the capture of the 2 bridges on Caen Canal and Orne Bridges by the glidermen D Company of the Ox & Bucks ..reccomended.