What if the U.S. and the USAAF had paid attention?

The reason the Japanese feared raping and killing is because that's what Japan would have done if they conquered Japan.

Or what the Russians would have done had they conquered Japan.

My father grew up in post war England and he was in awe of the USA. It seems like a magical mystical land. Compared to the bitter hardships that the average Englisher had to endure. And America stopped the Russians going further west.

We owe a debt of gratitude to America of 1945 so I am going to say that. Maybe it's not fashionable to say. But say it I do.

FLYBOYJ said:

My brother just turned 72, still suffering and it's gotten worse in some respects as he gets older. The VA has been coming through for him but it's been a chore dealing with them

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I feel for him, my brother just turned 70 and is NOT having an easy time of it. Also I can confirm that the VA has been pretty good but yeah, dealing with them is like jumping up and down on broken glass with bare feet.

As kids I idolized my big brother and had many great times with him, he got me interested in history as he would sit for hours reading to me when I was sick or recovering from a couple of operations as a kid. One because when you build straw forts in a huge barn loft and have a kick ass mock war with all the neighborhood kids, make sure there are no open trap doors near your fort.

So changed when he got back from Vietnam , it's been a long road and he's still a great big brother but it seems role reversal is approaching us, never thought I'd be the caretaking type.

Regarding US info on prewar Japanese aircraft:

I used to know one of the Wake Island pilots, BGEN John Kinney, who aside from flying worked not so minor miracles keeping the remaining F4Fs operational for several days. He said that on the way outbound, Enterprise's intelligence officer briefed the Marines on what to expect. John said that one of the profiles resembled a Curtiss pusher...

XBe02Drvr said:

My parents grew up in the 20s and 30s, (my mother was born in Japan and left at age 9 in 1933, and my paternal grandfather was born in Tokyo and left in 1908 at age 14.) They were both well aware of "Japan bashing" in the US in the interwar period. If you're not aware of this, maybe you need to do a little more research. It's history and it's not hidden. My mom, despite her caucasian status was teased unmercifully, shunned and called "Jap Squaw", "Geisha Girl" and "Mama San" by her classmates in a small town in Maine, and later in Vermont.
The very senior Navy dental surgeon who extracted my impacted molars was, in his first career, a Wildcat pilot in VF10, "the Grim Reapers", and he said that the scuttlebutt in flight training (pre Pearl Harbor) was "The Japs are lousy pilots and their planes are junk!" When PH happened, the reports back of Japanese aircraft performance were dismissed as delusional, and they were still being trained to do "round 'n round" dogfighting. First contact was a rude shock, but they'd been given an introduction to the Thach weave at Pearl before embarking for the Solomons, so their losses weren't too bad.
He had a huge scar on his left forearm where he'd lost his grip on the landing gear crank while taking off from Cactus in the midst of a strafing attack, and it gave him a dual compound fracture as it unwound. He managed to evade the Zeros, "single-handing" the plane with gear and flaps down, but absorbing a lot of lead. When the raid was over, he managed to get the plane safely on the ground, but it was a write-off. The ship sent an SBD to collect him after the medics patched his arm up. He kept a plaque on his wall paying homage to " The Grumman Iron Works" with a picture of his shot up Wildcat.

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Wes, THAT is interesting. I knew several VF-10 pilots and published Peter Mersky's short history of the squadron at Champlin Museum Press in the 80s. Would enjoy learning who the dentist was. Only one of the Grim Reapers I've known still remains, Les Gray of the F6F and F4U deployments. He was Killer Kane's "seeing eye ensign" in 44.

XBe02Drvr said:

My parents grew up in the 20s and 30s, (my mother was born in Japan and left at age 9 in 1933, and my paternal grandfather was born in Tokyo and left in 1908 at age 14.) They were both well aware of "Japan bashing" in the US in the interwar period. If you're not aware of this, maybe you need to do a little more research. It's history and it's not hidden. My mom, despite her caucasian status was teased unmercifully, shunned and called "Jap Squaw", "Geisha Girl" and "Mama San" by her classmates in a small town in Maine, and later in Vermont.
The very senior Navy dental surgeon who extracted my impacted molars was, in his first career, a Wildcat pilot in VF10, "the Grim Reapers", and he said that the scuttlebutt in flight training (pre Pearl Harbor) was "The Japs are lousy pilots and their planes are junk!" When PH happened, the reports back of Japanese aircraft performance were dismissed as delusional, and they were still being trained to do "round 'n round" dogfighting. First contact was a rude shock, but they'd been given an introduction to the Thach weave at Pearl before embarking for the Solomons, so their losses weren't too bad.
He had a huge scar on his left forearm where he'd lost his grip on the landing gear crank while taking off from Cactus in the midst of a strafing attack, and it gave him a dual compound fracture as it unwound. He managed to evade the Zeros, "single-handing" the plane with gear and flaps down, but absorbing a lot of lead. When the raid was over, he managed to get the plane safely on the ground, but it was a write-off. The ship sent an SBD to collect him after the medics patched his arm up. He kept a plaque on his wall paying homage to " The Grumman Iron Works" with a picture of his shot up Wildcat.

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I suspect those of us whose grandparents also immigrated to America as pollacks, dagos or spicks and any number of other foreigners can all sympathize with their experience.

Peter Gunn said:

you build straw forts in a huge barn loft and have a kick ass mock war with all the neighborhood kids, make sure there are no open trap doors near your fort.

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...or boards with rusty spikes sticking out under the hay! It didn't hurt that much, but it did ruin a brand new boot, putting a hole in the sole and in the upper. (as well as my foot). What did hurt was the disinfection process!

XBe02Drvr said:

...or boards with rusty spikes sticking out under the hay! It didn't hurt that much, but it did ruin a brand new boot, putting a hole in the sole and in the upper. (as well as my foot). What did hurt was the disinfection process!

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Probably got a tetanus shot, too!
(and those hurt like hell)

Barrett said:

Wes, THAT is interesting. I knew several VF-10 pilots and published Peter Mersky's short history of the squadron at Champlin Museum Press in the 80s. Would enjoy learning who the dentist was. Only one of the Grim Reapers I've known still remains, Les Gray of the F6F and F4U deployments. He was Killer Kane's "seeing eye ensign" in 44.

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The "Flying Dentist" was Lew Slagle, second from the left in the second row in the group picture, page 34 in Mersky's book. Great guy. He didn't talk much about the war, other than explaining the gruesome scar on his forearm, which hovered over my face as he worked in my mouth. Two consecutive careers in the Navy; fighter pilot, then oral surgeon, he was in his sixties, the most senior Captain in the entire medical/dental establishment, and had refused Rear Admiral twice. "The only Admiral billet in dentistry is a paper pusher in Bethesda. I'm a refugee from that hellhole; no way I'm going back there!"
He was an honorary member of VF101, Grim Reapers, who had wangled a flight crew authorization for him on some sort of an "aeromedical research observer" gig, and he got his quarterly flight skins and then some. Topgun trained instructors would let him fly front seat in the TA4, and his ACM skills didn't seem to be diminished with age. They painted his name under the RIO cockpit of the hangar queen of the month, and he was checked out on the AWG10 radar and could run intercepts like a fleet RIO. He also occaisonally instructed at the flying club, and I took some instrument lessons from him.
He was an occaisonal "guest" at the CPO and EM clubs, where he would show up in civvies and masquerade as an "old retired guy", much to the amusement of the few who knew who he really was and didn't want to blow his cover.
Pretty amazing guy, and worth every penny he earned as an O-6 with near forty years in service.

GrauGeist said:

Probably got a tetanus shot, too!
(and those hurt like hell)

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YUPPER!

denoferth said:

I suspect those of us whose grandparents also immigrated to America as pollacks, dagos or spicks and any number of other foreigners can all sympathize with their experience.

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Yes, but... my dad's dad and my mom were MKs (Missionary's Kids), and not immigrants in the true sense of the word, although they were treated as if they were. Their awkward English and atypical social habits made them odd ducks in conservative, hardscrabble, northern New England.

Nice and interesting thread. I had a couple of points to add.

Regarding American racist attitudes
These were very real of course but it's a bit more complex than the modern narrative tends to have us believe. A lot of it, as has been touched upon in the thread, overlaps with basic nationalist propaganda. All nations in WW2 did this - belittled and assigned negative racial stereotypes to their enemies. The British (and the Americans) called the Germans 'Huns', and depicted them like this:



Both in WWI and WW2. This was part of the nature of 'total war' thinking in those days, by pretty much everyone. And while the Americans treated Japanese immigrants especially badly, they did also intern some Germans and even some Italians.

Regarding the US and Asia specifically, I once read an article about how the US shifted between periods of being hostile toward China and friendly toward Japan, and the reverse. When they were hostile toward one country we tended to treat immigrants extremely badly, passing draconian laws against them, banning immigration and so on. When they were on friendlier terms, they began to import more and adapt aspects of each culture in turn. I actually think this still goes on, having lived through these kinds of phases in my own lifetime.

Regarding Japans technology
Hindsight is always 20-20. We have to keep in mind how far and how fast Japan had come. It's really staggering. Prior to the Boshin war, and the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate circa 1870, Japan was like one of those Kurosawa movies - people were settling scores with samurai swords. As far as Americans and most Europeans were concerned, they were these exotic people who were still living in the middle ages. Then all the sudden they had a modern (albeit, partly borrowed from the British) fleet and were beating the crap out of the Russians circa 1905. By the 1930s they were alarming everyone by their military successes in Manchuria etc., and it was dawning on the world that Japan wasn't just another remote backwater, but for them to come up to parity with the most advanced military's in the world, and beyond, by 1941 - was difficult to comprehend. Dan Carrlin's Supernova in the East helps put it in perspective pretty well I think.

To me, it's a bit like the rise of China today.

Regarding the NA-73
I don't think building more NA-73 / P-51A / A-36s would have improved the fighter situation in the Far East. It was faster than all our other pursuit planes but it did quite poorly as a fighter. There was only ever 1 Allison P-51 Ace. The problem was apparently due to ailerons, and was fixed with the P-51B as part of the general upgrade to the new engine. This, in my opinion, would have prevented the early Mustangs from making a Strategic difference in the Pacific.

However, I do think the NA 73 could have been helpful if they had some at say, Midway or the Philippines, as a recon plane and as a dive bomber. I don't think it is so unlikely they could have gotten some there as they had B-17s.. In the recon role, it had good range, I think better than all other US single engined aircraft, and a much faster cruise speed, and was quite hard to shoot down due to that speed. Fast recon might mean earlier detection of enemy ships. As a dive bomber, I think again it had better range than an SBD, and would probably be harder to shoot down. Whether or not they could hit ships with them I don't know, that would have a lot to do with training that wasn't as advanced in the USAAF as it was in the Navy, but I think it would have still been handier to have at Midway than those Vought Vindicators etc. An A-36 could run away from a Zero.

The Philippines
The big thing there was early warning and preparation. Most of the US planes, especially the fighters, were destroyed on the ground. It was bad luck for the Americans that they had just got some (painfully) brand new P-40E's the same week as the attack. We know from other battles, if they had an early warning in place (something they could have picked up from Chennault) and managed to have these fighters in the air, it could have helped enormously. Slowed the battle down, slowed Japan's momentum down. We know from places like Milne Bay etc. they could make a difference.

A better engine
I'm not even sure Japan was the biggest thing to worry about, as US fighters were particularly vulnerable to the German aircraft too. American war-planners and ranking officers knew about the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain and the lessons had been learned there - such as the need to fight at the highest altitude bombers could fly. As was pointed out a few times upthread, the Jimmy Thach thing was good preparation, probably just enough. The one other thing they might have done differently in my opinion, is to have developed a high altitude engine they could use effectively on a land based fighter in 1942. Two speed or two stage in-line engine, either an Allison or US made Merlin, would probably be the way to go. Not that they didn't make Packard Merlins obviously but maybe if they had been more cogniscent of the dangers they might have done more faster. Either that or fit one of those two-stage R-1830s on a P-36 or just rushed the P-47 or P-38 into development a bit faster.

Japan was open early mid 30s as they tried to get as much western tech as they could.

By the late 30s, they went dark and suddenly no info was available. This is when they starting designing their own aircraft designs. And for western purposes, all their latest designs were done. So the West had no clues what was out there.

Yamato is a good example of this as they had an idea of what it was but not actually what it was.

Been told you're up against Curtiss pushers however is a sign of total ignorance and incompetence. Hells bells. It's like told the army had muskets.

I know people talk about the unsustainability and futility of kamikaze attacks, and I don't disagree, there is a certain logic to them.

If you know that your attacking bombers are likely to be shot down by the American air defences anyway, probably without being able to actually hit the target accurately, then why not fill the aircraft with explosive and aim it at the target?

Either way you lose the pilot and aircraft but aiming the whole aircraft is easier then trying to aim a dumb bomb and likely to do more damage.

It would take a particular mindset to reach and accept that conclusion but to the Japanese it would make sense.

Ascent said:

I know people talk about the unsustainability and futility of kamikaze attacks, and I don't disagree, there is a certain logic to them.

If you know that your attacking bombers are likely to be shot down by the American air defences anyway, probably without being able to actually hit the target accurately, then why not fill the aircraft with explosive and aim it at the target?

Either way you lose the pilot and aircraft but aiming the whole aircraft is easier then trying to aim a dumb bomb and likely to do more damage.

It would take a particular mindset to reach and accept that conclusion but to the Japanese it would make sense.

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I agree, the Japanese had what? 5,000 planes designated for the Kamikaze role on the home islands waiting for the Americans to invade? With no shortage of volunteers either. Not to mention they were building the Ohka and other types specifically for the Kamikaze attacks on the U.S. invasion fleet.

I think it actually was sustainable in the mid term, not sure after you've shot off the initial few thousand if they could replace the equipment but a couple thousand kamikaze's would be quite the blood bath for both sides.

XBe02Drvr said:

The "Flying Dentist" was Lew Slagle, second from the left in the second row in the group picture, page 34 in Mersky's book. Great guy. He didn't talk much about the war, other than explaining the gruesome scar on his forearm, which hovered over my face as he worked in my mouth. Two consecutive careers in the Navy; fighter pilot, then oral surgeon, he was in his sixties, the most senior Captain in the entire medical/dental establishment, and had refused Rear Admiral twice. "The only Admiral billet in dentistry is a paper pusher in Bethesda. I'm a refugee from that hellhole; no way I'm going back there!"
He was an honorary member of VF101, Grim Reapers, who had wangled a flight crew authorization for him on some sort of an "aeromedical research observer" gig, and he got his quarterly flight skins and then some. Topgun trained instructors would let him fly front seat in the TA4, and his ACM skills didn't seem to be diminished with age. They painted his name under the RIO cockpit of the hangar queen of the month, and he was checked out on the AWG10 radar and could run intercepts like a fleet RIO. He also occaisonally instructed at the flying club, and I took some instrument lessons from him.
He was an occaisonal "guest" at the CPO and EM clubs, where he would show up in civvies and masquerade as an "old retired guy", much to the amusement of the few who knew who he really was and didn't want to blow his cover.
Pretty amazing guy, and worth every penny he earned as an O-6 with near forty years in service.

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Wow, thank you so much. I see he got a Zero and a probable at Guadalcanal.
Slagle's story would make a strong contender for The Hook magazine's "From the Catwalk" column.

One of the interesting details of WW2 is that technology transfer between the Germans and Japanese became increasingly difficult and then nearly impossible toward the end of the war due to the vast increase in ASW efforts in all the major oceans and seas. Some Submarines carrying some very interesting cargo were sunk in 1944-45.

What makes me think of it is the relative success the Germans had with the 'Fritz X' and HS 239 weapons. The Japanese were working on similar lines but seemed to be laggin behind a bit. Apparently, the Ki-147 was used at some point, with the Ki-148 in development.

This definitely has to be one of the zaniest war weapons ever conceived

I read somewhere that damage wise, the Kamikaze achieved better results and fewer losses than conventional attacks.

Suicide attacks are very difficult to stop so it's a win if you can find volunteers.

It's a fine edge if Japanese mentally and socially accepted suicide more than the West. Can you imagine if the Germans fought to the bitter end?

Odd talking about the Emperor and the role of the Emperor. It's likely his personal involvement ended the war and his stamp allowed Japanese overseas garrisons to surrender. Had Suzuki or Anami said so, overseas garrisons would have ignored and the war would have gone on.

Japanese overseas garrisons were known for ignoring Tokyo.

They definitely rattled a lot of USN crews, I've read some harrowing stories about some of the picket destroyers. Not the typical kind of WW2 story.

Barrett said:

Slagle's story would make a strong contender for The Hook magazine's "From the Catwalk" column

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Unfortunately, there's so much of Lew's story I don't know. He wasn't famous for tooting his own horn, so much of what I "know" was passed on to me by others, and legends spring up like mushrooms around some people. VF101 was my "customer" on the radar trainer I maintained and operated, so I interfaced with them daily, and they gave him the awesome grey eagle treatment. Story has it he seldom bought his own drinks at the O Club, and the few of us who knew who he was never let him do it at the EM club either. If he attracted the attention of the unknowing, he would pass himself off as a "retired chief dental tech" and let it go at that. We had a WAVE 3rd Class Dental Tech who would invariably choke on her beer when he came out with that line.
The only glimpses into his past came in the form of highly entertaining "sea stories", which upon reflection revealed themselves as gentle lessons in safety mindedness, team work, personal and social responsibility, or military leadership. He had a reputation for quietly "influencing" particularly talented naval aviators over beers in the club in their decisions about the advantages of a service career vs flying for the airlines. Many of those same aviators later retired and still had lucrative careers with fast growing startups like Southwest, Skywest, and JetBlue.
Lew was also a fantastic instrument flight instructor, as I can personally attest, and I wish he'd had the time to take me all the way through the course. I had to finish up on the VA after I got out. He did have time, just for grins, to teach me a thing or two about dive bombing technique in the club's T34. What a blast!