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

The Soviet losses prediction for the invasion of Manchuria was about same for an invasion of the Japanese mainland by USA.

President Truman: Er....no.

Mr Stalin: Cowabunga

Schweik said:

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

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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.

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Many of the fighters at Clark Field WERE in the air... from 8:30AM Manila time to around 10:30, when they landed to refuel.

See the following timeline, paying attention to the actions of Generals Brereton, Southerland, and finally MacArthur. Clark Field Events of 8 December 1941

Yeah, not up when the strike hit though. They should have staggered the CAP, it sounds like they (esp. Southerland) still weren't taking it seriously until almost the hour of the raid. If ~60 fighters had been at altitude when the strike came the Japanese raid would have taken some damage (as 49th FG demonstrated over Darwin a bit later). Climbing up under the Zeros was a recipe for disaster. It's too bad Brereton wasn't allowed to launch a B-17 raid against Formosa too that might have had some significant impact as well.

I don't remember where I read it but IIRC the first P-40E-1 were still coming into the Philippines that very week, and I think a flight of them landed the day of the raid. They had some teething problems with them initially and hadn't sorted them out yet.

XBe02Drvr said:

I suspect that racial prejudice and the mythology of oriental technical ineptitude was so pervasive in the ranks that any attempt from "top down" to encourage serious consideration of "Buck Rogers stuff" from a known insubordinate maverick would have a tough time trickling down. "What can the General be thinking of?? Brainwashed, maybe? We know anything that hot from the Japs 'sgotta be BS!!"

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Not aviation related but. Around 1974 I spoke with a Dutch man who had been raised in Indonesia, fought in resistance in Holland, then in '44 went to UK then Indonesia to train indigenous troops to fight the waning Japanese forces. He commented that the "average" Japanese soldier was "stupid" then corrected himself to say "less educated" and "too willing to die". But he spoke with great respect for the officers and skill, and explained how he and others strove to discourage rape and barbarism by the Indonesian soldiers (who he described in worse terms than he described Japanese soldiers). He explained how the incredibly brave civilian Japanese women would insert a bamboo section with razor blade and when raped would result in the obvious injury to the man, the revenge death of the woman, but how this allowed him and others to feed the rumor that a dragon was inside Japanese woman and this protected many others. He explained how often just a few Dutch would hold back large mobs of Indonesian soldiers from savagery.

RichardSuhkoi said:

He commented that the "average" Japanese soldier was "stupid" then corrected himself to say "less educated" and "too willing to die". But he spoke with great respect for the officers and skill, and explained how he and others strove to discourage rape and barbarism by the Indonesian soldiers (who he described in worse terms than he described Japanese soldiers).

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Trauma endured often begets trauma inflicted. Japanese troops and junior officers, who endured routine daily brutality from their own peers and leadership, and saw that as the norm for human discourse, usually felt it their duty to "chastise" conquered native peoples for their racial inferiority, their lack of military honor, and their indifference to the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Shere". This was encouraged and promoted by certain racist, ultra-nationalist officers such as Lt Col Tsuji Masonobu, Japan's greatest unpunished war criminal (1939 Manchurian border war, Sook Ching, Bataan death march, etc), who despite his lowly rank, exerted undue influence due to his activism and his mastery of "gekokujo" ("overrule of seniors by juniors")("insubordination" in western terms).
After living a hard life under colonial rule, then being "liberated" by the Japanese into a world of even greater oppression, brutality, and terror, it's hard to imagine Indonesions showing any restraint dealing with the enemy in battle.

I hope I'll be forgiven for pointing this out, but the Japanese, or the Axis in general were not the only nations whose troops engaged in widespread atrocities and abuse of both enemy combattants and civilians. Germany and Japan ... and the Soviet Union may have taken it to 'the next level' with State sponsorship of such activity, but US and Commonwealth (and other Allied) troops also committed atrocities in the South Pacific during WW2 and Southeast Asia during later eras. I'm not even referring to the mass incendiary bombing campaigns in WW2 or Korea, but just routine mistreatment of civilians ala Mai-lai massacre. Some pretty grim incidents occurred in Europe too for that matter.

And while the Greater East Co-Prosperity Sphere was certainly a grim joke, I don't think the Dutch East India company or British Colonial administration or US occupation in the Philippines were particularly gentle or kind hearted toward the locals. I wouldn't want to be press-ganged to work for the IJA, that's for damn sure, but I also wouldn't have wanted to be a worker on a plantation on Java either.

Soldiers fighting and campaigning under bad conditions, taking casualties etc., do not make the most gentle overseers of others when they suddenly find themselves with total power over captive enemies or another population. This is often particularly heightened when the more or less helpless population is distinct in terms of religion or language or culture, but that isn't always even a necessary ingredient. US troops during the American Civil War were brutal toward civilians in the South, most notoriously during Sherman's march to the sea. This goes back to the Renaissance - Italian and Swabian troops, having endured a brutal campaign and not been paid in months, went crazy after they captured Rome in 1527 and massacred their fellow Catholics, killing a large proportion of the population of the city. Which was considered quite shocking then, but pales in comparison to some of the crimes done in the 20th Century.

By concentrating on the technical aspects of war we sometimes forget what it was really all about - organized mass-murder. The amount of stress repeated near death experiences, brutal privation and suffering, wounds etc., put on ordinary men, many of whom weren't saints to begin with, is kind of hard to grasp. When conditions are particularly bad, as they certainly were in the Pacific, it often seems to bring out the worst in soldiers (of all nations). I think when it comes to WW II this kind of story is in large part of the victors writing the histories.

Not sure of your response as we are talking WW2 and u is talking about American civil war and all sorts.

The difference is what is state sponsored and what is individual soldiers.

The treatment of POW is a good case. British prisoner were treated well by Germany but Soviet prisoners were not.

British prisoners in Japanese POW not very well at all.

So you have to make a distinction between state sponsored terror and casual random violence by the usual scum.

Well, it's not quite that simple. Japanese prisoners often never made it to the POW camp to begin with. Not that this was entirely the fault of the Allied forces, since Japanese military personnel typically refused to surrender. But it wasn't really a priority to save them, nor was it a secret that they were routinely being massacred, including by aircrew. During the Battle of The Bismark Sea for example, US and Commonwealth pilots strafed Japanese sailors and troops floating in the water after their ships had been sunk. Some people were bothered by this, others were not, but the command structure didn't interfere with it or punish or reprimand anybody as far as I know.

German prisoners were sometimes massacred too. Nor were British or American POWs necessarily well treated, they were just better treated than the Soviets, or Polish, etc. troops let alone civilians and guerillas.

Something like 33% of Allied POW's in Japanese hands died during the war. But a bit over 1% of US POWs in German hands also died and that's not exactly a good time.

Lets also not forget that the US put thousands of civilians of Japanese ancestry, who had committed no crimes and some of whom had been in the US for generations, into not very comfortable concentration camps during the war.

For actual state sponsored murder of civilians, I'd point to the fire bombing of German and Japanese cities, for the most part.

Schweik said:

Something like 33% of Allied POW's in Japanese hands died during the war. But a bit over 1% of US POWs in German hands also died and that's not exactly a good time.

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A clever use of percentages and omission. 93,941 US sevicemen were held prisoner of war in Europe. If all of those were Russian and were killed it may or may not have changed the estimate of 3.3 million Russian prisoners killed out of 5.7 million captured.

pbehn said:

A clever use of percentages and omission. 93,941 US sevicemen were held prisoner of war in Europe. If all of those were Russian and were killed it may or may not have changed the estimate of 3.3 million Russian prisoners killed out of 5.7 million captured.

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I wasn't being 'clever' or omitting anything, did you miss this part: "they were just better treated than the Soviets, or Polish, etc. troops let alone civilians and guerillas." - at what point did I ever say or imply that the Germans didn't massacre and grotesquely mistreat Poles and Russians? I thought that was both well known and pretty obvious.

Do you actually read before you respond or just skim looking for things to get outraged about?

Schweik said:

I wasn't being 'clever' or omitting anything, did you miss this part: "they were just better treated than the Soviets, or Polish, etc. troops let alone civilians and guerillas." - at what point did I ever say or imply that the Germans didn't massacre and grotesquely mistreat Poles and Russians? I thought that was both well known and pretty obvious.

Do you actually read before you respond or just skim looking for things to get outraged about?

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Calm the eff down - this monologue about atrocities is going to get the thread shut down, so how about getting back on topic?

Calm down your damn self. I wasn't the one who brought it up, I just chimed in on a discussion well underway. You guys have a little clique of old regulars on here and routinely pounce on anybody who speaks 'out of turn' - I'm not some clueless teenager and really don't give a rats ass about your opinion, so take your own advice.

Nothing I posted was remotely political or agenda driven, it's all just history 101. I was only providing some context to a (slightly one-sided) discussion that was already underway. History is what it is, and it doesn't care what you or anybody else thinks.

Either this is a place where you can discuss history like grownups or it's some kind enclave of unspecified 'safe spaces' and hidden triggers over pet topics that people have to tip toe around like a minefield. If you don't like it feel free to ban me, otherwise lighten up Francis.

Anyone got any new kittens?

The Basket said:

Anyone got any new kittens?

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Do two grown kittens count?

If I had 2 cats I would call them Bismarck and Tirpitz.

The Basket said:

Anyone got any new kittens?

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Mochi on the left and Leviathan T. Hobbs on the right, the T stands for TROUBLE and he lives up to it. Not new, they're a year old now.

One if not the funniest thing I ever did see is when Mythbusters tried to herd cats.

They absolutely did not work it.

I find looking into cats eyes a bizarre experience. It's like they are judging you and judging you inferior.

Little killing machines.

The Basket said:

I find looking into cats eyes a bizarre experience. It's like they are judging you and judging you inferior.

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Well what do you expect? They're near perfect predators and you're a mere omnivore. No class whatsoever! You ARE inferior. Simple fact, no racism intended.