leftysergeant
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2007
- Messages
- 18,863
Okay, first of all, why is this information not available anywhere but on whackjob sites like What Really Happened? They are, as I have pointed out elsewhere, not the least bit reliable as a source. Nazied-up big-time.
Just having broken the codes really doesn't prove that an order to attack by naval air was ever transmitted to be intercepted. Why would any nation risk revealing it's movements when the admirals of their fleet left port knowing where they were going? All they would need is an order to execute, once they were underway. By making the order something like "Climb Mount Whatever" would be pretty ambiguous, even useless, if the admirals were told before leaving port what the orders for execution were. Nothing to intercept.
It is quite likely that the US Navy was expecting a conventional attack with a full-task force. In that sense, it would be quite logical to have the aircraft carriers out on maneuvers while the battleships just sat there as though unaware that something was cooking. Intel already knew that there were Japanese spies on the island. Had they moved the battleships earlier than they would have needed to in order to ambush an in-bound task force, it would have alerted the Japanese that their codes had been compromised.
Meanwhile, the aircraft carriers would patrol the area, looking for the heavy elements of the task force. Oops! They were probably looking for the battleships out of range to intercept the fighters returning to the carriers when they realized their mistake.
The commanders on the islands knew something was coming, but they didn't know, probably could not have known without detailed information on the Japanese order of battle, which would obviously not need to have been transmitted in an interceptable form such as radio transmissions.
Kimmel expected there to be guerilla operations against the air fields. That was why the bombers were all parked wing-tip-to wing-tip and heavily guarded.
FDR was a far better strategist than this conspiracy theory gives him credit for. Would it not have been a military coup beyond any he might have pulled off to respond immediately to take down the fighters before they could return to the carriers, or to take out the carriers themselves with airpower while the planes were not there to defend them? It would have taken days for the fleeing Japanese carriers to get out of the range of a carrier group with all its aircraft and the B-17s that were destroyed in the first strike. And that kind of losses early in the conflict would have left the Japanese forces at an insurmountable disadvantage, out of fuel and in need of repair.
So, to summarize:
Your source sucks and I shall discount it entirely until you can prove that these documents are genuine. I have seen statements elsewhere to the effect that they are not.
The whole theory paints FDR as militarily inept.
It smells like a fermenting pile of woo-woo that some Nazi sympathizer cooked up.
Just having broken the codes really doesn't prove that an order to attack by naval air was ever transmitted to be intercepted. Why would any nation risk revealing it's movements when the admirals of their fleet left port knowing where they were going? All they would need is an order to execute, once they were underway. By making the order something like "Climb Mount Whatever" would be pretty ambiguous, even useless, if the admirals were told before leaving port what the orders for execution were. Nothing to intercept.
It is quite likely that the US Navy was expecting a conventional attack with a full-task force. In that sense, it would be quite logical to have the aircraft carriers out on maneuvers while the battleships just sat there as though unaware that something was cooking. Intel already knew that there were Japanese spies on the island. Had they moved the battleships earlier than they would have needed to in order to ambush an in-bound task force, it would have alerted the Japanese that their codes had been compromised.
Meanwhile, the aircraft carriers would patrol the area, looking for the heavy elements of the task force. Oops! They were probably looking for the battleships out of range to intercept the fighters returning to the carriers when they realized their mistake.
The commanders on the islands knew something was coming, but they didn't know, probably could not have known without detailed information on the Japanese order of battle, which would obviously not need to have been transmitted in an interceptable form such as radio transmissions.
Kimmel expected there to be guerilla operations against the air fields. That was why the bombers were all parked wing-tip-to wing-tip and heavily guarded.
FDR was a far better strategist than this conspiracy theory gives him credit for. Would it not have been a military coup beyond any he might have pulled off to respond immediately to take down the fighters before they could return to the carriers, or to take out the carriers themselves with airpower while the planes were not there to defend them? It would have taken days for the fleeing Japanese carriers to get out of the range of a carrier group with all its aircraft and the B-17s that were destroyed in the first strike. And that kind of losses early in the conflict would have left the Japanese forces at an insurmountable disadvantage, out of fuel and in need of repair.
So, to summarize:
Your source sucks and I shall discount it entirely until you can prove that these documents are genuine. I have seen statements elsewhere to the effect that they are not.
The whole theory paints FDR as militarily inept.
It smells like a fermenting pile of woo-woo that some Nazi sympathizer cooked up.
