Truk (The day the zero fighter became outmoded)

Great show.Those guys were mighty brave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je5slzr0YwU


HEY, this plane wasnt chopped liver once they got the engines counterotating and properly sized.

That's an unusual amount of gun-camera footage for one of those.

The Japanese developed better fighters than the Zero but they never had the scope or time to make the newer ones reliable. They weren't able to train new pilots as fast as they needed to and their lack of emphasis on keeping pilots alive resulted in a lack of information i.e. a lack of experienced pilots for the newer ones to talk to or gain knowledge from.

American warplanes in WW-II were designed to get the pilots back alive if there was any possible way in the universe to do so, meaning they were faster, much more heavily built, and had greater firepower than their Japanese and/or German adversaries while never being quite as maneuverable. Things like self-sealing fuel tanks were mandatory on American planes, lacking on Japanese.

Very very neat airplane, no real possibility of using it from a carrier. Same basic thing, faster than a Zero, much more heavily armed and armored, no real shot at dogfighting or turning with a zero.

Every time I read about Midway it amazes me the US won. The Japanese had the experience, the better aircraft, better torpedos, longer range aircraft, and the numbers on their side. Luck wins every time. The first kamikaze was during Midway, by a marine pilot !

We had better information at Midway and that apparently trumped everything.

It was like the 3 most important criteria for real estate...location, location, location. With Midway to do the scouting, there was only one place for the carriers....to the north east. But there was still luck...the US dive bomber attack was about to turn back..the Japanese carriers were caught refueling and rearming...very lucky rather than information, but intelligence certainly aided the set up and timing.

Ah but the Americans had the code breakers. They sent out a message that Midway had water problems. Sure enough, the Japanese navy sent out a bulletin that AF(Midway) had a lack of water. Then they knew where the attack would occur

true...there was a bit of luck involved

Yeah, that was brilliant.

But from a strictly military point of view, it is still staggering the US won. The US torpedo bombers had a ridiculously short range, the dive bombers had the same range as the Japanese, and the US fighters had a range somewhat shorter than the dive bombers. The Japanese planes had torpedo, dive and fighter planes all capable of attacking at the same long range.

US torpedos were rubbish. The US plane had to fly much lower to the sea than the Japanese and when the US dropped a torpedo it was prone to explode on contact with the sea. They were also less reliable of hitting the target and exploding when they did hit.

The Japanese had the zero which was superior to the wildcat even if it was flown by an experienced pilot....and they werent. US pilots were all green.

The US had inexperienced pilots whilst the Japanese had been sailing up and down the coast of China for many years learning their trade in combat.

In sheer numbers, the US was outnumbered 3 to 1 in planes. It was very one sided in favour of the japanese but still the US won...and won decisively in a manner that shortened the war considerably. A remarkable victory.

I can agree. You'd be living in a colony of the Dai-tō-a Kyōeiken otherwise.

My view is that the US would have won the war in the Pacific one way or another, but thatit could have taken two or three times as long if a couple of things had happened differently.

The one thing I can think of which might have actually have given Japan a chance to win would have been taking and occupying Hawaii rather than just attacking it and they'd probably have had to put their war against China on hold for ten years in order to do that. They'd still have had to learn how to conduct antisubmarine operations and that would have required Japanese versions of our own jeep carriers.

Certainly. Economic power and manpower combined are a winning combination. The only way the axis could have won the war would be by having the atomic bomb first. The germans werent far off building intercontinental rockets. Thank God the good guys won.

Winning that war woud have been a lot more expensive
in the lives of our soldiers n Marines, without the aid of nuclear weapons.
There r a lot of ingrates in America who don 't give proper credit.

Dont sweat it Dave, no serious historian would think that less lives would have been lost without the atomic bomb. Roughly 10- 50 times the number. And what is the difference between being atomised by the fire bombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima ? Fried alive is fried alive. Why dont the anti-nuclear crowd condem both equally ?

Now, see, I cant even pronounce that...this would have been a problem.

OK; u think I can relax now ?



Yea, Dresden, too.


U don 't ofen hear them condeming Pearl Harbor.

Here, its 2:55 A.M. on Friday 3/19/10
What time is it where u r ?





David

Add 14 hrs to your standard time, not daylight savings. But the rest of the world thinks it is the 19/03/10 .

You would be basking in the warmth of Dai-tō-a Kyōeiken (Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere)