Game is not broken, History is!

[Captain]

ORIGINAL: Joe D.


For us, the "'fuss" is about historical accuracey,

We all have the same objective, namely to uncover the truth. I dont know why you would assume otherwise.

If the authors of Shattered Sword have investigated new documents that other historians ignored and can back up their interpretation with facts, fine.

Looking at new sources or taking a fresh look at existing sources is how history evolves. Glantz has done a lot of interesting work on the Eastern Front by mining overlooked German and Soviet sources. However, I have been studying military history long enough to know that it is dangerous to look to just one author or one book as the undisputable source on a subject. In history, as in everything else trends come and go.

Furthermore, even if we assume Patch and Tully's intrepretation is 100% correct, namely that Nagumo could not launch a strike against the US CVs before 11 a.m., it still does not change the basic fact that the US got lucky by having the Enterprise and Yorktown SBDs arrive on taget at the best possible time. If they had arrived 5-10 minutes earlier or later, the results might have been entirely different.

[spence]

The luck was equally distributed. Before the Japanese had launched even one aircraft to strike the American carriers the Americans had 175 bomb/torpedo carrying aircraft winging their way towards the Kido Butai. The fact they arrived one squadron at a time for 3 hours is not at all a demonstration of Japanese superiority: just a demonstration of Japanese luck. It just finally ran out after that.

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: Captain
If the authors of Shattered Sword have investigated new documents ...

Not investigated new documents, but presented translated old documents.

[Fishbed]

ORIGINAL: Captain

ORIGINAL: Joe D.


For us, the "'fuss" is about historical accuracey,

We all have the same objective, namely to uncover the truth. I dont know why you would assume otherwise.

If the authors of Shattered Sword have investigated new documents that other historians ignored and can back up their interpretation with facts, fine.

Looking at new sources or taking a fresh look at existing sources is how history evolves. Glantz has done a lot of interesting work on the Eastern Front by mining overlooked German and Soviet sources. However, I have been studying military history long enough to know that it is dangerous to look to just one author or one book as the undisputable source on a subject. In history, as in everything else trends come and go.

Furthermore, even if we assume Patch and Tully's intrepretation is 100% correct, namely that Nagumo could not launch a strike against the US CVs before 11 a.m., it still does not change the basic fact that the US got lucky by having the Enterprise and Yorktown SBDs arrive on taget at the best possible time. If they had arrived 5-10 minutes earlier or later, the results might have been entirely different.

When it comes to accuracy, sure thing. When it comes to CAP interference or a possible counter-strike, I seriously doubt it. And like said afterwards, what happened this way is more an illustration of USN's ability to nearly waste a golden opportunity thanks to its bad air coordination (the Hornet planes didn't even make it to target for God sake!) than the illustration of the divine intervention of pure luck. Although arguably putting a single bomb on Akagi out of three planes was quite something ^^

So will you read the book now and come back discuss it later? Although I can mostly only agree with what you're saying, you definitely give the impression that you don't want to get proven wrong. We don't care about this, and there's no "being right" or "being wrong", so go read it and come afterwards, would you please Captain? [:)]

[John Lansford]

ORIGINAL: Captain

ORIGINAL: Joe D.

But the flight logs did survive; a chronolgy of IJ fighter operations and a consolidated operational log of all 4 IJN CVs is published in the appendices of Shattered Sword.

That is interesting. If they have uncovered new documents, it would interesting to pick up the book just to see what all the fuss is about...

If you've not read it, I don't see how you could be criticizing what was said in the book. That's like someone criticizing a movie without going to see it.

[mdiehl]

If they had arrived 5-10 minutes earlier or later, the results might have been entirely different.

Nope. Ten minutes either side, none of the Japanese CVs were in a position to put up new CAP. The only luck the USN had at Midway was bad luck. If Hornet's strike hadn't gone haring off, the Japanese would have lost many more ships. If the SBDS and TBDs had arrived together, most of the Japanese CVs would have taken torpedo hits (as happened at Coral Sea), and more of the Japanese CAP would have been shot down by US fighter escorts in the process.

As I see it, pretty much everything went wrong for the USN that could go wrong, but the plan, being sound, simple, and fault tolerant, worked. As I see it, there was no way for the Japanese to win, since even ONE American carrier showing up would ruin their plan entirely. The Japanese plan was complicated, understrength, required perfect timing, and was completely intolerant of flaws in Japanese execution or the presence of USN CV based opposition.

[Captain]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

If you've not read it, I don't see how you could be criticizing what was said in the book. That's like someone criticizing a movie without going to see it.

I am not criticizing a book, I thought we were discussing the battle of Midway [&:]

re the book, I have ordered it.

[Captain]

ORIGINAL: Fishbed


Although I can mostly only agree with what you're saying, you definitely give the impression that you don't want to get proven wrong.

certainly not the impression I want to give, sorry if it came across that way. I can be argumentative, but I am sure I am not the only one. [:)]

The Pacific Theater used to be my favorite. I read about 75% of Morison's history, but that was about 20 years ago, I may have some brushing up to do...[;)]

I own WITP, but only picked up WITPAE before Xmas, still getting back into it. I guess my avatar and sig may be a clue as to which side I prefer...[:)]