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Britain's planned Taranto style attack on German fleet in 1917


Ohmisterporter

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For the history/defence fans on here I have provided a link to the Defence of the Realm blog which tells the story of the planned attack on the High Seas Fleet at anchor in Wilhelmshaven. It would have been the precursor to Taranto and Pearl Harbor if the logistical and technical difficulties had been ironed out. I thought it was fascinating, hope you find it of interest.

 

https://defenceoftherealm.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/world-war-is-abandoned-pearl-harbour-attack/

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Not a general, but Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto - "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Apparently, while the quote is attributed to him, there are no witnesses accounts or written evidence of him actually saying or writing it.

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Had the US focussed on the Pacific instead,  Asian casualties would have been much lower, against a much higher cost in Europe, primarily as Stalin would have had basically free rein all the way to the Northsea and Atlantic :rolleyes:  Post-war history would have been much different then, and luckily for us Churchill saw the danger :yes:

Interesting, and ironic that it was also Stalin pushing for a second front in Europe. 

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Interesting article, although I thought it was a well known fact that the Pearl Harbor attack was inspired by Taranto..??

The comment at the end about the RAF's attitude also explains why, although Wilhelmshaven & Kiel were again targets in 1939, the RAF tried (disasterous) conventional daylight bombing, instead of reviving a daring plan like this.

Thanks for posting!

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The idea was that Tokyo would declare war, and the timing of the Pearl Harbour attack was such that it would be only minutes after the declaration of war would have been delivered to the US, deliberately so on a Sunday too. This would insure the base would still be unaware of the state of war, and thus not in any ready state to defend itself, keeping the element of surprise for the Japanese bombers. In contrast to many, there is at least one Japanese general who considered the raid a total failure. He had travelled the US and got to learn the mentality of the US people somewhat. The fact the US carriers where out at sea was the prime reason for the failure of the raid, as it left the US with useful weapons to defend itself in the short term. If these carriers had been sunk, Washington would have no option then accept any dictate from Tokyo as "peace treaty". But because the Japanese missed the carriers, and the way the Japanese conducted this unprovoked attack, it kickstarted the slumbering might of US industrial power into high gear and the aforementioned general knew that Japan could never compete with that. It never did. Yes, the Japanese made rapid progress in 1942, but the sole reason Japan was only defeated in 1945 and not 1943, was Churchill's insistence with Roosevelt for the previously agreed "Europe first" policy. Had the US focussed on the Pacific instead,  Asian casualties would have been much lower, against a much higher cost in Europe, primarily as Stalin would have had basically free rein all the way to the Northsea and Atlantic :rolleyes:  Post-war history would have been much different then, and luckily for us Churchill saw the danger :yes:

 

Mind you, in the current PC brigade-controlled times, such policy would have been totally unacceptable and forcibly revoked. But DO NOT judge events and attitudes of the day with those of today! :nono: :rolleyes:

The other thing is that, missing the carriers or no, the Navy's Tank farm , containing its fuel reserves, lay at the mercy of the Japanese on the morning of 12/7; had they bombed that, the Navy would have had to retreat to the West Coast, or be immobilised through lack of fuel.

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Yep, and the tank farm would have taken a single Zero to get eager with it's MG's, and there would have been a LOT of fire :).  I've walked past North tank farm several times- though, to be honest, it was not the only source of fuel for the USN in Hawaii.  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hill_Underground_Fuel_Storage_Facility )

 

So, while hitting the tank farm would have put a severe dent in USN operations, I am unsure it would have been as bad as some have made it out to be.  

 

James

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The great irony is that Admiral Yamamoto was one of the principal moderates in the Japanese government and military high command who did not want an expansionist war with the USA and was highly critical of the army's colonial adventure in China. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Pearl Harbour (it was undoubtedly wrong at a moral level and at a strategic level, but I've always thought that the criticisms on account of it being a surprise attack to be a bit naïve and ignores just how bad the contemporary status of Japan - US relations was) it was a brilliant piece of naval operations to bring the Japanese carrier flight to within launching distance of Pearl Harbour with complete surprise and to escape pretty much unscathed after the attack.

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Whether it was right or wrong the Attack on Pearl Harbor was adjudged to be a War Crime at the Tokyo Trials (yes, I am aware that the victors write history).

Except if you read history as taught in Japanese schools post-war you would be told  that Japan had been peaceful (n that they acted in an anti-colonial way) until the dastardly attack on Hiroshima (put very simply).  

I like Japan and have visited several times but there is no doubt that they have been guilty of duplicitous behavior in the past, to say the least.

 

Best, Pete.

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The Master of Sempill was a Japanese spy. Perhaps, his paymasters got wind of the plans to torpedo warships at anchor when he was part of a British Military Mission to Japan in the early 1920s. The IJN operated 6 Sopwith Cuckoos, and later bought Blackburn Darts.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Forbes-Sempill,_19th_Lord_Sempill

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japanese_Navy_Air_Service

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_Cuckoo

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Dart

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The post war war crimes trials and verdicts have a credibility problem in that in general only the defeated powers were in the dock. To be clear I do not doubt German war guilt or Japanese war guilt for starting the European and Asia - Pacific wars. However Germany was no more guilty of waging aggressive war than was the USSR which co-operated with Germany in the dismemberment of Poland. Below this higher level of war guilt it gets much more complex. The German crimes against humanity were clearly horrific and with the exception of a few fringe holocaust deniers I think the general feeling of most who've considered the German race war against Jews, gypsies, the handicapped and others is that Germany got off very lightly after the war (far more perpetrators escaped than swung on the end of a rope and the German army did a splendid job sanitising it's part). Looking beyond that the uncomfortable truth is that in a truly impartial war crimes trial regime an awful lot of Allied actions would also have been in the dock.

On the Japanese view of history, that is indeed unfortunate (though it is more nuanced than often projected, many Japanese are fully aware of the more complete story) yet in a sense it is not that much different from any other country in that the history which is remembered is the history countries want to remember. The Asia - Pacific war is a case in point, American, British, French and Dutch people tend to view the war in SE Asia in particular from a very different perspective compared to Malaysian, Singaporean, Filipino, Indonesian, Vietnamese etc people. That is not to defend or exonerate Japan, but it is to say that the story of the war in Asia- Pacific was a lot more complex than is normally appreciated outside Asia. To most in the US and Europe the story starts in 1941 and ignores the steady escalation throughout the 1930's.

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True, but it has to be said that none of the white European empires were founded on altruism and this is especially true of the UK whose very origins are proof of that. The fact remains that "whoever started it", the World Wars were enormously profitable for those who held the real power and wars to this very day serve to enrich and empower those very same peoples' descendants. 

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I wouldn't say that "Japan had not threatened European or Western colonial interests until Pearl Harbour". The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, together with related internal Chinese conflicts, materially affected them and conflicted with them.

 

The USS Panay was sunk in the Yangste River by Japanese aircraft as early as 1937, there had been a diplomatic incident involving a US Consular official being assaulted by Japanese troops in the following year. USS Guam and other river patrol vessels were involved in tne transfer of US nationals to Hankow for safety in 1937, HMS Cricket and Scarab also attacked during this operation. Tension continues, including other minor incidents involving USN river patrol craft.

 

J G Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel, "Empire of the Sun" begins sometime in 1941. The first part of the book culminates in the Japanese seizure of the International Settlement in Shanghai, which took place the morning after Pearl Harbour, but it is clear that the situation has been perceived as highly volatile and dangerous for some time previously (cf the confrontation between Jim, his father and the Japanese troops while retrieving a model aircraft; it is clear that the countryside around the area has been too dangerous for Europeans to move freely, for quite some time, and it is mentioned elsewhere that European families known to Jim's family have been leaving for some time).The book includes a description of an attack on a US gunboat, which appears to be a combined description of the seizure of the USS Wake and sinking of HMS Peterel.

 

Hong Kong did not fall until Christmas Day 1941 but it was attacked immediately after Pearl Harbour, and Imperial forces were in a state of readiness some time before that, although it was recognised that the defence was a holding action only and could not succeed. Occasional incidents involving bombing and other "collateral damage" from the Sino-Japanese conflict had occurred since at least 1939.

 

It was generally understood that a "real and present" threat existed, from Japan, long before December 1941; given that any and all European or American forces constituted a "force in being" in the operational area of a war of conquest by Japan against China, and all parties were interested in tne same resources, it could hardly be otherwise. What was lacking, was a credible plan of action in response.

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True, but it has to be said that none of the white European empires were founded on altruism and this is especially true of the UK whose very origins are proof of that. The fact remains that "whoever started it", the World Wars were enormously profitable for those who held the real power and wars to this very day serve to enrich and empower those very same peoples' descendants.

 

What origins do you refer to? Do you mean that Scotland had the opportunity to decline to accept William of Orange in favour of James II and VII, thereby ending the "Union of Crowns", but rejected it after the then-independent Scottish Parliament requested "letters" (a statement of intent, in effect) from both possible choices? Do you mean the bankrupting of the nation in the civil wars of the 1680s, and the catastrophic Darien venture?

 

Once involved, the number of places which to this day, bear names like Fraser and Macquarie tend to suggest that Scotland was an enthusiastic participant in the Imperial project.

 

I'm with Dutch_master, above, on not judging the past by modern criteria but it's worth remembering that the British Empire first banned, then actively suppressed slavery long before any other empire. The Talylyn Railway is a last remnant of the search for other outlets fir investment by British interests, who declined to support the Confederacy (thereby probably influencing the French decisively; very different from subsequent French involvement in Mexico). No British monarch ever held an entire colony as their personal fief, as did the Belgisn King. India is the largest, or most numerous, elective democracy in the world, and that isn't by accident.

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I think the US would have built new carriers had the ones in the Pacific fleet been destroyed, and they would have done it as a demonstration of their military and industrial might. Then Yamamoto's sleeping giant would come knocking on Japan's door.

Not sure about that.

 

The US Navy conclusively defeated the Japanese fleet, very largely by air power, at Midway only six months after Pearl Harbour. Midway was a Japanese operation intended to secure a strategic position in the Pacific.

 

Had the Japanese sunk the US carriers at Pearl Harbour this would probably have succeeded and the whole Pacific War taken a very different course.

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I'd agree that applying modern sensibilities and values to the events of historic is wrong and merely promotes a poor understanding of history, equally I think it is important to recognise the attitudes that shaped history. To say that a gross under estimation of Japanese capabilities that was at least in part based upon racial assumptions played a key part in the initial disasters suffered by the Allied powers in the Asia - Pacific war is not so much an attempt to apply modern values to a historic situation as a recognition of factors which affected events. Allied history was written around an assumption that Japan struck without warning and that the European colonies, Pearl Harbour and the American army in the Philippines were the victims of a terrible act which they could not have expected. A terrible act, yes, but to claim there was no prior expectation is tenuous at best. Nowadays it tends to be forgotten that MacArthur in the Philippines was chomping at the bit safe in the knowledge he'd whip the Japanese, there were stories told to Allied fighter pilots that the way Japanese infants were carried and the shape of their eyes made them poor pilots, Australian soldiers in Singapore were boasting that they could get two Japanese on their bayonets etc etc. The discovery that the US and European defences in the Asia - Pacific theatre were woefully unprepared was a post-facto discovery, before the events many American military officers in particular were confident that they were ready for the war with Japan that was expected. There has been quite a cottage industry for example that Pearl Harbour was a Presidential conspiracy to force the USA into the war because to some that is easier to accept than the fact that a combination of superb Japanese planning and US lack of preparedness came together at Pearl Harbour. There is a good book called "War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War" by John Dower, like many revisionist works it makes the mistake of going too far in some ways and you have to be careful about being too accepting of some of the book however he does present a story that is all but ignored in the Allied countries. I'd challenge people to read it and then to still maintain that the Asia - Pacific war was anything like as simple in terms of war crimes as is usually presented. That is not to down play the horrendous crimes perpetrated by Japan, but rather to highlight that war crimes were not unique to Japan (or Germany in the European war).

On the British Empire, that is a good example of how people read from history what they want to read I think. There is no doubt the British Empire did a lot of good, there is equally little doubt that it did a lot of less commendable things. The story is complex and defies simplistic good or bad tags. The empire was not built on altruism or ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity however the colonial regimes for the most part did apply a paternalistic attitude to the well being of the colonial peoples (in a sense, that in itself reveals a lot) and left sound infrastructures and the systems of good governance. Just as in the UK we tend to remember the more altruistic aspects of the Empire, people in the countries of the former Empire tend to remember how the Empire was built and the fist that kept the Empire in line. In a sense neither story is more or less wrong in isolation but it is meaningless to try and tell the story of the Empire without bringing the two parts together.

From a Japanese perspective they could quite legitimately point out to the hypocrisy of powers condemning Japanese colonial expansionism when their condemnation was based to a large extent on threats to their colonial possessions. The Japanese war in China was a particularly brutal war in which the Japanese perpetrated ghastly crimes which is all but ignored in Europe and the US yet the origins of that war were much more complex than a simple statement that Japan was wrong (as unfortunately the League of Nations discovered). The native populations of the European colonies over run by Japan were treated extremely badly by the Japanese. Something I've always been struck by is that invariably people in SE Asia have much worse impressions of the Japanese occupiers than the European colonial powers yet at the same time comment that they the war aims of the colonial powers were hardly based on ideals of bringing liberation to those countries but rather restoring colonial regimes whose biggest redeeming features seems to have been that they were more benign than that of the Japanese.

I'm also really not so sure that Asia is any more (or less) racist than Europe. True, you do not have to probe very deeply to find unpleasant nationalism and xenophobia in much of Asia but the same is true of Europe I think. The rise of hard right parties around much of Europe would indicate that Europe is a less tolerant continent than it might like to believe. Of course not all Europeans are racist and I think on the whole Europe is a generally tolerant and decent continent but I think it is also true that most Asian's are generally decent people too.

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned 8th February 1904.

 

Japan attacked the Russian Far East fleet at anchor- three hours before the official declaration of war was given.

 

History, it seems, has a habit of repeating itself.

I think one reason for that is that it would be inconvenient to contrast the generally approving opinions of many naval officers from countries which later on concluded that the Pearl Harbour attack was a war crime. The other part of the story which had enormous implications for the events of 1941 - 45 which is all but ignored by most is the war between the USSR and Japan in 1939 along the Khalkyn Ghol.

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We must also take into account that Japan was an ally of the western powers  in WW1 but when it came to dividing up the 'spoils', the German imperial possessions, they were ignored when the French and British shared them out between them. This naturally caused a lot of resentment with the Japanese and probably led to the turning of a blind eye to Japanese 'empire building' in China. Italy, also an ally in WW1 although gaining a little territory in the Adriatic otherwise received very little of the spoils, although not as resentful as the Japanese considered itself as being given 'carte blanche' to carry on carving out its own empire in the Balkans and North Africa which had commenced before the war. Italy had also been given control of the Aegean islands that had been Turkish but occupied by Greeks that after WW2 became part of Greece. We have to remember that appeasement was supported by a large majority in the UK also, many had experienced the horrors of the trenches or knew someone who had and feared another similar war.

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I think the US would have built new carriers had the ones in the Pacific fleet been destroyed, and they would have done it as a demonstration of their military and industrial might. Then Yamamoto's sleeping giant would come knocking on Japan's door.

The first 11 Essex Class carriers were ordered by the USN in 1940 in two main batches, two more were ordered immediately after Pearl Harbor and then a further 10 were ordered in Mid 1942 with the final 3 ordered in 1943 (one of which was cancelled while under construction).  Thus they were already building new, and larger, carriers to replace their existing vessels long before the Pacific War commenced and as a  consequence of the end of earlier treaty restrictions on the size of aircraft carriers.  The main effect of the Japanese attacks was to increase the number ordered.  But even the early orders were only in full service in 1943

 

The Independence class carriers - built on cruiser hulls - also existed asa  design prior to Pearl Harbor but the number ordered was increased following the Japanese attack. they could be built more quickly than the Essex class although they too were not available in any numbers until 1943.

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I've never particularly believed that those in a position to know, ever believed in "bandy legged Nips with glasses". General Stilwell certainly knew about Chinese troops, although he was careful to recognise that the corruption, political postures and non-Western motives of the leadership, and the poor condition of most Chinese troops under Chinese command rendered them largely useless under that leadership. The British knew all about Gurkhas and other Asian mercenaries, including the hill tribes of South East Asia. So did the French.

 

The British, Australian and American armies in SE Asia in 1940-42 were hopelessly under-equipped; their tactics quite wrong, and quite ineffective. Their leaders ultimately capitulated from a position of, if not strength then certainly numerical superiority, in the supposed hope of sparing the local population, which they must have known to be quite futile.

 

Anything said to the troops, or the home front needs to be seen in that light

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