John T. Flynn blames Pearl Harbor catastrophe on FDR

I always wonder why nobody ever blames the Japanese for PH these days.

 

Was about to comment on the racism end. But then I'm forced to think the Imperial Japanese Navy at the beginning of the war could have beaten any navy on the planet, save perhaps the USN. (And that's a big maybe and relies on the USN actually concentrating its forces, which it didn't until much later.) Lots of hardware/organizational threads that dismiss Japan's capabilities feel similarly racist. (Of course the A6M/Kido Butai/long lance/what have you weren't really all that good. Just lucky!)

So thank you, Opana Pointer.

P.S. Dogfather:

You don't spread your forces out if you can avoid it. If you do the enemy just defeats them piecemeal. (This is a big piece of how we beat the IJN at Midway. They spread their forces out in advance of Coral Sea and paid the price for it by losing a third of their striking power for MI go.)

Go read an army field manual if you don't believe me. It will make it pretty clear. (Along with cute little things like bounding advances, but I digress.)

The USN had near parity with the IJN at the beginning of WWII in CV airpower. (A slight advantage in planes, and a slight disadvantage in flight decks.) We had the capacity to build a force comparable to Japan's first mobile force (da ichi Kido Butai) but we never did. Instead we sent half of our carriers to the Atlantic, giving the Japanese heavy local superiority. (Just about 2:1. Which means we lose if they play their cards right.)

All of this ignores the fact that we will ultimately outbuild them, but at least at the beginning of the war we did precisely what you suggest. We spread our forces out (a near disastrous mistake) and we fought an entirely defensive war. (We really didn't have much choice there. We just didn't have the capacity to do anything else, even without the losses at Pearl.)

But I'll stop here, lest I try to start a Coral Sea/Midway might have been thread.

 

I'm pretty sure How Flynn, obtained all this info on the Pearl Harbor disaster, way back in 1944. It was leaked to him! Not only
did the Chicago Tribune, print FDR’s War Plans, three days before Pearl Harbor. They also printed a story after Midway, called
Navy Had Word Of Jap Plan To Strike At Sea. This was on June 7, 1942.

Tribune war correspondent, Stanley Johnston, embedded on the cruiser New Orleans. Stole this info, from the captain’s cabin.

When info is leaked like this, there is a reason behind it. Somebody felt the story should get out, right away and the public
should know. I don't agree with leaks that would hurt the US war effort. But leaking info on the Roosevelt admin's war plans,
after he promised the electorate, he was not send out boy off to fight, and manipulations to get the USA in a war with the Japanese, were okay.

 

Dont'cha think SOMEBODY from the Jap side would have spilled the rice by NOW if Roosevelt was in on their war plans??????

tom

 

You could say the same thing, except change the Pearl Harbor references to "9-11" and you would still have hit the nail on the head. Some people will believe ANYTHING in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

tom

 

and down goes dog...

 

DogFather,

Care to back that up with a source?

If you didn't know, Stanley Johnson was a newspaper reporter on the USS Lexington, not the USS New Orleans. Furthermore, he did not "steal" the information from the captain's cabin, it was freely given to him by the, then sunk, Lexington's XO, Commander Morton T. Seligman, while the carrier's survivors were being transported back to Pearl aboard the transport USS Barnett. The two had become close friends aboard the USS Lexington. Mr. Johnson's outstanding conduct during the Lexington's sinking cemented this friendship, with Admiral Sherman and Commander Seligman recommending him for a navy citation for his distinguished conduct. Seligman showed classified documents to Mr. Johnson because of their friendship, and not out of any desire to "leak" information. Mr. Johnson, for his part, was doing his best to put the US Navy in the most favorable light possible, by showing how strong, smart, and powerful they were. Since Mr. Johnson had never asked for war correspondent credentials, he never signed any papers that he must submit his reports to any censors.

The plot thickened once the story was printed. Reporter Wayne Thomis claimed to have written the story without any input from Johnson. Thomis further claimed that he had written the Japanese breakdown of force using only a copy of "Jane's Fighting Ships" and made his own educated guesses as to what forces the Japanese would use. Needless to say the US Navy did not believe him, and conducted their own lengthy investigation on the matter.

Perhaps you should get the facts straight, before posting your wild conjecture.

Well, there was a reason for publishing these "supposed" leaks, but, it is nowhere near as "honorable" as you suppose.

The publisher of the "Chicago Tribune", was Colonel Robert R. McCormick(think a latter day Rush Limbaugh, using the newspaper instead of the radio), was an arch-conservative, staunch Republican who vehemently opposed Roosevelt. Anything that made the President and his party look bad, no matter how good it was the American public, was perfectly fine to print.

The Tribune's stories had little to do with "exposing the truth", but were more out of greed, jealousy, and a means of acquiring political power. No, IMHO, these are not very "honorable" motives at all.

 

What makes you certain that most, if not all, of these modernizations where not routinely scheduled for California before Dec 7th? Frankly, I don't see how the modernization of the old battlewagons advances your thesis in anyway. Instead of quoting Wikipedia you ought to explain, very carefully, how these modifications to the ships after PH is of any relevance at all.

 

AFAIK, the USS California was not scheduled to go in for refit in 1942. However, the USS Tennessee was scheduled to go in for refit in March, 1942. Still, the USS Tennessee's refit was not to have been the major reconstruction work that she would receive after Pearl Harbor. Furthering this, only the USS West Virginia received major reconstruction work due to the damage she had taken at Pearl Harbor, her sisters, Colorado and Maryland, were only modestly upgraded. Nor did the three Idaho class ever receive major reconstruction work.

 

Well, that certainly explains the absence of the monthly tirade.

Rich

 

That's a shame. It was always fun to see him try to duel with "Battleship Opana".

 

The only thing I have to say as to who to blame for PH is what the war itself told us about carrier airstrikes. How long did both IJN & USN airgroups search for one another during the Battle of the Phillipine Sea??? Did it not take a while to find your enemy throughout the whole war even if you knew they were out there??? At Midway we knew Nagumo was there somewhere but still had to find his precise location ,right??? We even had very good signal intell beforehand of Midway. it took Halsey awhile to find Ozawa off of cape Engano of I'm not wrong. Nagumo's raids into the IO completely caught the British off guard and you can throw in our early '42 raids & Doolittle's Raid as showing how easy it is for a carrier force to achieve surprise.

So the bottom line is if it was so easy for carrier forces(alongst with being so hard to find them after their attacking you) to achieve time surprise time & again during the war why is it so hard to believe that they could do it in a situation where war hasn't even been declared yet???

 

One certainly does picture FDR exclaiming, "I CAN spare this man! He is all talk!"

If this theory was any more of a dog, it would lose hair and lick it's genitals!

The numerous Congressional investigations failed to find a link between Roosevelt and the blame for the PH attack.

Dogfather, I have provided this website with an artical that explodes many of the myths that have grown up around the PH attack over the years. I posted it on Opana's thread associated with this very topic. It and other stuff posted by OP over his time here have well and truly debunked the idea that PH was anything other than the responsibility of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Period.

This chestnut has been done and dusted.

For God's sake, Dogfather, make us an offer we can't refuse and provide us with something like a smoking gun that points directly at Roosevelt, and myself and others on this website will be more than happy to change our collective opinion of conspiracy theories of this nature......i.e. It's a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers.....or, A load of old cobblers!

Sorry, old mate! The proof we wait for is elusive, so much so that the greater majority of informed users here seem to feel it does not and never did exist, except in the minds of others.

I will now jump down into my foxhole and await the shrapnel to come. Cold beans for breakfast and lunch, boys! Tin hats.....ON!

 

That poster, "DogFather" hasn't been around since February, I think he tired of the regulars tearing his theories to shreds.