Your First WWII Book

@barnee said in Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located:

@CWO-Marc
yea Spruance steaming away at night was a smart move. I wonder if Halsey was in the same situation if he would have. I kinda doubt it

Agreed. Ray Spruance was an excellent combat officer – he and Halsey spent the last few years of WWII alternating command of the 5th Fleet / 3rd Fleet, which was actually the same force whose name got switched every time the two admirals rotated, much to the confusion of Japanese naval intelligence – but he was very different from Bill Halsey in terms of style and personality. Spruance was precise and analytical; he certainly didn’t lack aggressiveness (when he made a decision to attack, he sent in “everything that wasn’t bolted to the flight deck”), but before making his decision to attack he would carefully weigh all the factors of the situation, which sometimes translated into over-cautiousness. Halsey was a hell-for-leather type – sort of the naval counterpart of George Patton – whose fighting spirit greatly inspired his men (the enlisted sailors loved him, not least for the fact that he could drink and swear as well as any of them), but this sometimes translated into recklessness. After the war, someone – I think it was Spruance himself – said that it would have been better if Halsey has been in command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea (where the IJN lost hundred of planes and pilots, but managed to save the bulk of its fleet) and if Spruance had been in command at the Battle of Leyte Gulf (where Halsey fell for a Japanese decoy operation, and compounded his error by leaving no covering force to guard the San Bernardino Straight).

Good to know. Thank you. And I did mean Palermo Italy.

The Battle of Wake Island began simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended on 23 December 1941, with the surrender of the American forces to the Empire of Japan. It was fought on and around the atoll formed by Wake Island and its islets of Peale and Wilkes Islands by the air, land, and naval forces of the Empire of Japan against those of the U.S., with Marines playing a prominent role on both sides.

The island was held by the Japanese for the duration of the Pacific War; the remaining Japanese garrison on the island surrendered to a detachment of United States Marines on 4 September 1945.

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

The Marines at Wake Island held out against the Japanese early in December 1941 before being overwhelmed.  Do you guys agree that it was truly an episode of heroism?

@Imperious:

Finish off HMS Prince of Whales and head back to port WITH DKM Prinz Eugen, not alone.

The military term of that is to strengthen a sure loss. As if it was not enough to lose Bismarck, you would make sure to lose Prinz Eugen too ? I know you are anti Nazi and all, but the question was to make a better result, not a worse. Letting Prinz Eugen go was a correct decision, save the ship to fight another day. Trying to catch up Prince of Whales whit your damaged ship and with no rudder would be borderline ridiculous. Your only rational decision would be to head back to port, but don’t tell Churchill about it, like Lutjens did. Keep the radio silence, and you just may have a fighting change.

Wise words, Worsham.

Like Model , he would have done very well in the halcyon days. I believe he would have done less well, defensively, unlike  Model, though. He would have worried his Army commander, like Guderian, never wanting to pause to regroup. But that would not have mattered to him or to the result.

Thanks Marc. Exactly right. Wi try and paste and post in the right place, although I suspect Worsham will see it here.
Was at work when I posted and my head was in the wrong place, obviously.

Thank you Marc.
I only wish we had been told which unit he had fought with and where it was found.

Also on the subject of Italian POWs: some Italians captured by the British in North Africa ended up being interned in the Orkney Islands, where they were put to work constructing concrete barriers to seal off the eastern entry route into Scapa Flow (the route taken by U47 when it torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak in October 1939).  Sometimes, arguments would break out between the Italians and the British personnel supervising the work, and an Army interpreter would be called in to sort out the dispute.  After one such altercation, a Navy officer took the interpreter aside and asked him why he had been translating for the Italian man who’d been complaining, saying that, “This fellow can speak English!”  The interpreter retorted that the man couldn’t “even speak Italian!” – an answer which no doubt baffled the Navy officer until the prisoner later confided that he’d been speaking in dialect.  (“Churchill’s Prisoners: The Italians In Orkney, 1942-1944.” St Margaret’s Hope : Orkney Wireless Museum, 1992.)

CWO Marc