CynicAl
Posts: 327
Joined: 7/27/2001 From: Brave New World Status: offline
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Snigbert [B]I read (Costello's Pacific War 1941-1945) that the reason the Mutsu was built in violation of the Washington Naval Treaty was because the Japanese pleaded that they had already taken material donations from schoolchildren and housewives in Tokyo to complete it's construction. That is how poor their resources were even before the war started. [/B][/QUOTE] Before the war started, indeed - some twenty years before. But that wasn't the reason she was spared. Mutsu survived because she had very good timing - she was commissioned on October 24, 1921, and the [URL=http://www.warships1.com/W-INRO/INRO_Battlefleet.htm]Washington Naval Limitation Conference of 1921[/URL] didn't kick off until November. So she couldn't have been built in violation of the Treaty, because there was no Treaty until months after she commissioned. That's why she was counted in the ships and tonnage Japan was allowed to retain under (NOT "in violation of") the terms of the Treaty. Don't get me wrong - Japan cheated on the treaty like crazy (Can you say "Mogami class"? I knew you could.), and very nearly from Day One. But in fairness, Mutsu wasn't "cheated in," she was part of the process. This is just another one of Costello's errors - I got the book as a Christmas gift last month and I'm having a great time with it, but I'd strongly suggest looking for independent confirmation of any supposedly "factual" information in that book. For example, check out the raid count for the first wave of the Pearl Harbor attack in Chapter 7 (page 132 in my copy). Somehow Costello got 49 Vals (level bombing Vals with 800kg armor-piercing bombs, no less!), 40 Kates, and 43 Zekes to add up to a total of 183 attackers. The total is correct - but the 49 level bombers were Kates (NOT Vals), the 51 (NOT 49) Vals were dive (NOT level) bombing, were tasked for airfield suppression (NOT anti-ship), and so were armed with HE bombs (NOT armor piercing). The most charitable explanation I can think of is that Costello "lost" a column in his notes and tried to BS his way through regardless ("Let me see, I know they had Vals, and Kates, and Zekes, and Kates carried torpedos, and Zekes were fighters, so the ones with bombs must have been Vals...") - but the glaring mathematical error still should have been a dead giveaway. (The least charitable explanation is that Costello is an idiot and/or a fraud, but I don't think either of those titles are justified. Yet. I still haven't finished the book...) It's not like this is some obscure bit of military arcana, either - this is basic, factual information that is widely known and readily available. Nor is this the only example, though it is the one that springs most immediately to mind, because it's so blatantly wrong that no amount of "interpretation" or "subjective judgement" can save it. Seriously - if you can't rely on the author to get very basic, very well-known facts straight, if you can't even trust him to add up a column of numbers on a calculator and get the correct result, why would you depend on him for anything more than entertainment value?
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