rtrapasso -> RE: How much did it cost? (6/20/2009 10:17:18 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Charles_22 quote:
ORIGINAL: rtrapasso quote:
ORIGINAL: CarnageINC quote:
ORIGINAL: Footslogger Being that the movie wasn't fact based, if Admiral Kimmel had deployed the fleet, would the loss of life been much less? I don't think so, in deep seas we would of been more screwed. Those ships wouldn't of been recovered for sure....unless they hired a future Howard Huges or the director of 'Raise the Titantic' [:D] The "they would have been sunk in deep water" theory generally doesn't take into account that if the fleet had been at sea, the IJN probably wouldn't have been able to find them in any kind of "sneak attack" scenario... and the KB was critically low on fuel to start with* so it probably wouldn't have enough to conduct any kind of operations except the hit and run attack that was carried out: i.e.: it would not have been able to conduct a prolonged "search and destroy" mission if the fleet had not been at Harbor... of course, they might have gotten lucky and caught the fleet just outside the harbor, but this would depend on when the fleet sortied, etc. *The original attack plan called for the KB to be scuttled after the attack due to lack of fuel [X(] [X(]... the IJN staff (rather late in the evolution of the plan) came up with a way to refuel the KB. Big deal, a lot of original plans turn out to be stupid, and are understandingly corrected later on. Sheesh, it's so stupid it's not even worth bringing up, because how could a force as good as that fleet, fair worse than if they used it somewhere else and just left PH alone? Losing every single ship to scuttling, what could be worse? The only good thing is you might be able to sink every ship in the immediate area, since your planes would have nowhere to go but continuing strikes. Perhaps 'the original plan' called for land force invasion as well, something that leaving the fleet without fuel to get back in immediate fashion might had been worth the danger, but to scuttle them entirely, even before anything could arrive to do any re-fueling, had you dominated the area for a good spell, what could be stupider? Kind of like sending 4EB's deep into the heart of Germany without escorts; that was a lovely realized plan that was. The thing that floored me about it was THEY WERE GOING TO GO THROUGH WITH IT!! It wasn't until a few weeks before they sailed (iirc) that someone finally figured out how to refuel the KB... to me it makes no sense at all to consider such a plan, let alone put it into action (i.e. - training, drawing up detailed plans, etc.) There was something about the Bushido spirit justifying the whole thing, etc. i'll have to try to find the references again (i've seen it in more than one place) to see when the refueling got added. EDIT: The main reason i brought this up was to emphasize the tight nature of the fuel supply for the KB - it could not afford to run around hunting for an American fleet that was not in port... it could barely get back to Japan, apparently, and conducting a fleet action to hunt for the USN ships away from any kind of support was pretty much out of the question.
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