Pearl Harbor 78th anniversary

[Rwy in Sight]

As today is the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Japanese attack I see it as an opportunity to remember that the attack helped bring the USA into war and kept bad people at bay since.

However I keep thinking if this attack hadn't take place would the USA have found another way to join the WWII.
And if the attack wouldn't have taken place in December 1941 but later, would the UK had the strength and the supplies to continue fighting for few more months?

[Pontius Navigator]

RiS yes to both. The massive US War Machine would not have been 'diverting' or dividing production to the Pacific. The USN was already involved in Western Atlantic and losing American lives on ships in the Atlantic.

[Rwy in Sight]

Thanks PN. That still does not diminish my appreciation for the UK who was able to keep Germany at bay from May 1940 to December 1941. If only the UK could do the same within the EU in the recent years.

[Pontius Navigator]

Recommended here I think was Masters and Commanders. A book that concentrated on the principal Masters, Roosevelt and Churchill and Commanders Brooke and Marshall. Lots of supporting actors too.

You need a good grasp of the global conflict to keep abreast of progress in the war but I still learnt things I hadn't known. In 1942 the USA was really in no better shape than GB in 1940.

[Rwy in Sight]

PN do you mean the USA was really in no better shape from a military or an industrial point of view? I thought the US industrial base was strong enough after about 1939 and they had a decent army but very inexperienced.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Bit of both really. They did the usual US trick of ignoring all the lessons everyone else had learned and tried to tell them (like convoys and night bombing), and were losing ships and aircraft faster than they could build them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time

[Rwy in Sight]

What other solutions but convoys could exist to move food, fuel and weapons across the pond?

I think some time the production caught up with the losses and rather soon it seems!

[Slasher]

The Jap attack on Pearl and the airfields was slick militarily and lasted 15 mins. Thing is wars aren’t won in 15 mins even if all the carriers had’ve been in port.

What the Nips started in Manchuria in 1931 ended in 1945 at Nagasaki.

[llondel]

The British even warned the US it was possible by attacking the Italian fleet at Taranto.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Didn't I once see some Pathe Gazette Newsreel about American bombers being pushed across the border to Canada before Pearl Harbour, 'cos Roosevelt wanted to help fight the war but couldn't be seen to be "delivering" aircraft. RAF Ferrry pilots then took them to England ?

Tales of Churchill having some knowledge of the coming attack from intercepted signals, but deliberately keeping quiet so that the USA would enter the war after the event, and expressing barely disguised satisfaction when it happened ? Who knows.

Maybe all Fake News, but why spoil a good story !

[G-CPTN]

I believe that several wartime events were known of in advance due to Bletchley Park, but to have reacted would have alerted the enemy that their communications were unsafe.

Bombing of Coventry

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Ultra advised that several targets were possible, including London and Coventry.
The Germans were using a newish system called X-Gerät . The means of detection involved flying around in Ansons in the early evening trying to find that night's beams. X-Gerät was much more difficult than the previous Knickebein for both the British and the Luftwaffe crews to detect - the main beam was only 100 yards wide over Coventry.
The measures taken to defend Coventry were the same as usual, jamming of the beam signals. This was the only possible measure, as AAA was known to be almost entirely for morale effect, and airborne radar was not yet effective (the first kill, by a Beaufighter of 604 Sqn, was the very next night after Coventry).
Whilst the main frequency of X-Gerät was known, the modulation frequency had been incorrectly measured at 1,500Hz instead of the correct 2,000 Hz. It was known that the modulation frequency might be incorrect, but the British hoped that this would not matter in a noisy Luftwaffe cockpit. Unfortunately, this was incorrect, and the reason was not discovered until a wrecked aircraft found the week before the Coventry raid was examined. Unlike the previous Knickebein system, the transmitted signals were not listened to by the crew, but detected automatically by electronics with a very fine frequency filter. The jammers were modified rapidly, but just too late to prevent the Coventry raid. In fact they were first successfully used to disrupt a raid on Birmingham 5 days after Coventry.

So, Ultra didn't pinpoint Coventry. Actions were taken to disrupt the Coventry raid, but they were ineffective. Airborne radar and X-Gerät jamming both started to become effective within a week after Coventry, but just too late for Coventry.

If you have never read RV Jones' Most Secret War, I highly recommend it. It is a fantastic lesson in what needs to be done to have rapid development of systems in the face of bureaucratic opposition and ignorance, if nothing else! One is fighting one's own hierarchy as much as the enemy.