The Roundtable
Forum
Official
Newsletter of the Battle of Midway
Roundtable
Issue Number 2011-20
29 August 2011 • Our 14th Year
~
AROUND THE TABLE ~
MEMBERS’
TOPICS IN THIS ISSUE:
1. From Our Archives: How Otis Made Seaman First
2. Book Review: Attack on Pearl Harbor
3. E-Mail Security Problem
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1. FROM OUR ARCHIVES: HOW OTIS MADE SEAMAN
FIRST
Ed.
note: from a carrier sinking
to two disastrous carrier fires, and even recently an earthquake and a
hurricane, Otis Kight seems to have always been in the midst of the
action. In this message from the
Roundtable’s earlier days, he describes the unique manner in which he was
promoted on the Yorktown from Seaman 2/c to 1/c. This message was adapted into Chapter 6 of No
Right to Win.
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1 November 2002
From: LCDR Otis G. Kight, USN-Ret
Virginia
BOM vet, flight deck
crew, VF-42, USS Yorktown (CV-5)
Hello, again! I was assigned to
the Yorktown, VF-42, in mid-November, 1941, out of boot camp at Naval
Training Station, Norfolk. I chased her
from Norfolk to Bermuda and back to Norfolk on a flush deck four piper [old
destroyer], catching up with CV-5 on December 7, 1941. There were two of us, and there was a billet
for a radio striker [apprentice], and one for plane pusher. I had a full seabag, including tennis shoes,
and the other guy didn't, so I was third guy in the Number 10 plane pusher
crew. After working hours, I had
volunteer tours in the bakery, (Coral Sea), Parachute loft, and laundry (Pearl
to Point Luck).
Due to having a Navy type jackknife on me at the right time, I was advanced to
Sea/1c by April 42. The warrant officer
that somewhat controlled the plane pusher mob mustered all of us one slack day
in April and stated, "everyone with a pocket knife, one step forward
!" Me and one other out of about
fifty stepped out. "You two are now Seaman First," the warrant
said. That was a slick way to ensure
everyone had a Rope Wrench [knife] if one was needed.
As usual, there was no slack when we were at GQ, and no aircraft
moving. I was assigned as ammunition
booster for the Marines' water cooled .50 cal. machine guns on the starboard
forward catwalk. I got into the forward
magazines, right below the flight deck, pulled out a magazine can (about sixty
pounds) and toted it to the guns. They took it from there. The gunners on that battery could, as the
other plane pushers described it, "make bullets disappear faster than a
paycheck."
It should be noted that all attacks [at Midway] were made from the port
side, not our starboard side. [Upon
abandoning the ship], several of us in the plane pushers in VF-42 went down the
ladder to the hangar deck, then aft, searching all aircraft for a life
raft. We got beat to every one, except
Tom Cheek's—his plane was upside down, and we couldn't get to it. So, we just eased down the hangar deck, over
into the water, and left the ship without liberty cards......
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2. BOOK REVIEW: ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR ( see issues #15, 16, 18, 19 )
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16 August 2011
From: Chuck Wohlrab
Afghanistan
In response to Ted Kraver's
question: Had any of the carriers been
in port, the air groups would have been flown off and landed at Ford
Island. This was standard practice, and, in fact, the scouts that Enterprise
had flown off that morning were in the process of doing just that when they
arrived at Pearl Harbor in the midst of the attack.
With the group ashore, they
might have been able to get some fighters aloft to defend the harbor or
scouts to follow the Japanese attackers back to their carriers. On the
other hand, since there were several dive bombers attacking Ford Island in the
first wave, most of the aircraft there would probably been destroyed on the
ground. The one saving grace would have been that the pilots and aircrew
would have survived.
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16 August 2011
From: Barrett Tillman
Arizona
author, Clash of the
Carriers; Whirlwind; et al
It would be a dandy wargame
scenario, that's for sure. But in my
opinion, practical matters would intrude.
First, we never got a handle on Kido Butai’s location, and even if we
did, coordinating far-flung task forces would've posed a huge problem, given
the lack of planning and probably even a doctrine for working together. Also, I'm not at all sure about communication
between Pearl and both of our task forces.
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28 August 2011
From: Robert Holzer
Germany
In my opinion the U.S. carriers
Enterprise and Lexington would not have fared well in such a
scenario. Reasons:
(a) The Japanese attack came as a surprise, so either the carriers
would have stumbled into the midst of the Japanese attack without any
forewarning—assume disaster—or, with some hindsight from alerts, the carriers
still would have had a hard time to distinguish between right and false
observations.
(b ) The U.S. carriers by this time operated alone with their escorts,
not in groups as the Japanese. While it
later spelled disaster on the Japanese at Midway, in this early scenario the
Japanese carriers would have had a big advantage of creating ad hoc strikes to
kill every sighting as soon as possible, much as they did at Midway [from the Hiryu
against the Yorktown].
(c) The Japanese crews were fully trained and had much combat
experience. Plus, they were aware of
what would happen and somewhat counted on the possibility to engage U.S.
flattops when they attacked Pearl. On
the other hand, the U.S. crews at most
were on higher alert and had heard rumors, but had no real clue that the next
moments would be "no drill."
(d) The U.S. crews had to train and develop some crucial tactics
before Coral Sea and Midway, such as flooding the carriers’ fuel lines with
CO2, learning to use radar effectively under combat conditions, or the
Thatch Weave. Furthermore, some crucial
deficits, such as poor torpedoes or lack of pilot armor on the early F4F-3
fighters (if I recall correctly) still had to be discovered.
(e) I am not sure if I'm correct here but I believe to recall that
the early sorties in December saw the U.S. carriers with less planes than
later. Especially the fighter
complement later was much increased (for example from 18 to 36 on Lexington). Thus the carriers’ CAP capabilities only
later rose to more effective level.
So my conclusion is that
surprise, tactical situation, numbers, training, and morale would have heavily
supported the Japanese efforts on this 7th December. Thus not seeing combat that day for sure was the better part for [the
U.S. carriers].
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3. E-MAIL SECURITY PROBLEM ( see issue #19 )
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17 August 2011
From: Allen Peisner
Michigan
There are two more common ways spammers get our email addresses.
They con the account owner to giving them the password. I usually trace these to China following the
full headers of the emails. I have gotten no results complaining about
this to Yahoo, even when providing them all the headers. They say I need
to complain to the originating source of the emails.
The other way is similar, except they tell you that you need to log in using a
link provided in the email. They are very creative at getting
people believe them and give away their email accounts. Once they get the
password, they change it and lock the person out of the accounts. Then
they spam the other accounts and try to get recipients to provide enough
information for ID fraud or to send them money.
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~ NOW
HEAR THIS! ~
NEWS
& INFO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Book Review: Refighting the Pacific War
- Featured Link
- Editor’s Notes
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BOOK REVIEW: REFIGHTING
THE PACIFIC WAR
Subtitle: “An Alternative History of World War II”
by James Bresnahan (editor),
USNI Press, 2011
First,
full disclosure: I provided some of the content for this book, so the following
review excludes the portions credited to me.
Others may critique my contributions if they wish.
That
said, this is a very interesting book, a significant departure from the usual
naval history publication. Instead of
researching and writing on a topic, author-editor (and Roundtable member) Jim
Bresnahan has assembled a panel of historians and veterans who contributed
their responses to a number of key questions about WW2 in the Pacific; each
question being of the “what if” category.
Example: what if the USS Hornet’s entire air group, not just
VT-8, had attacked the Japanese carriers at Midway as the battle began?
Since
“what if” speculation about the war isn’t a universally popular exercise, it
should be said that this book really isn’t “alternative history” fiction,
despite its subtitle. Rather, each
issue is approached with a view toward examining the significance of what
really did happen vs. what did not happen but easily could
have. The result is historical
analysis, not historical fiction, which leads the reader to a new awareness of
how the Pacific War was shaped in large measure by seemingly minor but ultimately
important occurrences that reasonably could have turned out differently.
The
questions posed range from matters concerning the Washington Naval Arms treaty
in 1922 to the administration of postwar Japan in the late 1940s, and
everything in between. The panel
explores what-ifs at almost every major clash in the Pacific as well as
several important political issues directly related to the war. Roundtable members participating on the
panel include authors John Lundstrom, Jon Parshall, Anthony Tully, Barrett
Tillman, Robert Mrazek, and Stephan Regan, and Midway vets Alvin Kernan, John
Gardner, Dusty Kleiss, Lew Hopkins, and Robert Swan. The panel includes additional familiar authors and historians,
such as Donald Goldstein, Peter Smith, and H. P. Wilmott, among others. The effect is like a gathering together all
of those eminent contributors at a forum in which they mutually explore most of
the Pacific War’s key issues.
While
the give-and-take among the panel members is very illuminating, readers need to
get past some confusion factors upon starting the book. First, the subtitle: this book is by no
means an “alternative history of World War II.” That was the publisher’s choice, not Bresnahan’s, and its quite
wrong. Alternative history is
fictitious history, and this book is not fiction. Those who might dismiss it upon first glance due to its title
should give it a second look.
Next,
there’s the matter of the panel: who and where are they? The panel is the core of the entire book,
but the publisher has oddly elected to introduce them at the very end,
sandwiched almost like an afterthought between the bibliography and the
index. Upon starting Chapter One,
you’ll encounter writings by panelists you know nothing about unless you look
them up one at a time in the back of the book.
Knowing the panelists is essential to the reader; they should have been
introduced at the outset.
Finally
there’s the foreword, by Japanese MSDF Vice Admiral Yoji Koda. The problem is that the publisher has
inexplicably labeled Admiral Koda’s foreword the “Introduction,” not the
foreword. I started reading what I
assumed to be the author’s introduction to his book, but it soon became
apparent that it couldn’t possibly be Bresnahan’s words. Puzzled, I skipped to the last page,
discovered Admiral Koda’s signature, and only then realized that I wasn’t
reading an introduction by the author, as one would expect in just about any
book.
But
none of those glitches are Bresnahan’s fault, and they are peripheral to the
heart of his work—the insightful exchange among the panelists. Once you get past the publisher’s gaffs, Refighting
the Pacific War is thoroughly interesting.
Anyone with a focus on the war in the Pacific should find it appealing,
but in particular, our members who have participated on the Roundtable over the
years should find reading the book to be a familiar experience. —RR
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FEATURED LINK
Here are 24 of the best on-line BOM photos yet
discovered. While most of them are well
known, they have much higher resolution than what you normally find.
The 24 BOM images are followed by 21 from the Alaska
campaign.
Click
here for the featured link.
Since there’s no guarantee that the host web site will keep
these exceptional BOM photos on-line indefinitely, I’ve copied and saved them
on our site. You’ll find them at link
#15 on our Image Board.
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EDITOR’S NOTES
~ Scott Kair is working
with the governor’s office in Illinois for a 70th anniversary BOM commemoration that will
highlight Illinois veterans who were KIA in the battle. The hard part is identifying the home state
of those who were lost. Does anyone
know of a resource, or have other suggestions?
You can reply to Scott at the e-mail address shown in your “new issue”
announcement.
~ The U.S. Postal Service
has a new commemorative stamp on sale that honors the memory of John Ford. Click
here for an article with the announcement.