The17thImmortal
Seeker of Sanity
I don't get the "7th" reference, personally, however the fact that it was on a Sunday just makes me facepalm and/or headdesk. It's stuff like this, is why I explicitly refuse to have anything to do with religion.
Changing Destiny (Kancolle)
- Thread starter Skywalker_T-65
- Start date
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be fair, a strike on Pearl Harbor was pretty brazen; naval officers tend to be rather conservative in terms of taking risks, and there were any number of ways the Pearl Harbor strike could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. We knew that the Japanese would strike somewhere soon, but we expected the bulk of their forces to be against naval forces that posed a greater threat to Japanese operations in the far east, like the Philippines or Singapore. The thought that Japan would take a massive naval force on a long, risky strike against Pearl Harbor was largely inconceivable. We knew Pearl was vulnerable, but they didn't think Japan would actually be audacious enough to try and capitalize on it.
Edit:
The fact that it was a Sunday definitely helped get many Americans fired up for the war, however. Though I'm sure it was far from the minds of most sailors that day, the image of heathen Japanese machine-gunning church-going American sailors is one that stuck in the mind of many on the home front throughout the war.
Edit:
The fact that it was a Sunday definitely helped get many Americans fired up for the war, however. Though I'm sure it was far from the minds of most sailors that day, the image of heathen Japanese machine-gunning church-going American sailors is one that stuck in the mind of many on the home front throughout the war.
Last edited:
Skywalker_T-65
Writer with too many ideas.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- Plural/They/He/Her
Sunday, December 7th, 1941.
Sunday, February 7th, 1932.
It's more the whole 'hey, a Sunday and the Seventh?' thing.
Exterminatus
Tsukumogami User
- Location
- Southern California
A lot of abnormal and unusual things also occurred during exercises that were also probably impractical during the 40s:
Although I guess Japan had a seaplane bombing attack in mind with their larger submarines IIRC? Still hindsight is 20/20 and just because something happened in war that actually happened in a peacetime exercise does not mean that it is practical to carry out at the present time.
Article: In 1931, Hart became Superintendent of the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, a job which he quite liked and in which he became acquainted with Major-General Douglas MacArthur, then Army Chief-of-Staff. His first sea duty as a Rear-Admiral was as Commander, Cruiser Division 6, flag on Louisville, in mid-1934. He had been offered a battleship division, but preferred the possibilities of independent operations inherent in a cruiser command. He showed his talents: in Fleet Problem XVI, he probably executed the only air strike ever launched from cruisers when twelve of his floatplanes were sent to "bomb" the U.S. facilities and seaplane bases on Midway.
Although I guess Japan had a seaplane bombing attack in mind with their larger submarines IIRC? Still hindsight is 20/20 and just because something happened in war that actually happened in a peacetime exercise does not mean that it is practical to carry out at the present time.
- Location
- State of Denial
Yeah, a strike on the Panama Canal to slow Atlantic -> Pacific ship transfers was the original intention for the I-400s
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Having a regular rest day is generally a good idea. I don't think hating on religion is relevant at all. Secular societies also kinda need holidays or at least a calendar structure that supports breaks and vacation time.
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
Probably followed by using them as long range stealth recon, which for the distances of the Pacific would have been an excellent idea, just get close, but not too close, to an enemy port launch your seaplanes and get a fairly accurate strategic picture of the enemy, one that even the loss of all planes would be worth it, especially during the first months of the war when the japanese could have acted on the information.
A shame for them that the I-400 came too late to be of relevance.
I'll just note that what was even more important than hitting Pearl on a Sunday (which apparently did not actually enter into the minds of the planners in Japan--they weren't thinking about the International Date Line and were thinking of it as a Monday) was the time of the attack.
The first planes arrived over Pearl Harbor and started their attack runs at 6:55 AM local. Late enough that there was good visibility following sunrise... but five minutes before the traditional start of the day for the US Navy when in port. Indeed, the attack interrupted the daily flag-raising ceremonies on the ships in port, and caught a large percentage of their crews still in their bunks because reveille hadn't sounded yet.
So you hit ships that are not at all prepared for combat--indeed, the California was completely opened up, all manholes and hatches, so that her captain could do an inspection of the ship that morning, in preparation for her regular INSURV inspection a couple weeks down the road--at a time of day when the bulk of their crews are still asleep, and the people on firewatch duty are exhausted and ready to turn in. Result: essentially zero effective defensive measures being taken in the critical first few minutes.
This also helped cause the confusion that had people convinced, initially, that this was a surprise mock air raid by the Army which, through a "typical Army foul-up," was mistakenly armed with live weapons. Nobody believed that you could launch a carrier raid early enough to hit its target that early, due to the dangers of night carrier operations at the time.
The first planes arrived over Pearl Harbor and started their attack runs at 6:55 AM local. Late enough that there was good visibility following sunrise... but five minutes before the traditional start of the day for the US Navy when in port. Indeed, the attack interrupted the daily flag-raising ceremonies on the ships in port, and caught a large percentage of their crews still in their bunks because reveille hadn't sounded yet.
So you hit ships that are not at all prepared for combat--indeed, the California was completely opened up, all manholes and hatches, so that her captain could do an inspection of the ship that morning, in preparation for her regular INSURV inspection a couple weeks down the road--at a time of day when the bulk of their crews are still asleep, and the people on firewatch duty are exhausted and ready to turn in. Result: essentially zero effective defensive measures being taken in the critical first few minutes.
This also helped cause the confusion that had people convinced, initially, that this was a surprise mock air raid by the Army which, through a "typical Army foul-up," was mistakenly armed with live weapons. Nobody believed that you could launch a carrier raid early enough to hit its target that early, due to the dangers of night carrier operations at the time.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
to do but damn
walked through her crew
was talking with her XO.
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
Good thing admirals got almost unlimited access to really good whisky.Sweet scene with Utah. Now, the issues of explaining shipgirls commence
They are going to need it, especially if they want to get anything from Thompson.
- Location
- State of Denial
And while they're all drunk he can drop the fact he's a time-traveler
Exterminatus
Tsukumogami User
- Location
- Southern California
... Can't believe I forgot that HMS Eagle is also the same Eagle that was ex-HMS Canada's sister ship who was converted into an aircraft carrier on the slipway.
How is Almirante Latorre doing these days?
How is Almirante Latorre doing these days?
The17thImmortal
Seeker of Sanity
Not against religion directly, but rather having to do with how ubiquitous it is in the Americas, and the cultural blind spot(s) that are a direct result of that very fact. Sunday being the "day of rest" and church-going that it is, means very few people are as attentive as they would have otherwise been, literally on any other day of the week.
'41 at least had the excuse of it still being effectively 0-dark-59 when the attack came. But what's their excuse for Lex and Sara getting in completely unnoticed?
Last edited:
Appletank
Acquire Cheese
From what I've read, they can tell someone is talking, but not what is being said. So, still near completely encrypted radio unless the enemy has their own shipgirl listening in.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Yeah, but this is all prior to people beginning to figure out ship spirits are a thing. Thompson was able to communicate with other shipgirls via the same radio transmissions, as was Halsey once he found out about it (notice that he spoke with Saratoga?). So it seems that once someone is able to perceive the direct existence of the shipgirls, they are also able to perceive what they are saying over radio.
Last edited:
Appletank
Acquire Cheese
Radio speakers, or shipgirl radio speakers? I'm not sure if there was an actual radio set in that scene.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
It was still apparently being done via wireless though.
On a unrelated note, I do hope Nimitz shows at some point. I really like the man. The best American theatre-level commander in the whole war, in my opinion.
Last edited:
Genolution
Hello there
- Location
- [DATA EXPUNGED]
But he was put in because his predeccesor as CINCPAC screwed the pooch wrt to Pearl, didn't he? The butterflies, they soar up up up in the clear blue skies.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Alas, they do. But I recall that his star was ascendant even before Pearl so he's liable to wind-up in some major position in the Pacific War...
An example of the Japanese fascination with the Canal. The Yamato class was designed to beat qualitatively any design that was restricted in beam to the Canal as well.
That the US could built larger ships intended for and stationed in the Pacific, or built bigger locks, or simply accept that it's largest ships could not pass the Canal (as they later did with the Midway class and later supercarriers) simply seems to have been ignored in their calculations.
Instead, thy used the Canal as the yardstick and developed sub classes specifically for attacking the Canal. They did the latter at a point where any use of blocking the canal to force the US into an early decisive battle with only half their fleet was long gone as they were in a war of attrition with most of the US fleet already. Very odd, but then the IJN was not always rational in its planning or designs.
Last edited:
- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
Yes and no.
On one hand, it's very very easy to do an experiment that shows that something is going on. It could be spirits, it could be sorcery, it could be psionics - who knows, but if the ones who can see the ship girls and the ship girls cooperate, they can make it exceedingly obvious that *something* weird is happening.
On the other hand, it's not obvious that what is happening is shipgirls. It could be.... Infernal contracts that only work on ships? Mass hallicunations that affect the physical world? The Star Spawn reaching into our reality to try to compromise our fleets? - Mind you, whoever comes up with that hypothesis then has to defend the assumption that there are alien empires out there with supernatural powers who are about to invade while also insisting that personifications are laughable and could not possibly happen. Occam's razor could be considered... lethal against this kind of stuff. Not to mention that they would be backstabbed and thrown into the loony bin by the others arguing against shipgirls on the grounds that THOSE MANIFESTATIONS ARE NOT REAL. Nevermind proof, we're getting that removed later today.
What the shipgirls probably should have been working on is 'control of the physical world'. Even if all that amounts to is 'moving pens around', that means: Radio sets, morse tapping on walls, turning on and off lights, turning on alarms - and later on, things like 'taking notes on paper for the captain', flipping circuit breakers, controlling the electrical motors turning turrets, fine tuning radars...
An interesting question is the following: The ship girls can speak with each others via the radio rooms. Does that mean it's easier for the shipgirls to control electrical signals directly, and radio speech ship to ship is a result of that, or is 'ship to ship speech' a specific power that can not be trained nor expanded upon?
Last edited:
Appletank
Acquire Cheese
Skywalker_T-65
Writer with too many ideas.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- Plural/They/He/Her
Well, if one wants to control electricity, go to Lady Lex.
Quoteth the Wiki said:
