[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to episode 442 of the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast my name is Seth peran historian and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum and with me as always is my esteemed co-host retired Navy Captain Bill toy former Skipper of the fast attack submarine USS Indianapolis commodor submarines B 3 in PE Harbor and many others how are you this Friday at 1541 bill it’s 16 41 where I am Seth on the east coast and I want to I’m doing fine and I want to push my

friend Michelle Assad’s new book getting off the ex Michelle and her husband were both CIA agents CIA agents and this book is about making sure that you’re not at the place where the bomb blows up and it’s it’s a fascinating story um they were respon they they worked in Iraq for a long time and if you want to read a good book this is the one to get about nothing to do with World War II Seth but modern-day anti-terrorist operations it’s one of the best sounds cool to me sounds cool to me uh with us as usual is

our good buddy John parall historian John parshall how are you this fine Friday afternoon John I’m well you don’t sound well John it’s gonna be fine it’s all GNA be fine it’s gonna get better it’s all gravy baby that’s right and with us he’s been with us for the last several q&as and he’s with us again today and he’s going to be with us again next season which is by the way just so everybody knows this is the last episode of Season 4 and we’ll get to more on that later but uh my good friend my oldest friend in the world retired United States Army

Cavalry officer retired major Sean burkstrom how are you today my brother I’m good to go it’s beautiful day here in the Panhandle Florida it’s a beach day as we would uh call it but where would you rather be than on a beach than then maybe with my boys doing some unauthorized history podcasts there you go there you go there you go so so as I was saying this is the last episode of Season 4 this is episode 442 we haven’t done 442 but that’s just what we’re saying um this is the next few weeks that are coming up we got a

couple placeholder episodes as Bill and I start to prepare for the next season season five and the first episode of season 5 will be in several several weeks we’re doing this now so Sean this is the Q&A the final Q&A of this season you got the hel baby all you Commodore do I have the con you have the con so in the future as always I always say two three sentences get to the point tell me who you are and what I’d also like is telling me where you’re where you’re writing from we’d like to know where the audience is you know so if if you’re in

Siberia you know say hey I’m in Siberia so that’s always a neat little aspect to it so hey before before wait before you get started before you get started because this is a Pacific War history show I need to point out that both John and I are drinking my ties so the last episode we drank or Q&A episode we drank the sink packs these are my ties yes I don’t know about your recipe John but mine’s the original 1944 recipe so I’m going Full Throttle World War II era you do you make your own or syrup as I I usually do but I did

not this time okay okay well then I have the moral High Ground because mine is homemade Ora syrup yeah but what kind of rum did you use though rum plural four different rums in this I’ll have you know um so calls for two that’s fine whatever I’ve got three different kinds of Plantation and then a little lemon heart 151 mixed in as well yeah I got I got two shots of Martinique and two shots of Myers and the Orit and then of course of course lime juice and um uh orange kirasa so yeah that sounds very similar to what what we’re doing here so

a goodie t a goodie all right so first question first question is what is your favorite rum um I like the plantation 20th anniversary for sipping my wife is also very fond of El Dorado 12y year I make old-fashioneds that are half bourbon half Eldorado 12 year and they’re quite yummy Seth I uh there there is a sort of halfway Cuban room called mat salum and it’s a dark very very very sugary room I’m not a really sugary drink kind of a guy because it just I call it headache juice it just yeah instant instant that’s why I don’t drink Margaritas but

um it is a good sipper it is a really good sipper it’s super super smooth and I mean it’s like you’re drinking freaking cane syrup it’s it’s not too not too funky no no not at all not at all it doesn’t have a stank to it it’s uh it’s pretty tasty if you find it anyway all right when I was in the Navy my Royal Navy friends used to push Royal old Pussers on me stuff is yeah pretty strong I can’t deal with it got but but yes I developed a taste I’m not saying this some people say I developed the taste for it meant they were

overindulging I was not um but there’s this uh rum from Barbados that I have downstairs it’s like sipping rum it’s really good you refrigerated kind of like uh you know good good V but yeah I can’t remember the name of it it’s just it’s uh it’s the old Granddad of rums there we go all right let’s do this thing I need a question I’m getting I mean I like Z well just that’s me but slow your roll John I’m in I’m in Comm I’m in charge sorry man let’s go have the con yeah all right Dave from Brian T Texas asks gentlemen one of the

things Admiral King has been criticized for is not allocating enough escort ships to protect ship in the Atlantic after the US joined the war and well into 1942 how would it have affected us efforts in the Pacific especially the guad canal campaign if Admiral King had sent more DDS and Diaz to the Atlantic love your show hope they get to see at least some of you at the Nimitz museums Daniel Symposium in 2025 I have an answer for that but go ahead John yeah I’ve wanted to talk about palc and schlog you in fact Seth

will will confirm that I’ve sent him texts off I’m like pal schlog let’s talk about pen schlog um I don’t think King was in any position to send any more escorts to the Pacific he was had a hair on fire emergency on the Atlantic and was desperate for as many escorts as he could get there um my biggest beef around the whole portrayal of pal and schlog which tends to be very anti- King obviously because you know it’s kind of a kind of a tanker hole AC cost on the East Coast but a lot of that criticism tends to come from British authors and

people like uh Michael Ganon who wrote operation drum beat which I thought was just amazing sensationalist garbage I thought it’s a good that one or torpedo Junction I’m thinking of torpedo Junction that’s an amazing okay the the bottom line is that King had a lot of things that he had to get done in the first half of 1942 he had a lot of balls in the air and one of the most important of those was to escort troop transports that were going over to Britain because the British were screaming bloody murder we need your

troops in the UK as rapidly as possible because we are shipping troops out to the mid East and the Far East because the you know the Barn’s on fire and what ends up happening then is that we’re sending these troop convoys over they are very heavily escorted because King makes a deliberate decision that you know I can accept a slow dribble of drowned Merchant Mariners but I absolutely cannot accept uh a drowned Regiment of American boys on board one of these transports and therefore those convoys are going to

be guarded within an inch of their life and you know in many cases we’re sending our old battleships along with them to make sure that people like ganau and Shor don’t show up so that’s one thing that’s going on the other thing that’s happening here is that the British are also creating a number of obligations for us um in the form of you know we need North Carolina and the WASP up in scopa flow because the tpet is big and scary and our kgv class don’t really match up well against can you guys come you know mine the shop while we’re off

doing things like capturing Madagascar and May and you know stuff like that um and so I think a lot of that gets lost to observers that this is this is a coalition war that we have partners that are trying to pick up the slack for our other partners that’s how you play a coalition war and I think it is very ungenerous of a lot of the British observers out there not to give King his due that he’s doing crazy things like running the WASP into the Mediterranean to you know dump off Spitfires in Malta and crap like that you guys are creating

a lot of commitments for our ships our big ships all of which require escorts and if I didn’t have those commitments gee maybe those destroyers might have been in a better position to actually um escort some of our convoys I willing King for not implementing convoying on a limited basis for tankers perhaps a month or so earlier than he did but part of that is also due to the fact that we really didn’t have a good understanding for what palen schlag was at the beginning it could have just been a PR stunt by Donuts you know I’m going to

send a couple of boats over just to you know shoot things up and you know raise holy hell we didn’t really understand until almost March that my God this is a sustained effort on the part of the Cs marine and they’ve really have figured out how to get boats over here to do things on a sustained basis and so I give King a b B+ maybe uh for his handling of that whole episode it was ugly but you know we accepted the losses and we moved on and I just I I really think that he did just about as well as he could have done Seth I agree with

that 100 perc and Bill and I’ve actually talked about this multiple times is that King gets crucified because a bunch of tankers and cargo ships and whatnot get sunk during the happy time you or the second happy time but regardless regardless of this he also could only do what he could with what he had too you know excuse me and he’s trying to fight a two ocean war which oh by the way our main Battle Force with the exception obviously the aircraft carriers has been destroyed in the Pacific so we don’t have a whole

hell of a lot to fight with and as you said he’s got a lot of balls in the air so he’s trying to juggle what he can with what he has which is not as much as people assume that we had at the time and the fact that as you said perfectly well Washington goes the freaking Washington the nautical assassin goes and runs North Atlantic service along with wasp along with later on South Dakota and the brand spanking new Alabama before they ever go to I mean the South Dakota goes to Pacific comes back but Alabama goes out to the

Atlantic before she ever goes to the Pacific to do this very thing when we needed those ships in the Pacific is all you need to know right there because I mean you’re sending Capital ships to do work in the Atlantic when they were frankly especially for the American war effort were far need were needed far more in the Pacific at the time yeah I I will absolutely grant that the British and I talk about this extensively in my 1942 book so that you know thank you for giving me this question because was like yeah I just love to blather about this

um the British had already gone through the first halfy happy time and their exports have been cut down dramatic Al um the Larder was not very full in the UK at this point in time the you know there there things like fuel stocks and food stocks had been drawn down pretty drastically so there wasn’t a lot of buffer to play here and you know the fact then that the second Happy Time takes off and as Roger W who is the commander of the British submarine tracking room puts it you know the problem is Admiral a lot of these ships

that are going down aren’t yours they’re out hours so from the British perspective palen schlog was an absolute air onfire emergency and they were pressing every panic button they could because they they could not afford to watch their Imports dive again so I get it but I I just feel that ex post facto there has not been a very balanced or nuanced treatment of of just all of the various commitments that our Navy and their Navy had to meet it wasn’t just submarines going on here there’s a lot of other stuff happening too I I think

something else too that that people fail to understand is that you know when when the United States goes to war yes we had been preparing for war for several years I mean that’s the God’s honest truth to a degree but you can’t it’s not you don’t just go back there and flip that light switch and then right crane Sailors come out and new destroyers roll off the yard and everything’s filled with ammunition all this fuel’s ready to roll it doesn’t work like that yeah things take time yes and to that end one of the things you’ll note in the two

ocean Navy bill is that a lot of that Capital was allocated for the building of large hulls carriers battleships Cruisers King went to the Navy Board and said we need to be laying down Destroyer escorts and he was he was turned away on that he did not get his wish in that regard and some of that makes sense in that if I’m going to plunk down a bunch of money now I want to put it into Halls that are as long lead term as possible I can build Destroyer escorts a lot more quickly than I can an S6 class carrier but what that means is that in 1942 it’s

just we’re in scramble mode and yeah FDR has got this notion that we’re going to build a bunch of these little 168 foot long um Chasers and that’s going to be the Magic Bullet that’s going to get rid of all the the the Boogie Subs not in North Atlantic baby not in North Atlantic it’s not um that’s just way too small a hall I mean the the a destroyer is actually a kind of a bad platform for anti submarine warfare because it’s a it’s a bigger ship it is optimized for Speed rather than seae keeping it’s a fuel hog really the best kind of design

really is what the British would call a Sloop and we would call a Destroyer Escort it’s something a touch smaller about a 300 foot Hull little bit beier that’s a better seab booat it’s light less heavily armed as well um you don’t need five five inch guns to go after a surface ubot you know a pair of three or five inches will do you just fine anyway yeah we just don’t have the right mix of ships in 1942 and it’s really not going to be until the end of 1943 that those HS are going to start coming off and some of that’s honestly FDR’s fault not

Kings anyway you guys talking about ASW like experts I am really impressed guys thank you I got nothing to add except I I do want to say that the loss of the merchant Mariners was horrific oh for sure and for a long time in this war maybe throughout the entire War you would know we lost more Merchant Mariners than we did Navy sailors yes thank and thank you for pointing that out if you look at the the percentage casualties The Merchant Marine has one of the highest percentage casualties of any of the American Service branches I

mean you know when you start getting into the you know the submarine force and eth Air Force you know their casualties are pretty damn serious higher but the Merchant Marine were no slouch uh yeah they really they suffered so y That’s a good shout out go ahead Seth I was gonna say before anybody comments on what John started to say when he sent me text about palen schlog dud everybody do the etto do the etto so just we’ve talked about it we’re not doing the etto we’re not we’re not doing the Battle of Bulge although I can talk

about the Bulge for days SW isn’t really etto it’s it’s it’s Easter hold on man hold piling on to your battle of the Atlantic we will eventually do the battle of the Atlantic yeah we are but it ain’t coming anytime soon so don’t hold your breath on that right now all right go Sean go all right John sold on it’s John’s fault I I appreciate the plug just I got to put a plug uh Russell rol berst from my grandfather was a Merchant Marine during out there during torpedo Junction and and I Seth I never told you this story

but he dropped off uh soldiers at gual Canal so pretty cool pretty cool so just gotta put a plug all right jent um hello I know there’s been a lot of talk about the issues of the MK1 torpedo but I still have a question was the magnetic trigger ever fix what I say 14 mark one Mar 14 we’re on the same page go ahead was the M was the magnetic trigger ever fixed making the torpedo a keel breaker or was they just using the impact triggers throughout the war thanks it was the ladder um in order to fix it they really did need a map know more

about the actual variance in the magnetic force of the Earth in various parts of the world because what what was happening is the magnetic field of the Earth was saturating the magnetic influence Exploder in some places and and that was just a very Nation science in those days and so the the cosos were just instructed to to not use the magnetic Exploder I didn’t know that there you go always learning always learning I assume that the Mark 48 adcap has got a little bit better uh ability in that regard yes and we we flew we

flew satellites in the early 70s to map the magnetic field of the Earth with great Precision cuz we needed that for our icbms and submarine launched ballistic missiles because the magnetic influences it varies the gravitational force and all these things as they vary they vary they they affect the trajectory of long range missiles so yeah we we need to know it for a whole bunch of reasons got it okay always learning my question is about the Rabbid advance of US forces in the final 18 months of the war is the quick Advance

better understood as a collapse of the Japanese military or due to the high tempo of US forces that kept the Japanese on their back foot thanks for all you guys do Matt yes say that question yeah no no he’s right though he’s right you got two feet on the gas you got two gas it’s interesting you know you look at the end of 1943 and I talk about this in one of the presentations that I do for the the World War II museum trips I mean if you look at the actual advance in 1943 up the Solomons and up the the coast of New

Guinea it’s like you know 260 miles or something like that up to Solomon or I don’t know I can’t remember the exact number but there were people there were Wags that were pointing out you know that at this rate we’re not going to be in Tokyo before 1961 but what’s going on sort of behind the scenes in 1943 I think is this there’s a shift in what the Russians would call the correlation of forces and that there’s a lot of you know just stuff that’s kind of out of sight that nobody even really thinks about but the maturation of

American Logistics the creation of the service squadrons that are going to be able to do underway replenishment and that sort of thing and also the the service quadrant that are going to be able to set up bases in places like you you know Majuro and ulthi and those those sorts of things um the maturation of American pilot training programs the Fielding of new second generation fighters in the form of the Hellcat and the Corsair so it’s it’s this sort of multivariate thing that just all comes together in this really nice package for

us in the beginning of 1944 simultaneously I feel like the Japanese have been just straining just to kind of keep these two campaigns going in new guine and and the Solomons they’re at the edge of their resources and at the beginning of 1944 a lot of the wheels start coming off um and the result is this sort of dramatic transformation uh in terms of the just the velocity of American optempo and how quickly we’re able to then penetrate into the Central Pacific that’s my analysis you’re 100% right because if you look if you go back back to the

episodes that we did on galvanic on tar which build would we do four I think we something like that and we made a big to-do about it because yes it’s the kickoff of the Central Pacific Drive which wins the war but it’s as you said it’s the maturation of the American Military machine this goes back to what I just said just a few minutes ago when when Pearl Harbor you know hits we don’t just flip the switch on Boop and carriers come out it doesn’t work like that it took a long time to build those ships so when you see operation galvana go off in

November 1943 and even just a little bit before that you see the Essex you see the Bunker Hill you see Enterprise come back from the yard you got all these Cleveland class Cruisers are popping up like freaking weeds in your yard you’ve got Fletcher class DDS you’ve got all this stuff coming out Indiana Massachusetts Alabama you know South Dakota both of the North Carolina class paid for by the two ocean Navy bill that was passed in July of 1940 you yeah correct all these things are now making their way to the Pacific for the very

first time and you know the SLO through the Solomons and that’s exactly what it was and up through New Guinea and that’s exactly what that was to it was a slog but you can again you can only do what you can with what you have and if you look at at the um the raal carrier raid we we we talked about John I think Bill was recovering from surgery that one that’s right it was you and me and and yeah it was just the two of us and and we sent hly sent two carriers down there he sent Princeton and he sent Sarah down

there yeah because that’s all he had Sarah’s day in the sun yeah that’s it yeah yeah that’s that’s our One and Only Time To Shine but that’s all he had yeah you know he didn’t have any heavy Cruisers to send down because they all got shot up or sunk at gu canal and the ones that were still around were oh by the way up at Northwood nimit so I mean there’s there’s things in 1944 we had enough things to do multiple things at one time yep In late 1943 we simply didn’t we just didn’t and everything that was being

built everything that was was going up north to Nimitz that was going in the Central Pacific Drive which kicks off at Galvan teror so good stuff all right this one uh is from Nicholas D this I do not know I’ve never heard this so you guys I’m gonna put you guys to the test were there ever any conversations or dire entries from higher ranking generals or politicians during the long dark spring of 42 where the us would have been forced or thought about negotiation with the Japanese thanks for the podcast look forward to it every week not not

I’ll throw yeah I’ll throw it to my friends here but not to my knowledge Bill and John the only time surrender is ever talked about and it’s not even surrender is on Gua Canal when they tell Vandergriff hey you might have to go up into the hills you know and and fight when the things are really hitting the fan but that’s the only time and even then it was very very brief and Vandergriff is like ain’t happening and that wasn’t surrender as much as it was gorilla Warfare correct right no I have I haven’t seen anything like that in in

all of the 1942 work that I have done um although I will yeah I I will say that there were a lot of people during that year who were um no one had a clue what the outcome of the war was going to be sure that there were a lot of people saying Eisenhower has this beautiful quote that no one in their hearts and Minds can recall the fears and worries of those days um it was a it was a really black time and so I think that there were a lot of people that were kind of slogging along like I don’t know how this thing

is going to turn out you know it’s a dumpster fire right now there was never any talk of surrender that I have seen but there were certainly a lot of people that were extremely concerned about what the trajectory of the war looked like at the beginning of 42 it was bad that’s an episode in and of itself right there because I mean you could talk about that you say I’d say from January till well the whole year really frankly till till November of 42 it’s it’s a coin flip it really is it’s a coin flip and and nobody knew I mean I think you know

obviously we know but I mean nobody knew you know Vandergriff didn’t know he knew he could hold out but for how long you know is he going to be is he going to be up in the hills you know yeah is nit is the Enterprise going to get hit by a submarine leaving to go get patched up after Santa Cruz you know nobody knows are we going to be without a carrier there’s so much doubt that goes into 42 and then after Gua Canal after frankly after you know the naval battle of Gua Canal the November 15th battle that’s things start to kind of people start to

go maybe well and the same is true on other fronts as well I mean you can definitely find quotes from the Soviets uh that you know we are extremely concerned about what is going on in Stalingrad at this point in time you know we look back at Stalingrad now and it’s like well you know they hit six and fourth ponzer armies with these huge hay makers which seems obvious in hindsight that of course they’re going to win at operation Uranus and brother it ain’t so I mean every time the Russians had tried some sort of a mechanized offensive you

know places like kov had just been disastrous failures you know that had put 400,000 guys in the P camps I mean there’s no Assurance on the part of the Soviets that the military reforms that they had put in place really starting since July of 1941 were in fact going to coales into a package of capabilities that would allow them to go toe-to-toe with the Vermont and I would argue that it’s really not until Christmas Eve 1942 is when second guards armed Army drops the hammer on M’s operation Venture gavit and just you know puts

paid to this whole notion of doing a rescue mission up to paulus and sixth Army in Stalingrad it’s really not until then that you can definitively say that operation Uranus has in fact succeeded and now the Soviets have demonstrated the Red Army has The Moxy to go toe-to-toe offensively with the Vermont just it this as Seth says you know this really doesn’t coales until the very end of 1942 we got John going there man yeah yeah started going on the global yep all right I’m gonna pronounce this wrong John so forgive me is there

any update on whether the IGN Destroyer hunting the USS Nautilus was indeed the IGN is it orash John had mentioned at least once that we were told we got that wrong as that that was a squadron leader and less likely to hunt Subs regards Matt thank you Matt um no I’ve got nothing new for you this was um this is kind of scuttlebutt that came to me from Tony Tully because Tony of course is you know still Deep In The Weeds on all this stuff but you you you’ve heard basically what we got at this point that there’s

this suspicion that since arashi is a a squadron commander that she would not have been tasked with keeping Nautilus head down it would have been another ship in that desron but I don’t know which one okay I’ll ask Tony though that’s a that’s a good thing yeah write that write that down John all right here’s a hypothetical guys let’s mix it up a little bit um we we we know that the Japanese utilize the sword um on a wide scale whether versus military or civilian um but Jay’s question from Cincinnati is of course just out there

which weapon do you feel killed more people as a whole in World War II the samurai sword or the atomic bomb the atomic bomb easy you think so I I well actually my my rifles man or yeah for sure for sure yeah artillery for sure artillery Bill well Bill what were the numbers that we we spit out for the atomic bomb episode you remember that that yes it’s less than 200,000 right I was going to say it’s less than 200,000 145,000 I want to say 150 yeah it depends I mean the cancers are it’s impossible to to determine causality

when it comes to those late cancers but you know I think the worst estimates are just under 200,000 the the the lowest estimates are something like let’s see 60,000 for roima John you correct and something like 80 or 90 for goad no it’s flipped hos hosim around 100,000 Nagasaki is yeah less than that 3540 so you think you think the cold steel killed more people okay so here’s the only thing that I would say you’ve got a war going on in China that ends up killing why that’s why King and all those battles there are

massives amount of Chinese and the fact that at the end of that war there was a prisoner War exchange and this is a this is a conflict that has involved millions of soldiers and the number of PS that were exchanged by the Chinese and the Japanese mutually was measured in the hundreds at least according to Rich Frank and you know I mean you know that hundreds of thousands of combatants were taken prisoners by both sides and guess what they killed them all and a lot of those I would argue probably were beheaded least on the part of the

Japanese so I you can make a credible argument that I I don’t know I’m just I’m just doing I me I’m not I’m not saying it’s not possible I’m not saying it’s not possible yeah for sure I’m not saying it’s not possible I’m just saying I mean I hate to again you hate to speculate on something like this especially something as gruesome as this but I mean again if you’re GNA be killing a bunch of prisoners you’re not going to be chopping too many head I’m not saying they didn’t because we all know they did didn’t shoot them you’re

going to shoot them so so and I mean you know you talk about like the the rape of Manila and all all that stuff which was a horror show and obviously you know there were a couple of I remember James Scott talking about there were a couple of houses one specific and I can’t they called it um I know this house I know EXA I don’t remember the name of the street but they called it the whatever street Death House yeah and there was some jackass on the second floor just lopping heads off all day long all day long like a like a damn human Guillotine

just po so and they were talking you and and I remember of the survivors that said something like there were like a couple hundred bodies down there yes yes they were dropping through a hole in the floor I remember this yeah yeah so I mean yeah who knows I don’t know that’s hard to so guys I’m going to be the poetic tool here and quote Robert Frost some say the world will end in fire some say in ice what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire but if it had to be if I had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate to say that

for Destruction ice is all so great and would suffice what does it matter or atomic bomb I do want to bring it back around and just say artillery is the big killer king of ble the king of battle the king of battle King of the battlefield yeah all right Commodore why do why is it that some submarines such as the Wahoo had had success early in the Pacific War despite the high failure rate of the infamous mark1 14 torpedo where their factors as tactics that mitigated the torpedo problem for these Subs also do we have a reliable estimate

of the failure rates on the torpedo thank you for the time and creating this outstanding podcast shun yes so honestly so we kind of alluded to this maybe we even said it in plain English that the glancing blows uh were more effective as far as the Exploder goes than the well set up shots right so if you try to shoot you’re you’re you’re aiming at The Intercept point and you shoot so that you’re going to hit a 90° angle those exploders uh pins firing pins would shear and the torpedo wouldn’t explode but if you’re in a bit of a Stern Chase

and you’re and the torpedo impacts at more of an acute angle the the firing pins didn’t Shear off and you would get a better Deton you’d get a detonation more often so the failure rate was something like 80% because a lot of these guys were setting up their shots per Doctrine the guys who didn’t set up their shots per Doctrine were generally the more aggressive guys they say screw it I’m shooting anyway and that is exactly the attitude exhibited by one Dudley mush Morton and so yes some of these guys had incredible

um success rates but it wasn’t it was it was be in spite of the fact they weren’t setting up their shots right rather than you know so yes actually yeah almost accidental and so the more aggressive guys then could succeed but they weren’t they weren’t sure why they were succeeding they just knew that the torpedos were blowing up yes Seth you got something I do and I think it’s also and I mean it sounds it sounds very Elementary but but I I it’s think it’s true it’s it’s the luck of the draw in terms of the batch

of fish you get because there’s there’s the episode when Morton goes into um the Sea of Japan for the first time right and he what he sinks I think he sinks one ship yeah because his Torpedoes suck and I mean this is mush Morton so I mean you know the dude ain’t firing from you know 10 miles away you know he’s going up there kissing these guys before he kills them or tries to and he’s got crappy Torpedoes and he’s just got a bad batch and that’s when he comes back to to uh Pearl and he’s like grump explodes

in Uncle Charlie’s office and literally he like starts Tussing and you know going bananas to the point where Charlie Lockwood’s like you might need to go home you might need to go home and of course yeah and then of course you know he acases and let lets mush go out one more time and of course what happens but but it’s he that batch of fish that he had bill you you may remember but I think he only sinks one ship yeah it was one ship think damages one in the ca of Japan again here we go in the Sea of Japan where the Japanese weren’t

expecting you you could set up the shot better and that’s what set him up is you had more time you could be more delicate you could be more uh you know intentional and those were the Torpedoes that failed so I’m going with it okay cool good good answer good answer all right uh Greg’s got a question he had heard on another YouTube channel quote don’t watch any other YouTube channel wrong with no no always learning so Greg’s Greg wants to he’s asking a legitimate question he’s taking it to the he’s seen some JV crap on

YouTube and he’s bringing it to the expert Seth okay there you go all right I like on a YouTube channel called what is going on with shipping Battle of latay golf Logistics and what if 80th anniversary of largest naval bout in history that’s a great Channel by the way that’s s m Marano’s Channel and it’s a great Channel anyway go on okay so maybe it’s not JB but anyway no sounds good that tappy 3 was 50 miles west of where the task force should have been located on October 25th is there any truth to this I haven’t been able to

find anything either way and if I think it’s true or I think it opens a lot of questions thanks Greg I mean without pulling up the map I have no idea no clue I don’t know sorry Bill do you not have any and this is where I’ll put in my plug again s stuff um that channel is great and he’s he’s done a number of fascinating uh presentations just on the first uh fast Oilers in the Pacific I mean that that dude knows his stuff so I’m I’m inclined to say that if if you saw it’s I have I have heard without confirming I have heard that that is

indeed the case that Taffy 3 was relatively out of position how far I don’t have a freaking clue I don’t have any idea I don’t have any idea okay next one my boy GMAC from Australia he had a series of questions last time we did this how do they make the naval guns fire accurately when the ship is constantly rolling roll in when a ship static they roll even more were they just sitting in the water static when giving Coastal to support artillery mortars use Stakes Etc how does Naval gun get registered I believe initially

planes were launched to help walk fire on enemy vessels did they so go ahead and give us science the bottom line is that these analog Fire Control Systems were incredibly sophisticated and they they were always slaved up to a gyroscope that was in the ship that was keeping constant track of how am I healing and you know yawing and doing all that stuff what is the ship’s motion and they are factoring that into uh the solution that’s being generated uh for the turrets and so the the the elevation of the gun barrels and all that stuff in

many cases what would happen would be that the the Fire Control System itself would interrupt the firing of the weapons you know so the weapons officer would pull the trigger and say okay I wanted to fire the guns but the system would wait until the ship rolls the proper angle and then it would know that okay now my barrels are lined up with where my solution says they should be now I fire my guns and things like that so uh the bottom line is that we had thought all of that stuff through and were reasonably able to compensate for

the motion of the ship the other thing you know some of these systems were sophisticated enough that they were taking into account things like humidity the temperature even the corol yep coris effect you know because when you fire these guns the Earth continues spinning underneath you as you as that is happening these systems would compensate for the coris effect you know so we’re talking real four-dimensional chess kind of systems here so so so just think about this everything you just said but like times 10 like really in-depth stuff

that’s what Willis Lee and Harvey Walsh and Jonas Platt Glen Davis and all those guys they’re sitting around smoking cigarettes in in Willis Lee’s C cabin on Washington and the gun club and they’re having these conversations that’s what keeps them up at night yep yeah all of the bades what’s the effect of my Barrel liner wear you know that my I’m the liner on these guns is only good for you know 100 plus rounds or something like that if I’m on round 75 you know what does that do what does that affect how does that affect the the trajectory of

this of this round guys are so deep in the weeds anyway that’s literally that’s go ahead bill yeah some of these rifles they were stabilized as well what we would call today accelerators accelerometers so yeah I mean people think that the computer didn’t come into existence until the 1960s with the IBM main frames and things not true analog computers were still computers folks and they were very sophisticated you know the ones we used for the torpedo data computer in a submarine all these things right those were computers they used an they used

servos and you cranked them instead of to put inputs and things like that and so yeah I mean they were they were kind of stone age computers but they could be very precise yeah and I mean again you know throwing it back to Willis Lee we all we’re all a fan of of Willis Lee but I mean just imagine those conversations for for a mathematical fool like me that makes my makes me sweat your head explode yeah dude seriously and these guys and I I forgot when Edwin Hooper who was like the man they’re all yeah the MIT freaking grade for

crying out loud and they’re talking about this you know like you like we’re sitting here talking about this right now they were doing calculus field on some of these Solutions right you didn’t have to do calculus to fire the gun what we were doing is we were they were taking it’s called numerical analysis right they were generating they were doing the calculations and then sending it off to have engineers build machines that mimic the calculations right and then they would they would have we’ll call them Jesus factors because that’s

probably exactly what they called them they they would tweak the the calculations as they detected error and then change the machine a little bit to match so so that that change their Doctrine a little bit too you know mentally they’d be like okay the machine can’t compensate for this but I know that I’m gonna Notch it down you know 05 degree and that’s or whatever you know to exactly to to that end to that end and I don’t know the exact date but it’s just it’s like a few days before the battleship fight off gu canal and I say

maybe a week maybe 10 days and and John you may remember this and Bill you too that Lloyd must of course is assistant gry officer on USS Atlanta USS yeah and he’s acting as or not he she is acting as the target for USS Washington as 56 is calibrating her main battery and of course this is all Willis Lee saying I want these things to be able to split somebody hair from 10 miles away and then you know Edwin Hooper and plat and all these guys well Platt’s five iners but still they’re all doing their thing and um muston is

watching these rounds drop in Atlanta’s weight just boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and he makes a comment he says something like you know if anybody messes with this Battleship they’re gonna be in for a bad day or along those lines and of course they do yeah exactly and they are all right that was some geeking out I got a good followup up question for Patrick in regards to this we’re g to take another step he says thanks for the great work my question is simply this who thought to tie radar to Fire Control Systems for

Naval guns as you stated Admiral Willis Lee was an earlier adopter but did he come up with it or did somebody else thanks for the great podcast so there were actually there’s a whole team of guys that do this but it’s actually none other than swed momson who’s the main driver of yeah who’s a main driver of a lot of this stuff in 1940 he’s one he’s not the only one obviously but he’s the main Pusher if you will of Naval of Naval of radar directed gun Naval gunfire he’s the guy that’s pushing a lot of this stuff and

is getting a lot of this stuff done yes Lee was one of the early adopters for sure but uh yeah it swed momson was was the the main arbitrator in 1940 and 41 Co Seth I will I will not miss the opportunity to point out that a Submariner came up with the idea for the doitt raid putting army airplanes a Navy aircraft carries and a Submariner came up with the idea of tying radar to Gunnery on Surface ships ah I we’re seeing a commonality here guys um what would that be I think it’s Dolphins bill I think it’s Dolphins Sweden swed momson

is just somebody asked when we were in San Diego Guys somebody asked if there was TPO problem too remember he Sol the torpedo problem and and he developed the VT fuse or part partially developed it if there was a biography that has yet to be written sweet mon get after it good point all right let’s keep it simple Brian B wants to know did the did the comicazi dive bombers or medium bombers did they carry rear Gunners or full Crews when they went on their missions that’s a great question yeah well well the last episode we recorded just

this past Tuesday the poetic tool go poetic tool goes to meet his with a full crew crew no great Point why should I die alone when I could bring two other guys with me to die right no and I think that points to the fact that yeah I think they probably crewed these planes up fully I mean the majority of comicazi were single seat you know the zero honestly is the most I don’t know maybe maybe I’m wrong I don’t know yeah anyway the evidence would tend to suggest that yeah if you’re flying a Val out there you’re gonna put two guys in

it super because I mean like you’re off off ok now laffy and Hugh Hadley and Evans we did episodes those like trainers and that kind of stuff some of them were but a lot of the ones that like ped Hugh Hadley and and laffy were Je judies Jud yeah that’s the vals vals out the wazo lot but anyway that’s there moving on I got a special shout out for the Commodore um this is from Cecil he says he’s an USS Indianapolis family member my father’s cousin and the man man who I am named after is um radio Man Arthur cult Trotter um who was lost in the

sinking special thanks to Captain toon and all he has done so so shout out to the Commodore and his question is in the recent kamakazi related episodes several imperior Japanese Admirals have been mentioned in relation to Japan’s decision process to proceed with organized suicide attacks what was the Imperial Japanese involvement in this was there were they in the decision process the planning execution if any regards again Cecil go ahead John um onishi Admiral onishi takiro is I think comaz yeah father of the com he’s he’s

the dude that you know is in command of uh is it first air fleet that’s on in the Philippines I’m I’m no he’s the overall commander of of the Philippine uh real time history go ahead yeah sorry no it’s all good um and he’s the guy that ends up sauntering into the headquarters of this one air unit uh and ends up you know picking these guys Lieutenant SEI and and so forth to go out and do that for Mission and so it it it seems from the scholarship that there had sort of first it is first air fleet thank you um that there’s kind of an organic

upwelling a number of different people within the Imperial Navy and also the Army too are like you know our goose is cooked after the battle of Phil sea how are we going to make lemonade out of lemons um and are moving towards this notion of sure hit sure death tactics but I think you can say that that onishi is really sort of the the guy that has high enough level rank to kind of promulgate that as an official sort of policy and it’s clear as soon as SEI does his thing and you know wipes out San low um that onishi immediately

doubles down on that and says this stuff works we’re going with it let’s be clear complete here these conversations about special attack tactic special attack yeah they they they were held in front of the emperor so it’s you know he he he absolutely gave Credence to and Def facto approval of these tactic these methods right so so this wasn’t made by some low-level dude the emperor in fact towards the end the the the ep one of the episodes that will have AED by the time this does we will have talked about the fact that

people were discussing in front of the emperor that we don’t even think special tactics will work to to defeat The Invasion right the emperor himself right says yeah I no longer have faith in special attack tactics that really that’s the the straw that breaks the camels back in terms of the the discussions on the the evening of the 10th of August so but yeah the emperor is is perfectly aware of this stuff all right moving on this is for for John John in shattered sword maybe you’ve heard of it you characterize the

Japanese Navy as quote over officered yet the great majority of its Pilots were Petty and warn officers can you explain all this Morgan from Pacific Grove California wants to know that’s a great question um if you look at the evolution of the Japan Air Service uh the Navy’s Air Service I guess I should say they become aware that they’re not g to have in that their Navy just isn’t big enough to put officers in the cockpits of all of their aircraft particularly when you start looking at things like um their landbased um bombers like you know the

the g3m Nell and then later on the Betty I mean these are seveners machines you know are you gonna is it going to have to be an officer at the at the controls of every one of those things it just it doesn’t scale and so they started relatively early uh a whole sort of separate branch of Flight Training that was oriented towards uh kids really who demonstrated some aptitude for this sort of thing and so they would get these these boys into the service some cases age 16 17 and uh start you know bringing them up to the ranks and it turns out

that uh a lot of these non-commissioned officers Petty officers and what not were some of their best triggermen uh there’s an episode I can’t remember exactly where in the Battle of of uh Midway that I talk about it it’s like it’s it’s the 0700 attack where the b26 and vt8 detached come in so that’s 10 American aircraft come in and they just get absolutely shellacked by the Japanese cap you know five of the six tbfs go down two of the four b-26s go down all of those dudes behind the stick uh on the the comet Air

Patrol by and large that they were all petty officers and they were very experienced and fought in China and so yeah the bottom line is that unlike um the Americans who tended to put officers in Pilot positions only there was uh definitely an issue on the part of the Japanese to to be able to have Petty officers as well there you go good explanation John concerning the Battle of serar straight why did the Destroyer torpedo attacks have such a great success than the multiple PT attacks earlier was there difference in

the torpedo use such as range or speed I enjoy the episodes for the information and the relaxed relationship you guys have look forward the new ones all the time Stephen A bill you want to start I’m not relaxed drink water not as relaxed as we are but yes yeah no no I’ll punt so so the PT boats first of all a lot early post-war histories of the battle of surg Strait gave a lot of credit to the PT boats for doing a lot of things and really they they as we know now they did not and the reason for that mainly is the fact that

there’s a small craft it’s an unstable platform number one number two they got to get like as I said you know I got to kiss you before I kill you kind of thing and they got to get super super close and when they’re attacking too they’re being shot at their plywood crap well they’re marine grade plywood whatever the hell mahogany whatever the hell it is wooden boats that are being shot at by you know destroyers and cruisers and battleships and things kind of go Haywire so you got to point your boat to where you want your torpedo to hit as

opposed smaller torpedo yes it is 1.7 in they’re basically using the air dropped torpedo yes they are as opposed to the mark 15 which is the standard or is it the 13 I’m now I’m spacing I think it’s the 15 15 15 thank you Sur ship yeah surface ship much longer range fish but again with a PT you have to point The Vessel at the Target which sounds like it’s oh that’s going to make it more accurate because I’m driving here that means I’m going to hit no it ain’t dude because with a DD you can be going this way and you can still be shooting this

way and and that’s what happens and the Destroyers a first of all they have a hell of a lot more fish than the pts do have better Fire Control too absolutely and it’s a better torpedo yeah it is so the DDS are going to hit and they’re going to hit well not going to hit every time but they’re going to hit a lot more accurately than the pts and the PT Sailors God bless them the hell I mean they were incredibly Brave to ride on those damn things they were but you know and and there were only very few certain circumstances where the PT Boats were

actually very effective in anything in in terms of ship killing in the Pacific the only thing I would add Seth is that you know again the torpedo only works if the if the target doesn’t zigg because you it doesn’t maneuver and so and you can see and like a submarine uh you you can see this thing coming so they’re small so attack at night so you’re hoping they don’t see you but if they do see you and they maneuver you’ve missed and you’ve got to be really close which means counterar is going to be really accurate so was very

very risky and then two a PT does not and cannot fire a spread of torpedoes right as a destroyer T and that is a huge difference build you know this far better than I you fire one two three four as opposed to six you know you’re going to get more hits or however manye yeah whatever going to get more hits all right so here we go Captain toon and Seth and Friends really introd a friend introduced me to your podcast I’m so glad he did I absolutely love it probably too much as listening to it has probably decreased my work proficiency

over the last couple of weeks I just tore through season one I have a quick question regards to episode 112 about the leadup to operation Watchtower in that episode you discussed the command structure for the operation and that Admiral McCain was in charge of landbased Naval Air air assets supporting The Invasion prior to Henderson field becoming operational where did those aircraft come from from what I can tell the US didn’t have any operational airfields anywhere near gu canal in August of 42 I look forward to your response this is

from John H he’s a Academy grad 93 and he says something afterwards about Navy and Army and and all that stuff but I’m not going to repeat that on by the way bill I like your shirt I have that shirt I think I bought that shirt when you bought that shirt you you did indeed we were there together I did so all right so most not all but most of the landbased air support for guala Canal at that time in the very early stages of the campaign it’s coming out of esparito Santo and they’re mostly b7s and PB and uh oh hail’s fire what

else there’s a there’s a there’s a layover John and and Bill when they’re coming outon yes thank you new Calon wait are they yeah y yeah because they’re coming out and there’s a lay over before like the fighters when when John L Smith and his people get up you know and not John elith S Christ ball no we didn’t have anything but they’re but they’re delivering some of those Fighters aren’t they using the Long Island to bring some of those they’re bringing the Marine Corps fighters in there yes yeah Long Island is cat

launching uh mangrum’s people and in his spds and they’re launching John El Smith people in their F refs but there’s another Echelon coming from esparito Santo and I cannot remember for the life of me who the heck they are anyway but they’re coming from esparito Santo New Caledonia yeah and then once they get established on Henderson field it’s not McCain anymore correct there you go right Dave Yeah by by the way before we get off that we want to know in precise detail I want you a metric how much your proficiency has dropped okay by watching

us we need we need that data for our marketing yeah exactly hard data not hand waving I my productivity is Dro no no we want percentages are you 30% less proficient or 20% we need that thank you moving on Dave L says de Seth and Bill and John no mention of Sean and that but keep track my favorite ship from the Pacific War is the USS Enterprise cv6 wow how about that my man my question is about her time testing the F4U Corsair in early 43 specifically how long was the testing period and the thoughts on the incent

Eliminator by pilots like swed veton and the Big E Deb crew okay so how long was it I don’t know I I I don’t know all right moving on to the next but so vza I knew I knew swed very very very very very well and of course he was the first Naval aviator to land an F4U on the deck of cv6 and there’s video footage of that he just blops it right down so that whole theory of the British had to teach us how to land a carrier on F4U on a carrier it’s a bunch of malarkey nobody taught swed vza how to land an F4U on the Enterprise he just

popped it down because he was a badass and and that’s generally the the true I he was he was the hottest stick in the Navy at the time and he was and everybody knew it but how long did it go I don’t know but I remember the man telling me to my face he said as soon as he got in that cockpit and launched from the Enterprise he like this is the baddest fighter in the air yeah and we need these and we need these now amazing oh yeah no Corsair was incredibly awesome but he was an early advocate of getting the F4U to the fleet

as fast as they possibly could he was also a guy and not to get two Sidetrack because I know we’re running slow who advocated that the SBD if given more guns and taken a little weight out could have been a good fighter because he shot down theoretically three aircraft with a dauntless huh so get on him would you guys consider that the best fighter of the Pacific oh yeah horse you bet by far certainly the sexiest fighter of the Pacific yeah I mean how do you want to measure it I mean in terms of raw airframe performance characteristics yeah it’s

it’s it’s better than the Hellcat I mean you have to say but the Hellcat is a better fighter from a mass production standpoint point if you’ve got a whole bunch of incense that you want to bring home I mean yes that the the Corsair is a hotter machine and it’s a little more finicky too um so I think I think the proof is in the pudding and that is that the Hellcat granted it was replaced by the Bearcat but the Corsair keeps rolling all the way through Korea right so okay another follow on another follow on here

just just go with me how would you compare it to the Mustang what the Corsair God gone into this I I look at you know the whole the Mustang is just like this I look at that as like the the frat boy fighter you know everybody loves the oh the Mustang super long range and man for my money I I love the Corsair it’s it’s just damn good and it’s it’s got It’s got better Firepower I would I would argue course my favorite they got 650s they both got 650s no but most a lot of the a lot of the Mustangs get down to four no the other way around yeah the

early Mustangs got four the bees the be model’s got four and the D’s have have 650s is my underlying underlying inclination I I love the p47 and I love planes like the hawk or typhoon I just love big brutal you know 850s kind of Fighters that’s that’s my mojo so was the was the warthog at the day so I’ve got another one and this one’s for I got I got I gotta CH Chim in here all I can say is I’ve driven the Mustang I’ve never driven the Corsair um FL a Mustang no ly he’s dri talking about a Ford a Ford Mustang that’s what

he saying I’m a general mot guy I don’t want to hear it that’s not what you’re talking about Okay Go ahe Okay and by the way I’ve flown in a Mustang I’m just saying and it’s cool I’m not saying it’s a bad plan I’m just like I don’t know okay hey man yeah go go go John now Seth already knows the answer this question and I’m just gonna tell you John before I Seth got this question wrong okay what was the question well just would you bear with me here okay John what World War II plane shot down the most enemy planes

um I’m going me 109 negative that was my answer too by the way I’m just saying my answer too that was set’s answer and it’s the wrong answer what is the right answer the right answer is the [ __ ] Wolf the 190 the 190 yeah you in the right right right area all right here we go Sean Sean Q says push back on that I mean if if you think about destroyed enemy aircraft though you think about the the just The Butchery that happened on the Eastern front at the beginning of Barbarosa a lot of those Russian planes were destroyed on the runway and that

sort of thing and the majority of that was taking place as a result of the the 109 anyway 95% of it was taking that that was my guess too was 109 I’m just saying yeah okay so John it’s okay we still love you we still love you John this is why my dog’s named after grun the raw 109 Ace but go ahead all right Sean Q asks with the exception of commic causes did the Japanese come up with any strategical Innovation during the war that caused us serious difficulties or were most of the difficulties in the end really our own

fault in not being prepared in time for the Pacific War to kick off thanks guys keep up the good work Tuesdays are my favorite for us okay me and the cat go ahead longland torpedo man um you know that obviously caused us significant difficulties in the night fighting in around gule canal and up through the Solomon this is a weapon system that was not understood by the Americans although um I just made a new friend a guy named Justin Pike who is um very very knowledgeable about uh Japanese groundbased Aviation he’s a he’s a he’s

a freak about the nail and the Betty and that sort of thing he just forwarded me a number of pre-war Intel estimates that came from our Naval attaches in Japan that show that we were aware of the type 93 torpedo and at least in so far as being aware that Japanese destroyers were carrying 24 in rather than 21 in Torpedoes so so but did we know the characteristics obviously not that that was the thing um and it’s funny because one of these reports that that uh that Justin forwarded me we had a naval at T that went to the torpedo school near

yooka um um and like 1935 or 36 and he’s asking all sorts of questions hey have you guys experimented at all with larger Torpedoes and they you know the Japanese just lie outright to him but we were aware of what we in the report it’s called trackless Torpedoes which is an indication of pure oxygen driven torps no we didn’t have a a clue about their performance characteristics yeah and that just bites Us in the butt and the Solomons so what about the Bonsai charge is you know that kind of took us by surprise too and I don’t think it was a

matter of lack of preparation I think it was just a matter we call it um failure of imagination I I I don’t know if it took us by surprise because you got to remember there are there are instances of bonsai charges quote air quotes Bonsai charges that occur in the Philippines in 1941-42 so it wasn’t necessarily an unknown tactic I think any surprises like you know the Marines especially at tinaroo River Alligator Creek whatever you want to call it are sitting there going you’re really doing this right are you serious yeah you’re coming at 37s

firing canister and 1917s 0 and 50 cows too and you’re come whatever whatever you want to do keep it coming keep feeding me belts because we’re going to knock this down right now I think it was more of a surprise tactic in that I can’t believe you’re actually doing this an unknown thing because it excuse me again it had happened dang it numerous times in the Philippines in 41 especially late 41 early 42 when when they were pushing our people back to batan and it was you know it was a thing I I would say just in

General the quality the high quality of Japan’s infantry was a bit of a surprise certainly to uh the early War uh combatants you know the British just couldn’t deal with these people at all you know you look at right y M’s offensive in Mala 20 25th Army just crushes the British over and over and over again because they and Burma’s Army is the same thing I think it’s their longevity like these people can can subsist on virtually nothing and get so damn far they’ve made a virtue out of necessity and that they have terrible

Logistics and as a result they travel very very light and they are really really good at fixing attacks from the front while working around your flanks to launch attacks from the rear or and or drop Road Blocks behind you that will discomfit you that just just bedeviled the British over and over again in Malaya and Burma Sean to your point go Sean well I was G I was going to expand on that just that point during the during the inter War well not in war but in the 40s in 40 3940 the Japanese developed the jungle

school out of out in Taiwan and they began understanding how tying yourself mechanized wise to in the jungles was not the way to go they started utilizing mules to be able to infiltrate and get behind lines because at that time roads were everything so the Japanese innovation in Jungle fights to to to to drive your point home John is how they’re able to go all the way through to Singapore and then get into Burma and and they’re out flanking the British and they’re like how are they getting behind us because they’re using mules and and

rapping around them so their jungle was I want I want to push back on that because if you look at the Japanese um field manuals of the time they have very little in the way of official jungle Doctrine I grant you that they had that school on Taiwan but there’s the majority of the doctrine that the Japanese Army has at the time is developed from Manchuria they’re all about how do we fight the the Soviet Army and I would argue too that actually in that early campaign in Malaya in particular the Japanese are not going to

go on to be shining practitioners of armored Warfare but they use their tanks very very well in Malaya Slim River in particular um so they’re they’re good at that too I I think that they they really had a package that just if you look at just the force composition we really tanking here I’m sorry I’m just fascinated by the M I love it but what go ahead John finish was going to say that that the Japanese had really good Intelligence on what they were going to be up against in Malaya and so they had just configured

25th Army perfectly in that they had for the Japanese had highly mechanized that they had tons of trucks they had beefed up its engineering complement so that they were really good at Bridge Building they had pumped in the fourth and seventh tank regiment so that they had armor when they needed that you know and the result is that 25th Army was the most highly mechanized Force I would argue in Japanese Army history and it’s precisely so that they can fight this 600 mile campaign from the craw ismus all the way down to Singapore

and they’ve got all the things in the toolkit they can do the jungle warfare thing but also if they need to change it up tanks right in your face the thing I just was thinking of is as you guys were talking was it’s not necessarily a strategic tactic but had strategic implications was their uh their their tend their willingness to conduct horrible atrocities against civilian populations that that we had to react to right that had and that that had incredible strategic implications because we had adapt our methods uh to

uh the realization that they were going to ma Massacre the population if we didn’t do something about it and that affected timelines that MacArthur used that very effectively his argument for going back in the Philippines when he did right and so it our whole strategic campaign reflected that reality and things like that and I think that’s one of the from my point of view another one of those things like you’re talking about John yeah PR great great question Sean Q you had us going in there down a rabbit hole all right

Sherwood wants to know Naval Admirals wanted land forces to complete missions in as little time as possible so as not to risk Naval personnel and ships Howen Matt Smith was their land attack dog how much of Smith’s actions were the result of culture and pressure from Nimitz and Hy to get the job done quickly as opposed to the Army’s perception of Smith being an enter service is it sh Chalet shavan shav chauvinist to so yeah tulle is a more politically correct term so the the thing with Holland with with Holland

Smith is is this is that he was a jerk bottom line yeah and he was the guy was a jerk he was a jerk bottom line and yes the Army did things differently than the Marine Corps in the Pacific in World War II that has been shown a thousand and one times but the Army’s way was no less effective than the Marine corps’s way of doing things quite quite frankly it cost less lives than the Marine claw way of doing things but Holland what was Holland Smith’s actions or were Holland Smith’s actions a result or his behavior

I guess a result of you know Doctrine or or no I think he was just a jerk yeah he was just a jerk he was just nor was it right nor was it a result of pressure from nimons that would not have been effective on him no absolutely not and it wouldn’t have been it would have been spru but no it it wouldn’t been yeah he thought he knew how the war should be fought and he was fighting it the way he thought it should be fought it was no no more complex than that H Smith was was was a marine yeah no great question but

but hen Smith was a Marine Corps live or die you know right I I bleed red every 24 hours a day and nobody can win this war but the core and God loved the core right but you know he he did not take into effect the way that the Army did things and yeah maybe there should have been a little more communication here and there specifically I’m thinking Sian we’re all think thatan I mean let’s be real but it was also Alan Smith who deployed the 27th infantry Infantry Division in such a way that kind of disabled them in the middle of the

entire fraking Island because he split their forces in such a way where they could not put everything they needed into the middle of the island and oh also by the way he gave them the worst terrain of the entire freaking Island the center of sipan John you’ve been there I’ve been there Bill you’ve been to sipan I you yeah it’s a meat grinder aw it’s a freaking meat grinder it’s like and not not that the Marines territory was was you know a flat parking lot because it was not they didn’t have ridges on either side they weren’t walking down a

tunnel and and I mean the thing is is and I’m and I’ve been critical of Ralph Smith I personally think that he was probably not the best United States Army General that ever put on the uniform I think he lacked a command presence but he certainly wasn’t helped by Holland Smith in any way shape or form so to to answer your question in a very long-winded way no it was just Holland Smith was just a jackass bottom line because Roy Guyer does the same kind of thing and guess what happens everything works fine fine all right jack ask is the answer

for that question um all day Richard M from Buffalo New York wants to know how did wartime censorship and propaganda shape American public’s perception of escalating casualties in 1945 particularly from the battles of Manila iima okanawa and the comicazi attacks and did this betrayal clash with the reality on the ground so oh my goodness gracious that that great question I don’t want to get yeah it’s a fantastic question it’s it’s two episodes at least yeah it is we’ve talked about this the home front and World War II and the American side and

Japan by the way it’s such a there’s so much unpack there but the thing is this is that the United States of America thought that everything was peachy keen 24 hours a day and that war was just the biggest thing that the United States hom front was concerned about was I don’t have enough gas I can’t go buy stake and where the hell is my next ham coming from that’s all they cared about they did not care about people in any other way the only time they did were the big casualty rates and this is why FDR does what he does after teraa he you know he

releases those images of um images hatch Norm hatch I knew Norm Christ I don’t to know that Norm hatch shoots or or his people shoot those photographs of those dead Marines on Tera on basio and um FDR says no we’re going to release this to the public and then when the American public sees this they go oh my God and he’s like yeah people are dying woring about your stupid turkeys people are dying here and and so the American public citizenry on the home front were so so completely out of touch with reality on

both sides of the ocean by the way that anytime any Warrior came home for any length of time they were appalled at the situation on the American homefront and they literally were like get me the hell out of here I want to go back to the goddamn War because this place is so screwed up they don’t know what the heck’s going on anywhere and that’s I don’t want to go down too far but just suffice it to say that the American Home Front was completely out of touch with anything that went on on either side of the east or west coast and it was it was

aing and the reason that high casualty rates were let loose was on purpose by the United States government to say oh hey by the way we’re still in a war here so pit your money in and get your butts to work and let’s figure let’s focus on the main goal here sorry it’s very touchy for me there but anyway I I I got up braided by my mom um who was a little girl during the war and she was like you know we were certainly aware of the fact that we didn’t have enough sugar and enough you know this that and the other thing and yeah she’s right but when you

look at the sacrifices of the American Home Front Visa the sacrifices of the British home front or the Soviet we have nothing to complain about not a damn thing yeah if you if you can’t get new tires this year guess what you’re not getting bombed right you’re not getting bombed that’s that’s sort of the litmus test that that that whole Aura of We’re All in This Together which I have to say my former employee used employer used to pump that all the time that’s a bunch of malarkey that’s completely untrue we were not all in this together it’s not

like England or Scotland or you know fil the blank there not even close man all right I have a question about the use of the fast battleships in 1944 and 1945 I have read up extensively on the activities of the big blue Fleet in 44 and 45 I was told by one source that Admiral Lee was hesitant to form the battleships into a battle line and attack the Japanese Navy it was I also heard that okay first off is that true or false that is 100% true and and I know John and Bill yall want to come in on this too but I I’ll take the lead on

this is that yes he was and why was he hesitant because they had not had the ability or time to train for nighttime or any time any kind of surface operations they as a unit as a as a unit correct he had been chasing the fast carriers for the better part of a year and anytime they go into Port they got AR we’ve talked about this before anytime they go into Port they got AR rest replenish a sailor need to you know go get a smoke break you know and they just did not have the time or the opportunity to train for nighttime Naval

Gunnery and that is partially the United States Navy at 1944 is not built to do that yes we could but that’s not what we were trying to do the C task force 58 wasn’t built to shoot it out we were built to bomb you out and that’s the reason mainly why Willis Lee wasn’t able to train it’s not that he didn’t want to he certainly did and when the time came for him to be able to do that he was 100% right in saying I can’t bring these people out here and expect them to not run into each other or shoot each other in the middle of a nighttime Naval

engagement but for which we have not trained and Bill you’ve said this a million times you can’t do it if you don’t train for it yeah I was just gonna say there’s a big difference between fighting the naval second naval battle of gule canal where it’s basically your battleship which you have trained to within a Razor’s Edge yes and a task force of six or seven or I I forget the number of fast battleships that would have been in there eight thank you you know you’ve got a real chance here with that big a group

you’re gonna have collisions and God knows what else so unit training is incredibly important in this in this context and so yeah if we haven’t been doing that sort of unit training there’s no way I want to get into a KN battle they probably could have done it they probably could have pulled it out of their hat if they had had to but Willis Lee understood that from a the standpoint of prudence I don’t want to have to do that if I don’t if I’m not forced to from the standpoint of experience he goes into the GU canal

with only two freaking battleships of which he’s riding in one and the other one trailing behind him loses Communications because she shoots her own you know her stuff goes hey and her Captain just says I’m out and he doesn’t tell anybody so he doesn’t know what the hell’s going on so his own personal experience is informing him that I’ve only had two and I really didn’t know what was going on I’m not taking eight oh and by the way Washington collides with Indiana at some point in 1944 and sends Washington and

Indiana back to the yard and Indiana’s Co gets relieved because Indiana damn near sank yes people don’t realize that but if you read the U the uh dual and garski a volume on US battleships it’s pretty clear that that Collision was almost disastrous and Indiana almost sank that’s why he gets relieved yeah because he almost sinks his freaking ship because they’re maneuvering at night yeah and he ain’t paying attention so Cas and point right there anyway carry on Sean all right what do you think explains and we’ve we’ve touched

on this before but just hit it from a different angle what do you think explains the Japanese complacency in the aftermath of Cor C heading into Midway such as their unwillingness to send the shaku and the failure to consider American Air Crews were skilled enough to sink the Sho and damage shukaku Zach wants to know great question um the bottom line is that at this point in the war the Japanese have not been given a serious backhand they yeah they look at the sinking of Sho which was a a small unit they’re like okay well

that’s kind of a bummer but the the phrase that was used at the time was that the reason that shokaku and zui Kaku had not won that engagement is because they were by far the more Junior carrier division in CUO tide carrier division five they had only been brought up to speed I forget when the commissioning time of Chicago I think it’s September of 1941 so this is a unit that hasn’t been in action all that long so the joke was that you know if the sons of lesser concubines um which is how they referred to to carrier division

five you know that that that the the the the legitimate wives which are carrier divisions one and two should have no problems whatsoever the bottom line is that they view carrier divisions one and two which are the most experienced carrier divisions in the Japanese Fleet as being perfectly sufficient to Doom any any enemy that they come into contact with and so there really isn’t a lot of mental pressure on the part of the Japanese to try to reconstitute at least an airwing for zui Kaku and get her into the party and it’s just it’s sort of you

know in retrospect it becomes absolutely uh incomprehensible but at the in the mental mindset of the Japanese in mid to late May 1942 we have yet to lose and so given that context if I’ve got my two best carrier divisions coming into this battle we’re g to be fine it’s a team and B team is what it is a team and team that’s a good way of putting it shorthand arrogance arrogance yeah Victory disease and I I don’t want to assign victory disease is the the total cause for what ends up happening at Midway one of the things

that I argue and shattered sort is that you know there’s not any one variable here that Dooms the Japanese it’s a whole bunch of different things that they end up screwing up but certainly there’s um a level of arrogance in this Navy at this point having just run rough shot over the Allied navies for the past six months that they’re extremely complacent about coming into a battle with these two really good carrier divisions I think they’re going to be peachy all right there good job John why did the US Navy which rescued so many

downed Airmen let Crews of so many sunken ships including Juno the late a tin cans and Indie drift for days and often Die For example didn’t anyone notice that the Johnson’s didn’t return and send a few planes to search for it Timothy l wants to know they didn’t because what Bill jump in because we’ve talked about this a million in one fraking times but it’s a running battle you talk you’re talking about the Battle off some more just in and of itself and Bill I let you take Juno because I know I know you’re you’re

you’re up on that one but just off the Samar issue that is a running gun battle that is a running fight things were happening as tasy 3 is pulling out we’re getting attacked by freaking comicazi we didn’t know what the hell that was were we concerned about the people that weren’t there all of a sudden of course we were but we were more concerned about the fact that our ships are getting hit by aircraft that are have people in them for crying out loud and oh by the way the Japanese are still chasing us God dang it so I

mean there’s a lot of things going on so as far as Samar is concerned was it a travesty that people were left floating in the water for days yes but you got to understand in terms of context of the situation there’s a lot of things happening at that one time bill go yeah on Juno was an arrow of omission and an errow of commission on the part of Captain Hoover on the San Francisco they believed the hel Hela I’m sorry Helena they believed that the torpedo was the explosion was so big that it obliterated the ship and that quote nobody could

have survived that so he he was right to scadaddle I mean the submarine was in the area I’m not going to fault him for that so the area of omission is that he failed to uh report that somebody needs to search for survivors cuz we had to depart the area immediately so that’s a failure and then the ER era of commission was once he got into a place where he was safe then to make sure that a search was in progress yes those guys the the Assumption was wrong there there were at least 100 people in the water and the and the by 10 by 10 days later

they were down to 10 and everybody else had you know Fallen victim to the sea or to sharks or whatever there you go all right guys let’s see I would like to discuss the racist nature of the Pacific War the Japanese were cast a suicidal barbarians and many stories appear to validate that but Americans treated the Japanese as different concentration camps right or wrong from the start can you develop the cultural underpinnings or learned aspects of these reciprocal behaviors and how true they are maybe paint a more

nuanced picture this is Ray s I’m I’m going to I’m going to start and then I’m going to throw it to my two friends because I know I know the commodor has a lot to say on regards to war fighting in order to make young men want to kill other young men you have to demonize your enemy and that is something I don’t think a lot of people talk about but it’s it’s necessary you have to demonize your enemy you have to tell people that these are the worst human beings on the face of the planet in whatever way you have to do that you have to do that and

yes this country was a very racist country in the 1930s and 40s and to a degree it still is today but that’s neither here nor there in the 1940s we never believed that the Japanese could do anything better than we could and that oops killed tens of thousands of American Sailors soldiers Marines Airmen whatever because of that racial arrogance however just to be 150% clear the Japanese were just as racist if not more so than the Americans because they put a genocide upon the people of Mainland Asia and all of them I don’t

even want to get into it because that’s a whole another conversation for another time but they were just as racist if not more so than the United States the entire world in the 1940s was a racist world and if you don’t believe that well I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is I don’t even want to talk about Nazi Germany but that’s just the way things were go ahead Bill to some extent it was racism and to some extent it was nationalism because you could argue that Chinese rans just like just like the Japanese are and they were killing

Chinese with abandon right and they were Asians as well and and that but but they would have considered themselves A different race of Asians let’s let’s be precise about this so you want to add Nuance there’s your nuance and yeah we uh you all throughout all of human history we’ve de demonized the enemy Even in our 20 year more recent War what were the enemy they were ragheads right so it’s not like we stopped doing that substantially less yeah the [ __ ] Hajj for short right and so substantially less than it used to be

yeah and did we really believe it or we using it for effect you can argue those things but but in final analysis it doesn’t matter and certainly guys like and I’ve talked about this a million times I’m going to use your expression a million times um Seth that you know that Admiral Holly leveraged racism for sure to inspire folks to the extent that the Japanese didn’t have to exaggerate about what he was saying they could quote him verbatim in their newspaper because he really really saying these things right

right the Japanese are a a race that is derived between the breeding in breeding between Chinese and and apes you know he was really saying these things and you know and he was saying that when we’re done with them the only place of Japanese language will be spoken of spoken is in hell they didn’t have to exaggerate or embellish he was really saying these things and it worked against our own interests so there is a lot of it going on yes in Europe is more nationalism were demonizing the Germans Germans were demonizing at

wor but the SLS and the polls everybody who ain’t German I mean exactly come on let’s be clear but they did cons consider themselves A different race an Aryan race so you know where you draw the line between racism and nationalism is really hard John no I was just gonna I guess the only thing I would add is that um the Japanese did themselves no favors uh with incidents like the batan Death March and other you know the Suk Ching massacres that happened in Singapore after the occupation there having lived in Japan and it’s it’s very

difficult to trot out uh sort of you know hear the Japanese national characteristics but I would say that this is a society that has always defined itself as being a part from other uh races and nationalities that this is a a country that has always said you know we’re unique we’ve never been conquered in our 26 yeah exactly samurai samurai culture the whole thing and so you it’s very easy for the Japanese I think to look at themselves and say well we are homogeneous you know Japanese people we don’t you know we’re not into Outsiders

and therefore it’s easy for them to create this sort of notion of the other and act just bestially to towards that other and it happens to the Chinese it happens to us in the case of batan it happens in Southeast Asia just over and over and over again and so the Japanese uh they’re they’re shooting themselves in the foot in that they’re giving guys like Hy all sorts of ammunition to characterize them as awful people because they did behave absolutely awfully to everybody that they came into contact with throughout

Asia and and and I I just want to comment go go ahead bill you gonna say something no I agree with that I don’t want to make it sound like we’re the only ones doing this stuff they gave us all the ammunition we needed more and more and and I want to comment on on on the H’s comments too is that I don’t necessarily support them however ever I lik in a lot of the things that Hy said especially you know when I’m done with him the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell he of course he said that you know literally on December the 8th

1941 and I liken that to a football coach I’m not saying it’s right or wrong I’m just saying I like a that to a football coach trying to rile up his his team sure and and I think that’s exactly what he was trying to do to a degree I mean I especially when we’re down at halftime and that’s my point is that you know did a lot of things that Hy say Boomerang on us maybe maybe not but but I think he was doing what the average blue jacket wanted to hear yeah and and and in a term in 1941 specifically after Pearl Harbor and in

1942 by the way that’s what they needed to hear and that’s what the American public needed to hear whe right or wrong that’s what they needed the inspiration I just think that’s what I’m saying that’s what I’m saying yeah but but another method if you know could he have chosen better words yes absolutely because 1944 he could have you’re talking about the J you know the people on cpan on suicide Cliff right throwing the babies over the side you just needed to quote Hy and quote it to those mothers and they they think that those

children are not going to survive well we might as well take care of it ourselves right you don’t have to make stuff up that’s kind of my point don’t give them the ammunition they need to want to fight harder right that’s the point fair enough Sean great oh you brother great job guys great job that’s it’s a very touchy subject it’s a very touchy subject because you can go for days on that and I mean there’s multiple examples of racism on both sides and I mean I’m not talking like 10 I’m talking like a thousand on each side

and I’m about the most anti-racist human being you could ever possibly meet for multiple reasons just look at my family but me regardless of that it it’s there’s so much information that can be derived from what is being said by both sides during that war and that that whips the the countries on both sides into such a frenzy that you get the blood bath that you receive and you know I don’t want to say pelop because that’s that’s a different say philppine well yeah sien I I was gonna say Philippines post Philippines Post in where it’s just this

you know ain’t nobody gonna be taken alive kind of a thing and every mother’s son is gonna die here I will say that of the spots that I have visited in the Pacific the the Bonsai cliffs in saan just that’s most moving yeah just I just I I can’t stand going there honestly even though I’m the the historian that’s supposed to take my guests to the spot and every time I go there it just it’s spooky yeah just giv me it is it’s horrible it’s a horrible Place unbelievably horrible anyway again I I gotta say this as a guy who was a

Korean wife right talk about you know the Japanese against the Chinese the Japanese against the Koreans the Japanese against the Filipinos you know wait you know they used it with abandon that’s all I’ll say yeah just to put a bow on this right it’s funny that when we look at different people we we automatically well they’re just different like John you’re different than sethani I because you’re from up North yeah Southern you know like and I’ll look at people from Alabama who are 20 miles away and I be like well you’re just different you know

so now they are I mean let’s be real well let’s be there but if you compound you compound that with people on the other side of the world and I think a flash point for this whole thing is you know nay King and and that’s a flash point of like to to quot back to John like they just think they’re better we’re just gonna kill with Reckless abandon you we’re just better for all the reasons John named and that kind of creates this tension in the Pacific and and we’ll eventually do the road to the Pacific and and you’re going to get a

real good education on why that all happens so this is a this is a good question I’m gonna finish with this one guys I’m gonna last last question and then I’m go for another hour we’re two hours in I got well actually we’re not but I got be dinner in 30 minutes so question see got take somebody’s got to take care of the troops the commodor has got to be taken care of the going all right can you give a general idea of what kinds of Records exist for us to know sometimes down to the minute exactly when attacks occurred and or

what damage occurred where people are assigned Even In the Heat of battle to to contemplate to write down all these details of what is occurring I know some of the written records like the Japanese Carrier Air Group data that John and Tony used brilliantly in shattered sword it is a is it a combination of events recorded during a battle a a after action reports are people’s Memoirs written years later to inform us non-historians can you describe the types of sources used to give such amazing details on the particular event

this is from Ted I wanted to close with this because as somebody who’s written history and and obviously everybody here has let us paint a picture of what goes into precisely putting together historical records oh as far as a ARs and and and deck logs are concerned the captain’s the only man that can answer that accurately so Bill go yeah I mean yes you write down the minute you write down the minute you start you open fire you write down you know there’s there’s Target logs there’s you know Gunnery logs there’s you

there’s logs on when you lit lit off the boilers I mean there’s there’s logs as you’re walking around doing your safety watches there’s logs for everything and if the ship sinks the logs don’t survive but every time you pull in a Shore maybe you ship the logs off right you you ship the logs off there’s there and there’s there’s um War logs as well right from the battle staff though the Admirals staff will have their you know versions of the logs so yeah there’s very detailed records kept as far as where people who’s on watch if they’re you

know the Quarter Master of the watch and things like that that’s all recorded um different watch stations in their logs they’ll record who is on watch so those records survive the war you can go into great detail uh but in a lot of cases like the Indianapolis is final sailing it they didn’t survive John with respect to the Japanese records um particularly for the for the carriers there it’s interesting because the the logs the the deck logs of all four of those carriers at Midway were burned deliberately after the war

the reason that the kotos shows which are the Air Group records survived is because I think they were viewed by the authorities at the time as being unimportant that these were records you know mundane records of you know planes going up planes coming down who’s in the cockpit and in some cases those records were also used for promotional purposes that I’m you know as I go through the kodos I can say you know Petty officers so and so oh yeah he’s flown you know 12 missions you know he should be Advanced a petty officer first class so we’re

fortunate that the Cotto uh the kot chos show survived from Midway um I would also say that unit records just in general uh for ground combat also can be incredibly detailed that you find Battalion records regimental histories you know divisional records as well and all of those can be kind of sewed together they’re very dry in a lot of cases but they will give you you know down to the minute yeah we fired on this position or we took fire from these guys or what have you and so that I I guess what I would say that if

you look at shattered sort as a as a piece of literature the kotos shows and other uh action records unit records sort of form the the the skeleton of the thing but you’ve then got to hang the narrative on top of that and that that is true for other records for ground combat units and that sort of thing as well they give you the dry details but now I’ve got to go out and interview the survivors or see the terrain or what have you to actually put together narrative structure that will paint the picture in your mind of what the hell is

going on in this battle Seth no 100% yeah you start with the after action reports you start with the if in the case of a naval battle you start with the Skippers reports you know the after action reports of what happened on the USS Cushing and that’s more often than not written by the skipper if he survives or the senior surviving officer and and they’re going to tell you to the best of their knowledge what they saw and that gives you the bones that gives you the absolute barebones of what you need to construct when you’re talking

about the naval battle of wild canal and then you take the oral history from the people that survive which I hate to say this but when it comes to Naval vessels in particular a lot of the times the Blue Jackets oral histories are not the most reliable sources thank you they’re not they’re just they’re not you have to understand that these Sailors are seeing this war through a soda straw maybe that’s right maybe if they’re down below decks if they’re in the BS of the ship they’re not seeing squat Jack they’re just they’re just

relaying to you 60 odd years later yes what they were told now if they’re a 1.1 Gunner on the Atlanta well then yeah they probably saw a lot of things go down but if they’re if if they’re stoking the boiler on the Atlanta no they don’t know and so the other thing that you’ll find too with a lot of those I’m sorry to interrupt no no that’s okay no good that a lot of firsthand survivors accounts you have to parse them very very carefully because there are things like the telescoping of time yes um in many cases events get put into the wrong

sequential order and when they put it down when they put it down when when they think they put it down right um so you always have to take into account okay this dude that’s talking to me about what he thinks he saw where was he on that ship really what was his th% what would have been his field of view his physical field of view if I know if this dude is the rear turret you know the the gun captain from Mount number four on a Fletcher class destroyer I know for sure he can’t tell me what the hell is ahead of my ship because he

couldn’t see it physically that’s right so there’s just all of these things that you cannot take these firstperson survivors accounts as valuable as they are you can’t take them verbatim because they don’t have a context you know for what it is that they saw they can only see their soda St off set for for for from someone who’s done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of oral histories the only thing you can take from those personal accounts is what happened to that person right I jumped off the Oklahoma at this time is and then I did

this and I did this and then this happened cool well what happened over here you never ask anybody that because you they don’t know they don’t have a telescopic eyeball they they can’t see what’s happening on the other side of the ship exactly to your point I’m I’m backing you up 100% is that unfortunately I hate to say it but officer accounts are generally more accurate right because they’re more informed they’re better informed as to what is going on at that time even if they are the engineering officer and

they’re in the bowels of the Atlanta they’re getting conss maybe and they’re hearing what’s going down whereas Joe Smith who’s stoking the boiler you don’t know what the hell’s going right you don’t know squats so so you have to take all of that to to to to shorten this long- winded answer you have to triangulate everything and you have to take the 50 pieces of information and craft it into four pieces if you will the overall situation the ship situation the officer situation and oh this guy may be seeing this kind of situation right and there’s

a lot to do and it’s it’s it’s not easy frankly and you have to be able to decipher the real stuff from the not I don’t want to say baloney because it isn’t but from what I think happened right human memory is malleable well I think Seth just hitting on the head there’s there’s really two things to kind of sum this up there’s two things actually happening the the first thing you’re doing is you’re getting your hands on as much possible information about set event as possible yes and then once that information is all gathered

and you’ve shifted sifted through all that now you have to come up with the what happened in your head and you have to base that off of each actual thing you’ve come up with and what sets it up at triangulate because sometimes you’ll be like this guy said one thing and this guy says and they’re completely different well what vantage point they were both they were both enlisted but this Lieutenant was in up on the bridge and then he’d have a better so you have to correct you have to go through that so it’s Gathering and then it’s piecing

the puzzle together it’s a detective it’s detective work is what it f history we said it’s basically you’re trying to solve a murder 300 years ago get all the evidence and tell us who killed them I mean it’s that’s how you’re putting together the story so this is one thing I want to give a shout out to my co-author Tony Tully that this is one of the things that made shattered sword the book that it is if whatever it is Tony has this incredible ability to be able to take 20 or 30 different firstperson accounts and pull them all

apart and then resynthesize them which is exactly what you’re talking about Sean and saying John don’t you understand this dude is seeing this from this side and this and oh light bulb okay I’ll go write that and that’s why it’s so important to figure out where guys were right you were on the San Francisco doesn’t mean you know you’re authority authority and what time it was what time did you see that speaking of of of temporal uh factors too one of the points that Tony has always made to me that I think is incredibly important is

that if you have a series of firstperson accounts Inon George gay is one of the classic examples from Midway okay right yeah I’ve got you know three or four different accounts of what George gay says he thinks he saw Tony is like always air towards the first account because that’s usually the one that was given immediately after the action and before he starts to believe other things that may have been told to him by other people later bill was talking about this on the Indianapolis episode with all the shs bill give you

credit you did an excellent job of explaining how history makes you start viewing things a lot differently than the actual reality yep yep and so there a lot there’s a lot to it when I go back to George gay I want to see okay what did he tell the dudes you know immediately after he was hauled out of the drink on June 8th or whatever the hell it was the most accurate account right that’s what he says as opposed to what were the stories that he was making up when he was out on a war bond tour in the US and he knows that the more

dramatic that story becomes the more beer he’s gonna get and the more nurses he’s I shouldn’t even 100% no no but you’re 100% right and and I’m not I’m not I I I agree with you 100% George gay was there yes there’s no question he was shot down his his Gunner know his grandson is going to be super pissed off about this because he camps his grandfather’s page on Wikipedia like a lion over a dead wilderbeast but in any case the truth of the matter is that I do not guy was there he was a b from being there and surviving he saw things

he heard things but there is no way in hell that you will ever convinced me that George gay had a ringside seat for the bombing of kab thaai because I know not a from the operational records the cabout Thai had moved at least a dozen miles to the north and your Viewpoint from sea level zero sitting underneath your you know your I that see those carriers anyway you can see six miles it depends on the M head height of the uh I appreciate you Bill toon subar appreciate that bill nor was George gay the sole survivor of

torpedo 8 that would Bert Ernest would have had and Harry F to say about that yes anyway so but that’s NE and with that being said the caval is giving up the con very right so Seth before we get exit this episode I just want to go through a few incredible statistics would you be okay with that L this is like I think we’ve got 164 published episodes as we are recording this one I think we have four in the queue this will make you know 68 is uh and over since we started this journey Seth 168 episodes God help me they run about two hours

each right we spent something like 340 hours behind the camera sitting on these seats just being record that doesn’t include all the time preparing and editing no it does not triple that number Bill triple triple times five times five so we’re talking like a thousand hours we spent on this folks and I know you I know you enjoy it and that’s why we do it we uh our number one markets the United States our number two Market is Australia thank you Aussies thank you Aussies we love you love that’s that’s Dave Holland that’s Dave he’s just

watching our show on repeat over Dave we love you Dave our number three Market is Canada so the 51st state comes in number three and our number four Market is is the United Kingdom and thank you thank you that’s Mike Whit by the way Mike Mike is watching over and over and over again yeah number five is number five is the Philippines 95% of our viewers are are male 5% female we’d like to get that number up and I guess females yeah so uh that’s that’s kind of interesting and this will not surprise you the number one age group are the

people that are retired and have the time to spend watching 2hour episodes so over J bill yeah we need to get the younger generation involved bill we do yeah so we have over 10 million views Seth and God help me people have spent over 5 million hours watching us how many of these have I done with you like a lotd many go write book John I don’t know I don’t know but I will say this I will say this as we close up season 4 we we’ve had a lot of guests on the show you know from Admiral Cox to Admiral I’m Fargo from former former sink pack for crying

out loud and and you know John Bruning and John mcmanis is a great friend Rich and James Scott and all these amazing people who are who are like genuine friends and they’re they’re good dudes daveand Dave got I I can I forget Dave Dave’s gonna send me a really nasty message but yeah no of course Dave but I think everybody knows that the triumvirate here is is is the you know we we we have a chemistry that just kind of flows and it’s awesome and it it’s genuine it really is I mean yes do we send out notes before each episode

not this one no but do we send out notes before each these questions were cold but do we send out notes before each episode yeah and do we do we collaborate on the notes yeah but I mean 99% of the time the conversation is genuine and the and the chemistry is genuine and it and it shows because you’re hanging out with your buddies and you’re doing really cool stuff and you’re talking about things that you I don’t necessarily want to say Enjoy but you enjoy talking about it and and that’s why we’re here but uh you

know in terms of closing season 4 this was a long one I never thought we would do 42 episodes for season 4 which covers 1945 good gracious God Almighty yeah and there is so much more to talk about and the show ain’t over and we’re going to continue to go but I just wanted I do want to say this because this factors into the things that you’re going to see the placeholder episodes that you’re going to see in the next two three weeks we’ve done this in the past I’ve done this in the past I’ve taken episodes that are like part one part two and

sandwich them together you’re going to see that for our EO stuff I’m also going to show a couple of uh documentary films that are going to come through I know you can probably look at them elsewhere but you know what look at them here because you know what we’re cool and and next season aside from doing the topical conversations that we always do we’re going to do something and we’re going to experiment with it where we’re going to dissect archival footage I have an enormous yes like over and I kid you not over

958 reels of archival footage in my collection it’s not all but it’s a lot of it is and it’s awesome and I think it would just be totally rad to sit there and go through and say look this is as best we can this is John parall this is Sean Bergstrom and they’re about to assault blah and do that kind of thing and this is the Enterprise and this is right before Midway and this is the date is X and I think that would just be really cool and people would eat that up and it’d be fun so we’re gonna we’re going to do some of that as we go along

and uh we’re going to experiment with it and find the right template for that so bear with us when we do that how can Schock we will will so so to break the news to to you know we’re having a baby and it is going to be the battle of the Atlantic but it’s going to be after season 5 so don’t expect anything before yeah it’s all good thank you for having me I’ve always enjoyed being here this is a great time it’s always great fun always great fun no I I just want to tell everybody that I appreciate it I I think the most important thing I could

say and I think all three of you guys would agree that you know not only is it the memory of these men but it’s it’s it’s actually you guys out there that listen to it that thank you audience make this make it worth it I mean again I remember Seth talking about this years ago about this ID he had with his buddy the commodor to do this and you all give breathe life well but breathe life into this podcast and I get to eyewitness it with all these stories and these these veteran stories and and these great questions and these great

recommendations so to the audience you guys are what make this all happen yes thank you so much thank you you guys all of us so is everybody cool are we done we’re done and I’m late for dinner yeah go well then go with that we want to thank you very much for listening to this episode of the unauthorized history of Pacific War podcast where please give us a rating and review wherever you receive your podcast blah blah blah if you got a question or comment send us an email at unauthorized Pacific podcast gmail.com for once again my name is Seth

par I want to thank you very much for listening John thank you for being with us Sean thank you for being with us Bill bring us home goodbye go to lunch see you next week I’m going to dinner bye [Music]