Tagged: OnThisDay

O’Hare

Even before the last Australian surrendered at Rabaul, the Japanese flooded New Britain with men, weapons, and material to enlarge the aerodrome, expand the port facilities, and turn Rabaul into a proper staging area for further campaigns in eastern New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, both scheduled for May. The harbor there was packed with Japanese transports waiting to unload. It was a ripe target.
 
In an attempt to replicate the Marshall/Gilbert raids, Nimitz directed Task Force 10, consisting of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and her escort of cruisers and destroyers, to raid Rabaul. But the Japanese commander expected this, and his reconnaissance spotted the Lady Lex and TF10 450 miles out, well outside strike range for the carrier.
 
The Japanese commander launched all seventeen of his land bases G4M torpedo bombers, nicknamed “Betty” for their voluptuous figures. They had a much further range than anything the Lady Lex carried although they were armed with bombs instead of torpedoes because the torpedoes weren’t unloaded yet. As Halsey pointed out a few weeks before, American carriers were severely deficient in fighters. A proper CAP rotation (combat air patrol, the fighter screen charged with protecting the TF from air attack) required more fighters than the carrier had, much less those needed to escort the bombers. When the first wave of eight Betty’s approached, the Lexington’s CAP fighters and the ready fighters on deck screamed off and shot them all down. Unfortunately this left the TF defenseless (We will see this phenomenon again). The next wave of nine Betty’s approached from a different direction and had a clear run at the TF.
 
Luckily, there were two fighters from a previous CAP still being refueled on the deck. Their pilots, LT Edward “Butch” O’Hare (the son of Chicago gangster Al Capone’s lawyer), and his wingman jumped into their cockpits and took off. They had just enough fuel to intercept the incoming Japanese a few miles out.
 
The Betty’s were flying in a “V” of “V’s” formation which gave good overlapping fields of fire for their rear gunners. Nevertheless, O’Hare and his wingman pounced on them from above. All four of the wingman’s guns jammed, which left just O’Hare to defend the Lexington. With only 450 rds per gun or 32 seconds of continuous firing, he didn’t have the ammunition to shoot them all down. He would try though.
 
O’Hare dove into the Betty’s and in a feat of aviation gunnery and ammunition conservation unequaled in the Second World War, shot down five Japanese aircraft in less than four minutes, and damaged a sixth. All those extra hours on the range paid off. Multiple observers would point out that there were three burning Betty’s falling from the sky simultaneously. The last three were driven off by the TF’s anti aircraft fire, much of which was directed at O’Hare.
 
One .50 cal gunner on the Lexington was particularly irksome, and though he didn’t do any damage, he wouldn’t stop firing at him. When O’Hare finally landed, he calmly walked over to the gunner’s position and admonished the young man: First, for not knowing the difference between an American F4F Wildcat and a Japanese G4M Betty, and then for not actually hitting anything. If he didn’t straighten up, he would “report him to the gunnery officer”.
 
O’Hare was the first American “Ace in a Day” (from zero to five confirmed kills in a single day) and the first US Navy ace of the war. He would subsequently be awarded the Medal of Honor, and Chicago would name its new airport after him.

Executive Order 9066

From 1936 to 1941, the FBI, Office of Naval Intelligence, and US Army Military Intelligence collected information on Japanese, German, and Italian immigrant communities in the United States and compiled lists of potential “troublemakers” that would be put into concentration camps in the event of war with the Axis powers. In mid-1941, FDR ordered a comprehensive investigation of the Japanese American communities on the West Coast. The “Munson Report” released a month before Pearl Harbor, stated that though some Japanese retained loyalty to Japan and its emperor, “the Japanese (American) problem didn’t exist”, and there was a “remarkable, even extraordinary degree of loyalty among some of this generally suspect ethnic group…” FDR ignored the report.

With war tensions high and a general civilian paranoia of a potential Japanese invasion of the West Coast, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, which gave the Secretary of War the authority to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded” and to “provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary . . .”

Three weeks later Congress passed legislation which funded Executive Order 9066 after the briefest of discussions. Opposition to the obvious unconstitutionality and potential for abuse in the bill made strange bedfellows. The minority Republican leadership in Congress was muted under their pledge to FDR in December to not let domestic politics interfere with the conduct of the war, so they found their champions in the only two of FDR’s cabinet members that opposed the EO, Attorney General Francis Biddle and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. Biddle and Ickes would eventually get Executive Order 9066, and related later EOs, to the Supreme Court and have them declared unconstitutional. But after a decade of the courts and Congress acquiescing to FDR’s expansion of executive power during the Great Depression, it would take three long years for that to happen. However, just after Pearl Harbor that didn’t matter – on 9 March 1942, FDR signed Public Law 503 into law, and the legal justification for one of the greatest tragedies in American history was established.

Surprisingly, Executive Order 9066 was not used as justification for exclusion of the largest Japanese American community in the US on one of the few pieces of American soil under actual threat of Japanese invasion: Hawaii. US Authorities there had arrested 2500 Japanese illegal aliens under FDR’s Alien Enemies Act in December. The other 100,000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not deemed a threat, too important to Hawaii’s economic well-being, and their internment not a military necessity citing the Munson Report, and a separate Naval Intelligence report which found “no evidence of ‘fifth column’ activity among Japanese Americans”. This was not the case for the American West Coast.

Shortly after EO 9066’s funding by Congress, Arizona and California, and Oregon and Washington were in their entirety designated as two military districts by LTG John DeWitt, the commander of the Fourth US Army and the Western Defense Command. DeWitt applied EO 9066, probably against its spirit, to the entire Japanese American community on the West Coast. DeWitt wanted to relocate anyone of Japanese American ancestry out of the two West Coast military districts. But there were 120,000 Japanese Americans in his area, so DeWitt, through the Sec of War Henry Stimson requested additional funding for quasi permanent internment camps throughout the US and a separate organization to coordinate and administer the relocations. FDR signed Executive Order 9102 on 18 March 1942, and Congress funded it. 9102 created the War Relocation Authority. Moreover, the racialists and Eugenicists in FDR’s administration reared their ugly heads and the EO was applied to anyone with 1/16th Japanese blood, or in practical terms one great-great-grandparent born in Japan. These also included Koreans and Taiwanese whose lands were Japanese colonies since the 1880s. EO 9066 could be argued as not racial in character and just an abuse of eminent domain; EO 9102, DeWitt’s proclamations, and the administration’s and army regulations pertaining to both, cannot.

In April, flyers from the Western military district headquarters began appearing in Japanese American communities advising not only Japanese resident and illegal aliens but also Japanese American citizens to prepare for relocation. Flyers also appeared in German and Italian American communities, but the racial character of DeWitt’s proclamations, and the easily identifiable stereotypical facial features of Japanese Americans meant that few Caucasians were interred, and those that were, were already identified on FDR’s lists. The director of the War Relocation Authority, Milton Eisenhower (Dwight’s younger brother), attempted to mitigate and limit the relocations through various means, including limiting them to just adult males, but was thwarted by DeWitt and administration officials.

Throughout the end of April and through the summer, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, 2/3rds of whom were US citizens, were ordered to report to assembly areas in parks, stadiums, and even racetracks. They were permitted to bring one suitcase and the clothes on their backs. The rest of their possessions were left behind, and left at the mercy of their communities. Many families lost everything: land, pets, furniture, cars, and savings were all gone when they returned three years later. The internees were packed into buses and trains for long journeys to ten hastily and poorly constructed internment camps, two as far away as Arkansas, each surrounded by barbed wire, and armed guards.

In late April, the frustrated and defeated Eisenhower wrote, “when the war is over and we consider calmly this unprecedented migration of 120,000 people, we as Americans are going to regret the unavoidable injustices that we may have done…”

The Channel Dash

With America’s entry into the war, Hitler correctly surmised that Roosevelt and especially US Army Chief of Staff George C Marshall would advocate an invasion of Western Europe at the earliest possible time in order to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union, who was fighting the bulk of the Wehrmacht. German planners calculated that the Allies would need the shipping capacity and capability to support 100 divisions in France, in order to successfully invade, defeat a German counterattack, and liberate the country (They were spot on, that’s exactly what the Allies had in 1944). In early 1942, they estimated the Allied shipping support at 40 divisions (it was actually ten), so they weren’t too concerned about an invasion of France that year. However, their erroneous belief that the Allies had 40 divisions’ worth of shipping support was more than enough to liberate Norway. Norway hosted several greatly successful commando raids in 1941. Moreover, Hitler believed that Churchill would want to avenge his 1940 Norwegian fiasco, and would gladly acquiesce to the Americans’ demands of an invasion somewhere in Western Europe in 1942, provided the target was Norway.
 
To successfully defend Norway against an Allied invasion, the entire German surface navy would be required, otherwise much needed troops from the Eastern Front or U boats from the Med and the Atlantic would have to be transferred to Scandinavia. The major capital ships of the German Navy were currently a fleet-in-being, the majority in Brest, France. This was an excellent location for threatening the vital shipping lanes from America to Britain, but not for patrolling the North and Norwegian Seas. Hitler ordered these ships, the big modern battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the modern heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, to sail home.
 
There were two ways to get back to Germany from their French Atlantic base: they could either sail around the British Isles, and do a “reverse breakout” through one of the Greenland-Iceland-Faeroe-Scotland gaps, or sail right up the English Channel. The first would put them close to the Royal Navy’s main anchorage at Scapa Flow Scotland, and well outside the range of any Luftwaffe support. Admiral Raeder, the Kriegsmarine’s top surface commander, chose the direct and bold option.
 
The British expected this. They had Ultra intelligence confirming it, just not the time and date. Furthermore, as the Germans knew, the Channel option just made more sense. The Home Fleet at Scapa Flow would welcome a showdown in the North Atlantic, and they had to stay there anyway to defend against a possible breakout by the Tirpitz (another Bismarck-esque breakout was still Britain’s top concern). What small ships could be spared, the Royal Air Force, and especially the RAF Coastal Command would have to stop any German dash up the English Channel.
 
Raeder was keenly aware of the Japanese destruction from the air of the Prince of Wales and Repulse two months earlier, and demanded and received priority Luftwaffe support for the entire trip to mitigate any RAF interference. Furthermore, the German squadron would be escorted by six big Z class destroyers, which were meant for fighting, not escorting convoys, so consequently were twice the size as any comparable British destroyer in home waters. They were also escorted by a dozen E-boats, which had the same advantages over British motor torpedo boats as the German destroyers did over their counterparts. The only advantage the British did have was reconnaissance, in particular radar.
 
But the British Coastal Command, responsible for reconnaissance and surveillance of the British home waters, was the red headed step child of the Royal Air Force. The RAF believed that to win the war against Germany they had to be bombed into submission with heavy bombers. The next priority was fighter defense. Far and away in priority was Coastal Command reconnaissance aircraft. And even further was Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm maritime strike aircraft. Despite the German squadron never being more than 200 miles from Piccadilly Circus in London, and never traveling higher than their top speed of 30 knots, the British had precious little to stop the two day operation from succeeding. And what they did have was misused.
 
The British couldn’t keep their squadrons on full alert all the time, so they concentrated the alert times based on the reasonable assumption that the Germans would try to force the most dangerous part of the trip, the 20 mile narrows between Dover-Calais, during a period of darkness and at high tide. They adjusted their limited patrol schedules based on where they expected the Germans to be based on that information. For example, this meant that the Germans should depart Brest at noon for a 0200 push through the narrows. They were could not have been more wrong.
 
The Germans thought it more important to depart under the cover of darkness lest the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow sail and engage them in the North Sea. The Germans believed that the Home Fleet had more than enough time to intercept them and be back in position to intercept the Tirpitz (They greatly overestimated the Royal Navy’s agility). The Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen and escorts departed Brest at 2245 on 11 February 1942. They passed out of the estuary to the sounds of ineffectual RAF bombing of the very docks they had recently occupied. If all went to plan, the German warships would sail past the White Cliffs of Dover at noon in broad daylight.
 
Coastal Command still had a chance to pick them up in the Atlantic and Western English Channel by long range Hudson recon aircraft with airborne radar. But British engineering is just good enough in the best of times (as any Land Rover owner will tell you), and the past 20 years were not the best of times for Coastal Command. Of the two Hudsons that could have spotted the squadron that night, both had malfunctioning radar. Fighter Command spotted them twice during early morning fighter sweeps off the Normandy Coast, but the pilots had misidentified the ships and reported them as destroyers escorting local cargo ships. The British only positively identified the frankly unbelieving and astonished Germans when a veteran British fighter pilot recognized the big 11 inch guns on the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at 1042 in the morning about 15 miles southwest of Calais, nearly 13 hours into their audacious journey.
 
The report then had to move through the stovepiped reporting mechanisms of the RAF and the Admiralty: all the way up through Fighter Command then down through the Admiralty and Coastal Command before anything could be done about the German ships seemingly strolling by as they were watched by observers on the beaches. The Germans passed through the straits at precisely noon, easily dodging artillery fire by British shore batteries along the way. British motor torpedo boats attacked at 1219, an hour and 23 minutes after they were first spotted, and were easily brushed away by the E-Boats. The initial airstrike on the ships was executed by just 12 antiquated Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers at 1239, from an airfield just minutes away. They were almost all shot down by the Luftwaffe covering force. By the time the Coastal Command’s six old and slow destroyers got into the fight, the RAF was throwing everything they had at the German squadron. But the former Lend Lease “four stacker” First World War vintage destroyers were easy targets for the Germans ships, – those that survived the battlecrusiers’ big guns met the Prinz Eugen’s batteries, and then the Z Class destroyers’, all of whom out ranged them. Those that survived courageously charged in to launch their torpedoes while dealing with the E boats’ own spreads. The German squadron didn’t even slow down.
 
Nearly 800 RAF aircraft attacked the Germans as they traversed the North Sea for the rest of the day, and most couldn’t find the fast moving ships. Those that did, did no damage: the heavy bombers had a bad track record of actually hitting inside city limits on the continent, much less a ship at sea. The fighters didn’t have the ordinance to do more than irritate the ships’ crews, and the Luftwaffe fought off the rest. The only bright spots for the British happened when both the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau struck mines, which slowed but did not stop them. That night, all of the dashing ships were safely inside German harbors.
 
It was the most embarrassing action for Great Britain in its own home waters since the Dutch Admiral DeRuyter sailed up the Medway in 1667 and burned the British fleet at anchor. This was doubly so fresh on the heels of the disaster off of Malaya when the Japanese had no trouble sinking two British battleships with less aircraft, less reconnaissance, and on the open sea. The Germans sailed under the nose of the British for nearly two straight days and got away clean. As one author put it,
 
“The cheek of it!”

The Normandie Fire and Operation Underworld

On 9 February 1942, the interned French ocean liner SS Normandie caught fire and capsized off of Pier 88 in Manhattan. The Normandie, recently rechristened the USS Lafayette, was in the process of being converted into a troop ship that could carry an entire infantry division’s worth of men (15,514 in 1942). The fire was almost certainly an accident, even though mob boss Albert Anastasia claimed credit (to enhance his reputation and send a message to the govt not to interfere with the waterfront rackets. He regretted it later.). Despite, or maybe in light of Anastasia’s claim, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) suspected Nazi sympathizers, maybe even Nazi saboteurs.

In early 1942 New York, this was not an unreasonable assumption. Just after Pearl Harbor, the FBI had broken up the Duquesne Spy Ring and arrested 33 German spies in New York after two years of investigations. That there were some that escaped capture was considered a given. Furthermore, America’s largest immigrant community in 1942 were German Americans; New York City was a stronghold of the influential German American Bund, essentially the American branch of Hitler’s National Socialists. Also, U boats were literally torpedoing merchant ships within sight of the Statue of Liberty. It was suspected that they were receiving information from the dockworkers (true, until the Duquesne Spy Ring was broken up) and that the U boats were receiving fuel and supplies from fishing boats (Not true, the Americans were just unaware of the Type IX U-boats true range) On top of all that, New York’s docks, shipping, and fishing industries were controlled by the Teamster, Longshoreman, and Seafood Worker’s Unions. All of whom were dominated by the Jewish, Italian, Sicilian, and Irish Mafias. None of these were seen as particularly friendly to America’s wartime interests, and would greatly profit from chaos on the waterfront.

The Mafia’s control of these critical wartime requirements greatly concerned Naval Intelligence. Black marketeering and corruption were on the rise, if only because of the increased amount of wartime goods and supplies moving through New York. Also, union strikes in New York reached an all-time high in early 1941 (while the Soviet Union was a defacto German ally) and was still a serious problem. Anastasia’s claim of credit was seen as further proof that the immigrant communities would at best encourage the sabotage, and at worst actively participate. Although Ireland was technically neutral in the Second World War, their hatred of Great Britain was legendary, and tacit Irish support for German operations in the Atlantic was not unheard of. Most disconcertingly, Mussolini’s Italy was Hitler’s closest ally. There were twenty years of ties between the Italian Mafia in Italy, the northern branches of which Mussolini used to gain power, and the Italian mobs in New York. The Sicilian and Southern Italian Mafia were a different story, but who the hell in the US Navy knew the differences between the Italian and Sicilian mobs? The various mafia organizations needed to be brought on America’s Team, or eliminated by those that were. But where to start? When Naval Intelligence approached the longshoremen about the Normandie fire, no one would say a word, and they were quietly “escorted” from the Manhattan docks.

After speaking with New York district attorneys, the question wasn’t “where”, but “with whom”. They recommended the Jewish Mob, who had ties to all the others through their lock on the gambling racket. More importantly, they had a fierce reputation of street fighting with the German American Bund and regularly broke up Bund marches, rallies, and meetings. Of all the Mafioso in New York, they had the least ties to Italy or love of Germany. So Naval Intelligence contacted Meyer Lansky.

Lansky was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, and he came to America in 1911 after the Russian pogroms. He was a slight, well dressed, bookish man who could pass for an accountant in any New York City firm. He was also a ruthless killer, and The Bund Nemesis. He was the undisputed boss of Jewish organized crime, and the most feared enforcer of the “Syndicate”. The Syndicate was the unofficial organization that kept the Italian “Five Families”, and the various other ethnic mafias working in their own areas and own specialties, and generally not killing each other. Violence was bad for business. Lansky was the perfect man to contact.

Lansky assured the ONI that although the immigrant communities were from countries generally hostile to the US, they embraced their new homeland for the most part, and disdained Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. They would refrain from active sabotage. However issues arose when ONI asked for the mafia members to report unusual activity, stop strikes, limit black marketeering, and even accept federal agents into the unions to keep an eye on things. Lansky was skeptical: mafia members, of any ethnicity, were anti authoritarians in the best of times, and would need some incentives for that level of support, and compensation for the consummate loss of profit.
The ONI made them an offer they couldn’t refuse: Cooperate or Washington will declare them a national security threat. Once that happened the FBI and an infantry division will descend upon New York and “kill them all”. (The Big Red One was passing through NYC at the time… Anyway, legend has it the threat came from FDR himself, whcih is not much of a stretch. Remember FDR was also the guy that had no problems rounding up every Japanese American in the country and putting them in concentr… err… “internment” camps.)

Lansky naturally agreed, “out of patriotism”, of course. Anyway, he had no problems with working against the Germans, if only for their treatment of Europe’s Jewish population. Also, once he explained the terms of the “agreement” to his fellow childhood friends, “Bugsy” Siegal and “Socks” Lansa, the ONI would eventually have no problems with the Italian and Sicilian controlled teamsters, longshoremen, or fishermen (with whom the ONI wanted to place agents to spot U boats). Lansky recruited Irish enforcer John “Cockeye” Dunn and his thugs to roam the waterfront. In Lansky’s words, “I gave Cockeye the orders. Go down to the piers and find out who is loyal and who is not loyal. You have to see that there are no strikes and that the job is done quickly when military stuff is loaded. And we have to make sure everybody keeps his mouth shut about troop movements. That means going into bars to make sure the crews and longshoremen don’t start sounding off when they get drunk”.

However, Lansky had no influence over the Irish mob on the West (Hudson) docks and rail yards, the surrounding Hells’ Kitchen slums, nor the Brooklyn Docks. They were run by Albert Anastasia, the same guy who “torched the Normandie”. The Irish had the biggest problem with authority. The “’G-Men’ really would need an infantry division”, and turn lower New York into a battleground, before the Irish submitted to federal authority. There was only one man who could convince Anastasia to cooperate: the Emperor of Vice in New York – “Lucky” Luciano.

Lucky Luciano owned the New York underworld, even from the maximum security prison at Dannemora, where he was serving a fifty year sentence. Luciano got the Irish on board under three conditions: His cooperation be kept secret, as he was an Italian citizen and if he was deported, Mussolini would have him killed. His sentence is commuted. And finally that he is moved to a nicer prison. The Navy agreed and Luciano was transported to the minimum security prison at Great Meadows. (He was eventually freed in 1946 and deported to Italy after being incarcerated for just 9 ½ years.)

Once the Navy had Luciano’s blessing, the Mafia were their enforcers. “There was peace on the waterfront. It was kept with rough methods. But that’s what the Navy asked us to do and that’s what the Navy got.”

Operation Underworld ran for the rest of the war, and was kept secret until 1977.

The SS Housatonic and Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

Although the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet lost more tonnage than the Imperial High Seas Fleet at the Battle of Jutland, the Germans never sortied from port again. In response, they prepared for a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare to begin on 1 February 1917. If the Royal Navy couldn’t be beaten at sea then the country would be starved into surrendering. The sinking of the ocean liner RMS Lusitania in 1915 had almost brought the United States into the war on the Allied side; unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 surely would. If the plan worked Britain would sue for peace before the US presence could make itself felt on the Western Front.

On 3 February 1917, the first victim of the new policy was spotted. U-53 stopped and boarded the cargo ship SS Housatonic off the southwestern tip of England. The Housatonic was sailing with a hull full of wheat from Galveston to Liverpool. The polite U boat captain ordered the ship abandoned then sank her with a single torpedo. He then towed the life boats toward shore and subsequently snuck away.

The Housatonic was the first of many ships sunk under unrestricted submarine warfare. The homely old steam freighter caused an uproar in the US Congress and inside the the Wilson Administration. President Wilson had just narrowly won the recent election on a platform of non intervention in the the war in Europe, even though he privately expressed his doubts that America could stay out of the war.
Great Britain knew it too, and was just waiting for the right time to inform America of a recent intelligence development. The sinking of the SS Housatronic provided the perfect opportunity.

Paranoid

Like every other rock band during the British Invasion era, the band “Earth” started as a blues tribute garage rock band. But after being double booked with another band of the same name, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Ozbourne decided to change their name to “Black Sabbath” after the Boris Karlov flick that was playing across the street from one of their rehearsals.
Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album in early 1970. It was a commercial success but critics hated it. BS found their niche in the darker themes reminiscent of Karlov’s movies and “stupid melodies” that were quite different than the flower power and hippie music that dominated the charts. In the fall of 1970, Black Sabbath went back to the studio to record the songs that they didn’t get a chance to for their first album.

They had just two days to record and one to mix. At the end of the second day, their album “War Pigs” was finished. However, their producer said they needed another three minutes of music. Iommi quickly came up with a riff, Ozbourne some angsty and depressing lyrics, and Butler called it “Paranoid”, which Ozbourne replied, “What the f**k does that even mean?” “Paranoid” took 25 minutes to record from request to final cut.

With the “counter culture” mainstream, Black Sabbath didn’t want the anti Vietnam song War Pigs to headline the album lest it get lost in all of the other aforementioned flower power music on the charts. They decided to name it after the shortest song on the album and the one most likely to get radio time: the afterthought, Paranoid.

Paranoid released in Oct 1970 in the UK, but it’s the release in the US on 7 January 1971 that changed the world. Like before, critics hated it, and it received near zero radio time. But the generation of resentful kids who were just then coming of age and beginning to realize they missed the crazy days of the swinging late sixties that their big brothers and sisters experienced, absolutely loved it. Most of the combat troops left Vietnam, the draft was winding down, and the economy began to stagnate, so what did it all mean? The world of Paranoid provided a glimpse of the answer. (And it helped that the songs were simple to enough to inspire a new generation of band members to pick up instruments and emulate them.)

Most of Black Sabbath’s signature songs appeared on the album. These included Paranoid, War Pigs, and one fantastical story of a future traveller who saw the end of the world but was turned to metal by a magnetic field on his return. The Iron Man then brought about the very apocalypse he warned against when his people wouldn’t believe him.

And Heavy Metal was born. \m/

Operation Bolo

By the summer of 1966, Operation Rolling Thunder, the American air campaign against North Vietnam, was in full swing, and American bombers and fighter bombers were engaging the most sophisticated air defense network produced by the Communist Bloc. Radar controlled SA-2 and AAA guns took a heavy toll on the B-52 bomber and the F-105 fighter/bombers (the F-105 could carry more bomb tonnage than a WWII era B-17). In the fall of 1966, the US Air Force introduced new radar jamming pods that were so effective that they reduced the SAM threat to zero. But there weren’t enough of them to go around, so the pod less F-4 Phantoms of the fighter escort were kept out of SAM range to protect them.

The North Vietnamese air force pounced. Guided by ground stations, the F-4’s nemesis, the delta winged MiG-21 Fishbed, made short work of the heavily laden F-105s. They effectively “waged guerrilla war” on the American formations: “one pass and haul ass” before the F-105s could dump their bombs and engage. They always engaged within the SAM ring so no F-4s were ever around. American losses spiked, and the fighter pilots of F-4’s were catching hell for not protecting the bombers, even though they were kept out of the fight by a well-meaning risk assessment.

Enter Col Robin Olds, a natural leader and an old fashioned “fighting commander” who wasn’t afraid to fly missions with his men. He was a former P-51 pilot with a plethora of Luftwaffe kills, and he scorned his superiors and peers who just came to Vietnam to “check that career box”, and sit behind a desk in Thailand. He wasn’t going to let his charges get shot down just because someone said it wasn’t safe. His magnificent mustache would not allow it.
Around New Year’s, Col Olds and his staff planned Operation Bolo. Air Force intelligence placed about 25 of the modern MiG-21s in Vietnam (there were only 18), if he could get them up and engage them, he could change the entire air war in South East Asia. He planned for his fighters to be “Wolves in sheep’s clothing” (hence the name of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, the Wolfpack). He would electronically disguise his air to air armed F-4s as bomb fitted F-105s. Furthermore, they operated on known F-105 frequencies, and used bomber call signs to deceive the North Vietnamese ground controllers. (The Black Sheep squadron is WWII did the same thing in the Solomon’s in 1943.) The MiGs took the bait.

On 7 January 1967, 12 MiG-21s screamed in to engage the “bombers”, only to meet a wall of Sidewinder missiles. Seven were shot down. 1/3 of the total MiG-21 force in Vietnam was destroyed in one afternoon. Olds tried again a few days later, not expecting much. But the North Vietnamese blamed the ground controllers. Then, like all good Communists, they thought if they just did the same thing and other people tried harder it would work out. Olds’ men shot down another four. The MiG-21s wouldn’t be back in the air for another ten weeks.

The End of an Era

Britain was the most affected by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which prevented a post war arms race by limiting capital ship construction, and placed a 10 year moratorium on new capital ships. It eased the effects of the bad post war economy, but the British shipbuilding industry atrophied, and the specialized knowledge required of the big ships disappeared. When the Treaty limits were completely dropped in 1936 in the face of German and Japanese aggression, a shipbuilding boom happened, but unlike their adversaries whose capital ship industries started from scratch, the British just recycled and updated Great War designs (They won, why change?).

With the Battleship Admirals still in control of the Royal Navy, the battleship was seen as the means by which deterrence was measured. But the Admiralty had a huge problem: the shipbuilding industry couldn’t produce the required numbers of battleships vis a vis their potential adversaries (much less the much more important carriers, cruisers, and especially destroyers, frigates, and corvettes). And they were all lower quality. After the 1940 and early 41 battles with the German capital ships, the Admiralty couldn’t rely on parity, they needed superiority, at least 4 to 1 against Bismarck’s sister ship, the Tirpitz. The latest British design, the King George V, was simply no match for the Bismarck (The Prince of Wales, a KGV design, had to run away from the Bismarck after the Hood blew up, and the KGV herself couldn’t sink the Bismarck even though the Germans couldn’t maneuver and could only sail ten knots.) And to make matters worse, the Italian designs were far superior, so battleships needed to stay in the Med in case the Italians decided to sortie (the Italian problem was leadership, not design). Britain didn’t have enough ships for its current commitments let alone enough ships for her other global commitments, especially after the losses suffered over two years of war.

When Japan occupied Indochina in the summer of 1941, the Admiralty planners’ worst nightmare came true: a likely maritime war with three major naval powers in three distinct areas: Germany in the Atlantic, Italy in the Med, and Japan in the Far East. Up until then the Far East question was an academic exercise, but now it needed an answer. The old French, now Japanese anchorage at Cam Ranh Bay was only a short three day sail from Britain’s main, if neglected, naval base in the East, Singapore.

But Singapore had no fleet, and this was not lost on Australia, New Zealand, Burma, East Africa, South Africa, and India, all of whom were particularly vulnerable to Japanese aggression. The combined Commonwealth navies barely amounted to a few cruisers and destroyers, but tens of thousands of Commonwealth troops were fighting the Germans and Italians vast distances away from home. They expected a British fleet to come to their defense, but the British simply didn’t have one to send.

In late November, after Australia and New Zealand threatened to pull their troops out of North Africa for home defense, Churchill ordered the two largest and most modern warships in the Royal Navy to Singapore: the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, and battlecruiser HMS Repulse, with four destroyers, as a deterrent (it didn’t matter, the Japanese were already committed to the attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor, but the Kiwis and Aussies felt better.) They were expected to pose a threat similar to the Tirpitz and Bismarck and tie up Japanese assets. But the Japanese were keen observers of the last two years, and saw little threat from the two British ships, given their lack of cruiser support (especially the lack of a Dido class specialized antiaircraft cruiser, all of whom were needed for the Malta convoys) and Britain’s piss poor naval–air coordination (a product of RAF Coastal Command’s red headed step child status compared to Bomber and Fighter Commands)

On 10 DEC 1941, Prince of Wales and Repulse, with supporting destroyers, moved north from Singapore to intercept Japanese landings on the east coast of Malaya. They were both sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers in less than three hours. Afterwards, the Japanese ignored the destroyers, and even signaled that they wouldn’t be molested if they stuck to picking up survivors. The Prince of Wales and Repulse were the first major warships sunk by planes on the open sea. Combined with the American disaster at Pearl Harbor two days before, it became clear airpower now defined seapower, even to the eldest and most hardheaded battleship advocate. The Age of the Battleship was over; the Age of the Aircraft Carrier had begun.

The Wild Run of Victory Begins

The Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7 Dec, Hawaii time, but due to the vast distances involved and the international dateline, the strike occurred on Monday 8 Dec local time in Tokyo and across the Western and Southern Pacific Ocean. The Japanese did not actually begin their war with the Western Allies with the raid on Hawaii. It began with landings in Malaya and Thailand that occurred about 90 minutes before Fuchida dropped the first torpedo into the USS Nevada.

Just after midnight on 8 December (local time), assault units of LieutGen Tomoyuki Yamashita’s 25th Army landed in Thailand and Malaya. (We will hear his name again) The Royal Thai Army gave a good account of itself (they killed more Japanese than America did on that day), but was eventually overwhelmed. Further south, bombers attacked the naval base at Singapore, and more assault units landed outside Koto Barhu in Malaya. British and Indian units stubbornly defended and counterattacked, and the battle on the beaches gave a rare glimpse of what the US amphibious forces would face in the future. But with Royal Navy nowhere in sight, and the RAF hopelessly outmatched and outnumbered, the Japanese invasion fleet landed more troops with impunity. When evening came and a fog rolled in, the fighting died down; the Japanese reinforced the small beachhead. All of the Japanese were veterans of the war in China, and had developed sophisticated night fighting techniques, and more importantly a willingness to use them (especially given the complete lack of portable night vision, a technology that wouldn’t invented for another 15 years). As the Brits and Indians remained in their positions, the Japanese infiltrated. When the sun came up, the Japanese swarmed them. It was a cycle that would repeat itself for the next few weeks.
Further north, Gen MacArthur in Manila was informed of the attack on Pearl Harbor as it was happening at 0230 local time on 8 December. He met with the Philippine president, but didn’t tell anyone outside of his chief of staff and small inner circle. He most definitely didn’t order his troops on alert. About 1000 he ordered his bombers to prepare for a strike on Japanese airstrips on Formosa (Taiwan). However, before they could launch the Japanese struck an undefended Clark Field at noon – nearly nine hours after MacArthur was informed of the attack on Hawaii. The Japanese nearly wiped out the entire American Far Eastern Air Force in a single blow. The only reason MacArthur wasn’t fired in disgrace like Adm Kimmel and MG Short at Pearl Harbor was anyone would could testify against him was dead or captured by the Japanese by the time the inquiries began. North of Luzon, the advanced elements of LieutGen Masaharu Homma’s 14th Army landed on Bataan Island (not to be confused with the Bataan Peninsula) to establish a forward base before landing on Luzon proper.
In other areas of the Pacific the Japanese attacked smaller isolated Allied bases. In China, they overran the international quarter at Shanghai, and forced their way into Hong Kong. Two destroyers caused heavy damage to the small base on the island of Midway. A landing force from Saipan captured Guam, and bombers from the Marshall Islands struck Wake Island, virtually wiping out the fighter squadron that Adm Halsey took such pains to deliver days before.
Adm Yamaoto told the Prime Minister Hidejki Tojo that, “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” He was off to a good start.
Clark Airfield, 8 Dec 1941
Clark Airfield, 8 Dec 1941
Sketch of the Invasion of Thailand and Malaya
Sketch of the Invasion of Thailand and Malaya
Wake Island, 8 Dec 1941
Wake Island, 8 Dec 1941
wwiiasia06

“Tora Tora Tora”: The Raid on Pearl Harbor

When the 183 Japanese planes of the first wave approached Pearl Harbor from the north without any resistance from the Americans, LtCmdr Mitsuo Fuchida, the commander of the Japanese air strike, signaled to Adm Nagumo the code words “Tora Tora Tora” (tiger, tiger, tiger) which indicated the attack began with complete surprise. Five minutes later, Cmdr Logan Ramsey, Ops officer of Patrol Wing Two, attempted to get the tail number of a plane he thought was flying recklessly. But he recognized the red “meatball” on the plane’s wing and immediately sent out the radio message in plain English, “Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is no drill.”

Fuchida had six objectives for the first wave. The first five were Pearl Harbor’s air defenses: Wheeler and Hickham Army Airfields, Ford Island and Kaneohe Naval Air Stations, and Ewa Marine Air Station. Most of the planes on these airfields were destroyed before they could get off the ground. And many even before the ammunition could be distributed to the anti-aircraft defenses, which despite repeated war warnings was still locked up in distant armories. Nevertheless, in the chaos, men fought back, including mechanics on Wheeler who threw wrenches at the low flying Japanese. Or more effectively, Chief Petty Officer John Finn, who pulled a .50 Caliber machine gun from a damaged PBY and fought through 21 separate wounds to earn the first Congressional Medal of Honor of the Second World War. Or an unknown marine at Ewa who stood in the middle of the runway firing his pistol at the low strafing planes. The official Japanese records of the attack refer to him at “The Bravest American”. The Japanese pilots specifically targeted him, like jousting knights, but as far they knew the young marine survived the attack. A large portion of the Japanese casualties at Pearl Harbor came by way of that most mocked and denigrated Army and Marine rank, the second lieutenant; eight of whom courageously took off into the teeth of the Japanese onslaught in far inferior planes to take them on at 20-1 odds.

While the Japanese bombed and strafed the airfields, Fuchida personally supervised his pilots at his sixth and primary objective – Battleship Row. There the eight battleships of the US Battleship Divisions 1, 2 and 4 sat. The surprise attack caught the ship’s crews preparing for the day. On the USS Nevada, the band played for morning colors just as the Japanese attacked. They finished despite being strafed because, “It was inconceivable to break formation during the Star Spangled Banner.” Specially designed low draft Japanese torpedoes struck the Nevada moments later, along with her sisters the USS Arizona, California, West Virginia, and Oklahoma. The torpedoes sank the West Virginia and capsized the Oklahoma. In spite of the surprise, the sailors were a bit more prepared to fight than their land based brethren as they had their ammunition on board. During Sunday morning mass on the cruiser USS New Orleans, the chaplain Lt.jg. Howell Forgy blessed his gunners, and told them to “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” On the West Virginia, Messmate Third Class Doris Miller manned a .50 Cal in the conning tower, a weapon he was unfamiliar with, until his ammunition ran out. Miller would receive a Navy Cross for carrying many of his wounded comrades to safety before the West Virginia sank.

After the torpedo bombers, Japanese dive bombers dropped specially converted 16in armor piercing battleship shells on the giant American targets. They would damage every battleship on the Row, but one hit in particular caused nearly half of the American casualties that day. Like her sisters, the Arizona was a battleship developed for the last war. Her armored citadel, the area that protects the vital areas of the ship, could withstand a hit from largest shell of that time, 14”. One of the dive bombers managed to place its converted 16in shell right above the forward magazine, where it penetrated. Seven seconds later a catastrophic explosion destroyed the ship, killing 1100 sailors instantly.

The entire island seemed to be on fire. In 90 minutes, four battleships and three other ships were sunk, four more battleships, and nine others damaged, 300 aircraft destroyed, and 3700 soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilians were killed or wounded by two waves of Japanese carrier based aircraft. It was still less than what was expected. On the outset, Fuchida gave a flare signal for an hastily planned conventional attack, one configured for an expected American defensive preparedness, instead of the planned signal for the attack in case surprise was complete, which it was as signified by the famous “Tora, Tora, Tora” broadcast. Fuchida’s signal prompted the torpedo bombers to wait a few critical minutes before attacking Battleship Row while the dive and level bombers plastered the airfields. Those few minutes were key: they allowed the crews to secure battle stations and close water tight doors. The torpedo bombers as a result took more casualties and their hits less devastating than they could have been. Consequently, Fuchida wanted a third attack: to destroy the fuel farms, dockyards, and repair facilities, and probably also to correct the sub par, though still devastating, results. But he was overruled by Adm Nagumo: most of the Japanese losses occurred during the second wave, and the American carriers were not in port and therefore an unknown threat. Also, the fuel situation would be critical if the Kido Butai lingered which it would have to do all day if a third strike was launched. By noon, all aircraft were recovered, and the Japanese were racing home.

Nagumo would regret his decision for the rest of the war.