THE ROUNDTABLE FORUM
Official newsletter of the Battle of Midway Roundtable
"To promote awareness and understanding of the great battle and to
honor the men who fought and won it."
5 March 2006....................Issue No.
2006-10......................Our 9th Year
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AROUND THE TABLE .................................................
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MEMBERS'
TOPICS IN THIS ISSUE
1.
Deception in the Pacific (War Stories episode)
2.
Mechanical Problems on BOM Aircraft
3.
Distance Between TF-16 and TF-17
4.
"Mutiny" on the Yorktown
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"DECEPTION IN THE PACIFIC (WAR STORIES EPISODE)" (see issue #07, 08, 09)
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23 February 2006
From: Dick
Epps repps846@yahoo.com
(BOM vet, RM3c, USS Aylwin)
I see in The Roundtable Forum #2006-08, that the War Stories
Episode Deception in the Pacific was recently on TV. They had Robert Stinnett on and discussed
his book Day of Deceit. That book was so full of false
theories based on no concrete evidence that it is just fiction.
[Stinnett's] basic claim that FDR had prior knowledge about Kido
Butai [the Japanese carrier force] from breaking JN25B messages is
totally wrong. Prior to December 7th,
CDR Joseph Rochefort, the top Navy crypto analyst for Japanese codes, was
confined to trying to break the Japanese admirals' code. That code had very little traffic and
Rochefort and his crew at station HYPO at Pear Harbor were not successful
in breaking it. The crypto crew in Washington was working on JN25B
but could only read about ten percent, which was not enough to give any
significant information. Rochefort
was given the go-ahead to work on JN25B a few days after December
7th. The final breaking and
translation of JN25B messages which referred to the Pearl Harbor attack were
not done until 1945-46, after WWII was over.
A complete analysis of Day of
Deceit by cryptologic veteran Philip Jacobsen appeared in the winter
2000 issue of Cryptolog, which shoots down all of Stinnett's
points.
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25 February
2006
From:
George Walsh gjwalco@msn.com
Joe Hilliard's comment [Forum #07] on the Ollie North program makes
sense to me. Roosevelt still had confidence in the power of our
battleships at that time. The Navy was run by the "battleship admirals"
and no one imagined that a Japanese carrier attack would be so devastating.
Although
such an attack had been wargamed in the 1930s, the prevailing opinion was that
our battleships could easily absorb any punishment aircraft could inflict on
the heavily armored superstructure of the battlewagons, and the shallow waters
of Pearl would not support a torpedo attack.
Roosevelt
could not have anticipated that a lack of search planes and radar failure would
preclude any early warning. He would also anticipate
that our ships would inflict a heavy toll on any aerial attack.
The
Japanese surprise attack was full of surprises no matter how much Roosevelt
might have suspected.
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"MECHANICAL PROBLEMS ON BOM AIRCRAFT"
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14 February
2006
From: Alec
Upward alecupward@netscape.net
What is the story behind the SBDs with mechanical problems on board Enterprise?
The source of my question, you might well imagine, is Cressman (et al), A
Glorious Page In our History. They refer (page 86) to 3 of 18
SBDs of Bombing 6 (B-4, B-17, B-10) having to be struck below sometime after
0700 on 4 June.
My understanding of standard procedure was that they would be run up
prior to being spotted in order to avoid this very thing. It just seems
very odd that so many would fail at the one moment in history when it
would most be wished otherwise. I'm toying with theories but would
obviously much prefer to be enlightened by anyone who knows.
USN carrier design and doctrine emphasized the launch of as many
aircraft as possible in the shortest possible time. Having them break
down on the flight deck is inconsistent with that goal.
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Ed note: New member Alec asks an interesting question. A
Glorious Page (pp. 86-87) actually reports five CV-6 aircraft with
engine trouble at launch time on the morning of June 4th: the 3 VB-6 SBDs
cited above plus 6-S-13 in VS-6, all of which were struck below. A
TBD was the fifth troublemaker, contributing to a 20-minute delay in
launching VT-6 and VF-6 that morning. There was even a sixth mechanical
failure in this group: 6-S-9 returned to the carrier after launch.
While a balky engine on a WWII flight deck wasn't
particularly unusual, six planes on one strike does seem a bit much. Does
anyone have a thought on the cause for this unusual failure rate?
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"DISTANCE BETWEEN TF-16 AND TF-17"
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22
February 2006
From:
Jeff McMeans jeffmcmeans@sbcglobal.net
When you look at how far it is from Tokyo to Midway, it seems just plain
stupid [for the Japanese] to hit Midway--unless Yamamoto's underlying
reason was to draw out our carriers, and he wasn't really concerned
whether or not they would actually take the island and hold on to it. I
know others wanted to hold on to it, but I am not sure Yamamoto cared at all.
Did anyone on Midway Island know that TF 16 and 17 were out there, hidden,
waiting to pounce? Or were they in the dark on that? And if they
weren't, what was Nimitz's reasoning on not letting them know?
Also, why were TF-16 and -17 so far away from each other? [If closer
together], maybe that would have helped fight off the Japanese planes sent
to take out the Yorktown. I have read that they were too far apart
in some book, maybe it was Incredible Victory,
but wondered if maybe someone could shed more light on that.
I can't wait for your book on the subject to come out, also.
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Ed note: these are some more good questions from another new
member. The first two are easy--yes, Yamamoto's ultimate goal in
Operation MI was luring the U.S. carriers into a decisive battle.
Midway was to be the bait that would cause that to happen, and without our
codebreaking success, it might have. And no, for the sake of security,
the presence of TF-16 and -17 was not revealed to the defenders of the
atoll. There was no guarantee at the time that Midway wouldn't
have Japanese occupants at some point, with American POWs to interrogate.
The third question, regarding the spacing between the two task forces, may
require a little more thought. My feeling is the separation between the
two was not so great that mutual air support suffered. Rather, I think
TF-16's CAP stayed with their own carriers because there was an expectation
that they also would be attacked. Who can give Jeff a better answer on
that one?
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"'MUTINY' ON THE YORKTOWN" (see issue #07, 08)
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2 March 2006
From: Leroy
Gardner gardner2@erols.com
I looked through the Yorktown deck logs for the month of June
1941. I found nothing about a mutiny or
even a hint of one. [Excerpt from
the log for the subject date follows.]
14Jun41
1600-2000 hrs. Steaming into port.
1600 At sea, bound for Newport News.
1745 Encountered hurricane, visibility 0. Wind 75 mph from 033.
1755 Anchored in Hampton Roads, Va.
in 9 fath of water.
1805 Hurricane subsided.
1955 Anchored at berth B-21.
There was nothing about the Marine detachment. The Yorktown
was in port almost the entire month of June 1941. Earlier in the year it had come from the Pacific, and after that
it was on maneuvers in and around the Bermuda area. After it left port at the end of June, it
went on a cruise north toward Greenland, after which it went south to the
Bermuda area once more. I think it
again put in at Hampton Roads and subsequently headed for the Pacific.
As
you people have been discussing, Buckmaster must have been a real
taskmaster. When the Yorktown
docked on the 14th, he literally kept the majority of the men right on board,
doing various tasks. Admittedly, some
were allowed shore leave, some were reassigned to other commands. But the greater number of enlisted
men were kept there working.
[In reviewing the daily log entries] I was much impressed by the number of
infractions of the rules. Literally
every day, there were men sentenced to anything from one day in the brig
on bread and water, through, I guess, a month in that same sentence. Many were docked anything from one day’s pay
to a month’s pay. Quite a few
were court-marshaled.
Buckmaster, himself pronounced many of these punishments. I could not believe that so many men were so
bad, from drunk and disorderly through swearing, talking back, some with bad
language, to superiors, fighting, refusing to obey orders, etc.
I
checked the officer roster for June and noted J. Clark, Cdr., boarded 5/18/1941
as XO.
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25
February 2005
From:
Jim Scanlon fmnavpern@yahoo.com
After reading Doc Regan's comments [Forum #08], I flipped
through Jocko Clark's book, Carrier Admiral, to see if it mentioned
what happened on Yorktown on 14 June 1941. I didn't really
expect that it would, but it did give a hint on pages 77 and 78 to his
(Jocko's) thinking just before Yorktown entered port on 14 June.
Jocko says:
"Leadership aboard Yorktown left a great deal to be
desired. Captain Buckmaster, though very much a gentleman and an
excellent ship handler, was too easygoing for wartime pressures. Soon
enough, I discovered he placed too much faith in his heads of departments,
failing to crack the whip when officers made serious mistakes. Many a
time I recalled what Rear Admiral C. P. 'Cy' Plunkett said to me when I was
serving in the destroyer Brooks in 1921: 'It all depends on the
man on top.'
"Some of the department heads I considered substandard, because of a
series of incidents that to me were alarming. The air department on two
occasions spilled large quantities of gasoline on deck during fueling; by sheer
luck, it did not catch fire. Once, during General Quarters, an enlisted
man abandoned a fan that was feeding to his companion in a compartment below
decks, with the result that the other man died of suffocation. Another
time, fire from the incinerator spread out into the incinerator room filled
with combustible materials. The first lieutenant, whose duty it was to
take care of this emergency, could not be found. I personally led the
fire-fighting detail, opening the door of the room myself to put out the fire.
As executive officer, I tried to push the captain, but I could go only so
far. There was uneasy feeling prevailing that the ship was going to be
sunk, a harbinger of what came later.
"In Yorktown I learned something about leadership from another
angle--how important it is not to let people get out of line. Because of
laxity on top, I had to use every trick I knew to get the job done, often
ending up doing it myself. Once a commander sets a course for his men,
they should be implicitly required to do an honest day's work. He should
build a groove or channel for them to operate in, and if they tend to get out
of it they should be gently but firmly nudged back. True, one should not
control men by losing one's temper, as Ernie King often did.
Nevertheless, in spite of my feelings toward him, I could not help admiring
King's stamina, driving power, and unflinching efficiency. In my opinion,
some of Yorktown's hapless department heads needed a lot of
King's brand of discipline."
From the above passages of his book, I'm willing to bet that Captain Buckmaster
probably had already left the ship before the incident that Ted Archer
recounted.
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Ed. note: I asked Jim to clarify his last comment above, and he
explained that he thought the "mutiny" incident was entirely the
responsibility of the XO, CDR Jocko Clark--CAPT Buckmaster was not
involved at all.
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..................................................... NOW
HEAR THIS! ....................................................
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NEWS
& INFO IN THIS ISSUE
--Pearl
Harbor Photos
--New
Member
--Forum
Notes
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PEARL HARBOR PHOTOS
Barrett Tillman gets credit for finding the following collections of Pearl
Harbor photos. Included are at least a few that most of us probably
have not previously seen. Check these URLs:
http://www.rivervet.com/pearl_harbor.htm
http://www.de220.com/Pearl%20Harbor/Pearl%20Harbor.htm
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NEW MEMBER
Please join me in welcoming to our roster Van A. Harvey, a
retired professor of religious studies at Stanford University in northern
California. Prof. Harvey is member number 281 on the Roundtable,
an all-time high.
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FORUM NOTES
~
If you will be attending the 64th BOM anniversary dinner in San
Francisco on Saturday, June 3rd and would like to stay overnight at the
Marines Memorial Club, you should make your reservation right away. Call
800-562-7463 and press "1" when you hear the option menu.
Mention "Group Code: Battle of Midway" to get the special rate.
Saturday night lodging is complementary for BOM vets, but you still need to
make a reservation.
~
Information is also wanted on this year's round of ship, squadron and unit
reunions. When you learn of such plans, please pass the word and we'll
get it posted on our web site for all to see.
~
The same holds true for other BOM anniversary events besides those already
discussed. When you become aware of anniversary observances anywhere,
please send in the details.
~
Because of an unusual workload the past several days, I didn't get a
chance to compile our regular "TV This Week" column. It should
appear next week as usual. If
you are aware of upcoming movies or broadcasts of interest, please let me know
by next Saturday.
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For a glossary of abbreviations, acronyms, and terms
used in The Roundtable Forum, click the following URL or go to our home page
and click "The Roundtable Glossary" link.
http://www.midway42.org/glossary.htm
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