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My friend Dylan and I are embarking on a quest to read as many quality books as we can about US history this year. Although I've been having a very hard time with Indigenous continent (I think it's an awful book), I really enjoyed Ian Toll's The Pacific Crucible both from an entertainment standpoint and from a scholastic one.
Pacific Crucible starts dramatically at Pearl Harbor, backtracks a little bit to explain the US naval doctrine from the Spanish American War onwards and the reasons for Japanese militarism, and then proceeds chronologically until the Battle of Midway, alternating between the American and Japanese perspective. Although there were aspects of these first few months of the war that I feel like Toll covered too quickly (the battle for the East Indies), or even missed entirely (the submarine war on shipping for example), I learned a ton from this book.
Fascist elements in the Japanese military began to take over the country in the early 1930s as a result of the Great Depression and perceived slights by Western Powers against the Japanese Empire. These elements were allowed to eventually overthrow the Diet because Hirohito was extremely weak-willed. The invasion of Manchuria and the rest of China was a direct result of this military coup, and the Pacific war was a direct result of this because the US eventually refused to sell oil to Japan anymore.
Teddy Roosevelt and FDR were both big believers in naval power, although this naval bias played into a long US naval tradition of excellence at sea because of a need to protect global shipping. FDR actually started a massive carrier buildup in 1938, which made it such that new US carriers were ready as early as the end of 1942, which was incredibly important for faster victory in the Pacific.
Lots of racism from both sides which caused incredible lapses of judgement at Pearl Harbor and the Malaya campaign, and at Midway/Coral Sea.
At this stage in the war, Japanese pilots seemed to be far superior than the American ones. What prevented more Japanese victories at this stage in the war, as well as the collapse in capabilities from 1943 onward was poor command at a higher level (rivalry between the army and navy, lack of strategic vision or sober analysis of Japanese strength), and poor husbanding of human and material resources (veteran pilots got no break and were not used effectively to train new pilots, but were rather ground down completely by campaigns of attrition.
These naval battles seem incredibly confusing and unsettling. All your ships are miles away from each other, and you don't see the enemy basically at all, unless you are a bomber pilot. I suppose this has gotten even worse with the advent of drones or ballistic missiles, which have made carriers obsolete in the same way that carriers made battleships obsolete.
It's interesting how propaganda has completely changed our perception of WW2. In this book Toll notes that most Americans weren't super happy to be going to war, but were resigned to get the job done. Very different from how WW2 is portrayed now, as the "good war".
Which is to say, not obsolete at all? The idea that the battleship was made obsolete in WWII is a) untrue, and incidentally b) a highly american-centric one based on experiences in the pacific. The only way battleships were made obsolete by carriers is in carrying the role of primary offensive arm of naval strategy (ie- sail your Grand Fleet towards the enemy Grand Fleet, blow them to pieces and then blockade their coast and shell their harbors and raid their shipping with cruisers was replaced by launching airstrikes against capital combatants from long distance and submarine warfare against their commerce), in a tactical and operational sense they were still very much relevant.
Looking at the Iran situation, it would be incredibly helpful to have a vessel that was not particularly vulnerable to drone and missile stikes (through whatever combination of armor and defensive armament) that could cheaply return fire on shore- and small boat-based launchers that we could park in the straight of Hormuz right anout now.
Also, carriers can also serve as highly efficient drone launch platforms, to say they are obsolete in an era of drone warfare is circular logic.
Okay maybe obsolete isn't the right word. I think I mean counterable. Until cheap drones and long range missiles, the only thing that could effectively counter carriers were other carriers or land based air forces. The same is true with battleships. Before carriers, the only thing that could consistently counter a battleship was another battleship.
Forgetting submarines here, which of course is how the submarines like it.
In an age of ballistic missiles and cheap drones, carriers continue to have a huge advantage because unlike airfields they can move around, and very very quickly. The disadvantages carriers have compared with an airfield is that it's probably easier to repair the airfield, particularly from relatively minor damage, and you can't really fly large aircraft like strategic bombers, transports, or airborne refueling aircraft off of them.
It's also an added, compounding layer of difficulty and complexity launching and landing on them. A country being able to build carriers is impressive, but not as impressive as one that's able to launch planes like from them like clockwork with few accidents bar rounding errors, under stressful war conditions.
100%, although it seems to have gotten much less difficult recently. The US Navy used to always train carrier landings in trainers. Now, thanks to advances in avionics that can enable a more precise control mode behind the deck, they've removed the carrier landing requirement from their next trainer.
Lots of interesting things here, including the likely permanent passing of a difficult rite of passage.
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