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Absalom
Well... I can't say I'm surprised. I wondered about this when it was first revealed that Sutpen put his first wife aside. It also plays into the whole question of Race that we are discussing without it being much mentioned.I'm sitting at the window of Another Cafe. Haven't been here for a long time, but because this is a rainy day, I decided to stay close to home. Until now, the incoming storm was parting with the colorful bits (on the Doppler radar map) drenching counties to the north and south but missing us almost entirely. But now we are getting more of it. I don't mind.
Pacific War
A YouTube content provider (Military History Visualized) who covers warfare in general has started doing more episodes about the Pacific War. Recently he did some odd episodes where he merely talked to an expert in the field and created a lengthy bibliography of the war.I was impressed with the suggestions made by the expert and added my own suggestions. The expert and I got into a rather long (geeky) chain of messages. Since the point of all this is to give MHV suggestions for future topics, my mind started working overtime.
Once again I am amazed by just how many wonderful topics and stories there are for this war. So much so that it is hard to know where to start. And most of these stories are not just "military history" but also have compelling personal aspects -- it isn't just ships and battles but the stories of the men involved. The story of Shōji Nishimura is one of my favorites.
Nishimura started the war as a Rear Admiral in command of one of the IJN's (Imperial Japanese Navy) wonderful destroyer squadrons. He participated in, but didn't really achieve much at, the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942. By late 1944 he had risen to Vice Admiral, though still without achieving anything of note, and was placed in command of the Southern Force in the IJN's complicated (as was their wont) plan for the Battle of Leyte Gulf. His son had recently been killed in the fighting around the Philippines and he seems to have become despondent. He refused to meet with the captains under his command and his conduct of this vital phase of the overall battle plan appears to have been a massive suicide attempt. So much so that the advance of the Southern Force in the Surigao Strait is often compared to the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. If death was in fact his goal, then the operation was a success. Though if, from the perspective of Combined Fleet, the goal was a distracting demonstration on the enemy flank, the annihilation of Southern Force was also a success, as it left U.S. 7th Fleet out of position, and a bit low on munitions, for the main Japanese attack that followed within hours.
Which brings us to Takeo Kurita. Kurita had been a very competent Rear Admiral in command of a force of cruisers at the Battle of the Java Sea, and had also risen to Vice Admiral by late 1944. He was in command of the IJN main, or, Central Force at Leyte Gulf. His flagship cruiser was sunk under him as he steamed toward battle. He shifted his flag to Yamato and ended up racing away in the wrong direction, chased by a brace of torpedoes, at a crucial moment and never really managed to get back in control of the battle. (The fatigue that was such a huge factor around Guadalcanal also played a role here.)
The key part of this story is that Kurita, and the IJN in general, didn't know the 7th Fleet had a force of Escort Carriers to provide air support to the Leyte landing. This force, divided into three task groups known as "Taffy" 1, 2, and 3, was composed of sixteen CVEs -- essentially Liberty Ships with flight decks.
Compared to the Fleet Carriers of 3rd Fleet, these CVEs were a joke. When, to everyone's surprise, Kurita's ships stumbled upon Taffy 3 the morning of the Battle off Samar (the third of the four sub-battles that comprise the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In order: Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, Battle of Surigao Strait, Battle off Samar, and Battle of Cape Engaño), he assumed they were a task group of 3rd Fleet escorted by the usual array of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.
Over the course of the battle (hours), Taffy 3's escort, of destroyers and a destroyer escort, counter attacked Kurita (hence the torpedoes that chased him away from the battle) while the aircraft of all three Taffies attacked the Japanese while the little CVEs tried to evade destruction by a larger and faster enemy force. In the end, Taffy 3's losses were less than you would expect, while Kurita's Central Force was mauled by the tiny ships and second string air groups. What isn't clear to me is when, if ever, Kurita realized that he wasn't fighting 3rd Fleet.
Because, at this time the IJN could not provide trained air groups for the carriers it still had. That the Americans, in addition to fielding the most powerful fleet the world had ever seen (the carrier divisions of 3rd Fleet designated Task Force 38), could also build and provide air groups for a deceptively powerful auxiliary fleet, would have been as disheartening for Kurita as the loss of four more of his powerful heavy cruisers. Kurita is often second guessed for not pursuing his attack that day, but if he did indeed realize the significance of the Taffies, you can easily imagine him thinking, "What are we even doing out here?" And heading home.
I should stop there but I have a favorite detail of this battle regarding the "pea shooters." The U.S. fleet possessed a wide array of naval artillery ranging from the 16" guns on the Iowa class battleships, to the 8" and 6" guns on cruisers, to the 5" guns in single and dual turrets on destroyers, cruisers, battleships and even Essex class carriers. (By the way because of the difference in the weight of the projectile, a 6" gun is about twice as potent as a 5" gun.) Because the escort carriers had originally been developed for anti-submarine warfare, they mounted a single 5" gun that wasn't even placed in a turret. It was for engaging submarines that had been forced to the surface.
At the crisis of the Battle off Samar, when Taffy 3 was caught between rain squalls and was being fired at by most of the huge ships of Central Force, the following order was given to the U.S. escort carriers, "open with pea shooters." They even claimed quite a number of hits with those little 5" guns conveniently mounted on the aft of the fleeing little ships.
And then there's my favorite angle on the war: Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey. Really that should be Roosevelt, Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey. When you read about the almost unimaginable dysfunction at the command level on the Japanese side -- especially when it comes to Army-Navy cooperation -- and look for why the same thing didn't happen on the U.S. side, you almost always come back to Nimitz. He placed Halsey as Commander in the Southwest Pacific where he could act as liaison with General MacArthur. Nimitz also chose Spruance, who like the Japanese officers I mentioned above, started the war as a Rear Admiral commanding a force of Cruisers, as his Chief of Staff. And how did the comparatively junior Nimitz end up in command in the Pacific, because of Roosevelt.
I don't know if it was Nimitz or Spruance who thought up the "platoon" command system for the Big Blue Fleet, but it was probably one of them. This system, one of the great innovations in military history, was crucial to maintaining the pace of the offensive against Japan starting in 1943. The U.S. main "Fleet" was designated either 3rd Fleet, and commanded by Halsey and his staff, or 5th Fleet, and commanded by Spruance and his staff. This meant that while one staff was fighting the war, the other was resting and preparing for the next operations. There was no pause in operations (as was a problem with the Allied armies in Italy, for example) while the staff decided what to do next and then prepared to execute the new plan. This tag-team approach continued all the way to Tokyo Bay where Halsey stood on the deck of the USS Missouri during the surrender ceremony while Spruance commanded from the USS New Jersey -- just in case the Japanese pulled a fast one.
The Halsey/Spruance back story, their friendship extending back to their earliest commands, makes this story all the better and the fallout from Halsey's "swallowing the bait" at Leyte Gulf and sailing into two typhoons even gives it a tragic coda. What more can anyone ask for?
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