The Dreadnought Effect.

This ought to scare you funny.

1. If you are a citizen of Georgia or North Carolina, USA; there are missing nuclear weapons near Savannah and Raleigh Durham.
2. Rota Spain... be worried.
3. Somewhere in Colorado, USA *(Near Boulder, they named a city after a rock, go figure.) there might be a 2.5 megaton surprise waiting.
4. South Carolina, USA has a future, or does it? They found the one that wrecked the farmhouse, but the second one is still missing.
5. The Russians segment of the video has me scratching my head. The Davy Crocket gives a fair idea of just how heavy a small nuclear weapon would have to be *(about 50 kgs.), and the Russians managed to get one into a suitcase? (Gun type bomb design.) It would take a gorilla or two men to heft it.

By the weigh, (Notice the pun?), the Americans have lost at least ten strategic bombers and the Russians five submarines of which I know. ALL of them "potentially" carried at least one and as many as four "special packages", each. The Russians have never admitted how many strategic bombers they lost in their own territory (17), but they have definitely lost them.

6. Did I forget that Norway should be worried?

Publicly known events.

Dreadnought effect explanation.

Atomic weapons were invented by the Americans. They used them. They forgot that a fail-never technology does not and never can exist. One day, their invention will bite them. Inevitable blowback effect.

I do think this is an example of the Dreadnought Effect.

a. The Blowback was that the British did not understand their new weapon system at the user level. The Germans did. From ammunition and propellant storage, to signals and comms and to damage control, the Germans were plainly better trained with better understanding of the mechanicals. Dogger bank showed Hipper was the better admiral than Beatty. Jutland was a pure case of Jellicoe being a superb seaman with prescient situational awareness. Nevertheless; Beatty did his best to lose the battle for Jellicoe by failing to win the merge or accurately report contacts. 

b. Somerville rejected CAST and HYPO intelligence passed to him. FECB gave him the wrong date for Nagumo to show up. Somerville guessed wrong at where the Japanese would launch. Nagumo actually launched 100 nm further west than Somerville assumed. The RAF reconnaissance fan was botched out of Sri Lanka. By pure accident a Canadian PBY found the outer boundary of the Japanese air defense CAP and was shot down. The pilot got off a report and that was the first Somerville knew of Nagumo in the area. When Somerville launched his own search to find Yamaguchi's detached flattops, the search found Yamaguchi but misreported the position by 40 nautical miles north of where he really was. The Albacores, to attack on that contact, were launched and sent on a wrong bearing a La Mitscher at Midway.  Since the ASV fitted to the Albacores at that stage of the war in that latitude and IO weather had a search cone ahead of no better than 15 nautical miles for a capital ship sized target, the strike package missed to the south. The admiral who botched the plan was actually a chap named D. W Boyd. And as usual, the RAF, with radar, and a complete IADS at Colombo, was caught on the ground a day later and wiped out. HMS Hermes which was in the vicinity and had no business being there since Somerville had a full week to get her out of there, based on the HYPO and CAST information, was found fleeing and sunk. The cruisers, Cornwall and Dorsetshire, on detached duty to the southwest of the Colombo attack were an instant Nagumo bonus in that utter debacle. With this complete shambles reported back to him; Somerville did the only thing he could do. He hung around long enough to rescue the survivors off Cornwall and Dorsetshire, in retrospect a huge mistake if Nagumo had found him, since it was likely Indomitable and Formidable would have been hunted down and destroyed. But for some reason nagumo did not fly off a search even thougfh his CAP reported British planes of a carrier borne type in the area. Somerville finished the rescue, retreated west and avoided contact with Nagumo, for his own planes reported their contact with Nagumo's CAP. Somerville eventually retired to East Africa and based there ceding the central Indian Ocean as a no-man's ocean to the Japanese. 

For a bonus, the "slow squadron" of R's was soon sent to Madagascar for Operation Ironwood to cover it, where the amphibious landing was mishandled and the HMS Ramillies was torpedoed by a Japanese minisub in that confusion. 


c. Tom Phillips and his mentor, Dudley Pound, refined the Backhouse plan for empire defense in the South China Sea. They assumed that they would be able to take the units based out of Gibraltar (Somerville's future slow squadron of R class battleships and two Illustrious class carriers), and join it with a battlecruiser force to bodyguard the flattops. With cruisers already assigned to the Indian Ocean and a mixed allied force of American (US Asiatic fleet, Hart) and Dutch ships (Doorman) to make up British shortages in light forces, this Eastern Fleet under British command was supposed to power project into the South China sea and stop a Combined Fleet movement south towards Singapore. The Japanese would be "deterred" if they had the US Pacific fleet on their eastern flank and a flock of B-17s in the Philippines. This "plan" was based on British experience in the Mediterranean campaign in 1939 and 1940. The plan was cooked up at the ABC-1 and ABC-2 conferences and sold to Admiral Harold Stark as an alternative to Plan Orange. He bought it. You can see it in his Plan DOG memo. He sold it in turn to FDR, which in part explains the Pacific fleet move to Pearl Harbor, putting the hitherto out of range Pacific fleet (based at San Diego) into range of the Imperial Japanese Navy strategic weapon, their first mobile fleet which had a tactical reach radius of just 3,700 nautical miles, that is if they brought their tanker support with them. 

The Blowback from Taranto is this: the Japanese knew the Backhouse/Pound/Phillips plan backwards and forwards. To take that plan apart, Yamamoto looked at the Taranto operation and used it to model the neutralization of the American Pacific Fleet. Battleships or carriers, it did not matter as long as Kimmel did not move into the Marianas Islands as planned while the Japanese were entangled in the South China Sea. 

The further Blowback from Taranto was: One does not need aircraft carriers to bomb and torpedo ships. One uses planes with dedicated and highly trained aircrews. The other lesson the Japanese learned was that the Italians had torpedoed British warships using "Hunchbacks". The Spaviero was a slow, utterly obsolete flying piece of junk. The Japanese created a "Special Attack Force" of G3 and G4 bombers trained in anti-ship tactics. Then they moved it into Vichy French held southern Indochina and based that force there. This made nonsense of the British power projection plan and was the reason FDR sent Hirohito a letter on 6 December that amounted to telling the Japanese emperor to remove the presence of those forces or face war. 

To further develop the situation, the British plan to send 2 aircraft carriers, 2 battlecruisers 5 battleships, 3 cruisers and 8-12 destroyers went down the loo when the flattops planned were mission killed in a couple of club runs to Malta. One more carrier ran aground in the Caribbean after finishing repairs in the US. Some of the slow R class battleships were out of service under repair or hurried refit. Hood had been destroyed. Renown was committed so she was unavailable. Prince of Wales was fresh repaired from the Battle of the Denmark Strait and Repulse was free. Indomitable might later join them but she was the bird farm that ran aground as she missed that buoy that marked the channel into Kingston Jamaica.  So Force Z was rumped down to a battlecruiser and a battleship and four destroyers. The British (Phillips specifically) now suggested that the British aircraft carriers be replaced with AMERICAN aircraft carriers and that as agreed, the Asiatic fleet be chopped to Force Z along with the Far East Asia Air Force. (All of those B-17s.).

That was the gist of the meeting Phillips had with Hart at Manila, on 7 December 1941, local time. Phillips fully intended to take command as he assumed the ABC-1 Agreement entitled him to do. 

Here is what Hart knew and what he told Phillips.

1. The British Force Z was not of the strength promised.
2. Prince of Wales was a mechanical casualty unfit for war. Hart had this via the USN consul who reported that PoW was under repair at Colombo for engine problems. Hart was not a fool. More on how this relates to Phillips in a moment.
3. Japanese invasion convoys were at sea already headed for landings on the Kra Peninsula and probably for Lingayen Gulf. American air recon had seen these ships.     
4. Any power projection into the South China Sea was dead, because Japanese airpower was too strong. Hart mentioned Japanese bombers near Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), specifically.                 
5. Hart told Phillips that as the US was not yet in a state of war, the Asiatic Fleet was not going to be chopped to British command at all. What Hart meant was that things had moved beyond the Singapore plan and the Japanese had split the baby by basing in Indochina. All British notions were moot.

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At this juncture, I do not know if Thomas Hart told Phillips to retreat Force Z west to the Andaman Islands, Kolkutta, or Colombo, Sri Lanka; but knowing from the record just what a fireball and irascible man Hart was, I suspect after some strong remonstrations; he would have advised Phillips "to get out of Singapore before he was bombed out". 

I do know from British admiralty records that Winston Churchill knew everything I have just written at least by 1 December about Japanese intentions, including the presence of the "special attack force", because the Americans told him, while his own navy kept mum. He found out about the convoys at sea about 12 hours after the Americans did locally. 

I also know around 1 December that Churchill asked Pound if Phillips should not hold up at Sri Lanka with Force Z instead of pressing on to Singapore. PoW was still undergoing emergency repairs and it would be an excuse Pound could use to order Phillips to hold in place. Pound did not do so. 

British critics like to criticize Ernest King for his subsequent decisions regarding the Royal Navy after FDR fired Stark and appointed him CNO. It was Stark who screwed up the American force dispositions and gave FDR bad naval advice to use the Pacific Fleet at Hawaii as a bluff. Part of that advice was to move Atlantic fleet assets around so the British could create Force Z as the Americans moved toward the Azores and Iceland. Stark agreed with Pound's overall plans, but like Pound, he was very inflexible and lacked the presence of mind to adapt to rapidly changing events.  On the RN side, it was obvious with the available information, that far from being a deterrent to aggression as the Pacific Fleet was not at Pearl Harbor, Force Z would be promptly attacked in a Kantai Kassen exercise in the Gulf of Siam; even if it had been at full strength and that it would be annihilated. All Tom Phillips did, with his doomed sortie, was allow Takagi to hang back out of range and watch the bomb-ex before he, Takagi, led the covering force in to backstop the landings Phillips was far too late to stop.

And the RAF with radars and an IADS in the Malay Settlements was caught on the ground (Brook Popham) with a full day's warning and they were wiped out.  Same thing happened in the Philippines with the Far East Asia Air Force. (Brereton, the guy who screwed up the Ploesti Raid and then Market Garden. Remember him?).  I actually blame MacArthur. Always blame MacArthur when something like that happens in the Southwest Pacific.      

If this reads like an anti-British rant; it is not. It is just to fill in the holes on how Taranto blew back on the British and the Americans, because there was this Italian admiral, Iachino, who told his incompetent boss, that it was a bad idea to park the Regia Marina's main battle fleet at Taranto without air warning facilities, fighter protection and within easy sortie range of a British fleet which was known to have a tactical radius out of Alexandria; Egypt of two thousand nautical miles, to have an aircraft carrier, and which had been observed conducting night fighting exercises. His boss, Mussolini, overruled him. After Taranto, Mussolini pulled back the fleet until the Italians could guarantee a no-repeat performance. (Wait for it.)   

There was this American admiral who had already told his boss the same thing about the Pacific Fleet and Pearl Harbor. Once the Taranto raid lessons (chickens) started to roost in OP-20-G, and Royal Ingersoll's letter started to make the rounds among the senior American commanders (Including Stark, Tower, King and Richardson; then commander of the Pacific Fleet and then his successor, Kimmel, see next...), James O. Richardson became very exorcised over that little lesson learned about not putting one's own fleet out there on a limb. He became so obnoxious that Roosevelt fired him. Enter Kimmel and Pearl Harboe happens. Nimitz goes out and the Pacific Fleet cannot back out because it is sunk. So: salvage in place and build a fortified naval base around it. Before Pearl Harbor, the anchorage and harbor, was being built into a forward staging base, not a true naval port like Bremerton, San Diego or Norfolk. After Pearl Harbor, the salvage in place and base construction to a full fleet base like San Diego happened. Another Taranto blow back lesson assimilated.

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The British went after the Zeppelin Sheds and U-boats in Belgium.



e. The Desert Army forgot. The Metro-army (1940 France) had it pounded into them that all arms cooperation was a thing. The Desert Army seems to have picked up bad habits in Egypt, such as jock columns, tank charges into anti-tank gun lines and also into OBVIOUS minefields, fire on the move, leaving the infantry in the lurch, making fortified boxes in the defense; instead of interlocking their mobile battle groups a la Roman maniple tactics as the Germans and Italians, practiced lax radio and cable discipline, conducted sloppy patrolling and possibly worst of all; the Royal Artillery was forming their own club and not paying attention to higher headquarters. So was the RAF for that matter. Close air support? Not for us! 

About my parochialism... as a point of view or my xenophobia.

If one has not picked up on it, I am a fan of Montgomery. He seems to have acquired the French habit of methodical battle, even more-so than the French. He insisted on as thorough preparation as the times and means allowed. He planned battles to a high degree with not one, but several plans. If Plan A was no good, he had a B and a C and even a D. He never panicked like Bradley did at the BULGE, and he never lost his head like Ritchie or Clark or Percival or Wainwright did. I adjudge his arrival in North Africa with a completely changed 8th Army. They learned discipline. Example: Montgomery had trouble with one of the "old hands", General Gatehouse, during the Battle of El Alamein. Off to Washington with Gatehouse. "If the Americans can dump Stark on us, we can dump him on them."  True, absolutely true. Gatehouse was Starked; because he mishandled his division and disobeyed orders during the battle. See Montgomery quote a bit later.

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Remember Kasserine Pass, that great American fiasco? Eisenhower sent Patton forward to clean house at II Corps, but what one does not usually know, is that Montgomery took a look at the British part of that disaster and black marked Kenneth Anderson for not sorting out Lloyd Fredendall after Ernest P. Harmon had warned him that Fredendall was incompetent and a yellow-belly before the disaster. It got so bad over there, that it percolated up the chains to Marshall and Alan Brooke. While Orlando Ward and Harmon put the boot in on Anderson locally and scoured his name with mud, it was Montgomery who fixed that "gentleman's little red wagon." with London. "I don't think we need him." to quote Montgomery, carried a lot of weight.      

    

  
    

I recommend this thesis by Andrew Boyd.

Worthy of better Memory: The Royal Navy and the defence of the Eastern Empire 1935 - 1942 Volume 1 of 2

Worthy of better Memory: The Royal Navy and the defence of the Eastern Empire 1935 - 1942 Volume 2 of 2

Everything I wrote, he covers in exhaustive detail. Especially that part where He notes that Phillips and Pound tried to get the Americans to launch a surprise air raid on the Japanese a la Taranto.

That was ABC-2.

The rest of that story is from British and American official records covering ABC-1 and ABC-2.

Some accounting, from Hyperwar, is given here, but Boyd covers it better along with who actually suggested the Pearl Harbor type raid on the IJN primary anchorage.

One asked if it was Britain's fault that Stark and Kimmel were not qualified and were not removed before they made their mistakes? No, they were fired once they failed to perform in war. Was it Britain's fault that Tom Phillips and Dudley Pound were unqualified and not removed before their mistakes lost the British their empire? Perhaps, not, but it can be shown that their actions and plans did not result in positive outcomes. Pound, like Charles Portal of the RAF, was not relieved when he was clearly medically unfit. Tom Phillips, possibly imitating Sir George Tryon, went down with HMS Prince of Wales, rather than face his music.

As for Thomas Hart's assessment of Phillips and his attempt to implement his, Phillips' plan at that famous Manila meeting? Hart told him, Phillip, that he, Hart, would not allow his fleet to be put under Phillips' command. That was about the only correct decision that was made in the Pacific Ocean on the allied side in the month of December. The Asiatic fleet was thus saved to become the nucleus of the future 7th Fleet.

There was enough blame to spread among the allied navies, but the British navy recommendations for dealing with the Japanese were the first cause for FDR to move the Pacific fleet westward into IJN reach. And yes, the British expected the Americans to move west into the Mandates to threaten the Japanese in that quarter prior to movement to the Philippine Islands, because that was the American plan they were shown.

We will disagree. That is okay. We should. The only thing to remember is; that the recent evidence shows that it was not all only American mistakes or even mainly American mistakes that created the British Eastern Command disasters.

A1. The British still assumed the Pacific Fleet would be headed west.
B1. One should read Boyd. He deals with FECB, which was aware of it; and which was incredibly incompetent about it.
B2. Chennault also sent it by diplomatic courier. It reached the United States. It was lost in the USAAC bureaucracy.
B3. Chennault carried the knowledge in his head. He returned to the United States and taught it at the Fighter Tactics School before he was pulled to form the Flying Tigers / AVG and sent back to China.\

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Just because the Hollywood treatment has turned the AVG into legends, one should not assume that the AVG was immune to human error and exaggeration.

www.cia.gov/static/94bf6caa6473683acfdbe5e17678011d/Claire-Lee-Chennault.pdf



Kind of shows that Americans were getting the data and how they got it.



So; the information did get back.

How do we know this?

The XF5F began in 1935, but really took off in 1938.



Now who screwed that program up? Bu-Air's John Tower. Same bozo who fumble-dorked the F4U.

Who buried Chennault's data in the USAAC? Rufus Bratton screwed that one up. He was ably assisted in his mistake by the incredibly incompetent George H. Brett.

The Blowback Effect from Brett, the bomber baron, is that he hated Chennault's guts.  He was also worried that if the USAAC technical branch started to sidetrack funding into fighters' development, he would not get his massed bomber fleets.

But somebody paid attention.