Why Didn't the Naval Barrage on Iwo Jima Work?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2022
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US Marines storm the beaches of Iwo Jima after a short naval barrage, predicting a simple victory. When the Marines come ashore, Lt. General Kuribayashi unleashes his pre-sighted artillery firepower on the beach. Here we look at why was the naval barrage so ineffective at neutralising the Japanese artillery.
Bibliography
Alexander, Joseph H. Closing in: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima. Glasgow, UK: Good Press, 2019.
Bradley, James, and Ron Powers. Flags of Our Fathers. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2016.
Kakehashi, Kumiko. So Sad to Fall in Battle: An Account of War. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2007.
King, Dan, and Linda Ryan. A Tomb Called Iwo Jima: Firsthand Accounts from Japanese Survivors. Rockwall, TX: Dan King, 2020.
Leckie, Robert, and Ted Burwell. The Battle for Iwo Jima. New York, NY: Random House, 1967.
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General Kuribayashi made sure his men would go underground. A lot of officers did not agree with him at first but he stood firm with his tactics. "Letters of Iwo Jima" is a great movie as it shows the battle in Japanese perspective. "Flag of our fathers" is for the American perspective.
Letter from Iwo Jima is from the Japanese perspective. Flags of our Fathers is from the American perspective.
@@aldreenbautista2375 The Japanese perspective was a better film, 8/10
They did a great job capturing the moment the flag was raised on Surubachi. I knew what was coming but it still gave me the shivers and I even met some onion ninjas
I haven't see the movie but I keep forgetting about. I'm VERY forgetful.
Thanks for the movie tips
My Dad-in-law was at/on Iwo as a Demolition specialist. His older brother was there as a Corpsman. Dad was shot on day 29 & survived. His brother found him at the aid station just a day before Dad was removed to better medical care. He later ended up doing the balance of four years overall deployment in Japan during Occupation. He and his brother both made it home. Dad used to say, "I was just a dumb 19 kid when I got there. I should have gotten shot earlier and gotten the Hell out of there!" When he got home to a tiny little town in IL, he went to work one day later at a quarry, blowing up rock. Shortly thereafter, he became a Lineman and finished his life career as a supervisor then consultant for Large nationally recognized Electrical Construction company. He died a few years age at 89. I sure do miss him. Semper Fi Corporal Lester Twigg. Also to you Uncle Joe.
One of my neighbors was there and was severely wounded. He died in the 90's from the indirect result of his wounds. A clot had formed in the area where the doctors had left a bullet de to the danger of removing it. The clot dislodged and went to his heart.
Salutes to your father, my neighbor, and all the men who took part.
Grandfather was CB on Iwo.
Purple heart recipient?
Ran across an old Marine a few years ago who landed both at Iwo and pelelu. Most awestruck I've ever been in my entire life, and I've met men who have won the MOH.
Il near St. Louis?
An important part left out wasn't just about conserving ammunition, but was gun wear. The 14 and 16 inch naval guns rifling and jacket wear out past 300 rounds fired during that time frame. Each battleship had 9 guns. So after firing approximately 2700 rounds per ship all the guns would need to be serviced which took the ship out of duty for an overhaul. The 16″/50 Mark 7 guns had built up barrels with a liner, tube, jacket, three hoops, two locking rings, tube and liner locking ring, and yoke ring. The liner was auto fretted and chrome plated for longer life. The liner is what wore out and it could be removed and replaced separately. The liner had a life of 1,500 FER (Fatigue Equivalent Rounds.) Per round fatigue depended open the round fired (AP vs HC vs HE), and the velocity it was fired at, which was determined by the powder charge.The barrel life during WWII was expressed in ESR and these guns had an ESR of about 300. But each round had an ESR that varied from as low as 0.03 (HC rounds fired at 1900 fps) to as high as 0.43 ESR (AP rounds fired at 2690 fps.)
I wonder if that's part of the reason there was a trend toward using rocket artillery for bombardments (among other things).
Very intersting. Thank you. Would be most interesting making a video on the impact this phenomenon had on the entire war.
I briefly had the same thought before I watched the video as far as barrel wear being one reason the Navy didn’t go “full bore.”
Thanks for the information! I hadn’t given that much thought.
I was an artillery mechanic in the Marine Corps and we tracked rounds fired in gun books assigned to each gun. And used EFC’s as a unit of measure. Effective Full Charge. Which is similar to what you described.
IMPRESSIVE! HOKEY SMOKES YOU KNOW YOUR GUNS! BTW. Naval guns are the only true definition of a "gun" and a very big one at that! I cringe everytime someone calls a rifle or a pistol a "gun" as they have totally bastardize the word!
All the pre assult bombartment. Heavy bombers, Aircraft, rockets, all calibre ship bombartment. And those defenses still stood. A complete guess but given the ground and size of the tunnels I'm guessing most were hand dug. And survived all that. It's definitely impressive.
Yeah I'm totally assuming but looking at how the Japanese managed labor it was probably POW forced labor.
@@theredacted3805 agreed. There were also apparently also civilians there until July 1944
I wonder if the earthquake bombs or grand slam bombs used by the British would have made a difference on the tunnels and bunkers in the mountains?
@@Luis-be9mi Some tunnels could possibly collapse but at the same time, underground structures are somewhat more resistant to earthquakes. I think an alternate strategy to weed them out of the tunnels would be to fire enough white phosphorus and other smoke generating munitions into the tunnels trying to suffocate them out would've been more effective.
The beaches were covered in volcanic ash which further complicated The invasion efforts of the Marines. Tanks had trouble climbing it amphibious tractors had trouble you name it couldn't get up those Banks. You go to climb and you'd be in it a your knees. One thing not mentioned was the expensive minefields that the Japanese had dug in. Some of the minds were essentially anti-shipping mines buried in the ground. That would be a 500 lb roughly mine.
The idea to use this channel to compliment the other was a brilliant idea. I'm absolutely loving this.
The defense works was constructed by expending the lives of tens of thousands of Chinese, Phillipines and Korean slave labors who were literally worked to death.
What other channel ? I'd love to see it too.
@@billotto602 not sure but i guess it is operations room
@@billotto602 Yes, Operations Room. If you liked this video you are in for a treat.
The Operations Room gives the timeline of an event. The Intel Report gives the context of said event.
As much of an American as I am, I highly respect General Kuribayashi. He understood his enemy and the situation he was in and he knew he couldn’t win. So he used every trick in his book to make it difficult for us.
He had a great strategy and was a good tactician.
Yeah, he is one of the few Japanese generals who really knows how to fight the US. It's really lucky that he is a minority, other Japanese generals are a group of fools who only know brute force and simple tactics and send their soldiers to die in vain.
Too bad his leadership sent him on a suicide mission along with every other Japanese soldier in their military. If he was actually intelligent he would've realized he should just surrendered the island over to the Americans instead being responsible for thousands of deaths in both his own country men and their future allies. Such a shame he decided to be one of the worst humans to live in the name of "his family honor"
@@minecraf1er
Self-sacrifice is something few Westerners can understand. It's a lot easier to be brave when you're backed up by the largest industrial base in history and one of the largest, most well-equipped militaries than it is to be brave in the face of insurmountable odds and certain death on a desert island almost certain to be pummeled into dust.
@@minecraf1er
1. if he would have tried to surrender, his underlings would have prevented it and probably killed him.
2. If he did surrender and somehow convinced his troops to surrender, and they survived the war, they would have been a tiny percentage of Japanese that surrendered. They wouldn’t have had no home, rejected at home, which means no life. The shame wouldn’t have been bearable, being called a pathetic coward, no career, rejected by family after the war.
Fun fact: Iwo Jima (a volcanic island in the Ogasawara group of islands) moves north at an average rate of 14 feet per year making it the fastest moving landmass in the world. More remarkable is that it randomly retreats a few feet every 3-4 years. The remarkable speed of its advance and then its apparently random occasional retreats thought to be due to a combination of the factors of tectonic plate movement (which shifts only in a northerly direction in the case of the plate that the Ogasawara islands lay on) and the orbital movement of lava underlying the volcanic island itself - which appears to oscillate forwards then backwards depending upon lava flow and where the greatest mass of lava sits in the oscillation from time to time.
I read somewhere that it is currently also rising out of the water so as to expose ships that were sunk during the war to form a breakwater.
Adam, that, indeed, is a really "Fun Fact!"👍
Very interesting....
10:15- An error; as stated in the companion video, the Japanese artiliery was 120mm, not 20mm.
Quite right
I was about to say, if a 20mm piece manages to take down either a battleship or a heavy cruiser (even though both were naval treats ships) is nothing short of miraculous.
Yeah I was wondering about that. My first thought was, "What were the Japanese doing firing 20mm at a cruiser? Trying to scratch the paint?"
well that invalidates the veracity of the whole piece. based on this gross error i doubt that there WAS a so called "world war 2"
@@johnthompson7420 That's not what he said. If there's an error, it should be pointed out. If I said something that was historically wrong, I'd want someone to say where I was inaccurate. This isn't a gotcha thing.
Been there. The tunnels are covered with volcanic gravel. Basically a sand bag of protection above them. The concrete was also feet thick. The Japanese had a turkey shoot in all direction. Zero cover for attacking forces. The heat above ground is also thick with sulfur enriched air. Below was a comfortable 55°.
better than sandbags because the brittle structure will absorb alot of any sharp sudden impacts and shatter without transferring as much energy
Iwo Jima is like the most defensible landmass on the planet, I don't know if another week of bombardment would have mattered
@@NewMitchell-wh3fj "is like the most defensible landmass on the planet" " then how Americans were able to win there?
The Battle of Monte Cassino was the real deal and Germans lost only because Allies got Polish troops there to do what dosens of other nations before them failed to do. Only Polish soldiers graveyard is visible from the mountain, as other soldiers were not even able to get to the hills not to mention capture it.
Most of the heavy battles of the Americans in this war do not even compare to the battles on the Eastern Front where the battles ended with millions of dead soldiers.
@@Bialy_1 My wife dad was in that battle. Anzio Invasion. I tried asking him about it over years and years but he politely refused to say a word about his service. Pretty sure he saw alot of hand to hand. I have read alot about the Anzio Invasion it was incredibly brutal fighting very high US loss. My father in law was a tough dude. His Burial Flag in its display box has a prominent and proud place in my living room to this day.
I was stationed on Iwo Jima in 1991-1992 at the USCG LORAN Station. We spent many weekends crawling through the caves and fortifications. I still have a few souvenirs from my exploration. The Japanese brought in 1200 Korean laborers to dig tunnels and pill boxes. I have great respect for our magnificent marines and what they accomplished there. The island still had a lot of live ordinance laying around and you did need to be careful.
PFC Leo Greene, from Great Falls MT, KIA on the 3rd day of the invasion. He was with 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment (2/28 in Marine terms), the Battalion that raised the flag. He was a veteran of Tarawa, and had gotten in trouble in Hawaii and been reduced in rank. KIA at the age of 19. Just a Montana farm boy who never got to live a full life. The letter from his battalion commander said that he was shot in the neck by a sniper and died instantly. Think about him and the thousands like him. Semper Fidelis, Uncle Sharkey (Leo Greene), my uncle. MGySgt USMC (Ret)
I'm curious. What kind of souvenirs did you manage to find?
@@battleshiparmorlord some of the ceramic grenades were found by others. I found some battle dress white uniforms (Japanese Navy). Ceramic landmines were every where.
@@surfboy344 any paranormal stories?? I would imagine those tunnels are filled with horrible memories and energy
@The Largest Collection of Music From Japan on Here absolutely not. Had no idea that we had a unit still there, but I'm glad we did.
The japanese defenders were clearly hard men. Imagine being bombed with massive shells, constantly for weeks on end, living in a bunker in extreme heat and bad food. And after all that, still being able to fight effectively against battle-forged US Marines. Crazy how hard the men on both sides of WW2 were
2:24
The terrain of the atoll is not the same as the terrain of a volcanic island.
The Japanese made good use of the volcanic ash that, mixed with
cement produced an exceptional concrete.
Yeah the Filipinos still use the ash from Mt. Pinatubo for construction
Forget who said that, 100 shells that did not hit does less damage than a single shell that hit. Hence, the introduction of precision guided munitions.
The fortifications on Iwo were so deep even a hit wouldn't affect them.
I think it more points out that there's no replacement for boots on the ground.
That even with the age of drone warfare we will always need brave men to go into harms way.
It would be interesting to war game out this attack and defence with present day technology and tactic.
See what's has changed and what remains the same.
Impressive. But I think no amount of bombardment would have eliminated the Japanese in their caves and underground bunkers. S.E. Morrison writes that the navy/marines wanted to use poison gas and the request went all the way up to President Roosevelt, who said no. Thanks for your work.
The bombardment isn't supposed to eliminate them. It is supposed to weaken their position greatly.
Poison gas should've been used. How is poison gas off limits but fire bombing wasn't? Or, they should've blanketed the island in fire bombing and smoked them out
@@pyropulseIXXI "How is poison gas off limits but fire bombing wasn't?" Like, laws of war? Chemical weapons were outlawed after ww1, incendiary bombs weren't. Also why do you think that fire would've been able to magically do what normal explosives couldn't? Fire bombardment is good, because fire spreads. Fire won't spread through a rock tunnel, as there's nothing to burn.
@@vitkosbence3705 there is oxygen to burn though...
@@jaythomson5942 Do you lack an elementary education? The three components of fire are, fuel heat and oxygen. I've never suggested we lack oxygen, I'm saying we lack fuel... sure the bomb does carry some amount but that's only enough to burn the area of impact, causing damage similar in scale to what a simple HE bomb would cause.
@@jaythomson5942 oxygen isn't a fuel, so it can't spread the fire.
I served in a unit commanded by a member of the 2nd wave that landed on Iwo. He said the naval bombardment suppressed the defenders long enough for the first two waves to land pretty much unscathed, but the 3rd and successive waves took a terrific pounding. He saw landing craft get flipped up in the air, roll over, spilling the marines out into the water and landing on top of them, killing everyone. After that I didn't ask any more questions, what he said was enough to convey what a terrible battle it was. When he described this scene I could see the pain it caused him and out of respect didn't ask any more questions. There were other guys in that unit who'd been with the 1st Marines at "Frozen Chosin", Korea, who had some terrifying tales of bugles blaring over loudspeakers followed by waves of infantry that came swarming at them into their trenches where they fought hand-to-hand. They said it took a while and a lot of casualties before they drove them back and during that time they said it felt like it could've gone either way, which must have been a hell of an experience.
Ridgeway found a solution to that. 105's dug in with the infantry and aimed point blank at Chinese hoards as they started there assault. They died in heaps. Joseph Stalins answer to Victory over Bazi Germany- kill Germans. Ridgeway's answer to defeating Chinaman hoards- kill Chinese! Seemed to work well in 1951. Why Ridgeway wasn't given a fifth star is beyond me.
I remember seeing a WW2 training film about naval bombardements, specifically dissecting the bombardement of Iwo Jima (in particular noting the ineffectiveness of area saturation fire, and the effectiveness of aimed fire at well known point targets, at destroying enemy fortifications). I was amazed at how much we seem to have learned about bombardements from this single battle. I think we probably learned about as much about how to conduct effective artillery bombardements at Iwo Jima as the British learned at the Somme. In both cases one of the key takaways was that area saturation fire, while devastating against unprotected troops in the open, is incapable of destroying deeply entreched forces.
Relearning old lessons, really. As I recall, the lack of effect of heavy bombardment on prepared defenses was noted as far back as the Age of Sail, and relearned many times since.
and vietnam too. linebacker was a such a waste of resource so now they use targeted laser guided bombs
@@SnakebitSTI but back then balls wherent accurate hence the race for making bigger and bigger cannons
@@SnakebitSTI
The commander of the military base in Alaska where they test military vehicles, when asked if they had any problems, stated that every few years they had to relearn that water freezes at 32°F.
@@SnakebitSTI I mean it's not that the US Navy wouldn't have liked to but the Japanese were very effective at making their fortifications impossible to effectively target so you are only left with area fire
I spent 3 days on Iwo with a Marine battle study group in 89'. And explored many of the tunnels that were not bulldozed in. It was a very elaborate tunnel system. One could still find Japanese helmets, ammo and grenades lying on the floor. Looking down from Mt. Suribachi onto the invasion beaches, it's a wonder how anyone wasn't hit by small arms fire.
The supreme irony is as pointed out by Saburo Sakai in his autobiography, "Samauri", was if Iwo Jima was attacked at the time MacArthur persuaded FDR to let him go to the Philippians. Their defense at that time was so sparse, Saburo himself said we could have easily swept the island's sparse defenses at that time with minimal losses.
The ENTIRE build-up of the extensive underground works occurred DURING the Philippian's campaign, and gave them to time to develop it into the bomb-proof complex it became, allowing it to become basically an unnecessary loss of lives for both sides.
I think you mean 'Samurai'
And Phillipines.
There were 100,000's of Allied and civilian POW's in the Philippines. MacArthur rightly stated that the US had a supreme responsibility to free them as soon as it was possible. Every allied government felt the same way......the conditions our people captured were forced to endure were an abomination. The Navy Cabal in Washington constantly delayed Mac in this quest, opting instead to take small islands at horrendous cost.
I did Iwo as my battle presentation for Corporals Course.
I got to go a few years after that as a 6'2" 220lb Marine in my prime and climbing that beach I wept like a child.
That place was Hell on earth.
Had a friend who was stationed at the LORAN station on Iwo Jima in the 1970s. They were all told to stay out of the caved due to possibly unexploded ordinance plus many of them were considered to be graves.
Nobody cares about cannon fodder stories.
My grandpa served in the Canadian military and served in Europe. He was offered a role in the Atlantic campaign as an Canadian attachment - due to the Japanese invasion of Alaska Aleutian Islands
He chose to remain with his mates from Nova Scotia until the days before the rise of the Wall in Germany.
While there he heard of the stories of the Pacific campaign - he said said he was glad to have turned down the offer and did not envy any who had to fight on that front.
“War is hell wherever it is fought - I fought my world war. I didn’t want to fight another.”
Average Japanese made even the most hardened SS look civilized.
In US ground forces you stood a 1.78% chance of being KIA in the Pacific Campaign compared with a 0.36% chance in the European theater.
About 24.2% of Japanese soldiers and 19.7% of Japanese sailors died during the Second World War, contrasted with 3.66% of U.S. Marines, 2.5% of U.S. soldiers, and 1.5% of U.S. sailors.
So yeah he would have increased his odds of getting killed by 500%!!!! by transferring to the Pacific. Wow!
I believe apart from the battle of Hong Kong the Aleutian campaign was the only Pacific battle Canadian ground forces participated in.
Because of the huge tunnel system on Iwo Jima, I have a hard time believing that 3 days vs 10 days of bombardment would have made any difference. You would have used up 3x as many shells for the same end result. A dug in enemy waiting to strike.
It should have destroyed the machine gun bunkers and larger guns and arty
There were many guns, especially on the side of Surubachi, that faced seaward in order to cover the beaches. Like those 120mm guns that duked it out with the battleships, more of those could have been destroyed, or maybe the lower ones blocked by debris from the upper part of the mountain
Maybe they could have worked out a recon system, like a destroyer getting REALLY close, spotting holes in the mountain, lighting it up with 20mm tracers and the battleships blasting them. Maybe that would trigger the Japanese to shoot back, especially at the destroyers, causing casualties but also giving their positions away even more
Not saying it would have worked. Just saying it could
@@sjonnieplayfull5859 i was kinda of thinking along those lines. tough to say though and hindsight is always 20/20. sadly i think Iwo Jima wouldve turned into a blood bath no matter what.
@@sjonnieplayfull5859 Funny thing as well as those 120mm guns would’ve done little damage to the battleships
@@MrOiram46 there are many parts without armor on a battleship, and their radar and fire control systems are always vulnerable. Also during the duel mentioned in the battle the US battleships DID suffer casualties among the crew
the island is irregular in shape; it is about 5 miles (8 km) long and ranges from 800 yards to 2.5 miles (730 metres to 4 km) wide. It has an area of about 8 square miles (20 square km).
This was a problem with nearly every amphibious assault. Pick any landing at random then look up what the Marines and/or Soldiers said. The US Navy consistently overestimated the effects their shore bombardment would have. They also greatly underestimated the time it would take to subdue the enemy. They never seemed to learn from their mistakes.
Sounds like the western front in 1914-18...
Lindy beige did a whole video on bombardment alone, and some of its shortcomings .
@@brennab2697that was a good video 👍
Still haven't
We’re so spoiled with the simultaneous uploads
As an Artillery observer recently retired from the Army my opinion comes down to a series of conclusions.
1. Obscuration smoke. Today we not only have white phosphorus smoke but also HC smoke that can be delivered accurately by Artillery.
2. Naval guns are not howitzer, they shoot too flat of a trajectory to be effective at leveling bunkers.
3. Intelligence. No frogmen, Seabees or marine recon where infiltrating the island until just before the landing to clear obstacles. There for the effectiveness of the bombardment could not be evaluated. A good reference would be the Battle of the Somme where ineffective artillery failed to cut wire or neutralize german bunkers.
4. Ammunition selection, I have not heard it mentioned so I doubt it was used. All air bombs should have had delay fuses. 14 and 16 inch battleship guns should have fired armor piercing shells into the mountain where their flat trajectory will work best.
5. More napalm fire would deprive the underground of oxygen and suffocate defenders.
Thank you for item #1, which deserves more attention than it usually gets. Even given that Japanese guns had been pre-zeroed in to specific target points, it seems like taking away their clear view of the beach would have made it much harder to know exactly when to fire to hit actual concentrations of men and supplies, and to observe the fall of shot to adjust their aim.
Regarding the trajectory of naval gunfire being too flat, by 1944 couldn’t most ships’ guns be elevated enough to provide plunging fire? Didn’t Bismarck (probably) destroy HMS Hood with such fire three years earlier?
I thought almost the same thing about having “ground truth.” I agree that advanced raids by special forces would have helped the main invasion. However it’s hard for me to know if most of the forward recon units would have been killed by the time any main force arrived to relieve them. So anyway to slice it, a lot of soldiers were going to die on Iwo Jima.
@@jesseeswain3079 the lead up that came before Normandy in June 1944 showed what proper recon looks like. After the failed Dieppe the planners knew they had to ensure beaches will support vehicles.
When the Underwater Demolition teams began preparation for the landings on Iwo, some Japanese positions opened fire early. The positions were identified and engaged by the shore bombardment force.
Since only 1 beach offered landing ground and the Japanese knew we were coming I see it is a failure of planning to not keep probing the defenses. They only assumed the defenders were dead and in disarray.
Umm .. it's a tiny island with tens of thousands Japan soldier stationed there. The island was swarmed with Japan soldier that any reconnaissance men would be easily detected and eliminated.
@@gorilladisco9108 hence they would know the bombardment was ineffective
There was a similar situation with the Canadian raid at Dieppe. The ground forces had requested battleship and heavy bomber support but the navy refused to risk bringing any of their capital ships into the English Channel and Bomber Harris thought he was going to win the war by raiding Berlin and refused to divert any of his planes.
"Tried massive pre-deployment bombardment with everything we could think of. Didn't really work." is an exceedingly common thing in military history. "Tried massive pre-deployment bombardment. Was super effective." is rare.
@@michaelcook7107 In the case of Dieppe it was intended to suppress the movement of reinforcements not the destruction of hardened positions. The planners had all come through WW 1 and understood the limits of artillery when it came to destroying entrenched enemies and had planned to use tanks against the bunkers and pill boxes inside the town.
As it happens it wouldn't have helped as, without knowing anything about the raid, the Germans had been conducting a routine drill and had all of their positions fully manned.
So many inaccuracies in that ridiculous statement…not the least being that the army decided against bombing the town so the streets wouldn’t be blocked for their tanks. Pretty standard for TH-cam though.
@@annoyingbstard9407 Could you point me to the source for that please? Everything I've seen (admittedly told from the Canadian side) says that bombing support was requested and Harris pulled a fast one to avoid it.
Specifically he asked the ground commander if there were any circumstances where the attack would be made without bomber support. The ground commander replied that, if the troops were already in the landing craft and half way to shore and the bombing mission was cancelled he'd still have to send in the troops as they were already exposed to German batteries.
Harris used that as an excuse to refuse the air support as, he chose to interpret the ground commander's comment as meaning that bomber support wasn't essential for the success of the mission.
What a mistake. Had the UK and US done more and earlier work on ground penetrators, it would have made a vast difference in what our troops would face and it might had saved the lives of many pilots and crews. This only slight risk bombing targets near to coast as compared to flying over much of Germany.
Have studied the war in Europe and don't know particularly much about the war in the Pacific, this video was a real eye opener and gave me a lot to go and look up, glad I've found your channel great video
I find most Europeans are more or less clueless when it comes to the nature of the war in the Pacific, in the same way that most Americans are more or less clueless about the war in the Mediterranean. Normally, an American history of the war will devote 40-50% of its coverage of the war to events in the Pacific. I watched a British documentary on the war, and it spent approximately 6% of its run time on the Pacific war and less than half of that was on any of the events after the fall of Singapore. Less actually minutes were spent on the Pacific campaign than on the siege and defense of Malta (which in turn might get only a passing mention in an American history of the war). The impression you will get then if you use European sources is that the USA entered the war, and then dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and that was the story of the Pacific theater. And without the context, the decision to drop nuclear bombs seems strange and unreasonable. It's necessary to study the actions and history of both sides to get to the inexorable and horrible logic that led to the decision to use the bomb.
@@celebrim1 True, I've found that the prevailing thought about WWII in the US is that "we won". That's often construed as "we" as in the US won but most folks lump the whole allied effort into the "we". But the narrative almost allways starts with D-Day, stops in Paris and ends in Bastogne and voila! WWII = Over. But America's "real" war was in the Pacific. From day one. Its first major campaigns were in the Pacific, it's greatest innovations came out of that theater and it's true enemy was Japan.
This was the perfect follow up to the Iwo Jima video, the question I was itching to answer for sure. Thank you for adding on to your amazing work at Operations Room!
The Japanese change their way of fighting from Pelilu on. They decided to emphasize entrenchment over doing Banzai attacks. Only after the end was coming did they launch Banzai attacks. This change cause large amount of causalities on the American and Japanese sides.
Yes the commanding General of Okinawa had managed to fight the U.S . Forces to near standstill only ro be convinced by his subordinares that a banzai attack had to be made for yhe honor of the Imperial Army I guess. So stupid! After that unsuccessful foray the Japanese garrison's fate was sealed. So stupid, so unnecessary!
I love all of your Operations Room work. Seeing you go even further in depth is so exciting! Thank you.
Flying from Iwo Jima to mainland Japan was about the same distance as flying from Washington DC to St. Louis - except entirely over ocean.
With the benefit of hindsight, I do sometimes wonder if Iwo Jima would’ve been America’s first nuclear target after seeing the sheer level of carnage the assaults brought (if little boy & fat man were ready by D Day that is)
They probably would have simply destroyed the airfield facilities with bombing raids as they had already done and otherwise left the garrison to rot with no supply. With hindsight available to us about the terrain the effort and expenditure required to have an effective bombardment would not have been considered worth it.
You'll see some level of apologism about the battle trying to find some kind of silver lining to glean from it, but in truth the capture of the airfield had very limited utility for the war effort. This is understandable because it can be really hard to accept that so much was lost for what amounted to almost nothing.
All of that said, it's one thing to make decisions when you know their outcome, it's another matter entirely to make them when you don't. We can talk about who said what and who wanted what, but at the end of the day they had no way of knowing what the island was like without boots on the ground and even with every ship slated for the bombardment and a full 10 days of hell letting loose there is little indication that it would have made an appreciable difference. Ultimately, they made their decisions and in another circumstance on another island it might have turned out another way.
I highly doubt it. The radiation risk was known to the Manhattan project, they wouldn’t have dropped any bombs where they would later have to deploy troops. The island was of strategic value and had to remain occupied by the allies. It would be like peeing all over your bed before bedtime, except with deadly radiation.
@@joshlampe3458 Why deploy troops there are at all. One of the primary reasons for taking the island at is that it was "in the way". The base acted as an emergency landing strip not a full on airfield. I'd like to see someone reason how little lives it would have taken for it to have been worth it to assault an obvious trap in hindsight.
There is one point that is often (almost always) missed when talking about how few pilots ended using Iwo as an emergency strip. If the war had gone on and the mainland invaded, it would have been used much, much more than it was. Who would have known that two "super weapons" would remove the need to invade mainland? If we had thought there would be thousands of sortee to the mainland, we would have also wanted an emergency strip. They just didn't know the future.
No the civilians were the target of the nuke not soldiers. Specifically the high Catholic population in the 2 cities, which were the top 2 for Japanese Catholics at the time
Our President just happened to be a Freemason, who according to the Alta Vandeta from the Freemasons themselves are the enemies of the Church.
Loving the new channel and new content. Great episode.
This video really compliments the video from The Operations Room and gives full descriptive details of the problems that the attacking Marines faced during the operation.👍
One of my favorite channels on all of TH-cam. Exceptional work. Love watching these companion videos.
Always impressed by your videos. Good work!
The amount of excellent information along with animations. A thing of beauty, a work of art
I appreciate you including the quotes of those who were there
Appreciate the double upload. Day before Canada's long weekend so work is dead.
YES this is EXACTLY the kind of content I want to see from this channel!
Fantastic. I see you didn't let us down from your annoucment, exceptional work. Many thanks, and keep 'em coming!
More to come!
This was very well done, and as interesting as any of the Operations Room videos. Thank you!
Excellent video. Thank you. 👏👏
Once again, Amazing videos! I love these videos about breaking down the battles that have happened in history. Keep it up man!
My Uncle was in the pacific theater with the army. He always said the Naval Barrage never seemed to work. They would bomb for day and only get 5 KIAs. I was in Guam in 75. We were standing guard duty for the South Vietnamese waiting to go to the US. I remember seeing a gun that they said was hit by naval shell I guess, before the landing.
Outstanding documentary skills.
Subbed.
In the 1970s, Bucyrus Erie purchased the Naval Ordinance Center in Pocatello, ID. I was hired to work there as a welder building drag line crane components. One of the buildings purchased still had the facilities to realign warped naval gun barrels. There were large holes in the building's floors lined with electric heaters. The warped barrels were lowered on end into the holes, and the heaters fired up. Gravity did the rest.
Like clockwork, Operations Room is here to remind me it's Friday.
❤️
Seems like the most important role the ships played wasn't the initial barrage but the precision fire when called in by the Marines on the ground. So, if Rear Admiral Blandy extended the initial barrage and had practically ran out of shells to support the troops with once they're on the ground, would that have been better or bloodier for the Americans?
As a Marine Vet. I appreciate this story, on both channels.
Brilliant. The excellent 'Operations Room' series could only be improved by such deeper analysis of critical aspects of the operation. Thank you 👍
Loved the combo of this video with the traditional operations room. The biggest question I had from the operation video was why did the bombing fail? Look at my recommendations and boom.
With the extensive aerial and naval bombardment even if less than originally intended not doing much attrition to deep cave and bunker formations it is a bit of logic leap to suggest a longer naval bombardment would have saved the day for the US marines.
I’ve watched a lot of WW2 stuff and many Iwo Jima shows. That was the best!!!
This is actually something I've wondered about. Thanks!
This was awesome, super informative and interesting! This was a topic I didn’t even know I was curious about. Thanks for sharing! God bless you :)
Glad it was helpful!
The serious lack of deep diving bunker busting bombs and shells was the main problem. More AP would have helped.
Today’s thermobaric bombs would’ve also been very effective, but at this point in time, they were in infancy stages
Not knowing where those bunkers are could pose a problem too.
Really enjoying this new channel and the quality of the content.
Good stuff man! Love your other channel. Glad to see this is getting off the ground so quickly.
The film Letters From Iwo Jima is an excellent insider's view depiction of the Japanese perspective of this battle.
Insufficient concentration of force leads to high casualties.Many such cases.
I've been wondering this since 1995. Thanks.
My wife's uncle was a 4th Marine and was killed on Feb. 28 during the battle and my uncle was Admiral George McFadden O'Rear who was Captain of the USS Arkansas Battleship and was the Commander of the Naval forces at Iwo Jima and begged for larger battleships but was only given WW1 ships not the new ones with 16 inch guns.
And the sad irony is that the main reason to take the island was to use it as a forward air base for P51 escort fighters to protect the B29s. However the USAA only used the Iwo Jima base for a few P51 missions. So, historically, It turns out the island could’ve been bypassed entirely.
If i'm not mistaken, the general idea at the time was that they would have to invade Mainland Japan itself. So in that scenario, Iwo Jima would've been vital.
They were also using planes from this island’s airbase to harass bombers
Using Iwo as a fighter base was only half the reason for its invasion. It was also intended to be used as an emergency landing airfield for B-29s returning to the Marianas after bombing Japan that were damaged or short on fuel. Hundreds of USAAF air crew members that would have had to bail out over the ocean or ditch in the Pacific have a very biased view on the value of invading and capturing Iwo Jima.
Why when they had Okinawa much closer
@@michaeldavid6284 March 4 the first B-29 made an emergency landing, By the end of hostilities, 36 Superforts had landed on Iwo Jima.
What a sight that must have been, you can sense it's massiveness from a Pilot interview, 50 years later he was still amazed at "....the Capital ships and Carries as far as the eye could see".
Bad weather sure could have caused a disaster if a flight of B-29's dropped their payload 2-3 miles off target with all those ships ringing the island. Very good time to be cautious. Not sure why carrier craft would turn back, most if not all are high/low altitude weapons. And there would have been no flack from this intel report.
wow, seeing the position of my grandpas ship during the initial barrage and their firing lane on a map. always wondered what his view woulda been.
“The enemy gets a vote.” - US Navy
I've wondered if British Lancaster bombers using the giant 20k bombs would have penetrated the mountain and bunkers, The British Pacific fleet was starting to come online. B29s could not carry the 20K pound bombs due to having 2 bombbays
So many American lives lost unnecessarily. Great analysis.
Great start to the channel bro! Keep it up 👏🏻
Brilliant video and content again!! Was that comment (@10:50 ) from Radioman Tsuruji Akikusa taken from "A Tomb called Iwo Jima?" I recognize the cover picture! :-D Great book!
Cant wait to watch this channel grow too
They shouldve made emphasis in shelling the ground ascending from the beaches where the marines might face dug out defenses, instead of just throwing most of it on flat surfaces of runways, maybe a parallel air bomarment atop of the beaches: but of course, theres no way to know such things
Keep making these awesome videos
Fascinating
I wonder how well those tunnels would have stood up to Tallboy or Grandslam earthquake bombs?
Gee, we'll never know.
I feel like it was obvious that they had dug underground bunkers since there was basically nothing on the surface. The bombers would have been pretty useless without some anti bunker bombs and the only bombardment weapon they had that would be effective were the 14" AP shells from the battleships. Maybe its hindsight, but they should've known that the bombardment would have been ineffective if they were dug in somewhere underground.
Except that back in WWI one of the earliest learnings about artillery bombardment was that it was mostly good to keep the enemy's head down. Even massed guns were only just able to break the Liege forts and Vaux and Duamont still had to be taken hand to hand even with the mincer in full effect. This was heavy land artillery with massive supply and ammo dumps sat behind a huge and intact rail network. No naval bombardment was going to do more than bounce the sand on top of completed defenses.
My dad was part of the 5th Marines, he was on Iwo for 28 days….. PFC Paul E. Greenlee.
Great job on both channels.
This is why it’s so important to have men on the ground that can relay defensive positions and movements in real time. 😮
simple reason, kuribayashi deliberately designed the defences to be as resitant to heavy bombardment as possible. and unfortunately for our marines, he succeeded all too well.
Hey it's good to have a worthy adversary. It makes for a more epic tale. The Battle of Iwo Jima is the stuff of legend today. Our Marines are all better for it now too.
Narrator's vocal is just awesome...
Astute analysis, well done. It was interesting to have the weather be revealed as a factor; I had not heard that before. Aloha!
Using Gran Slams and other such weapons would have helped a lot.
Can't hit what you cannot see.
A huge change in future fights of this order would be close air support. Such as attack helicopters and harriers. A big part of bringing heavy ordinance to crack hardened bunkers like this with assault carriers from then on.
These days you could just spend a week or so flying drones,collapsing all the tunnel entrances you found, rinse and repeat.
@@crabmansteve6844 You've got to find the tunnel entrance. This Island might seem small, but try walking such an area. Small is relative,
They're called Cruise missiles.
The sister video was great! Then, this video added more context in yet another display of great skill by your team!
Caves. Easy answer, but great video
More than anything else, I think this goes to show how ineffective naval bombardment can be against some especially well-built defences.
you should look up fort drum, its a very similar story
Imagine a 16 inch round of AP or HE hitting your bunker. It was about the efficiency of the gun and projectile, more about tactics and intelligence.
At 2:42 you can see what appears to be a marine dual wielding Thompson smgs
Several weeks into the battle for Iwo Jima one of the Marine battalions trying to take a position decided to not request the usual pre-attack naval barrage. Much to their surprise they had little resistance and found most of the Japanese at the position were asleep. The Japanese had learned to go into the caves once the usual pre-attack bombardment started, and then come out when it stopped before Marines would attack. So it wasn't doing much more than letting them know an attack would be coming and to take cover. But throwing the old change-up worked. It seems like the same thing probably came up in Vietnam too sometimes.
Wow, everytime I swear off anything to do with military science a completely professional, and neutral, documentary comes along. Well done, Sir.
Not only in Iwo jima,but like in tarawa,the preliminary bombings were Devastating,but the Mental Strenght of the Japonese Soldiers that endure that carnage its beyond me.
They were truely very well trained,Brave and Very Mentaly Strong Soldiers.
Weebish comment tbh
And died in drives because of it.
@@chuckbuckbobuck you must meen "droves"...
And yes they died in droves,because you must be very strong Mentaly,knowing that you gonna die,and not even finch for a second to think abaut that .
It needs a very strong man,to not care abaut his own life,just with the purpose of defending his own beliefs till the end no matter how.
Like the bushido code says " Death is light like a feather,duty is heavy like a mountain".
Strong and Brave man.
@@jpmtlhead39 Pardon the typo! Yes droves. The glory of dying for the Emperor. Concept way beyond me to wrap my head around but a tragedy to me-all the wasted life!
I just saw a picture of a pile of Japanese corpses from Tarawa that I had never seen before and it was so sad-all nice looking Japanese men in the prime of their lives now expired and ready to be bulldozed in a massive pitt as there was no time to properly bury them and putrification happens pretty quick in the tropical sun so away they went pushed in a mass grave and smoldering in anonymity for eternity. SOME GLORY TO THE EMPEROR!
@@chuckbuckbobuck yes,its a concept that only strong will driven individuals can accept has part of their lifes in this Earth.
This event with the bombs in particular makes me wonder what would’ve happened if the Americans used a bomb similar to Britian’s “Tall Boy” bomb.
I expect that those types of munitions would have been more effective, but the US forces didn’t have a full understanding of what they were facing. By the time they did know, it was too late.
well done
I went Tarawa in 1980 and there were still underground bunkers visible. There was a big gun which had been taken from Singapore and still in its emplacement and with a big hole in its armoured shielding..
'Shells are expensive, Marines are cheap'.
Comment for the algorithm
Instant sub.
In preparation for this series, I decided to rewatch Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.
Nice!