When Your (Multiple) Myth Gets Exposed

[John Thomas8]

Jon Parschall has spent over a decade researching the Battle Of Midway.

He and his co-author Anthony Tully poke many holes in the accepted story with many facts:

[John Thomas8]

This is the book:

[John Thomas8]

And if you're interested, John spent 3+ hours with Drachinifel going into more detail:

[John Thomas8]

I had so bought into the "the torpedo bombers drew off the Zeros" so the dive bombers could strike.

But I'm also grateful I can still learn and accept facts and not my treasured myths.

[Foggy]

Wow. There are a lot of museums that need to revise their displays about this. I spent an hour in the one on the Yorktown in Charleston, they had a whole section of the hangar deck devoted to the torpedo plane pilots.

[Dave from down under]

If I didn’t miss something

The first 2 squadrons of TB didn’t keep the Japanese CAP low..
It was the 3rd squadron with its fighter escort that did allowing the NE DB to make their attack.

So… only those first 2 squadrons impact are a myth.

[John Thomas8]

Wow. There are a lot of museums that need to revise their displays about this. I spent an hour in the one on the Yorktown in Charleston, they had a whole section of the hangar deck devoted to the torpedo plane pilots.

The men in VT-6 and VT-8 were amazingly brave.

[Reality Check]

If I understood correctly the point was that even though the US torpedo bombers didn't keep the Japanese fighter cover down long enough to have an impact they kept their carriers occupied long enough that it was too late to launch a counterattack against the US carriers. I think Parschall is kind of playing both sides of the street on whether the Battle of Midway was pivotal. First he said the US was eventually going to win the war regardless of the outcome of Midway because of the US advantage in GDP and industrial production. Then on the other hand he says the battle probably knocked a year off the war.

Who's to say that if the Japanese had won a decisive victory at Midway they would have not then taken Hawaii and threatened the US West Coast? US resolve may have been weakened enough that they might have entered into negotiations for peace in the Pacific so as to concentrate on the war in Europe. Midway was a victory the US badly need after a terrible start to the battle in the Pacific in 1942.

[Suranis]

There's actually a few myths like this. Like the myth that the German fleet never left port after the Battle of Jutland in WW1. Wrong, it set out three times, but at that point the German High Command had figured out that the British were reading their codes so they retreated when they found the British waiting for them. They were basically making sure.

Theres another one that the Lecturer actually mentioned, that the Spanish Armada was a "decisive victory by a plucky massively outnumbered English that sent the Spanish reeling and they never tried it again." Er... nope.

Firstly, while it is true that the English navy only had 40 vessels or sp, the English commandeered scores of Private vessels so when the Armada set out they actually outnumbered the Spanish fleet.

Second the Armada was meant to pick up an Army at Calais and ferry it over. When the Armada arrived the Army was not there. So they settled into wait. That was when the famous attack with fireships happened, but that only destroyed 4 Spanish vessels.

Third the famous speech by Queen Elizabeth happened 11 days after that Battle, not before it. And the Lines "I may bave the body of a weak and feeble woman... Etc" were not spoken by Elizabeth, but were written 38 years afterwards by a poet, and after Elizabeth was dead. And it was spoken to the English army who had assembled to fight off an invasion, not to the Navy.

After the Armada departed, half the men who wee involved in the English fleet died of Disease and Starvation. Elizabeth suddenly found she didnt have the money to pay them or keep the ships supplied, so it was convenient to keep them out at sea and little supplied to reduce the bill. Gosh.

Finally the Armada decided to cut its losses took the long route home around Ireland, rather than fight through the English fleet again. And the storms in the North sea sank 38 Spanish ships, more than the english managed to sink. The rest of the Armada made it home and repaired and refitted.

Oh and really finally, no-one mentions the English counter Armada. The year after the Armada, the English sent 84 ships to attack Spain, and it was a total disaster. They lost nearly all the ships and 20,000 men died. And Elizabeth went on to become increasingly unpopular and and the country became poorer under her reign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Armada

Plus, The whole story of Phillip and Liz hating one another is not true. Phillip actually helped her get on the throne as he preferred her over Mary Queen of Scots, and they corresponded regularly. The actual reason for the Armada was English pirates attacking Ships bringing riches to Spain from the Americas, which Phillip (rightly) thought of as Elizabeth robbing them to fill her coffers.

Regardless, if the army had actually turned up the Armada would have been successful in transporting it over to Kent, and history might have been a lot different.

[John Thomas8]

Who's to say that if the Japanese had won a decisive victory at Midway they would have not then taken Hawaii and threatened the US West Coast? US resolve may have been weakened enough that they might have entered into negotiations for peace in the Pacific so as to concentrate on the war in Europe. Midway was a victory the US badly need after a terrible start to the battle in the Pacific in 1942.

Yamamoto had toured the US, seen the manufacturing potential and knew if he didn't knock us out quick it wasn't going to happen. By the time of Midway the Essex-class carriers were well into production while Japanese production of anything at best remained static. Their pilot replacement program was inadequate, their aircraft development and manufacturing capabilities woefully unprepared to compete and they would have had to finish the battle of Midway with minimal losses to have any chance of at a minimum some semblance of parity when the Essexs rolled up.

They accomplished none of those and they weren't winning any war with the US based on fanatism and slowly degrading manufacturing capabilities.

The war in the Pacific, outside of a very special, specific and unlikely set of circumstances, ended when the first bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor.

[Suranis]

Ya... the biggest question of the war as regarding pearl harbour is... why?

No action could have driven the US into the war faster than a direct attack. Which the Japanese delivered gift wrapped in a nice big bow. If they had not actually attacked Pearl, the US could not have gotten involved in the war for a while in any case as they would have needed time to get their fleet together. And the US public would not have seen the need to get involved in what would have been seen as a scrap between the Japanese and the British. Isolationism was very big in the USA then, and that was instantly washed away by Pearl harbour.

Plus all those car manufacturers would have fiercely resisted having their profit making factories retooled into war production. Bribes and Prostitutes would have flowed to congress like water. The net result would be that The US manufacturing would not have been tooled up to the level that actually happened, while the Japanese would have dug in and gotten their own production capabilities up to speed.

The first steps in the war was the Japanese's greatest mistake.

[RTH10260]

Ya... the biggest question of the war as regarding pearl harbour is... why?

I seem to remember that the Japanese expected the aircraft carriert to be at the base, but they were out on an exercise. It would have allowed the Japanese Navy to operate with clear airspace. Replacing aircraft carriers would have been far more difficult when having to start the war time economic machine.

[Suranis]

Moving onto another great myth, this highly entertaining video takes on the enduring myth of Michael Wittman, the young dashing honorable SS Tiger commander who singlehandedly destroyed entire tank brigades with his teeth, and utterly tears it apart. Instead, the picture the emerges is of a willing tool of Nazi propaganda who was average at best, and a complete Prat at worst, who machine gunned ambulances and who got a load of irreplaceable equipment totaled because he was a goddam glory hound who was incredibly lucky.



Its also a parable on the dangers of accepting enemy propaganda at face value and not actually asking for the testimony of the people who were effing there. As he points out, a historian who went out and asked for the accounts of other tank commanders in a famous battle was swamped with people who were desperate to tell their stories becasue in the 40 years since no-one had bothered to ask them to tell their side of the story.

[John Thomas8]

Ya... the biggest question of the war as regarding pearl harbour is... why?

It was a major US naval base, not even a little bit secret. BUT, as they repeatedly did during the war, the IJN failed to scout properly. Any sort of submarine or flying boat missions could have told the IJN that Pearl Harbor was occupied by 2nd-line battleships and nary a carrier was to be seen.

Over confidence, situational unawareness, hubris, misguided schadenfreude, arrogance and an inability to adapt doomed them from the beginning.

[John Thomas8]

Moving onto another great myth

Thread title adjusted to represent this expansion, which I think is fantastic.

And the number of wehrboos that want to have Wittman's baby is staggering.

[Foggy]

Theres another one that the Lecturer actually mentioned, that the Spanish Armada was a "decisive victory by a plucky massively outnumbered English that sent the Spanish reeling and they never tried it again." Er... nope.

Umm ... nevertheless. And yet ...

The Armada was one of the biggest military disasters in history, for the Spanish. The whole point, as you said, was an invasion of England. It was a failure.

Not a single Spanish ship landed safely in England (many were shipwrecked); not a single Spanish soldier trod on British soil (unless after being shipwrecked on the less-than-hospitable left coast). The Spanish fleet - so celebrated as gigantic that they still sell a (gigantic) motorcar called the Armada in the US - was scattered and destroyed, and estimates were that maybe one in four of the people on the ships survived to see Spain again.

So, y'know, 75% dead, not a great stat.

And the silly Spaniards did build "fighting castles" on their ships, which rendered them basically unnavigable. Sailors worldwide know better than that now. They had infinitely less control over the direction of their ships than the Brits, so they were scattered by the winds, tides, and currents.

So it wasn't a very successful invasion of England.

In the US, the myth of the Armada is that it was successful, although 99 of every 99 Americans knows nothing except that it was a really, really big fleet of ships. Why would you sell a car named the Armada if it was a yooge failure? You couldn't, that's what. Here it was a big success.

A few of us know the full name is "the Spanish Armada". What other armada was ever famous enough to be given the name? I think a lot of Americans imagine the whole thing happened in the Mediterranean (confusing it with the Battle of the Nile). I mean, Spain is on the Mediterranean, amirite?

(here is where rikker mentions the Sweet Potato Armada )

Edit: There was a much bigger fleet, y'know. June 6, 1944. Little thing called D-day. Anybody ever heard of the US-British Armada that day? No, you have not, and they actually managed to pull off a successful invasion of Europe. Only one fleet in history is called the Armada, and it was a disaster.

Edit: So the word "armada" doesn't mean "a fleet of warships" if it is only ever used to describe one fleet in the history of the world. It means "the fleet of Spanish ships that tried and failed to invade England in 1588, before the invention of toilet paper".

[John Thomas8]

Drach just dropped a coupla videos on The Armada:



and

[Foggy]

Totally cool

[Suranis]

Theres another one that the Lecturer actually mentioned, that the Spanish Armada was a "decisive victory by a plucky massively outnumbered English that sent the Spanish reeling and they never tried it again." Er... nope.

Umm ... nevertheless. And yet ...

The Armada was one of the biggest military disasters in history, for the Spanish. The whole point, as you said, was an invasion of England. It was a failure.

Not a single Spanish ship landed safely in England (many were shipwrecked); not a single Spanish soldier trod on British soil (unless after being shipwrecked on the less-than-hospitable left coast). The Spanish fleet - so celebrated as gigantic that they still sell a (gigantic) motorcar called the Armada in the US - was scattered and destroyed, and estimates were that maybe one in four of the people on the ships survived to see Spain again.

So, y'know, 75% dead, not a great stat.

And the silly Spaniards did build "fighting castles" on their ships, which rendered them basically unnavigable. Sailors worldwide know better than that now. They had infinitely less control over the direction of their ships than the Brits, so they were scattered by the winds, tides, and currents.

So it wasn't a very successful invasion of England.

In the US, the myth of the Armada is that it was successful, although 99 of every 99 Americans knows nothing except that it was a really, really big fleet of ships. Why would you sell a car named the Armada if it was a yooge failure? You couldn't, that's what. Here it was a big success.

A few of us know the full name is "the Spanish Armada". What other armada was ever famous enough to be given the name? I think a lot of Americans imagine the whole thing happened in the Mediterranean (confusing it with the Battle of the Nile). I mean, Spain is on the Mediterranean, amirite?

(here is where rikker mentions the Sweet Potato Armada )

Edit: There was a much bigger fleet, y'know. June 6, 1944. Little thing called D-day. Anybody ever heard of the US-British Armada that day? No, you have not, and they actually managed to pull off a successful invasion of Europe. Only one fleet in history is called the Armada, and it was a disaster.

Edit: So the word "armada" doesn't mean "a fleet of warships" if it is only ever used to describe one fleet in the history of the world. It means "the fleet of Spanish ships that tried and failed to invade England in 1588, before the invention of toilet paper".

Ya, they lost 44 ships out of 131. Not bad for a fleet up against 200 English ships. And the ships made it home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ish_Armada

Yes and the reason you know about the Spanish Armada is because of one thing = English Propaganda. The reason you DON'T know about the English Armada which was a much bigger naval disaster? Again, English Propaganda. Plus to Phillip of Spain the English Armada was just hot that important. The Ships of the Spanish Armada made it home, got repaired and then completely smashed apart the English fleet. Far less than one in four of the people on the English fleet make it home, making the English invasion pretty feeble. Phillip simply didn't see the need to make a big deal about the English Armada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada

The following year the English with Dutch conscripts launched the Counter Armada, under Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris with three tasks:

Destroy the battered Spanish Atlantic fleet, which was being repaired in ports of northern Spain
Make a landing at Lisbon, Portugal and raise a revolt there against King Philip II (Philip I of Portugal) installing the pretender Dom António, Prior of Crato to the Portuguese throne
Take the Azores if possible so as to establish a permanent base.

None of the objectives were achieved.[134][135][136][137] The attempt to restore the Portuguese Crown from Spain was unsuccessful, and the opportunity to strike a decisive blow against the weakened Spanish Navy was lost. The expedition depleted the financial resources of England's treasury, which had been carefully restored during the long reign of Elizabeth I, and its failure was so embarrassing that, even today, England barely acknowledges it ever happened.[134] Through this lost opportunity, Philip was able revive his navy the very next year, sending 37 ships with 6,420 men to Brittany where they established a base of operations on the Blavet river. The English and Dutch ultimately failed to disrupt the various fleets of the Indies despite the great number of military personnel mobilized every year. Thus, Spain remained the predominant power in Europe for several decades.

More information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Armada

But the English trumpeted the Defeat of the Spanish Armada for centuries, spread pamphlets all over Europe talking about how massive the defeat of the Spanish Armada was (i.e. they lied) and then "forgot" to mention the same Spanish Armada completely butchered the English fleet a year later.

You lost the Alamo too.

[Reality Check]

You lost the Alamo too.

Actually the country of Texas lost the Battle of the Alamo but eventually won independence from Mexico.

[Foggy]

Nobody ever pretends there was a different outcome for the Alamo. The whole thing about "Remember the Alamo" was because everyone died and the fort was captured. It would be silly to suggest that was a win of any kind.

And thanks for the additional information about the Armada. I still think it's an astoundingly stupid name for a car, but America, man.

[John Thomas8]

Dr. Felton has multi series about the fates of the top of the Reich food chain, this is the first in his latest effort:

[John Thomas8]

That the Marines only won the war in the PTO.

[John Thomas8]

More myths:

[Flatpoint High]

There's actually a few myths like this. Like the myth that the German fleet never left port after the Battle of Jutland in WW1. Wrong, it set out three times, but at that point the German High Command had figured out that the British were reading their codes so they retreated when they found the British waiting for them. They were basically making sure.

Theres another one that the Lecturer actually mentioned, that the Spanish Armada was a "decisive victory by a plucky massively outnumbered English that sent the Spanish reeling and they never tried it again." Er... nope.

Firstly, while it is true that the English navy only had 40 vessels or sp, the English commandeered scores of Private vessels so when the Armada set out they actually outnumbered the Spanish fleet.

Second the Armada was meant to pick up an Army at Calais and ferry it over. When the Armada arrived the Army was not there. So they settled into wait. That was when the famous attack with fireships happened, but that only destroyed 4 Spanish vessels.

Third the famous speech by Queen Elizabeth happened 11 days after that Battle, not before it. And the Lines "I may bave the body of a weak and feeble woman... Etc" were not spoken by Elizabeth, but were written 38 years afterwards by a poet, and after Elizabeth was dead. And it was spoken to the English army who had assembled to fight off an invasion, not to the Navy.

After the Armada departed, half the men who wee involved in the English fleet died of Disease and Starvation. Elizabeth suddenly found she didnt have the money to pay them or keep the ships supplied, so it was convenient to keep them out at sea and little supplied to reduce the bill. Gosh.

Finally the Armada decided to cut its losses took the long route home around Ireland, rather than fight through the English fleet again. And the storms in the North sea sank 38 Spanish ships, more than the english managed to sink. The rest of the Armada made it home and repaired and refitted.

Oh and really finally, no-one mentions the English counter Armada. The year after the Armada, the English sent 84 ships to attack Spain, and it was a total disaster. They lost nearly all the ships and 20,000 men died. And Elizabeth went on to become increasingly unpopular and and the country became poorer under her reign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Armada

Plus, The whole story of Phillip and Liz hating one another is not true. Phillip actually helped her get on the throne as he preferred her over Mary Queen of Scots, and they corresponded regularly. The actual reason for the Armada was English pirates attacking Ships bringing riches to Spain from the Americas, which Phillip (rightly) thought of as Elizabeth robbing them to fill her coffers.

Regardless, if the army had actually turned up the Armada would have been successful in transporting it over to Kent, and history might have been a lot different.

Phillip also prevented the Papal Bull excommunicating Elizabeth I from being published in Spain.