quote: 21st Century Reporting of the Doolittle Raid April 20, 2006: The recent anniversary of the April 18, 1942 the Doolittle raid raised the question of how the press of today might have reported on the event. At the time, the Doolittle raid, as militarily ineffective as it was, proved to be an enormously popular morale boost for the American people and their allies. However, times have changed. Here's a likely report, of the 1942 event, but as it would be reported by today's media.
New York Times, April 19, 1942: "AIR RAID ON TOKYO. In what the Roosevelt Administration described as retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Army Air Corps launched an attack on Tokyo from an undisclosed location. The attack, using the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber, was described as a success, even though preliminary estimates indicate that little, if any, damage was done. A statement from President Roosevelt claimed the bombers launched from Shangri-La, although informed sources tell the New York Times that there was an unusually high degree of Army-Navy cooperation in the operation?"
San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 1942: "DISASTER ON AIR RAID? Sources from inside the War Department report that nearly all of the planes failed to reach safe havens in China. These same sources report that the carrier force that was to deliver these bombers was detected by Japanese picket boats, forcing the attack to commence at least twelve hours ahead of schedule. In the ensuing skirmishes, at least three picket boats were sunk, and reports indicate at least two Navy dive-bombers were lost with their crews. No word has yet arrived on the status of the 80 Army Air Corps crew men ? all of whom were said to be volunteers"
Washington Post, April 21, 1942 "AIRCREWS CAPTURED? Reports of a disastrous result appeared to be confirmed when one War Department source indicated that at least one of the aircrews has been captured by Japanese forces. The crew, said to be led by Lieutenant Dean Hallmark, and from the 95th Squadron, 17th Bombardment Group (Medium), reportedly crashed near Poyang Lake. Spokesmen from the War Department and the White House declined to comment on these reports. 'The President will make an announcement when it is safe to do so,' said another White House official. Unconfirmed reports from Russia indicate that one bomber landed there rather than ditching, and that the crew is in custody?"
New York Times Editorial, April 21, 1942: "Without a doubt, the decision to risk two carriers and their escorts to launch a raid that could do so little damage can only be described as incredibly stupid. The fact that the cost of this raid included all sixteen bombers, with most of the aircrews missing, only increases the level of disaster involved. By allowing this mission to go forward, Secretary of War Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox have shown that they lack the judgment to carry this war to victory. If they will not resign, then President Roosevelt should fire them."
Washington Post, April 25, 1942: "MOST FLIERS SAFE! Sources in China indicate that at least 60 of the fliers are receiving assistance from Chinese peasants, who are moving them westward ahead of the Japanese advance. These efforts are said to have been coordinated by the Reverend John M. Birch, an American missionary, and Tung Sheng Liu, a Chinese engineer. War Department sources would not confirm the reports from China, but there is a sense of relief that is visible among many of the high-ranking officers, including General Hap Arnold?"
New York Times Editorial, June 18, 1942: "Two months ago, the Army and Navy carried out a joint mission to attack the Japanese homeland. All the B-25 bombers were lost, three men were killed, eight have been confirmed as having been captured, and while sixty-nine men made it back to friendly lines, some of them, like Lieutenant Ted Lawson, are gravely wounded. And for what? Minimal damage to Tokyo and Nagoya. One has to wonder if these bombers and their valiant crews might have done more had they been employed elsewhere. During the recent battle at Midway, these bombers could have damaged the fourth carrier, and thus, the United States Navy would still have had the Yorktown available, rather than on the bottom of the ocean?"
- Harold C. Hutchison
This speaks for itself, enjoy. I am in Kuwait and I fly home to Georgia tommarrow if all is well. We made a detour to Qutar yesterday because of thunder storms, and we had trouble getting the cargo hatch shut, but we made it this far anyway, so wierd to not have to carry weapons...
posted
Seeing as how all the entrees are possible interpretations of how modern newspapers would carry that event you might argue every paragraph is in fact a question. Which would make all the ones with periods wrong
I think a better question would be should journalism during war time be concerned with reporting just the facts whether for good or ill, or if that is impossible should news agency focus on boosting people's morale? I suppose this topic has been debated to death, but I am not sure if the responsibility of journalists changes at all during war time. I personally think the Dewey raid was a waste, but then again I do not pretend to have an extended knowledge of the morale boosting effect of that event.
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posted
Prior to becoming Presidents JohnF.Kennedy's and LyndonBainesJohnson's Secretary of Defense, RobertS.McNamara was also General CutisLeMay's chief advisor on the planning of the Tokyo raid which killed ~100thousand civilians. And just after firebombing was approved, he said to his commander: You do know that if the US loses, we will be charged as war criminals, don't you?
BTW: McNamara's initial S stands for Strange. While heading the hypermassive buildup of US nuclear weapons based on a known-to-be-false "MissileGap" with the USSR, he napalmed and BLU82ed and AgentOranged and RollingThundered Vietnam along with lesser incursions of Cambodia and Laos. McNamara then went on to practice his devastation upon the rest of the ThirdWorld as the president of the WorldBank. Strange love in deed.
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Secretary of Defense RobertS.McNamara was also Doolittle's coplilot. And just before the firebombing commenced, he said to his commander: You do know that if we get captured or the US loses, we will be charged as war criminals, don't you?
Excerpted from General Doolittle's after-action report:
quote:Takeoff No. 1 Plane No. 40-2244
Crew from 34th Sqdn P Col. James H. Doolittle 0-2771885 CP Lt. Richard E. Cole 0-421602 N Lt. Henry A. Potter 0-419614 B Sgt Fred A. Breamer 6875923 G Sgt Paul J. Leonard 6248728
Your information (edit: regarding the Doolittle raid) is totally false.
Edit again: Now that I have cooled off a little, the Doolittle Raid was neither firebombing nor a war crime, though it was commonly broadcast by Japanese propagandists (as well as North Vietnamese ones twenty years later) that US pilots would be considered "pirates". Four Japanese officers were, however, convicted in 1946 of war crimes in the deaths of some crew members from the Doolittle Raid.
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posted
A major THANK YOU for your correction, Jim-Me. Corrected my statement above. Twasn't the Doolittle raid nor was McNamara a copilot to the commander. Mixed up my readings on the first Tokyo bombing with McNamara's role in CurtisLeMay's decision to firebomb Tokyo. As for the "war criminals" quote, it's from McNamara in The Fog of War.....or possibly an interview promoting its public release.
No fan of McNamara myself, but have a special place in my heart for the Doolittle Raiders. Thanks for your graceful correction.
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posted
While the terror bombing of cities was not considered a war crime at Nurnberg, I think you could make a case that it should have been. Of course, the Allies would have had to shoot their own officers. But if, say, the Swiss had been running the trials, well.
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posted
I believe the intentional targeting of civilian populaces would have been, but collateral damage from attacks on the enemy's logistical and industrial base, otherwise known as "warmaking capability" has pretty much been considered acceptible.
And if everyone was like the Swiss, the war would have ended when Germany dropped atomic bombs on Japan rather than split the world 50/50.
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posted
You mean, if everyone had a militia mobilising 100% of the male population, compulsory monthly rifle drill, and a history of five hundred years' minding their own business and smashing any foreign invader? Sure. Also, even taking your ignorance about the Swiss for truth, you didn't seem to include the Germans in that 'everybody'.
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posted
Lets not forget raking in all the unclaimed moneys deposited in swiss accounts, times decades of interest....
Self-interest motivated the Swiss and their "neutrality", lets stop pretending otherwise. It is easy to trun a blid eye to atrocities when you are being paid well to do so....even if you are being paid in blood money.
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posted
Um, yeah. Of course the Swiss should have attacked a nation twenty times their size, whom their enemies alleged to do Bad Things. Speaking of things that are easy to do, how about making judgements on people fifty years after the fact, when you weren't there? Incidentally, just how altruistic was the neutrality of the USA?
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posted
My ignorance of the Swiss, though large, is not at issue. Nor am I being critical of their neutrality.
They made practical decisions. So did the US. One dropped two aromic bombs, the other managed to avoid a nasty invasion in which they would have had little to no support from allied forces. My point was the Swiss have no more moral high horse than anyone involved in the war, so what they would have done at Nuremburg (sp?) isn't relevant.
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It's more than just a little ironic that to make a point about biased press, you'll post a made up article written from an obviously biased viewpoint.
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posted
Their neutrality would mean that they could judge the facts of the case without bias, and choose whether or not to hang the people who ordered, say, the firebombing of Dresden. (Who's to enforce this is a separate matter.) A 'moral high horse' has nothing to do with it. The Swiss would be good judges by virtue of not being parties to the case - neither bombed nor bombers. You appear to be projecting onto me a 'liberal' bias that I don't have.
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quote:You mean, if everyone had a militia mobilising 100% of the male population, compulsory monthly rifle drill, and a history of five hundred years' minding their own business and smashing any foreign invader? Sure. Also, even taking your ignorance about the Swiss for truth, you didn't seem to include the Germans in that 'everybody'.
The Swiss kept to themselves, and did business with their neighbors-reprehensible or otherwise-from around the world. Exporting mercenaries is hardly 'minding one's own business', either.
Let's not glorify them, shall we, KoM?
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posted
KoM, you are the one who swooped in and started implying that the Doolittle raid was "terror bombing" and that the Swiss would have made everything right if they had been involved in the War Crimes Trials at the end of WWII.
First, you look ridiculous when you morally posture and then turn around and claim you weren't.
Second, the Swiss gave up their right to participate in the war crimes trials when they refused to participate in the war.
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Yes, I know the USA did much the same thing, on a private scale and on a government scale. Ignoring things, pretending things weren't happening, turning Jews away to be exterminated. It's shameful there, too.
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posted
Well, actually I do think the Doolittle raid was terror bombing. It's generally agreed that it did very little actual damage to Japan's warmaking capacity; I think the people ordering it must have known that from the start; so it was apparently done purely to kill civilians and improve morale at home. ("Superman says : Slap a Jap today!") I think that's terror bombing.
Now, somebody introduced a difference between collateral damage from industrial bombing, and pure terror bombing, and I agree that the distinction exists. But I'd also have to point out that a lot of the cities in Germany that were bombed didn't actually have any industry to speak of, and also that the avowed aim of that bombing was to 'reduce German civilian morale'.
About the Swiss, I did not mean to imply that they are or were paragons of moral virtue; they were just the first example that came to mind of a neutral nation. Substitute Mexicans, Swedes, or little scaly aliens if you prefer. The point is that they should not have been bombed, thus no revenge motive; and not have been the bombers, thus no dis-inclination to judge their own officers.
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quote:Well, actually I do think the Doolittle raid was terror bombing. It's generally agreed that it did very little actual damage to Japan's warmaking capacity; I think the people ordering it must have known that from the start; so it was apparently done purely to kill civilians and improve morale at home. ("Superman says : Slap a Jap today!") I think that's terror bombing.
On the contrary, the primary goal was to both improve morale at home and harm morale in mainland Japan. Something which had been very, very high. It was important to the war effort to harm civilian morale in Japan.
It was not done purely out of spite or racism-obviously not racism, since we did much the same thing elsewhere. This is not a moral judgement, but a simple statement of the realities of the time which you are distorting, KoM.
The Swiss are not a very good example of a truly neutral nation, because they were involved and did profit from warfare. That was pretty much inevitible due to their geography, if nothing else. What they weren't was militarily involved. A rather prudent decision on their part, don't you agree?
I'm glad you realize the Swiss were not so very moral.
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posted
*my* point was about the targeting of the raid.
It wasn't like a modern suicide bombing where they go and *target* a bus stop or a cafe under the guise of a harmless civilian.
These were clearly marked military planes targeting japanese infrastructure (however inffectively). Absolutely with the intent of harming morale, and, we'll be honest here, certainly with disregard for civilian casualties, but not targeting them directly.
That is a significant difference.
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posted
I don't get it - how is "harming morale in mainland Japan" any different from "scaring the Americans so they'll give up their war on Islam"? In either case you are deliberately killing civilians with the intent of making the enemy change his policy. Now, I'm not saying there is no difference between a military aircraft, and a disguised suicide bomber; but the targeting, and the intent of the targeting, is the same.
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There is a difference between targeting warfighting industry with the knowledge it will kill civilians and targeting civilians directly, with the primary purpose being inflicting civilian casualties.
That difference is significant enough that one is a war crime and the other isn't.
And btw, you are aware I am talking about the Doolittle Raid and not Dresden, right?
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posted
Right. Whose primary purpose, we have already agreed, was to strike at civilian morale, sod the infrastructure.
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posted
Having the planes show up over Tokyo at all was the morale strike... they could have dropped only leaflets and had the same effect (edit: on Morale).
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posted
Declared state of war, for one thing. A routine practice of warfare at the time, for another. Something Imperial Japan engaged in as a matter of course to excess, for a third. Not the sole means of warfare being used, for a fourth.
These are all substantial differences, most especially the last two. Please note that I am still not saying that these differences make Dresden or any other civilian bombing a worthy, honorable thing.
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posted
Pretending that the Americans were capable of not hitting civilians with WW2 technology is ridiculous. The American targets are clearly shown in the historical record to be militarily legitimate targets. If the bombs didn't hit where they were supposed to, it certainly wasn't for lack of trying.
K of M seems to have a very strange definition of terrorism. I don't know of any definition for terrorism which includes uniformed regular military personnel dropping bombs on enemy military targets during a declared war.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Nor do I; I was suggesting that deliberate targeting of civilians is terrorism. Now, I see that the Doolittle raid was indeed intended to hit military targets; that's not true of later raids, though. But the military effect of the raid was negligible, and this was known in advance; thus, whatever the target of the actual bombs, the purpose of the raid was purely to strike at civilian morale. In other words, frightening the enemy population into doing what you want.
Please note : I am not talking about collateral damage from military bombing. I wonder if you gentlemen are projecting onto me the perceived opinion of American liberals, that everything the US did in WWII was evil? I do not share that opinion, in fact I think it's ridiculous. But I also think it possible to say that 'yes, X was a bad thing' without thereby condemning the whole war effort.
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posted
I'm specifically concerned with defending the doolittle raid here...
Again, the strike against morale was in having the planes show up over Tokyo at all... they weren't supposed to be able to do that.
Edit to add: and it succeeded so well it agruably changed the course of the entire Pacific War... the Japanese were so incensed that they had their master strategist concot a plan to trap and destroy the US carrier force, which resulted in the Battle of Midway...
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posted
American liberals think that everything America did in WW2 was evil? I never got that flyer in the mail.
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posted
I'm not imputing anything to you... you can throw out all the red herrings you want, but your initial post could only have the purpose of implying that the Doolittle Raiders were war criminals and were only kept from being charged as such by the partiality of the Tribunal.
For someone so proud of his intellect you play awfully dumb sometimes, KoM.
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posted
I disagree. As far as I can reconstruct my thought process, the initial post referred to aspectre's first, saying :
quote:Prior to becoming Presidents JohnF.Kennedy's and LyndonBainesJohnson's Secretary of Defense, RobertS.McNamara was also General CutisLeMay's chief advisor on the planning of the Tokyo raid which killed ~100thousand civilians. And just after firebombing was approved, he said to his commander: You do know that if the US loses, we will be charged as war criminals, don't you?
I then got sort of sidetracked into the Doolittle raid, having forgotten what my first post was actually about. But the original 'terror bombing of cities' referred to the firebombing of Tokyo, not the Doolittle raid.
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quote: Again, the strike against morale was in having the planes show up over Tokyo at all... they weren't supposed to be able to do that.
Jim-Me, I'm not exactly sure where you're going with this. If the only point of the Doolittle Raid was to impact Japanese morale negatively, and that objective was accomplished merely by US military planes showing up over Tokyo, then how does that justify the reality of the raid? I'm not familiar enough with it to have an opinion one way or the other, but you seem to be trying to defend the raid based on the reality that it was neccessary to destroy morale. Yet you say that what the raid was to accomplish could have been done with nothing more than leaflets. Those planes were definitely dropping more than leaflets. I dont mean to argue with you at all, but I guess I dont really understand what you're trying to say. Would you mind clarifying?
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Well, then perhaps I'm the dense one, KoM... but for clarity's sake I will reiterate, hopefully unmistakably this time, that I have been discussing nothing but the Doolittle Raid. I don't know enough about the firebombing of Tokyo to defend it, but the City of Tokyo was definitely a strategic target. At best it showed little concern for civilian casualties (as I said earlier) but callousness in war is certainly not limited to Tokyo and Dresden nor is it a war crime. If it can be shown that their actual, military purpose was to kill civilians, then yes, I would say it would be a war crime today for sure...
Sadly, though, killing civilians was a common military practice for millenia and, while always having been regarded as barbaric, especially by the country whose civilians were attacked, it has rarely been punished by the side in power, My Lai being a notable exception.
Foundling, let me just back up and try to give you my assessment of the goals of the Doolittle Raid.
1) to remove the Japanese sense of invincibility... they actually thought their homeland was divinely impregnable. The appearence of American warplanes over Tokyo shattered that sense. This portion of the mission was an unbridled success.
-and-
2) to attack Japanese warfighting capability by targeting various startegic factories, bridges, and the like. This didn't go so well as the damage inflicted by the relatively light payloads was fairly minimal.
KoM was suggesting that damaging Japanese Morale meant "targeting and killing Japanese civilians". I was trying to point out that this was most definitely not the case. It was no more terrorism than firing a warning shot.
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posted
In defense of the Swiss, a neutral country that depends heavily on banking, during a time of war would probably be well advised to take deposits from one of the belligerents, especially if that belligerant was right next door.
Of course, when the large deposits of gold that come in aren't in coins or bars, but look a lot like gold teeth, it would take some pretty cold bastards to never say a word about it.
Of course, after it was found out what had happened after the war, a good bunch of folks would return that gold without a fuss, right?
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posted
Don't forget about all the pretty diamonds the Navis absconded with, and sent to a secure location for safekeeping...
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posted
I rather suspect the Nazis melted the teeth down to form bars before they deposited it. Which is why it's not very traceable.
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posted
Gold is actually quite traceable, so long as the parties involved don't do things such as stamping bars without numbers on them, or false numbers.
I believe the Swiss did not know where some of that gold was coming from no more than the Germans living in Germany didn't know Jews were being exterminated. The Swiss aren't stupid.
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posted
Right, and the Nazis would not have falsified the numbers because...? I defy you to look at two bars of gold and say "This one came from teeth, that one is straight from the mine."
I agree, though, that the Swiss probably knew they were fencing stolen goods. Again, I wasn't holding them up as paragons of virtue; just as a neutral nation, capable of saying "this is a war crime, that isn't" without revenge or protection coming into it.
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