Show 66 - Supernova in the East V

“As an airbase, Rabaul had been very nearly neutered by unrelenting air attack. But with units streaming into the lines from points west, Japanese troop strength approached 100,000. Surrender was beneath consideration, so the garrison began to prepare for a climactic fight to the last man. For almost 2 years the Japanese had been building and improving their defensive fortifications. So they waited, and waited, and waited, and the Americans did not come.”— Japanese intelligence officer

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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Bypass denies glorious death

“The squad leader, a corporal or sergeant, is the man who sees that the assault orders are executed. Reams and reams of paper are used to write orders from the highest authority down, telling everyone what to do and how to do it. The squad leader never sees the reams of paper consisting of brilliant orders written by officers who've attended every war college in the world.”— Anonymous squad leader

Leadership & Management · Operations & Execution · Psychology & Behavior

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Plans are theoretical, execution is real

“Amateurs think about tactics, but professionals think about logistics. In New Guinea, you can see the Australians slowly but surely building up their strength, bringing in new good units from the Mediterranean and places like that. The Americans bring in more troops in Guadalcanal. And all of this is part of what will begin to simply stop the Axis impetus.”— Marine Corps General Robert Barrow

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution · Economics & Markets

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Logistics beats tactics in long wars

“The Japanese have fueled a lot of these warships with the equivalent of straight crude oil right out of the ground. They can't even get the oil that they need for the ships' boilers and engines refined. And if they do get them refined, they can't get the refined oil to where the warships are. They have huge fuel problems. And you know it because this straight crude is going to foul the boilers, destroy the engines.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution · Economics & Markets

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Destroying assets signals desperation

“Little things become significant. The next meal, the next bottle of booze, the next kiss, the next sunrise, the next full moon, the next bath. This is a hard philosophy, but then a soldier's profession is a hard profession in wartime. A lot of men like it, though, and even civilian soldiers have been known to stay on and make it their life's work. It has its excitements and compensations.”— James Jones

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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No future means vivid present

“They love beheading for some reason. And they'd done the killing prisoners in Rabaul before this, the beheading, the civilian killings. And it's one of those things that sort of boggles the modern mind because you can't help but ask the salient question, 'Why? Why is this happening? How does this benefit anybody? Isn't this counterproductive?' The Australian soldier who gave the affidavit says they took the Japanese soldier to the Australian corpses and basically said, 'Why did you do this?”

Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

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Atrocities as surrender prevention

“The Jap is still being underrated. There is no question of our being able to defeat him, but the time, effort, blood, and money required to do the job may run to proportions beyond all conception. The Jap there has been in a hopeless position for 2 months. He has been outnumbered heavily throughout the show. His garrison has been whittled down to a handful by bombing and strafing. He has had no air support, and his own navy has not been able to get past our air blockade to help him.”— Lieutenant General George C. Kenney

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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No easy games, only Notre Dame

“The invasion of Saipan also required a much longer sealift than at Normandy. While the invasion forces for Neptune Overlord had to leap 50 or 100 miles across the English Channel, many of the transports and amphibious ships loaded up at Pearl Harbor, more than 3,500 miles from the target beach. For Neptune Overlord, the landing craft could and did shuttle reinforcements and supplies to the beaches in a near-constant rotation for weeks after the initial landing.”— Craig L. Symonds

Operations & Execution · Strategy & Decision Making · Economics & Markets

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Distance creates all-or-nothing logistics

“What was it about the war that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and deprivation. It was rather the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable.”— Paul Fussell

Psychology & Behavior · Culture & Society · Leadership & Management

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False narratives breed contempt

“35 years has glossed it all over and given World War II a polish and glow that it did not have at the time. The process of history always makes me think of the way Navajos polish their turquoise. They put the raw chunks in a barrel half-filled with birdshot and then turn the barrel and keep turning it until the rough edges are all taken off and the nuggets come out smooth and shining. Time does the same thing with history, and especially with wars.”— James Jones

History & Geopolitics · Psychology & Behavior · Culture & Society

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Time polishes history like turquoise

“In 1942, the Americans churned out 49,445 planes according to Richard B. Frank. Japan churned out 8,861. And 1942 is the least productive year of the war for the Americans. '43 and '44, you're going to see production numbers absolutely shoot through the moon. The difference in production numbers are so incredibly profound that the Japanese would be foolish to think that they aren't going to just be buried.”— Richard B. Frank

Economics & Markets · Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution

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5:1 production gap compounds yearly

“The Japanese, especially here on Saipan, are taking part in what the Japanese term is gyokusai. We had said all along that the Japanese were like everyone else, only more so. Well, in June 1940, when Winston Churchill was afraid that the Germans were about to invade another island nation, just like Japan, but in this case Britain, he gave a famous speech that might have been written by the Japanese emperor himself. He said, 'We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.”— Winston Churchill

History & Geopolitics · Culture & Society · Psychology & Behavior

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Churchill rhetoric mirrors Japanese

“Because of the efforts of the Cactus Flyers and the lack of efforts by American admirals, a curious tactical situation arose in the waters around Guadalcanal: a change of sea command every 12 hours, creating a sort of mutual siege. By day, American ships plied the channel between Tulagi and Guadalcanal, and transports arrived to unload, keeping a wary eye cocked for Japanese aircraft.”— Richard B. Frank

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution

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Both sides besieged, alternating shifts

“In China, soldiers were forced to practice on prisoners, slashing and stabbing, as soon as they arrived for training. 'Stab him!' they'd order, indicating an unresisting prisoner. I didn't move. I just stood there. The platoon leader became enraged, but I just looked away, ignoring the order. I was beaten. I was the only one who didn't do it. The platoon leader showed them how, with vigor. 'This is how you stab a person,' he said. He hit the man's skull and knocked him into a pit.”— Ogawa Matsutsugu

Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management · Culture & Society

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Prisoner killing as training method

“The front line is really where the war is, and anybody 100 yards behind the front lines doesn't really know what it's like. Part of the evolution of a frontline soldier is coming to the conclusion, not that you might die, but that you will die. You are a different person simply for considering the idea. The other thing you do in the 100 yards at the front line that the people in a medical station behind, or a support unit doesn't do, is you kill.”— Eugene Sledge and James Jones

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Certainty of death changes you

“Take the Mitsubishi factory plant that is making the Zero fighters has no airfield next door to it. And so they have to transport the newly made Zero fighters. Can't do it on a truck, apparently they're too fragile. Can't do it on railroads, there's no railheads near the factory. So they use beasts of burden to do it. Oxen towing these fighter planes the 25 miles that they need to go. And by this time in the war, they can't get feed for the oxen except on the black market.”— Ian W. Toll

Operations & Execution · Economics & Markets · Strategy & Decision Making

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Oxen moving fighters signals collapse

“The Japanese Army preferred direct assault after the German fashion, but the Americans flowed into our weaker points and submerged us, just as water seeks the weakest entry to sink a ship.”— Japanese intelligence officer

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution

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Flow around strength, not through

“If you looked at a map of the region in the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur and the US Army and the Australians and New Zealanders are coming up through New Guinea towards Rabaul on one side. On the other side of New Britain and Rabaul, the Navy and the US Marines are working their way up the Solomons, the island chain there, and they will sort of cut off Rabaul. So they're starting to ping off of each other and take pressure off of each other.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution

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Two fronts relieve each other

“What annoyed the troops and augmented their sardonic, contemptuous attitude toward those who viewed them from afar was in large part this public innocence about the bizarre damage suffered by the human body in modern war. The troops could not contemplate without anger the lack of public knowledge of the Graves Registration Form used by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, with its space for indicating members missing.”— Paul Fussell

Psychology & Behavior · Culture & Society

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Public shielded from war reality

“Alone amongst the great armies of the world, the Japanese morale is, for all intents and purposes, unbreakable, which means you have to go around and kill them all. You have to wipe out each position one by one by one. It's a combination of workmanlike and extremely deadly. And it creates a sense of fatalism amongst the troops, which is normal in war, but of a level that you don't see elsewhere.”

Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making · Culture & Society

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Unbreakable morale forces annihilation