Over the transom...I wonder whether it is true, but it could be

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Thursday, September 1. 2011

Over the transom...I wonder whether it is true, but it could be

Finally, my intertunnel, phone, and TV service has mysteriously returned via the mysterious and fragile workings of Optimum. This came in from a friend:

After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started. The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River. Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships all fighting the Germans.

So, why did they not invade?

After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question. Their answer|...they know that almost every home had guns and the Americans knew how to use them.

The world's largest army... America's hunters! I had never thought about this. A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion: There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin. Allow me to restate that number. Over the last several months, Wisconsin 's hunters became the eighth largest army in the world. More men under arms than in Iran .. More than in France and Germany combined. These men deployed to the woods of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed. That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan 's 700,000 hunters, all of whom have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

The point? America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower. Hunting -- it's not just a way to fill the freezer. It's a matter of national security.

Posted by Bird Dog in History at 12:30 | Comments (16) | Trackbacks (0)

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All true but for the fact that we were not "actively" fighting the germans at this time, but rather providing all assistance possible to the brits. The nazis did not declare war on the USA until Dec. 11, 1941.

#1 Dale on 2011-09-01 12:44 (Reply)

That worried me as well. At most we had a very few thousand soldiers in Europe, including those in Spain for one side or the other, before Pearl Harbor. Those were mostly Americans who had joined the Canadian and British air corps. Curious, his assertions.

#1.1 Amazed on 2011-09-01 14:23 (Reply)

I'd like to see an explanation of how the Japanese could have invaded the continental US and driven to the Mississippi with that they had in 1941. An invasion is not made up of troops rather it is made up of a long and complicated logistical and communications chain back to the mainland. Notice the US didn't attempt to invade Japan from California.

#2 Homer2 on 2011-09-01 13:46 (Reply)

Yep - Logistics. They could have invaded and gone maybe 10 miles deep before they ran out of gas and food.

An invasion a thousand miles wide and two thousand deep? No way. Once they were a few hundred miles inland (walking / captured vehicles), we wouldn't even bother attacking their troops - just the supply lines. That is where the civilians with hunting rifles would really do their damage.

#2.1 NJSoldier on 2011-09-02 14:27 (Reply)

...and women.....men and women under arms. My 77 year old mother and I took my 16 year old nephew to the range to introduce him to shooting handguns. Afterwards I asked him what was the most important lesson he learned, hoping to hear him quote some bit of safety I taught him. His initial reply was, "Don't mess with Grandma!" The range boss snorted coffee out his nose. (Grandma had put 4 out of 6 shots with her .38 in the 10 ring at 50 feet) Grandma didn't tell him she'd been shooting since she was his age, and taught me, his old Auntie to shoot at 14. I only got 3 out of 6. I don't mess with Grandma either!

#3 Amazed on 2011-09-01 13:56 (Reply)

This is nonsense. The Japanese did not have the Sea Lift capacity to invade the United States. I'll get back later with references.

#4 RBM411 on 2011-09-01 15:14 (Reply)

I've heard this before, and it's apocryphal, at best. While it's true that as a nation we're well stocked with firepower, there is no way Japan could overcome the logistical difficulties inherent in an invasion. They would have the US behind them (still in Hawaii) and in front of them, and their supply lines would be extremely vulnerable.

Regardless of weaponry, they'd have faced massive problems feeding and arming their own men. Not to mention that their army would be spread so thin at that point it would be virtually useless.

Their truly logical first step would've been landing in, and taking over, Hawaii. Then moving north to Alaska. It was the Pacific Rim they were interested in, anyway, not the continental US. Funny thing is, in the long run, we gave them what they were asking for.....they ran the Pacific Rim for a good 30 years, until China started showing their stripes.

#5 Rick on 2011-09-01 15:16 (Reply)

Here is some info:

1. The Overlord invasion required 4,600 ships to travel 100 miles under the air cover of 12,000 planes to land 156,000 troops on a French coastline 3,437 miles long. Over the next three weeks, the Allies brought in another 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies.

2. The unopposed landing at Anzio required 369 ships to land 100,000 men. Over the next four months, the Allies brought in another 14,000 men and 450,00 tons of supplies. Despite this, and the fact that the British Eighth Army and U.S. Fifth Corps were only 50 miles away on the other side of the Gustav line, the Sixth Corps remained helplessly trapped in its small beachhead.

3. In January 1942, prior to both Executive Order 9066 and the battle of Midway, the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed 717 carrier-borne planes and 176 ships, of which 15 were troop transports. The IJN's troop-bearing capacity was about 42,000 men. Reinforcement and resupply required a roundtrip transit of 11,000 miles to a coastline only 1,359 miles long.

Read more: No case for internment http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=26421#ixzz1WjNcM3hK

#6 rbm411 on 2011-09-01 15:32 (Reply)

pretty accurate, except that the Allied invasion troops during OVERLORD weren't REALLY landing on over three THOUSAND miles of French shoreline.

#6.1 Old Salt on 2011-09-01 23:48 (Reply)

Once the frontier was closed, there has never been a time when the US could have been invaded by a hostile force. Even the large-scale illegal immigration that is now occurring on the Mexican border is knowingly permitted, if not incited, by the Feds.

The only threat to the American people during that whole time has been the Federal government and its military.

#7 bob sykes on 2011-09-01 16:00 (Reply)

The logistics of the Pearl Harbor attack stretched the limits of the Imperial Navy. They may have been able to put some portion of a division ashore somewhere in the west coast but it would have had to forage - resupply would have been logistically beyond their capability.

Now, whether or not any ranking Japanese military person ever said such a thing or not, and the evidence is slim, one needn't be a military genius to realize that the issues of invading the US are daunting in the extreme. One very real portion of that is the armed populace. They would have been aware of this but it probably wasn't the factor that drove any decision to not invade.

This is true for China today. They may be able to put 25 million young men under arms but they can't ship them to the US and even if they could they can't resupply them and move them 500 hundred miles let alone 1,000... 2,000... 3,000. Fighting a couple million snipers - even if most would be of dubious quality - while doing so wouldn't make anything easier.

#8 Knucklehead (Link) on 2011-09-01 17:38 (Reply)

At some particularly macabre point in my life, using an average depth, I worked out the number of bodies the Chinese would need to place a thirty foot wide bridge across the Bering Strait. Just as a mental exercise as it a ridiculous idea, of course. But, head to toe for width, I believe it was around 4 million people. I suppose I should go to hell for even having the thought of doing that exercise. Though, I was considering a determined enemy for whom lives meant nothing.

#8.1 XRay on 2011-09-01 19:44 (Reply)

The obvious error about two million men fighting the Germans can be ignored. But it does put the rest into perspective.

IMO the Japanese would have done far better to immediately invade Hawaii after Pearl Harbor.

To take Hawaii they would have had to temporarily bypass MacArthur in the Philippines. But in reality it was Hawaii that they needed. Holding it would have shifted a big logistics burden onto the US.

An invasion of the US mainland was a silly idea whether Americans had guns under their beds or not. The Japanese simply could not support that effort. And they knew it.

#9 KTWO on 2011-09-01 18:27 (Reply)

In many history books (I've read a few) there is mention of civilians with hunting rifles. These are always dismissed as unimportant/useless weapons. I've never understood that. I believe it was Patton that said something along the lines of the most useful tactic in war was a well placed bullet.

#10 Rick on 2011-09-01 18:47 (Reply)

Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the Pearl Harbor attack who once lived in the US, is reputed to have said: "You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass...."

So he had that bit of Americana down pat!

His real mistake at Pearl was ignoring the Fleet fuel depot and repair facilities. Wipe those out with a concerted effort and the US reels for at least two, maybe as long as four years trying to re-group on the West Coast.

In the end, War is logisitics. Combat arms usualy constitute no more than 5% of an army's field force. Maybe 10% with naval forces. The US wins wars because nobody builds bases and handles logisitics like Americans!

#11 Earl T on 2011-09-01 22:57 (Reply)

With all the commentary on logisitcs here, did anyone else see this [url] http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110824-geopolitics-united-states-part-1-inevitable-empire [/url] recently, discussing roughly the same things?

I first saw it in an email newsletter that I receive from John Mauldin, so you might have too if you're a subscriber.

#12 BJ on 2011-09-02 20:49 (Reply)

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Thursday, September 1. 2011

Over the transom...I wonder whether it is true, but it could be