Asia, Modern History

Two Battles and a japanesse gamble

I will go wild in pacific for 6 months, after that I dont guarantee anything

– Yamamoto (Japanesse Naval commander)

In 1941, Japan played a gamble, a huge one. Japan wanted to rise, they wanted to show the world that what they got and wanted to answer back the world for what they got during world war 1 which was disrespect. They trained the huge army, mastered their artillery, built good naval and air power and wanted to advance from their rising sun land.

Image result for pacific war

The world had already sensed that Japan was going to burst and superpowers tried to prevent it but they failed. Then Japan signed tripate act with Germany(Nazi) and Italy.During 1940, Japan had four ways for starting a war by its own.

  1. Move south, annex mighty Australia. Australia was having a large area of land by their military was not strong and was supported by the USA
  2. The second one was to move to the Indian Ocean, do raids over British India and pass over Burma.
  3. The third one was to move north and attack Soviets, who were one of their arch-enemies.
  4. Move eastward and conquer Pacific

They took all moves except 3rd. They thought that Germany already has hold of Soviets, Japanese can relax on the 3rd move. The USA was expecting war with Japan but was hoping not. They were already very close to getting into the war with Germany. The USA was instead supplying things to Japan before WW2, they wanted just Japan to stay away from their territories in pacific which Japanese were eager to have.

On 7th December 1941, a powerful armada sailed from Hittokapu Bay in the Kurile Islands. Two battleships, three cruisers, nine destroyers and three submarines escorted the heart of the strike- six aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers were the key for a country to have a good navy.

Image result for Pearl harbour

After that, they hit their target, pearl harbor in Hawaii. Their main aim for the whole raid was to destroy the navy of the USA especially the aircraft carriers. Pilots were commanded to destroy and take out the whole of the battleships, so they did. At that time, seven battleships were docked over the pearl harbor. Within some minutes, four of them were sunk. In little more than 2 hours, Japan altered the balance of power over the Pacific. The bold attack had taken lives of 2,403 Americans. 18 of 96 vessels at pearl harbor were sunk or damaged heavily. A total of 165 US aircraft were destroyed and 128 others damaged. In exchange, the Japanese lost 29 aircraft, five midgets submarines, one fleet submarine and 185 dead. This was a huge victory for Japanese. But they missed out two most important things, firstly they were not able to target enemy aircraft carrier and secondly, they forgot something very important. many historians take it as ‘mistakes in million’. They forgot to target oil plants in Hawaii if they had taken out them, USA navy was already down without oil support. Conditions can be very changed if that mistake was avoided.

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Months passed fighting for Pacific and then a battle took place which was a turning battle for Japanese. It was battle of midway. Midway is located over north-west of Hawaii. this battle was for the heat between 4-7 June 1942. It is a small island but a very strategical base for both sides for both the sides. Its size is less than 1,930km. Yamamoto (naval leader of Japan) commanded for the annexation of midway for which he was hungry. The operation for midway was planned in which Japanese decided to take four of the aircraft carriers- Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu with other vessels. Japanese didn’t know that Americans already knew that they were planning this. Both of the sides were prepared.

  • Japanese plan- attack with their four aircraft carriers and deploy 500 soldiers afterward to conquer midway. They took 234 combat aircraft for this.
  • Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, was planning to counter Japanese Midway operation. He ordered the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and USS Hornet and their escorts to join up USS Yorktown. The base at midway was alerted.Image result for battle of midway

Image result for battle of midway

On the June 1942, Nagumo (leading the Japanese raid) ordered 100 planes to damage the base of midway. He wanted that the first wave to soften the defense over the base so they can further take actions and deploy their soldiers. But the wave failed and they were only able to give little damage to the base over the midway. This made Nagumo think twice about what to do next because the planes airborne were loaded with torpedoes.Instead, he was thinking that they should be armed with bombers so he can damage the base more. Then he spotted the American aircraft carriers and commanded airborne planes loaded with torpedoes to attack the vessels where on the other hand he ordered another wave armed with bombers to damage the base over midway. He further ordered to recover the planes of the first wave who were low on fuel and ammo. Shortly after 10 minutes, American ordered their own wave of defense. Furthur after, American ordered 150 dive bombers and fighters to target the opposition vessels and take them out. This was not what Japanese were expecting. With a weak defense of Japanese vessels, the course of the midway sea was changed with a flash. American bombers bombed the Japanese aircraft which were on their way for taking off and three of the aircraft carriers were doomed and flamed. The last surviving aircraft carrier of Japanese succeeded to damage the opposition and USS Yorktown was hit badly.

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In the battle of the midway, at last, US lost one carrier, a destroyer, 137 planes, and 307 men. The loss for Japan was much severe, they lost aircraft carriers, cruisers, 332 aircraft and more than 2,000 men. This battled impacted the WW2 a lot. After this, the war continued with full potential from both nations.

38 thoughts on “Two Battles and a japanesse gamble”

  10. Nice post, but you are wrong when you said:

    ‘They took all moves except 3rd. They thought that Germany already has hold of Soviets, Japanese can relax on the 3rd move.’

    In fact the Japanese attacked the Soviets first than the Germans!

    But I do not blame you, most people, ignore that these battles of Khalkhin Gol took place.

    After the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, Japan turned its military interests to Soviet territories that bordered those areas. The first major Soviet-Japanese border incident, the Battle of Lake Khasan, occurred in 1938 in Primorye. Clashes between Japanese and Soviet forces frequently occurred along the border of Manchuria.
    In 1939, Manchuria was a puppet state of Japan known as Manchukuo, and Mongolia was a communist state allied with the Soviet Union, known as the Mongolian People’s Republic. The Japanese maintained that the border between Manchukuo and Mongolia was the Khalkhyn Gol (English “Khalkha River”) which flows into Lake Buir. In contrast, the Mongolians and their Soviet allies maintained that the border ran some 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) east of the river, just east of Nomonhan village.
    The Battles of Khalkhyn Gol were the decisive engagements of the undeclared Soviet–Japanese border conflicts fought among the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Japan and Manchukuo in 1939. The conflict was named after the river Khalkhyn Gol, which passes through the battlefield. In Japan, the decisive battle of the conflict is known as the Nomonhan Incident Nomonhan jiken) after a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria. The battles resulted in the defeat of the Japanese Sixth Army, by the end of August 1939.
    The Japanese suffered heavy casualties, followed by the announcement of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi–Soviet Pact, the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact or the Nazi German–Soviet Pact of Aggression (officially: Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, respectively.

    The Japanese Army, and the Navy were split in their general strategy, about the War, so they choose options 1, 2, and 4 after this battle was lost, it was the decisive reason they no longer had interest in option number 3.

    The battle was the first victory for the soon-to-be-famous Soviet general Georgy Zhukov, earning him the first of his four Hero of the Soviet Union awards. The two other generals, Grigoriy Shtern and Yakov Smushkevich, had important roles and were also awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union. They would, however, both be executed in the 1941 Purges. Zhukov himself was promoted and transferred west to the Kiev district. The battle experience gained by Zhukov was put to good use in December 1941 at the Battle of Moscow. Zhukov was able to use this experience to launch the first successful Soviet counteroffensive against the German invasion of 1941. Many units of the Siberian and other trans-Ural armies were part of this attack, and the decision to move these divisions from Siberia was aided by the Soviet spy Richard Sorge in Tokyo, who was able to alert the Soviet government that the Japanese were looking south and were unlikely to launch another attack against Siberia in the immediate future.

    Best regards! 🙂

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. I really really appreciate your knowledge. Maybe yes, my research lacked and I really don’t knew about battle of lake khasan, all I knew was that battle of Japanese and sino in different regions. Zhukov was a very powerful general, I knew his battle in Kiev but didn’t heard about what he done at East. I am really thankful that you corrected me and I really appreciate that you read! Thanks again!!

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  12. You will be surprised as to how many people well read in WWII, do not know about this battle!
    So do not worry.

    WWII was a very wide, and spread out conflict, with far too many belligerents, and it lasted for quite a long time, some argue it didn’t start on 1939, but way before with the invasion of Manchuko, and China by Japan, and the Spanish Civil War, where Rusian Soviets, German Nazi, and Italian Fascist also were involved, Italy invasion of Ethiopia. 1935-1939

    The battle of Khalkhin Gol, in1939 where a series of skirmishes, and provocations that escalated in to full battles, between the soviets, and the Japanese, in a far off place, at a time when the attention of the world was in the tensions of Europe, where Hitler, had annexed Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and was just about to invade Poland, whatever news of this far off place reached the World, were soon forgotten, and of a minor interest after, once the conflict swallowed Europe, and so many battles where fought, in too many fronts.

    You are welcome. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

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  13. Well, my friend through life we have gathered this, and that, here, and over there. Where I come from, there’s a very popular saying, that we could translate this way:

    ‘The devil knows a lot, not only because he is a devil, but because he also has become wise, by his old age.’ 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  17. Pingback: Two Battles and a japanesse gamble — vision of sid – SHOWERS OF BLESSINGS COVENANT HOUSE

  18. It’s really a cool and helpful piece of information. I am satisfied that you just shared this useful info with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.

    Like

    Reply

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