Likewise, by late '44 Kurita knew his cause was - at least, strategically - hopeless. Indeed, I read (somewhere) that his pre-battle address to his men included words to the effect: "Who knows - A Miracle could happen...". I don't know about the average IJN sailor in 1944, but that kind of "Pep Talk" - if that's the best the commander(s) could have come up with - would've bummed me out, to no end! 
Still, the "Miraculous Save" I was talking about at Leyte was the preservation of the rest of Taffy 3, and who knows how many additional escorts/transports - not to mention the Black Eye to morale - if Kurita had kept on slugging it out. Albeit his inevitable loss of Yamato - maybe all his heavy units - to go along with Musashi, once the USN carrier task-forces caught up with him again.
And speaking of Yamato, it's well-documented that, when the defense of Okinawa was clearly seen to be impossible, she was committed to her inexorable Suicide Mission, after the question from The Emporor: "Have we no warships left?" Which, when you think about it, can only have meant: "When we loose this thing, we must not have any (significant) warships remaining afloat: it just wouldn't look good.
Also, in retrospect, it seems likely the gigantic explosion of Yamato - unknowingly foreshadowing the nuclear mushroom clouds over Japan, soon to follow - was deliberatelly planned and executed, to create a spectacle for American eyes: to be captured by USN cameras, as exactly proved to be the case. The unequivocal message being: We will DIE TRYING.... This of course, the very essence of the Kamikaze tactic.
Speaking of which, when you look at the above from the American point of view in 1945, it appears very clear why everybody would have insisted on dropping the A-bomb(s) on Japan, as soon as they were available. Certainly, if I had been an intel/strategy analyst at the time, I would most definitely have recommended it. (Now, whether the very first targets should have been cities or not, I am still not sure.)
Anyway, what were we talking about...? Oh yeah: I will gladly take your 400-scale British U-class - and again your (preferably source-of-origin labelled) 700-scale spares in exchange for whatever Matty's Models (nominally 550-scale) guns you might be able to use, buddy. Just let me know exactly what/how many - and I'll even prep/Purple-Prime 'em, for you!
Cheers,
- Matty
Responses
« Back to index | View thread »
