Quarterly Report - War and Remembrance - Glory Seekers and Patriots

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Wednesday December 7, 2011

Today is the 70th anniversary of the sneak attack by the Japanese on the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This is a significant anniversary as the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association has given notice that it will disband at the end of 2011 because of declining membership.

Most Americans learned of the significance of the attack after President Roosevelt's speech to Congress on December 8th in which he requested a declaration of war against Japan. The capital ships of the U.S. Pacific fleet consisted of nine battleships and three aircraft carriers. At the time of the attack, eight battleships were berthed in Pearl Harbor, but the aircraft carriers, USS Lexington (CV-2), USS Saratoga (CV-3), and USS Enterprise (CV-6), were at sea. Except for the battleship USS Colorado (BB-45), that was on the West Coast for repairs, all of the eight battleship at Pearl Harbor were either damaged or sunk which rendered the Battle Fleet impotent against the Japanese.^1/

This impotency was based on the prevailing theory that combat between navies would be waged and decided by combat by battleships as advocated by Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval officer. Mahan's theory was widely accepted and it caused a naval arms race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the United States, Great British, Germany, Japan, and to a slightly lesser extent, Italy and France, to build battleships. Such ships were the enormously expensive, and except for the United States, most countries could ill-afford them. Nonetheless, many battleships were built, with their host countries going into debt to construct them. During World War I, it was assumed that the battle fleets of Great Britain and Germany would meet and slug it out, thereby determining which nation would control the seas. Such a battle took place, off Jutland, Denmark. The battle was indecisive. After the battle, the German fleet was essentially confined to port by the German Emperor Wilhelm II, and German naval attacks on British ships were accomplished through the use of submarines (U-boats). The result of the Battle of Jutland presaged what would happen in World War II.

After Pearl Harbor, a new US naval strategy was needed to respond to the Japanese in the Pacific. Fortunately, there was a military man with the intelligence and lack of ego who put into place a strategy for defeating the Japanese. That man was a naval officer, Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Using five aircraft carriers and the submarine fleet, Nimitz fought back. The naval battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the numerous naval battles for possession of the island of Guadalcanal, stopped further Japanese expansion. After winning control of Guadalcanal, the Japanese surrender came a year and a half later.

Nimitz worked with what he had to begin a counteroffensive against the Japanese. He realized that the aircraft carrier, not the battleship, was the most important weapon he had to defeat the Japanese.^2/ At one point in the Pacific war, he had but one aircraft carrier left, the Enterprise. The Enterprise, although it was heavily damaged a number of times, was to survive the war. Regretfully, attempts to get the Enterprise -- the most decorated ship of the war -- designated as a museum ship failed, and she was broken-up in 1960.

A study of military history reveals that the ego of generals and heads of state has been the single greatest influence on the fortunes of a country in war. During World War II, command for the prosecution of the war in the Pacific was shared between General Douglas MacArthur and Nimitz. MacArthur's ego was legendary. He failed to prepare his forces after learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor and his air force in the Philippines was destroyed on the ground by the Japanese. Out generaled and embarrassed -- charges he never would have admitted -- he was ordered by President Roosevelt to Australia as the Japanese overran his army. He promised that "I shall return" and lobbied Roosevelt for an invasion of the Philippines to retake the islands. His conduct during that campaign was filled with ego-driven underestimates of Japanese strength. He cost many men's lives. Later, as commander of the United Nations' forces in the Korean War, he was often contemptuous of his Commander-In-Chief, President Harry Truman. MacArthur was fired.

The European Theater of World War II gave us British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who craved newspaper reports of his exploits. When the American, General George Patton, arrived on the scene in North Africa, a battle between the two was waged for media attention. This conflict continued during the Sicily Campaign and the invasion of France. After D-Day, Patton was given command of the U.S. Third Army, and he drove it across France. Montgomery, looking for a way to recapture newspaper attention, came up with the absurd operation called, "Market-Garden." Ignoring intelligence of German defenses, he cost many men their lives in his attempt to overcome Patton's success.

My father-in-law, Joseph G. McNamara -- a two time recipient of the Bronze Star -- was a captain in Combat Command B of the 14th Armored Division, 7th Army, during World War II. The 7th Army invaded France at Marseille in October 1944 and fought its way into Germany as the southern salient of a four-pronged attack on the western front of the Nazi defense. The exploits of the 7th Army are not as well known as either Montgomery, General Omar Bradley or the Patton led armies, but the 7th encountered heavy resistance in the Vosges Mountains near the French-German border. One day, Captain McNamara was scouting enemy positions with two other officers. A German sniper took aim and killed one of the men standing next to him.

On January 1, 1945, the Germans launched a counterattack against the 7th Army, Operation Nordwind, and fighting was fierce. The 14th Division broke through the German defensive line -- the "unbreachable" Siegfried Line -- and liberated more prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates than any other unit in the Allied war effort. The 14th Division received the honorary title, "Liberators," because of their heroic efforts. My father-in-law hated war, but his allegiance to his country caused him to return to active service with the 8th Army in the Korean War. His experience there was to foreshadow America's involvement in Vietnam. He told me that he often "did not know who the enemy was."

In the mainland Italian campaign of World War II, the American army landed at Salerno under command of General Mark Clark. Clark wanted to capture Rome and be a hero. Contrary to orders from his superior, General Harold Alexander, he turned his army towards Rome and allowed the German defenders to escape from their positions along the coast and establish defensive lines across Italy. The subsequent fighting up the "boot" of Italy, including the disaster at Anzio, came at a horrendous cost to the Allied forces.

My uncle, Edmund V. "Bud" Keehan, was an engineer aboard LST-376, a ship designed to ferry tanks and men to landing beaches. After training in North Africa, his ship disembarked men and supplies at Sicily in support of Patton's 7th Army. The landing was largely unopposed. Later, his ship landed men and equipment at Salerno in support of Clark's invasion of mainland Italy. My uncle's ship came under heavy fire from German artillery and aircraft. The fighting was intense and my uncle manned an anti-aircraft gun in defense of the ship. Afterwards, my uncle came home. This was a stroke of Providence as LST-376 was torpedoed and sunk by the Germans on June 9, 1944 while engaged in Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, France. Clark's bungling of the landing at Salerno, called Operation Avalanche, nearly cost my uncle his life. As was the case with Joe McNamara, both men credit their religious faith for seeing them safely home.

LST-376 embarking equipment prior to D-Day

Joe McNamara and Bud Keehan are patriots. They unhesitatingly joined the armed forces of the United States to defend their country. Although the U.S. Constitution explicitly grants war powers to the Congress, U.S. presidents have unilaterally taken the authority to wage war. This must stop. The courage and dedication of the military must not be used to satisfy the ego of any general or president for glory.

Both Joe and Bud are still with us. They are a tad old, however.

Footnotes

1/ In an incident eerily similar to the destruction of the British battlecruiser HMS Hood by the German battleship, Bismarck, the USS Arizona (BB-39) was struck by a converted 16-inch battleship projectile dropped by a Japanese bomber. The shell penetrated the Arizona foredeck and exploded in the forward powder magazine causing the destruction of the ship and the loss of 1,177 men. The hull of the Arizona was not raised after the attack. The ship was dedicated as a memorial to all the military personnel lost in the attack.

USS Arizona Memorial

2/ The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was meant to neutralize the American Pacific Battle Fleet. The Japanese believed that the U.S. Navy would intervene if the Japanese attacked natural resource rich -- particularly oil -- Southeast Asia. If the Pearl Harbor attack had not happened, the U.S. Navy might have responded to an attack on the Philippines and neighboring islands ("War Plan Orange"). The Japanese superiority in aircraft carriers and its better-trained pilots would have doomed the battleships of the U.S. fleet. This was verified by the Japanese attack on the British battleship, HMS Prince of Wales, and the battlecruiser, HMS Repulse, off the Malaya Peninsula, three days after the Pearl Harbor attack. Both were sunk, the first instance of capital ships sunk by aircraft while underway.

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	War and Remembrance
	Glory Seekers and Patriots
	by James R. Audet