[S-99]

i dont have the first clue about this pearl harbor war, that aside.

If it wasn't so obvious it was me seeing the similarities. Even the similarities it has with 9/11. Like i said, if it wasn't obvious enough AI Enough with pearl harbor anyway and people who don't read whole posts.

spam

[General Battuta]

i dont have the first clue about this pearl harbor war, that aside.

 

Friend, that was called World War II.

[Al Tarket]

oh that pearl harbor war. if it was made a little more obvious, because i though their was another war going for pearl harbor again!.

i see your similarities to the suicide bombings and divine wind tactics.

[MP-Ryan]

The japanese back then fighting to the death and doing kamikaze attacks and requiring drastic measures to stop which was a messy situation has it's similarities with terrorists blowing themselves up taking drastic measures to stop (terrorists did do kamikaze runs with airplanes b4 too, just passenger jetliners going into buildings as opposed to fighters plunging into naval vessels) which is also a messy situation.

It has it's few similarities which i find fascinating as well as it's big gaping differences which i already pointed out. Anyway that's enough of pearl harbor i guess.

No, that's not enough of Pearl Harbour. It's pretty obvious you watched the movie but you don't follow military history.

-The Japanese did not fight to the death at Pearl Harbour.
-The Japanese did not employ kamikazee tactics at Pearl Harbour (in point of fact, they weren't employed until 1945, fully four years later).
-No drastic measures were required to halt the attacks.  The Japanese departed after their first ordinance run was depleted; they failed to actually take the second wave in (though they easily could have).  The American defence had little to do with the decision to depart.
-Japan's military leadership was fully aware of the wrath it would incur following the attack on Pearl; military intelligence estimated they would have to complete their military objectives in southeast Asia and China within six months of the Pearl Harbour attack and then negotiate with the west to seek a cease-fire with a territory reduction that would still leave them with large portions of China while reducing their overall presence in the Pacific.  As it turned out, they didn't get far enough in those six months and as such were not in a position of strength from which to negotiate.  They also didn't count on the speed at which the industrial machine in the US grew.

Compare/contrast to September 11, 2001.

-The hijackers got on those aircraft knowing full well they would ram them into key civilian and military targets and they weren't going to be surviving it.
-Hijackers mounted a coordinated plan based largely upon the (correct) assumption that airline travellers have been conditioned not to resist hijackings.
-The plane flights cannot be classified as kamikazee in nature; a kamikazee attack is an attack by a solo pilot in which they intentionally crash an aircraft loaded with ordanance into a high-value target during a time of war.
-Bin Laden underestimated the severity of the US response and, as far as we can tell, had never included negotiation or afterthought in the initial planning phase.  Safe to say he certainly did not forsee a massive NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan destroying a major supporter in the Taliban, nor the subsequent invasion of Iraq and destruction of its government.

Terrorism cannot EVER be compared with conventional warfare.  Wars are fought because military powers believe they are able to best exercise power in a given situation by deployment of force above all other options.  Terrorism is conducted, to paraphrase Stalin, simply to terrorize - for the purpose of destabilization and change through chaos, which are ultimately the goals of a terrorist.

So - do not compare things like the military attack on Pearl Harbour to the terrorist attacks on New York.  They are completely different phenomena.

[Al Tarket]

i do not see why you are saying

Wars are fought because military powers believe they are able to best exercise power in a given situation by deployment of force above all other options.

and yet these forces still haven't found that terrorist group if anything, they do deploy tactics which is not understood by westerners and so you or they attack what you do not understand. and the ignorance you show to this fact about bin laden not known about the attack on Afghanistan you will never know, if this was conducted by bin laden then he was expecting the attack known full well he can kill more Americans throughout Afghanistan and Iraq. so as far as he is concerned his plan has worked to perfection. the other end is the end you said.

and how is it considered kamikaze is not running into something to cause as much damage as possible and kill as much as possible? them planes had a lot of fuel on-board which explodes with high temperatures. so i must be mistaken the terrorist must of wanted to hug the north tower with a ****ing plane!!.

[S-99]

No mp-ryan i do not consider pearl harbor the movie with ben afleck as canon

[MP-Ryan]

i do not see why you are saying

Wars are fought because military powers believe they are able to best exercise power in a given situation by deployment of force above all other options.

and yet these forces still haven't found that terrorist group if anything, they do deploy tactics which is not understood by westerners and so you or they attack what you do not understand. and the ignorance you show to this fact about bin laden not known about the attack on Afghanistan you will never know, if this was conducted by bin laden then he was expecting the attack known full well he can kill more Americans throughout Afghanistan and Iraq. so as far as he is concerned his plan has worked to perfection. the other end is the end you said.

and how is it considered kamikaze is not running into something to cause as much damage as possible and kill as much as possible? them planes had a lot of fuel on-board which explodes with high temperatures. so i must be mistaken the terrorist must of wanted to hug the north tower with a ****ing plane!!.

This is what's best known as a language barrier.

My point was to illustrate the differences between conventional warfare (e.g. World War II) and terrorism.  You missed that entirely.  But again, I know English isn't your first language and my post is probably difficult to understand as a result.

The word kamikazee is a distinct phenomenon within World War II, and primarily during 1945.  People frequently try to use it outside that context, which is incorrect.  A modern plane smashing into a modern building isn't a kamikazee attack - it's a plane smashing into a building.  It's semantics, but terminology is important.

Misunderstanding aside, I'll address the unrelated point you did make here:

and yet these forces still haven't found that terrorist group if anything, they do deploy tactics which is not understood by westerners and so you or they attack what you do not understand. and the ignorance you show to this fact about bin laden not known about the attack on Afghanistan you will never know, if this was conducted by bin laden then he was expecting the attack known full well he can kill more Americans throughout Afghanistan and Iraq. so as far as he is concerned his plan has worked to perfection.

It's pretty safe to say that had bin Laden's Taliban supporters known his actions would lead to a military invasion of Afghanistana nd the total destruction of their government and formalized power structure, they would have stopped him.  If bin Laden had actually assumed that the attacks on the US would lead to a full military incursion he was probably hoping that it would lead to a backlash of most Arab states against the NATO forces.  That didn't happen.  While Afghanistan and Iraq are both a serious mess right now, the fact is that Al Qaeda (loosely organized as it was and remains) has taken a much more serious beating than NATO military forces.  If you want to look at the numbers in terms of dead, wounded, displaced, and destruction, the Middle East has suffered far more as a result of those attacks than has any Western country.  I don't think that bin Laden actually intended that for a second.

[General Battuta]

Well, maybe. Remember, he hates those Middle Eastern governments because they're not Islamist enough.

[IceFire]

Thank you Ryan for addressing my other main complaint with this thread so far.  Comparisons between current events and World War II in the Pacific CAN be made...but they have been made very poorly in this thread.  Most of the comparisons are based on very little knowledge of the actual conflict.

Lets talk the 'Kamikaze' for phenomenon for a moment.

The first instance of a Kamikaze style attack on US ships in World War II happened in 1944.  The war started, for the US anyways, on December 8th (the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor) 1941.  So we're talking a few years later.  What does a few years make?  Well during that time the United States and the various allied powers including Britain, Canada, Australia, the Dutch, and countless others turned the tide against the Japanese in areas such as Burma, New Guinea, the Solomons, and China.  Until 1944 the Japanese used conventional warfare tactics including artillery, tanks, infantry tactics, naval warfare with submarines and some of the most modern battleships available, and so forth.  The Japanese employed a very much modernized army and navy that directly challenged their opposition.

In 1944 the situation was far worse.  The war had not gone well for the Empire and they were being pushed back on all fronts.  The Japanese Navy was largely sunk or damaged beyond repair.  All major carriers had been lost.  What was still available were large numbers of obsolete aircraft so the tactic was devised out of desperation to try and sink American carriers.  So young men were drafted, quite controversially, to belong to the "Special Attack Squadrons".  They were given minimal flight training and then sent off in old planes (mostly), usually with bombs hastily attached, and told to crash their plane into the next enemy ship they saw.

Initially it was felt that there was some success in this tactic because a US Navy escort carrier was sunk, however, it was reported incorrectly that a US Navy fleet carrier was sunk. So the technique continued to be used through 1945 until the end of the war.

So the "suicide" attack, Kamikaze, Divine Wind, whatever term you want to use...was borne out of desperation and undertaken by selected groups.  Not as a general rule.

This shouldn't be confused with Japanese Warrior code (called Bushido if I'm spelling it correctly) which does involve fighting to the death but thats still meant to be undertaken in a conventional manner where warrior is against warrior in a very personal sort of battle.

There are comparisons you can make but from my understandings of the suicide bomber techniques undertaken...these are not personal battles in the warrior versus warrior sense. It is a terror technique.  Walk into a crowd and blow oneself up.  Or drive a truck into the middle of a convoy and blow oneself up.  I have no doubt that these people are convinced they are doing the right thing...for religious or political gain.

The main difference is the goal...strike fear in a population of civilians versus use an unconventional means of sinking an enemy ship of "greater value" than the life sacrificed.

Also I'd like to point out that the attack on Pearl Harbour shares some similarities with 9/11 but is drastically different in others.

Some Similarities:

- Considered a "surprise" attack
- Happened on American soil
- Caused an outrage in a generally unaware American populace

Some Differences:

- The attack on Pearl Harbor was a military gamble against a military target
- The intention was to put America out of the war before it entered into one
- There were no planned suicide style attacks at Pearl Harbor, it was a pure military operation
- 9/11 was a purposeful suicide attack against civilian targets with the purpose of striking fear

[Nuke]

No mp-ryan i do not consider pearl harbor the movie with ben afleck as canon

yea you also would have had to watch tora tora tora as well, which is more historically accurate (and also contains some actual war footage).

[Grizzly]

Well during that time the United States and the various allied powers including Britain, Canada, Australia, the Dutch, and countless others turned the tide against the Japanese in areas such as Burma, New Guinea, the Solomons, and China.

We helped? As I recall, the only dutch ship that fought along side the americans sank. AFAIK the Dutch were only helped, and did not help all that much themselves.

[Colonol Dekker]

Morale boost capacity?

[Mars]

IIRC the Brits withdrew from the Pacific early in the war, and it was the pretty much US vs Japan after that. Of course it could just be I never learned about other countries involvement in the Pacific theater

[MarkN]

The British lost almost their entire pacific fleet in the first few weeks after the start of Japan's attacks, and with the loss of Singapore, had no useful pacific base. Those ships which stayed in the far east fought a convoy war in the Indian ocean similar to, but more spread out than, that in the Atlantic. After the battle of the Atlantic was over (due to the Germans losing their french submarine bases), several British carrier groups moved into the Pacific, but they were mostly mixed in with US commands. In the South-East Asia theatre (Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia), on the other hand, it was primarily non-american forces, although the number of available allied ships was small, and instead the land battles and special operations pushed the Japanese back. even then, however, the South-east asia war tended to be 'the forgotton war' with all of the news being about Europe and the Pacific.

[NGTM-1R]

The first instance of a Kamikaze style attack on US ships in World War II happened in 1944. 

This is entirely untrue. The first instances of kamikaze-style attacks in fact occurred in 1942, but were conducted by single aircraft which were probably either damaged or had wounded pilots. The first recorded instances of an apparently undamaged aircraft delibrately attempting to crash-dive a target are either a US Marine Corps Captain who crashed his SB2U Vindicator scout-bomber into an after turret of the cruiser HIJMS Mikuma at Midway (there is a famous picture of the Mikuma where you can just about make out the remains of the aircraft atop the turret amid the other devestation), or a Imperial Japanese Navy pilot (I have not seen his name or rank ever recorded; it's quite possible that he can't be identified) who smashed his Kate torpedo-bomber into the forward superstructure of a US destroyer during one of the Solomons carrier battles. (To be shortly followed/preceeded by a United States Navy Commander and SBD-3 Dauntless dive bomber pilot who went all the way in on the carrier Shokaku; he said he would lay it right on the flight deck if he had to to get a hit, and he did.)

Note that, except for the Dauntless pilot, whether or not these aircraft were actually undamaged and the pilot uninjured is not entirely proveable. As the lead aircraft of his squadron it is however fairly certain the Dauntless was under constant observation and no one actually saw it take a hit, making the evidence more compelling.

We helped? As I recall, the only dutch ship that fought along side the americans sank. AFAIK the Dutch were only helped, and did not help all that much themselves.

Several Dutch squadrons fought under the umbrella of 5th Air Force and the RAAF, and a number of Dutch submarines were part of 7th Fleet. The most valuable service provided in the Pacific theater by the Dutch, though, was probably by their merchant marine, as the ships of the KPM line were absolutely vital to Allied supply on New Guinea in 1942 and early 1943, and many of them paid the price.

[MP-Ryan]

This is entirely untrue. The first instances of kamikaze-style attacks in fact occurred in 1942, but were conducted by single aircraft which were probably either damaged or had wounded pilots. The first recorded instances of an apparently undamaged aircraft delibrately attempting to crash-dive a target are either a US Marine Corps Captain who crashed his SB2U Vindicator scout-bomber into an after turret of the cruiser HIJMS Mikuma at Midway (there is a famous picture of the Mikuma where you can just about make out the remains of the aircraft atop the turret amid the other devestation), or a Imperial Japanese Navy pilot (I have not seen his name or rank ever recorded; it's quite possible that he can't be identified) who smashed his Kate torpedo-bomber into the forward superstructure of a US destroyer during one of the Solomons carrier battles. (To be shortly followed/preceeded by a United States Navy Commander and SBD-3 Dauntless dive bomber pilot who went all the way in on the carrier Shokaku; he said he would lay it right on the flight deck if he had to to get a hit, and he did.)

Note that, except for the Dauntless pilot, whether or not these aircraft were actually undamaged and the pilot uninjured is not entirely proveable. As the lead aircraft of his squadron it is however fairly certain the Dauntless was under constant observation and no one actually saw it take a hit, making the evidence more compelling.

You just described isolated incidents.  Kamikazee attacks were an ideologically motivated doctrine which originated in 1944.  What both iceFire and myself are driving at is what you just demonstrated:  that one should not confuse someone crashing an airplane into something as Kamikazee attacks.  There are other very relevant considerations which supersede the act itself.

People have been crashing planes into things since planes were invented.  The Kamikazee attack and ideology originated in 1944 within the Imperial armed forces.

[NGTM-1R]

He cited "Kamikaze style".

Which is a considerably broader definition, something along the lines of: "Making a delibrate attempt to crash an undamaged military aircraft (that was assigned to you) into a hostile military target."

This is well within the scope cited. 9/11 is not as there were no military forces involved (unless you count the terrorists), definitely no authorization anywhere by anyone aboard or involved with the actual ownership of the aircraft.

[IceFire]

Perhaps style was a poor choice of words.  I was referring to the 'kamikaze' method as a military strategy rather than an individual act of desperation.  That sort of thing is rare but not unusual within any warrior culture.  We could just as easily cite the instances where RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain found their Spitfires or Hurricanes on fire and instead of bailing out attempted to continue firing or ram the bomber they were attack.  But that wasn't an approved RAF strategy.

But you are right...thats not the only or first incidence of the Japanese ramming a ship with a plane.  But I was getting at the organized and planned strategy.