The Last Japanese Victory: Vella Lavella
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- Опубликовано: 12 июл 2024
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The Battle of Vella Lavella (1943) was the last significant Imperial Japanese Surface victory in World War 2.
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» SOURCES «
Mawdsely, Evan: The War for the Seas. A Maritime History of World War II. Yale University Press: New Haven, USA, 2019.
Symonds, Craig L.: World War II at Sea. A Global History. Oxford University Press: New York, 2018.
Dull, Paul S.: The Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, USA, 1978.
Morison, Samuel Eliot: Breaking the Bismarck Barrier 22 July 1942-1 May 1944. History of the United States Naval Operation in World War II. Volume VI. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 1950 (2010).
Cox, Samuel: H-022-5: Battle of Vella Lavella-The Last Japanese Victory, 6-7 October 1943, www.history.navy.mil/about-us..., last accessed: 18th August 2020
German Extended Translation (used for this video)
Potter, E.B.; Nimitz, Ch. W.; Rohwer, Jürgen: Seemacht - Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart.
Reardon, Jeff T.: The Evolution of the U.S. Navy into an Effective Night-Fighting Force During the Solomon Islands Campaign, 1942 - 1943. A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University. August 2008.
Naval Analysis Division: The Campaigns of the Pacific War. United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific). Government Printing Office: Washington, US, 1946.
Nevitt, Allyn D.: IJN Fumizuki: Tabular Record of Movement, www.combinedfleet.com/fumizu_t..., 1998, last accessed: 27th August 2020.
Combined Fleet: Tabular Records of Movement Matsukaze
www.combinedfleet.com/matsuk_t...
Combined Fleet: Tabular Records of Movement Yunagi
www.combinedfleet.com/yunagi_t...
#Sponsored #LastJapaneseVictory #VellaLavella
Sponsored by World of Warships! Register here ► wo.ws/3alYYIo to receive 200 doubloons, 2,500,000 Credits, the USS St. Loius, the SMS Emden Premium Cruiser, 20 Restless Fire Camos and 7 Days Premium Time when you use code BOOM. Applicable to new users only.
I have a question regarding ww1
The french army had mutinies cause of the trench warfare and their officers........why not the germans that didnt had a rotating System?
Please don't encourage more people to play carriers in world of warships, they are already ruining the game enough.
That being said otherwise great video as always
May I interest you in another stunning evacuation done by a losing army in WW2? Codenamed Operation 60.000 it was the evacuation of German and Romanian forces from Crimea in 1944. It was the Axis' Dunkirk and succeeded in evacuating twice the expected number of troops.
codenames.info/operation/operation-60%2C000/
Can you make a detailed video about the ranks in the Imperial Japanese Army? I can't find one anywhere on RUclips.
No wonder I never hit anything look at the state of those shells all battered and non aerodynamic.
The Yugumo breaking formation to go all Leroy Jenkins alone and preventing the other japanese destroyers from launching their OP type 93s reminds me of THAT teammate you always have in your team...
Considering this video is sponsored by world of warships it's very apt
@@mathewkelly9968 Agreed
dots dots dots dammit leeroy!
3:04 You made a mistake there. The Isokaze at Vella Lavella is the Kagero-class Isokaze built in the late 30s, not the old Isokaze-class Isokaze from WWI.
thanks, yeah, IJN sneaky naming tactics got me.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized hey...you got the point across and that is all that matters....gj my man.
Makes sense for a late 1930s destroyer. Most WWI destroyers in Japan were relegated as third line destroyers, minelayers or gunboats by WW2.
@@BHuang92 or ad-hoc
transports
I'm truly amazed about how you managed to say "Vella Lavella" while maintaining sanity.
finally someone commenting about this :D
It is a mouthful to say the name over and over
I think the writing was actually more of an issue, I always wrote Lavella Vella or something, I can't remember...
but I can't remember that recording was annoying, but I agree the name is not "intuitive"... also my brain was like "why where the Japanese and US Navy fighting for a village in Spain / Latin America"
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Bougainville similarly sounds like some place in France or something.
You should just call it "The Vella Incident". Oh, wait - that one's taken...
Captain Tameiichi Hara of the HIJMS Shigure wrote in his memoirs " Japanese Destroyer Captain " about this battle. It's a fantastic book and the only one of its kind. It offers a unique perspective of the battles from the Japanese side. I wholly recommend it for anyone passionate about the battles in the Pacific.
Shigure's Captain Tameichi Hara was the only IJN Destroyer captain to serve in and survive the entire Pacific war, starting from Day 1. His early extensive research which resulted in the "correction" of faulty IJN torpedo doctrine may have had something to do with his ongoing remarkable career as a "fighting captain" always in the thick of battle.
I love his book... Been through it twice.
I read Japanese Destroyer Captain in the summer of 1970. I found it randomly in a bookstore on the boardwalk at Wildwood, NJ. It lead to a lifetime of interest in the IJN. They have the coolest looking ships. In addition to this fine book I also recommend the website: Nihon Kaigun.
One of my favorite books, read it a couple times. I haven't found another book that make naval battles feel so intense
@@jc-hf1bk James D Hornfischer's books "The Last Stand of The Tin Can Sailors" and "Neptune's Inferno" are also great books. He uses a lot of quotes from the survivors of the battles and mixes the intensity of combat with the calm but tense atmosphere back at naval headquarters. They're especially good at making one understand how important both valour but also logistics and administration were for the naval campaign in the Pacific, especially at Guadalcanal.
When I was a kid, about 12, in the mid 70s, I knew a dear old woman who's brother was in the US Navy, and died in that battle.
He was a handsome young man, I know, as the old lady gave me a photo of him in his uniform with a big smile, that I kept on my desk for some time.
I had thought I would join the U.S Navy at that time.
Turned out I later joined the Army, as a Military Police Officer in the 1st Cavalry Division, Ft. Hood, TX.
Must hsve been one hell of a battle.
War sucks......
I wish I could remember the Sailor's name. Been decades since I learned it.
I want to say his first name was Phillip, if memory serves. I really wish I could remember exactly. HEROs deserve to be thought of and remembered.
I don't think it was mentioned that Vella LaVella eventually became a base for VMF-214, the famous Black Sheep squadron which did so much damage to the Japanese air units from Rabaul.
Probably why they called it Vella Lacava on the show.
My father was a gunners mate in the forward 5 inch gun mount on the Chevalier, I have audio interviews and a video of one of the survivor's reunions. There were some carriers in the area, they were the large Sangamon class escorts although they were used for convoy escort after sending their dive bombers to operate from land bases. The Chevalier was one of the 3 ships that left the shipyard with the 1.1/75 AA gun instead of the 40mm Bofors, and kept the gun until the ships loss.
Did your father survive the sinking? since he was in the forward turret when the forward magazine was struck by the torpedo that mustve been a very jarring experience to say the least.
@@clevernamegotban1752 He was in 5 inch gun mount #1, the torpedo struck under 5 inch #2 and the explosion severed the bow with the #1 gun. Most of the crew of the #1 gun survived, none of the crew of #2. All he remembered was the last order he gave then being in the water. His leg was broken from the force of the explosion. Picked up by a boat from the O'Bannon, then shipped stateside until he was well enough for full duty again.
@@billlandsaw5485 wow that's incredible do you know what ship he served on after he healed? Swimming with a broken leg sounds nigh impossible. Thank you for sharing i am always interested in the smaller picture from WW2 veterans or their families, it conveys a more human side the history. For instance I was reading the comments under a video about the wreckage of USS Helena and all the families in the comments kept mentioning how their loved ones received help from natives on the island and apparently their monkey soup was really tasty haha.
@@clevernamegotban1752 I enjoy talking about history. He was a passenger on the Arizona in Jan 1941, then on the Mississippi until Spring of 1941 when he was assigned to the Chevalier. After the Chevalier he was an instructor at Point Monterra anti-aircraft gunnery school after getting out of the hospital. Then he went to the DD481, the Leutze. The Leutze was hit by a Kamikaze and it took several months to get it capable of sailing back to the states. It was in the shipyard when the war ended and was written off as a total wreck. Then he was assigned to the San Jacinto for Magic Carpet and to mothball the guns before the ship went into mothballs. Finally discharged in Dec 1946.
@@billlandsaw5485 very cool thank you for sharing!
A book called "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Tameichi Hara gives an account of this action. Hara commanded Shigure.
“If we believe every victory claim, than we have sank 15 of their 7 ships. Including 2 carries. There haven't been any carriers to begin with.“
@ is this ironie?
Because there where never 190.000 in Stalingrad.
It's either "we sank" or "we have sunk" so and so many ships.
The Japanese succeeded in their objective, they evacuated their troops and the American force failed to stop them. Whatever anyone can say about exact numbers lost, this is still a clear Japanese victory.
Not really, that was a draw at best, strategic loss at worst (as trading ships 1:1 was terrible for their war effort). If the commander sunk the other damaged ships, then it would be a win...
I was wondering how the Japanese think they sunk cruisers even though all they were fighting are destroyers.
@@1mol831 Nighttime, the destroyers never got within easy distance of each other for identifying specific ship classes in the dark, and a bad intel report. To be fair, the intel report was from an aircraft also trying to identify ships at night, and you have to realize that the quality of recon pilots in the IJN was also starting to deteriorate due to attrition. So mistakes happen. Even if they correctly identified the 3 ships they were engaging as destroyers, there was always the threat that the cruisers might be in the second group that the recon pilot had spotted approaching, and so the best decision was to withdraw since they had already achieved their objective of evacuating the troops rather than risk getting sunk in an uneven fight against 1 or more cruisers.
KuK137 you completely miss the point. It’s not about relative ship losses in this one. It’s about the Japanese successfully evacuating their troops from that island. They succeeded. Want to argue that it wasn’t a significant victory? Sure, it probably wasn’t. Want to argue that it was a “victory” the Japanese couldn’t afford? Maybe... but then you have to consider whether saving that garrison to fight on elsewhere was worth the risk and the actual losses; and whether it’s easier to replace the naval losses or replace those troops if they didn’t go get them off that rock.
Want to look at morale and psychological effect? Clear Japanese victory, as it should be regarded, because not every battle and not every battle plan is about pure attrition and how many more men were killed on one side than the other.
@@mglenn7092 to be fair i think the "tokyo express" is attacked as a bad idea specifically because it cost modern destroyers in a transport usage they aren't built for. the destroyer lost in this battle was extremely modern, so it's a continuing japanese trend, not just one battle.
This messy battle is well described by Tameichi Hara in his book “Japanese Destroyer Captain”.
Wait, a Japanese crewman was rescued from the water and then killed one of his rescuers? What a knob; I hope they threw hem back in...
It quickly got to the point that the Allies didn't even take many prisoners because of this sort of Japanese fanaticism. My ex's uncle fought on Saipan, and as he told me with a hint of a smile "We didn't take any prisoners." He carried a Japanese machine gun bullet in his lower back right next to his spine for the rest of his life and worked as a mailman for the USPS in Phoenix, Arizona till he retired.
How did he do it?
@@isaacm5339 I don't know. It must have been a constant nagging pain, especially lugging a mailbag for miles everyday. It was so close to his spine that the doctors didn't want to try to extract it for fear of leaving him crippled.
@@ToddSauve Just tough, that's how he did it. Also perspective probably eases the "load". He'd had it far rougher.
Not an isolated incident...
That poor guy, killed for giving coffee
What's amazing is there weren't any reprisals against the other prisoners. Imagine the massacre if it had been a U. S. prisoner who shot a Japanese guard.
Maybe he didn't like instant
@@peterblood50 reprisal is hard to define.
they where all tied up already. He was untied for the cup of coffee and stole a weapon from the guy handing it to him. Its probably safe to say the rest of them got a fair few beatings and the likes.
The standard for capturing japanese prisoners, or rescued crews was to tie them up to ensure they cant pull this sort of stuff. And they learned that the hard way.
He wanted sake...
This link describes Japanese cruelty ruclips.net/video/kpVgDgKpQS8/видео.html
Love that connection about significant emotional events.
All of the surface battles in the Solomons were kind of a "mad man's night out." It wasn't until November 43 that the USN ironed out a long list of problems (such as bad torpedoes) and started to dominate in festivities near Torokina. The campaign is of great interest and I suspect there are more details that could be found to flesh things out. One of the problems was that the USN decided to leave their "official" history to Morison and a small group of assistants working on their own. Morison was a brilliant writer, a good historian. He also knew many US officers and could be very partisan. The Army's "Green Books" are less elegant, but much more comprehensive and usually more accurate.
I thought that was very well done! My dad was on the O'Bannon, so I have a personal interest in the battles of the Solomon Islands. I just reread "Action Tonight" a book about the O'Bannon written during the war, and "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by the Capt. of Shigure. It is fascinating to see how different the two sides saw what happened at the time. Now in retrospect we can sort out the reality.
The Solomon Campaign is not often talked about so it is good to hear someone even recognise there was fighting at Vella Lavella - a point that bugged my grandfather who was sent to Vella Lavella.
What isn't often realised is that whilst the initial landings were done by the US forces, mopping up was done with a fair amount of help from the attached New Zealand 3rd Division units.
My understanding is that the Kiwis did a good job at mopping up, luckily suffering relatively few losses - probably because they had lots of US equipment but in fairness they were well trained and a were possibly a tad cautious.
My understanding (and I may be wrong), is that they did possibly proceeded a bit too cautiously which allowed the Japanese naval forces to evacuate what remained of the Japanese garrison on Vella Lavella.
A bit of the back story.
As always military engagements are complex. - Rarely, if ever are they simple. The New Zealanders were not too cautious. Like their US counterparts. They fought hard. However some context is in order. They were only engaged in this particular part of the campaign for a little short of 3 weeks. Both the Naval and land operations were well underway before the NZrs were deployed. Never the less these 3rd NZ Division troops played their part in reducing the Japanese Forces down and locking them up into a small area. - Also for all combatants, both friend and foe alike. In many places. The terrain over which these combat engagements took place - was thick jungle. And the fighting often happened under torential rain. So the circumstances were not exactly conducive to easily deploying armour or artillery. The latter had to be barged into various areas, then towed by off road trucks and jeeps through the jungle mud and slush. And finally manhandled into position. All factors that were a hindrance to speed of mobility. Lastly the Japanese evacuation of the few surviving troops was, essentially a Naval operation. In conjunction with - tactical air support. But primarily, it was part of the Naval aspect of this battle. - Not the land operations. And as such, the troops on the ground had little possibility of significantly impacting these Naval and air operations. And it was precisely because the surviving Japanese troops were under threat - of being annihilated. IE, finished off! - That the evacuation was carried out. - Not because anybody had been too cautious! And although the numbers evacuated were relatively small. Never the less the Japanese achieved their objective.
Great video!
One little editing error at 1:25: the area of Iron Bottom Sound is too small. It extends well under the "Iron" east of Savo Island. Actually that's where most of the wrecks are. Don't want to be picky, just trying to maximise your historical quality (which is great anyway). :D
I really enjoyed this brother! You are doing a terrific job...
If torpedoing a cruiser is considered a victory in the context of this video, then the bar is low indeed. 0:50
German soldier wounds an American: "Yay guys we won the war"
Try new Night Fighting (TM), now with an extra ration of Chaos! For when you want to make sure NOBODY has a chance to figure out what's going on around them.
If you want to see naval night chaos, find the RUclips video "Night Action off Empress Augusta Bay", or better, read the book (which is also available free online).
The IJN destroyers were especialy trained for night action, when their low profile and excelent night sight equipment allowed them to fire salvos of torpedoes into unexpecting enemy flotilla's without return fire. Usualy they only opened up after the torpedoes gave the signal to. The Americans on the other hand....
"Vella Lavella " i really wanna hear the japanese radio chat and how they spell this island in japanese ,this must be a lot of fun for the us army intelligence service
If you go on google it will be berarabera
Lmao
ベラ・ラベラ (bera-rabera -r and l are the same sound in Japanese). You're welcome.
@@kgw72 and Japanese says our sound /v/ as /b/. Tricky name for Japanese speakers!
😁😁😁
Umlaut on the U in "supporting" in the end screen. I see what you did there. :-D
In before the inevitable compilation of every mention of Vella Lavella in the video.
Well done and thanks for creating this
Super video. Great set-up for the battle itself.
can I just say incorporating visuals from and actually connecting the content of the video with the sponsor is the best way of doing sponsorSHIPS and something more people should definitely do more, especially history channels.
I'd like to see that Mark Felton doing this kind of topic and theatre but hes obsessed with click he gets from the nazis I'm afraid.Good video.
Try again. His Saipan video has well over a million views.
@@steveellis7174 oh right,ill have a look,i just get fed up nazi stuff thats all .
He’s done a number of pacific videos.
The Japanese destroyer Fujizuki is sunk at Chuuk Lagoon. I dove on her back around 1995, before the bow was ripped off by a dive boat.
Love your videos. Keep up the good work 👏
Interesting watch, but should be noted it was the New Zealand forces (that had relieved the initial US invasion force), who had forced the Japanese into such a such a tiny pocket that they needed to be evacuated.
Well said. One of the few instances of Kiwi ground troops clashing with the Japanese.
@@Rohilla313 I hope they didn't use overpowerd Bob Semple tank, that would be too unfair!
Solid work
I am happy to report that we sunk a Battleship!
Oh. Never mind. It was a PT boat.
and... ten destroyers
20 PT boats can probably overwhelm a battleship by sheer numbers.
My grandfather was a radioman on DD357 USS Selfridge. He told me that when the battle was over they stopped to pick up survivors from the Chevalier they fished out a large sailor with a smaller one on his back. The first thing the large sailor did was grab a knife and jump back into the water to kill the sharks that had been harassing them. The Selfridge also had her bow blown off and had to be towed backwards to Noumea for repairs.
Great content
US sailor: Gives coffee to Japanese sailor they rescued from the sea
Japanese sailor: WTF I hate America now
FYI, The _Isokaze_ in service at this point was not _Isokaze_ class, but a unit of the _Kagero_ class.
Japan: *Points at a destroyer* Is this a light cruiser?
Very good video!!
died a bit inside when i hear you said "shigure"
Very interesting!
Looking forward to more such detailed engagement stories :)
Schöne grüße aus wien
Love your accent, reminds me of my grandpa.
@WW1 German C.S.A. Riflemen we had to share the automatic !
What accent is that from?
@@juliendubois3257 austrian
It seems to be a theme with the Japanese over estimating / misidentifying opponents.
Probably because newest ships were much larger than their WW1 equivalents, things to which senior japanese officers would be used the most...
Germany: Why are you so bad at war
Japan: atleast I won several times and stay by your side
Italy in the distance: *sneeze*
I admire the Italians. Yeah they supported Mussolini all those years but when WWII started they were like "hey what's this world war crap, we didn't sign up for THIS". They were way smarter than the Germans and Japanese who fought on long after it was obvious they were going to lose.
In what world do Italians(or anyone) actively resisting mussolini(or a similar dictator) from the start, have an obligation to uphold his alliances once war begins? Italy was never fully unified behind fascism and mussolini the way Germans and Japanese were behind hitler and hirohito, and to be fair it was only really the Japanese who were 100% committed to this fanatical desire to murder everyone, some small portion of Germans were likewise opposed to hitler, but too few, too scattered to do anything, unlike Italians opposed to mussolini.
@@tremedar Uh.. the Mafia?
@@Bakotcha The most well known of opposition to mussolini because they were already organized and armed, but there was a sizable number of royalists behind Victor Emmanuel III too.
Did the fascists have a majority, yes, still doesn't mean everyone else had to fall in line with them.
@@tremedar I get what you're saying but I don't get what you're trying to say here, I'm confused because Im dumb.
another action where the Japanese commander did not follow up initial success. It certainly seems after Midway the IJN knew it was on the back foot and wanted to avoid defeat more then pursue victory in start contrast to those early wild successes of 1942
You have to believe that High Command was constantly harping on the need to save ships for the Big Battle.
Tokyo already knew that the US was cranking out Fletchers at a frantic tempo.
That's why exchanging an IJN DD for a USN DD was a DEFEAT.
The same production logic drove the Germans crazy on the Soviet front.
In both cases, the Axis forces needed to pick off five or more opponents for the loss of even one DD or tank.
The crippled USN DDs actually counted for nothing. Their crews survived. Whether the ships were repaired or scrapped was irrelevant.
Worse, the IJN had squandered a real opportunity to really punish the USN.
They lost this engagement. They had superior forces in play, exchanged even, and gave up Vella Lavella.
The damaged DDs simply don't count -- except to wargamers. Even exchanges are a DISASTER for the IJN.
When you casually say "The U.S. built 175 Fletcher's throughout the war".
Japan's Navy sweating intensifies.
Sorry had to look up that episode of Friends where Ross kept jumping out on Rachel & Phoebe shouting "unagi"
Now do the land battle of Vella Lavella.
Love the heavy German accent of the narrator! 😃
What would be the last German victory of WWII? Market Garden? Operation Panzerfaust? Courland Pocket?
A small skirmish in the Baltic sea after the German capitulation when a Marinefährprahm fought off some Soviet patrol boats with a piece of outdated field artillery stored on the deck.
The early battle around postdam or maybe any defensive withdraw by sea from the Soviet pockets.
That depends on what you define as victory I suppose
Charkov is the last victory in the east. If I remember correctly
Have you done the battles of Cape st. george or battle of vella gulf?
love that accent reading japanese words 👌
I enjoy your brave (mutig?) adventures with the minefield of English random pronunciation. It is perhaps as close to the sensation of riding a tank high speed off road that I will have.
With regard to the pronunciation of USS Chevalier DD-455 named for US Naval aviator Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier, I would like to help. My dad was the skipper of DDR-805 Chevalier in 1956, the Gearing replacement for the sunken DD-451, and the received pronunciation on board was as French as Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier suggests. Although my grandson, now in Baden-Württemburg, found French so deplorable he chose a gymnasium where he can replace it with Latin.
One Japanese sailor killed an American sailor, after he was taken prisoner. The Japanese soldiers and sailors could be very fanatical, this fanaticism the Japanese was the only thing that was left, after almost their entire military was destroy during the war.
5:05 Naval maneuvers.
10:45 Doing damage.
I thought it was Hiroo Onoda shooting Filipinos in the 70s
Even just looking at the OOB, you can tell where things are probably gonna go wrong. Each of the US groups is significantly smaller than the IJN Taskforce...
I am curious if you have covered the Battle in Alaska in detail.
My uncle Joe was there with the Canadian army at Kiska in August 1943. Fortunately, the Japanese had left about 2 weeks earlier but left plenty of booby traps. They stayed to fight on Attu.
The surviving crew of USS Indianapolis upon seeing this video's title: "We weren't defeated! It was a draw! Just like Vietnam!"
Vietnam was a win for the U.S. if you look at the outcome of today. Besides won every single large engagement.
@@Calzaghe83 I am sure the 50000 dead Americans and the perhaps 1000000 other dead appreciate that fact
@@nowthenzen I'm sure they are. Not the dead commies of course. They're rolling in their graves, lol.
@@Calzaghe83 LOL you are funny xD
HAH! He says World of Warships is "free to play".
Better it costs a lot, because the time it wastes certainly costs you.
FTP, PTW. And I was a beta tester.
I wish I could just pay 50 bucks for it and have a permanent game where the progression is tweaked by the devs for maximum enjoyment instead of maximum frustration that tempts spending.
I played the Beta too, but I quit playing long ago. Around tier 5 the grind gets obnoxious, and whenever I tried to get back in the game I got frustrated navigating all the daily bonuses that slightly speed up said grind.
I bought an indie game called Heliborne, which you could describe as World of Helicopters, but it isn't FTP. And guess what, unlocking stuff is fast and easy when the game doesn't rely on being obnoxious to make its money back.
@@bificommander It's easy to grind now. Just takes around 10 battles to get a new ship. It is ok. But to get to highest tier you'd need around 300 matches though, if you are not running boosts.
Played it free for about a month. Then gave up on it, looked like the same money drain that WoT is.
5:05 they left the Ball, heading for lala land , along the coast of BungaBunga ville
The little bow Pete refreance made me laugh. Also how much time did you spend with pronunciation? Japanese ship can be difficult to say.
after that Japanese achived greatest victory in this war
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cottage
After Vella Lavella the IJN went to Hella, fella.
Let me guess: the Matzukaze and Yunagi specialized in ramming tactics?
Killed over a cup of coffee. Damn shame.
When is Japan's last successful strategic offensive against the U.S., a campaign they initiated as opposed to a battle they won? By my count this is Operation RY, which captured Nauru in August 1942.
With today battle space information its hard to imagine how the pacific war was fought practically blind.
It seems most battles were absolute clusterfucks and that the outcome was more of a coin flip than anything else.
Carrier battles in particular where it was all about spotting the enemy first since the advantage of the attacking planes was overwhelming over the surface fleet on either side.
The place was so nice they named it twice!
After battle VMF-214 flew missions from island.
25MM is a cannon. 20MM and greater are cannon, anything less is a machinegun
Combat looks similar to the one where Kirishima battleship was sunk. But in a smaller scale.
I can't tell a destroyer from a cruiser, and I've never flown a recon plane, but I have a hard time understanding why officers back then couldn't distinguish a cruiser from a destroyer etc.
difference is mainly in size and it is night...
Destroyers and cruisers can look fairly similar and older, smaller cruisers could be fairly close in size to newer, larger destroyers.
Now, you are in an aircraft travelling at high speed at a great distance from the ships at night. Correctly identifying the ships isn’t an easy task, even for trained crews.
And now, let’s say you think it’s a destroyer, but it might be a cruiser. If you say it is a destroyer and it turns out to be a cruiser, you likely just doomed friendly ships and cost hundreds of lives. If they are destroyers and you report them as cruisers, your forces will be extra cautious and might miss an opportunity. Which way do you want to be wrong? Even without consciously thinking it, people will lean towards the bigger ships (much like how there so many reports of tiger tanks on the western front when no tigers were anywhere nearby)
Yep! The Fletcher in particular gave Japanese identifiers endless trouble thanks to its large size and its silhouette having superficial similarities to modern US cruiser designs. The Japanese had destroyers that could match the Fletcher in size, such as the Yugumos and Kageros, but a not-insignificant percentage of their fleet was made up of smaller, older ships. This was _especially_ true in the Solomons theater, where the bulk of the destroyers were older Fubukis and Shiratsuyus. The Kamikazes mentioned in this video were a full 50 feet shorter than the Fletcher and 600 tons lighter!
Its an error that is made many times during the war, by both sides. From the air , when at speed, both are small little slivers of dark with large tails of white wake... looking identical except cruisers were usually about 1/2 again larger. It was often indeed fortunate that the Japanese made the errors; optical fire control systems used the height from the water line to the bridge or main mast as the means of estimating Range, so their first few salvos usually missed at longer ranges. Of course at the knife-fighting point-blank ranges that often happened at night in The Slot, that didn't matter.
Great video! Thanks for it.
Others have covered this well, but another point or two to add - not only is it dark and your plane is moving at high speed, but if you get too close to the target, it's also going to start shooting at you. A lot. American ships, even destroyers and destroyer escorts by this point of the war, had a lot of anti-aircraft weaponry (generally more than their Japanese counterparts), and being shot at is going to be one more terrifying distraction that will make the enemy ship seem bigger and badder than it really is.
I thought the last japanese victory of the war is anime and hentee getting created?
That’s more of an american victory, really.
Just a side effect on losing the war and do their ,,honnor,
@wargent99 Anime is the proof that radiation is the true horror.
"Admiral Ijuin claimed sinking two cruisers and three destroyers" Pretty impressive to kill 5 ships when you were only fighting 3. It's sort of impressive how greatly commanders exaggerate kill claims in these sort of engagements. At some point, wouldn't it become standard practice to undercount kills, just so you don't get overconfident?
3:03 Can hear the German accent leaked out
The guy himself who is behind the channel is a German so that's common for him to have a German accent.
(I'm a Filipino though)
Unlike World or Warships, real destroyers do not have unlimited torpedoes.
So many times in war that if one side only pressed the attack a decisive victory would have been attained.
Had they not chickened out they could have won Leyte.
The last and only victory that the Japanese had in ww2 was to quit fighting.
Victory...yes. But what poor luck that the two US destroyers collided. Hardly a show of IJN skill (which they had plenty of). Without that it could have gone quite differently. And I'll remember to never offer coffee to a captured IJN sailor, what a barbarian.
Take a shot everytime MHV says "Vella Lavella"
We probably didn't have major surface fleet engagements in 1943, because most of our cruisers were on the bottom of the ocean.
"Most" is an exaggeration. At the time of this battle, the USN still had 30 light cruisers and 14 heavy cruisers in service, several times more than had been sunk. There weren't heavy units involved simply because their presence was required elsewhere rather than hanging out around an island with less than 1,000 enemy troops on it, just in case any significant enemy naval force happened to show up.
Oh yes the famous battle of Milli Vanilli
you should collaborate with MonteMayor to make vids about the Pacific War
Sounds like Commander Walker would've made a good gambling addict for a casino to exploit.
Anything on Blue Division of World War 2?
The title is misleading as the last Japanese victory of World War II was not the naval battle of Vella Lavella but the Battle of West Henan-North Hubei.
Vella Lavella, what a funny name for an island.
Poetic repetition in names was -- and remains -- common for Polynesians. Some of these crazy names are Europeanized versions of the local names.
Guadalcanal smells Polynesian, too. It certainly was no canal. It probably translates as "The Armpit of the Solomons." (It gets hairy there.)
@@davidhimmelsbach557 Guadalcanal was named after a Spainish village in Andulsia.
And Martha's Vineyard isn't? Or Crete, home of the cretins?
@@mikearmstrong8483 Only those conned cretins were deemed stupid.
Interesting
When was the Japanese garrison evacuated? You said the Transport Group bugged out as soon as the American ships were sighted. Had the troops already been taken off at that time? I had the impression the Japanese squadron was still approaching the island when that happened.
The imperial command should have kept Admiral Tanaka....
The Japanese navy wanted decisive battle but they seem to be so careful that they fail to capitalize on their successes.
Their captains have been brow-beaten with the mantra that their ships must be saved for the Big Battle.
It's by this point that the IJN realizes that the Pacific War has devolved to a production war -- and they are totally screwed.
The Solomons were the last time that the lay of the islands actually favored the IJN. From here on out, the USN was going to be able to pick off the Japanese, island by island. There would be no New Britain to back-stop the out-posts. Their land based aircraft are, by now, being just shredded.
The P-38 is now showing up in numbers. It's pretty long-range, too... right up there with the Japanese machines. What a nightmare.
Town the Town or Village the Village, that can't be right can it?
5:09
now do "The Last Italian Victory 1941"
Kolum-BANGgara
That's where the Black Sheep squadron worked?
I would not consider sinking the Indy as a victory. It's a victory about as much as stepping on the other guy's toe as he knocks you out.