Questions raised by "Tora Tora Tora"

[lissener]

I just watched Tora Tora Tora for the first time in years. If it's accurate (and it has a reputation for being generally so), it seems like Darwin was clearly on the side of the Japanese. The light of hindsight shone on 9/11 suggests that, like Pearl Harbor, the window of opportunity that permitted these two attacks was left open pretty wide by a severe case of thumb-in-rectum disease on our part.

Now, I understand that's open to debate, at least as to the degree to which it's true. But my question is, are there any examples in U.S. history where we were able to slam the window shut in time? Any instances of such attacks averted? Or are we 0 for 2? Does the Bay of Pigs count? Was a specific attack averted?

Couple other questions that occurred to me while watching: Is it confirmably true that the ultimatum was delivered to Hull after the attack had already begun because of a slow Japanese typist?
Is the text of that ultimatum available anywhere?
Come to think of it, wasn't Flight an American invention? How'd everybody else get it? Did the Wright brothers patent it? Or was it given free to the world, like the French did photography?* Or was it probably just reverse engineered once we proved it was possible?


*Can you imagine where we'd be if Bill Gates had invented flight? or fire? Microsoft Wheel 2.0: $599 with mail-in rebate!

[silenus]

The Wright Brothers were just first. People all over the planet were working on powered flight at the time. Hardly a patentable development. We were just very slow to realize the potential, even after Billy Mitchell sank the Ostfriesland. The Japanese were not so slow.

[silenus]

Page 158 onward (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/army/chap_3c.html). It was the reply to our ultimatum that was coming in from Japan.

[smiling bandit]

It wouldn't have mattered if we'd gotten the message in time, anyway. The japanese deliberately timed it for maximum combat effectiveness with a fig leaf to cover themselves. I very much doubt the American publiuc would have cared for their shennanigans.

[Captain Amazing]

It wasn't an ultimatum...it was the declaration of war.The Japanese Empasy got the telegram at 9 AM in 14 parts, with the instructions that it needed to be presented to the US Secretary of State by 1 pm. They have trouble translating it into English, and then the person they get to type is a junior diplomat named Katsuzo Okamura. He's not a good typist and makes a bunch of mistakes the first time, so he decides to retype it.

Finally, at 2:30, about an hour after the attack, the Japanese ambassador gets it to the Secretary of State's office. The Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who knows about the attack, doesn't invite the delegation to sit, yells at the ambassador ("In my 50 years of public service, I have never seen a document more crowded with falsehoods and distortions..."), and orders him to leave.

[lissener]

It wasn't an ultimatum...it was the declaration of war.The Japanese Empasy got the telegram at 9 AM in 14 parts, with the instructions that it needed to be presented to the US Secretary of State by 1 pm. They have trouble translating it into English, and then the person they get to type is a junior diplomat named Katsuzo Okamura. He's not a good typist and makes a bunch of mistakes the first time, so he decides to retype it.

Finally, at 2:30, about an hour after the attack, the Japanese ambassador gets it to the Secretary of State's office. The Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who knows about the attack, doesn't invite the delegation to sit, yells at the ambassador ("In my 50 years of public service, I have never seen a document more crowded with falsehoods and distortions..."), and orders him to leave.
Yes, all accurately depicted in the movie. So . . . it was not an ultimatum that could have, theoretically, been responded to in such a way as to avoid the attack? (Not that we would have, or should have, appeased the Japanese in this way.) The attack was a foregone conclusion? I suppose that's why the attacking planes did not hold off when they arrived 5 minutes early (again, assuming the movie is accurate on that account).

[Blake]

... it seems like Darwin was clearly on the side of the Japanese.

I have no idea what this statment means. Are referring to Darwin the city, or Charles Darwin the 19th century naturalist or some other Darwin? None of the possibilities seem to have any relevance.

The light of hindsight shone on 9/11 suggests that, like Pearl Harbor, the window of opportunity that permitted these two attacks was left open pretty wide by a severe case of thumb-in-rectum disease on our part.

As you point out, this is open to debate. I largely disagree.

But my question is, are there any examples in U.S. history where we were able to slam the window shut in time? Any instances of such attacks averted?

Of course there is no factual answer because it is impossible to find evidence of an attack that never happened. To have any hope of getting a factual response you need to explain what you are actually looking for. Are you loking for possible attacks on US soils? Attacks against US interests and allies? And what standard of evidence is required: definitive battle plans, general troop movements, rumours, allegations of WMDs?

You could certainly present a strong case that the removal of Soviet nukes from Cuba was a major attack that was diverted. As I've already said, it's impossible to find evidence that an attack would have occured, but it's no more improbable than someone destroying the WTC with a commercial aircraft.

One could also make a case that preventing Iraq from perfecting and exporting chemical wepaons and weposn technology prevented amjor attack. But once again of course it's impossible to know. A similar case can be made for all those nations that were prevented from acquiring nukes or chemical wepaons through US 'diplomatic' intervention.

Beyond that there have probably been thousands of attacks prevented simply through routine procedures. Border and customs checks, coast guard patrols, Secret Service protection, CIA/FBI/NSA surveilance and investigation and so forth. These aren't necessarily specific attacks that have been foiled, but the very presence of the secutiry means that the targets are considered to hard to bother with.

Or to put it another way, if anyone from anywhere in the world was free to travel into the US carrying anything they wanted and go wherever they wanted within the US with that cargo, how many attacks do you think would have occured? Once agian you strike the problem that you can't find factual evidence of attacks that never occured.


Does the Bay of Pigs count? Was a specific attack averted?

Huh? :confused:

The Bay of Pigs was US sponsored forces attacking a nation that had no interest whatsoever in attacking the US. Moreover the invasion was a horrible failure and could only have served to encourage agression on the part of Cuba, had such aggressive tendencies existed.

Come to think of it, wasn't Flight an American invention? How'd everybody else get it?

"Flight" isn't an American invention, Flight existed for hundreds of millions of years before there even was an America. Therefore nobody can patent flight any more than they can patent walking.

I am assuming you are referring to the Wright Brother's invention. But the Wright Brothers were only the first people to manage sustained, controlled, heavier-than-air flight in a craft capable of carrying a human. That's an awful lot of qualifiers for a patent. Various other people managed to achieve all the facets of that list well before the Wright's. In fact IIRC someone else managed to equal what the Wright's achieved before they had publicised thier own flight. IOW it was a true independent invention.

Which simply shows that 'flight' was being worked on by numerous groups worldwide at the time and would inevitably have occured had they never been born. Doubtless some reverse engineering of the Wright's work helped speed things up, but the events you are referring to occured lamost 40 years later. Even if the Wright's had patented their work (and I don't know if they did) it would have made no difference to those events.

[Captain Amazing]

Yes, all accurately depicted in the movie. So . . . it was not an ultimatum that could have, theoretically, been responded to in such a way as to avoid the attack? (Not that we would have, or should have, appeased the Japanese in this way.) The attack was a foregone conclusion? I suppose that's why the attacking planes did not hold off when they arrived 5 minutes early (again, assuming the movie is accurate on that account).
Here's a link to the Japanese statement:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/myths/14_part.html

[Xema]

But the Wright Brothers were only the first people to manage sustained, controlled, heavier-than-air flight in a craft capable of carrying a human. That's an awful lot of qualifiers for a patent.
Which is probably why their patent was on their system of 3-axis control, rather than any of those things.


Various other people managed to achieve all the facets of that list well before the Wright's.
It's debatable just how much control was achieved by anyone prior to the Wrights. The most generous view that's consistent with history would probably be "rather little".


In fact IIRC someone else managed to equal what the Wright's achieved before they had publicised thier own flight. IOW it was a true independent invention.
I don't think that's correct.

The first point is that it's misleading to speak of "their flight": they made 4 flights on 17 Dec 1903, and obviously a great many more in subsequent years. They did publicize their first flights, though they took care to ensure that the publicity did not reveal much of the technical detail.

True worldwide fame didn't come until their public flights in France and Washington DC in 1908. Prior to their flights in France, the french were highly skeptical that the Wrights had done anything like what they'd claimed, and generally believed that folks like Santos-Dumont were at the cutting edge. After they'd seen Wibur fly, they pretty well fell over themselves admitting how far ahead the Wrights obviously were. Prior to this, no aircraft flown in France had used 3-axis control; the scheme was then widely adopted and subsequent progress was rapid.


Even if the Wright's had patented their work (and I don't know if they did) ...They definitely did - it was filed in March of 1903 (well before their first powered flight, as the salient features had been developed in their gliders of 1900-1902).

[lissener]

Flight existed for hundreds of millions of years before there even was an America. Huh. I did not know that. I'd assumed that birds and bats had reverse engineered it from the Japanese.

[NoClueBoy]

Wasn't it the wing warping for in flight control that was patented? I seem to recall that the invention of ailerons by Glenn Curtis was spured on by a desire to bypass this patent.

Anyways, some possible support for my statement, tear it up as needed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_warping

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/collections/curtiss/curtiss.htm

[Xema]

Wasn't it the wing warping for in flight control that was patented?
Wing-warping was how the Wrights achieved control in one of the three axes (the roll axis). They also used a "horizontal rudder" (we'd call it an elevator) to control pitch and a vertical rudder to control yaw.


I seem to recall that the invention of ailerons by Glenn Curtis was spured on by a desire to bypass this patent.
Curtiss is recognized as the inventor of ailerons, and there was indeed a long dispute over whether this was or was not covered by the Wrights' patent; the ultimate decision was yes. A case can be made that the patent granted to the Wrights was rather overly broad. But it did cover the use of ailerons to achieve roll control.

It's perhaps significant that by the time of the 1903 Flyer (and thus well before Curtiss), the only parts of the wings that the Wrights warped were the outboard trailing edges.

[Exapno Mapcase]

The Wright Brothers were very secretive because they were so concerned about people stealing their ideas. Although the first flight was publicized at the time (despite what some later reports might say) they did not do many public flights for several years after 1903. They did allow locals, investors, and even a few journalists to see them fly but their one truly public exhibition made no real impact outside of Dayton.

As far as the world knew, therefore, the first public flight was the one given by Alberto Santos-Dumont in 1906 (http://www.first-to-fly.com/History/History%20of%20Airplane/santos_dumont.htm).

Most of Europe and the U.S. as well as Japan was full of inventors trying to get in the air by then, and hundreds did in various ways over the next few years. Most of these were non-starters, but dozens contributed pieces to later successful planes. No single person invented powered flight as we know it.

[commasense]

Several other posters have ably chimed in while I wrote this, so pardon a little redundancy, but here's my two cents.

While, as a couple of posters have said, you can't patent flight or walking, you can patent inventions related to shoes, and you can, and the Wright Brothers did, patent inventions relating to flying machines. See this site (http://www.paperlessarchives.com/wright_brothers_papers.html) for an illustration of the Wrights' wing-warping system for controlling banking, the functional equivalent of ailerons on modern-day airplanes. (Scroll down about 3/4 of the page, or search on the third instance of the word "patent.")

I'd also like to take exception to the claims that the Wrights were "merely" the first. While it is obviously true that airplanes that would have been invented if the Wright Brothers had never existed, they didn't just happen to be first. Unlike virtually all of their contemporaries, they were the first to systematically and scientifically study and solve the problems of controlling heavier-than-air craft. Their predecessors based their designs on birds' wings, hunches, and pre-conceived notions about how planes should fly. Most were also startlingly unconcerned about how to control the plane in flight.

The Wrights researched the state of the art in aeronautics, found it contradictory and inaccurate, and conducted their own tests on airfoils, wing shapes, and propellor design, among many other things. In the process they just happen to have invented the first wind tunnel.

They were quite paranoid, and perhaps rightly so, about people stealing the fruits of their hard work, and this unfortunately led them into some unwise moves. Having invented the first practical method for controlling an airplane in all three axes, they kept it tightly under wraps while the Patent Office took three years to grant the patent. In the meantime, other people were working, but without the same level of sophistcation or success. But they were doing so publicly.

...the Wright Brothers, wary of the competition stealing their plans, refused to make public demonstrations of their machines or take part in air shows before signing firm contracts with the military. They attempted to sign contracts with the United States Army, the French Army, the British Army, and even the German Army, but all refused as they had not been shown the flying machine in operation. Thus, ridiculed by the press, the Wright brothers continued their work in semi-obscurity, while other pilot pioneers like Brazilian pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont or US pioneer Glenn Curtiss were occupying the limelight.

Santos-Dumont received a world triumph after succeeding with the first public take-off, flight, and landing in the history of aviation, flying 60 meters with his Oiseau de proie aircraft during a public demonstration at Bagatelle, on the outskirts of Paris, on October 23, 1906. On November 12 he flew 220 meters. It was a very pale performance compared to the 39 kilometers flown by the Wright Brothers the year before, but at the time the October 23, 1906 flight in Paris was thought to be the first flight of an airplane in human history, as people were unaware or doubtful of the previous flights of the Wright Brothers. As for Glenn Curtiss, he succeeded with America's first public and official airplane flight on July 4, 1908.Xema is correct that there is no reliable evidence that anyone really made controlled flights before the Wrights, proponents of Gustave Whitehead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead) to the contrary nothwithstanding.

I'll close by recommending one of the best biographies of the Wrights, The Bishop's Boys (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039330695X/qid=1136164137/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/103-9773498-7927066?n=507846&s=books&v=glance) by Tom Crouch.

[David Simmons]

I am assuming you are referring to the Wright Brother's invention. But the Wright Brothers were only the first people to manage sustained, controlled, heavier-than-air flight in a craft capable of carrying a human. That's an awful lot of qualifiers for a patent. Various other people managed to achieve all the facets of that list well before the Wright's. In fact IIRC someone else managed to equal what the Wright's achieved before they had publicised thier own flight. IOW it was a true independent invention.I believe the Wright brothers' important patent was for their method of wing-warping that allowed them to make controlled turns.

[Xema]

The Wright Brothers were very secretive because they were so concerned about people stealing their ideas.
I'm not sure what could be cited in support of their being "very secretive". It's quite true that they didn't want to publicize their technology until they'd brought it to a sellable form and then found one or more customers (such as the U.S. Government). But they did regular flights at Huffman Prairie near Dayton, and these were witnessed by both invited guests and others.

They flew on their own schedule, without public announcements inviting spectators. But I'd say that to be considered very secretive, you'd need to be doing your experiments further away from a city the size of Dayon, and certainly not in view of a trolley line.


Most of Europe and the U.S. as well as Japan was full of inventors trying to get in the air by then...
In 1906? Glen Curtiss hadn't even begun trying to get into the air. There was certainly activity in France, but probably no more than a handful of serious attempts were underway.


No single person invented powered flight as we know it.
True. But it's quite remarkable that the system of control patented in 1903 is still used for well over 99% of manned flight.

[Xema]

I believe the Wright brothers' important patent was for their method of wing-warping that allowed them to make controlled turns.
As noted above, the patent was for their system of 3-axis control, of which wing-warping was the means of controlling one axis.

[David Simmons]

True. But it's quite remarkable that the system of control patented in 1903 is still used for well over 99% of manned flight.As modified by ailerons altering the flow over a section of the wing rather than by wing warping.

[Xema]

As modified by ailerons altering the flow over a section of the wing rather than by wing warping.
Right - both schemes effectively decrease the angle of attack of one wing and increase the AOA of the other. Which is pretty much what the patent said.

[David Simmons]

Right - both schemes effectively decrease the angle of attack of one wing and increase the AOA of the other. Which is pretty much what the patent said.To continue the sidetrack. When the plane turns the outside wing has its lift increased and the inside wing has its lift decreased. One result is that the drag on the outside wing is increased thereby retarding it and resulting in the pernicious effect called adverse yaw. The nose swings in the direction opposite the turn and I think this is the thing that caused Orville's (or was it Wilbur's) first crash. This is one of the things the rudder does; it counters adverse yaw

[RickJay]

The Wright Brothers were just first. People all over the planet were working on powered flight at the time. Hardly a patentable development. We were just very slow to realize the potential, even after Billy Mitchell sank the Ostfriesland. The Japanese were not so slow.
This doesn't really have anything to do with Pearl Harbor, though. The United States had the time certainly understood, and had built and deployed, the implements of air power. It was, after all, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers that stopped the Japanese offensive in the Coral Sea and won the day at Midway. Those were all built before Pearl Harbor.

[silenus]

Yes, but the fleet wasn't built around them like the Japanese fleet was. We were still stuck in the "battleship navy" way of thinking. It was only Pearl Harbor, which left us with nothing but carriers and subs to sink that mind-set.

[Xema]

This is one of the things the rudder does; it counters adverse yaw
Indeed, it's probably correct to say it's the main thing.

[RickJay]

Yes, but the fleet wasn't built around them like the Japanese fleet was. We were still stuck in the "battleship navy" way of thinking.
In no way is that different from the way the Imperial Japanese Navy was built; THEY had a battleship-heavy navy as well.

At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack the IJN deployed 10 battleships (Kongo, Hyuga, Hiei, Kirishima, Haruna, Mutsu, Fuso, Yamashiro, Nagato, and Ise) 18 heavy cruisers and 20 cruisers, plus more than a hundred destroyers and 68 fleet subs, along with six full sized carriers and two light carriers. It's just not the case that the Japanese were somehow more forward thinking in that particular regard; the U.S. had put plenty of effort into naval air power.

Pearl Harbor worked not because of a particular technological failing on the part of the USA, but because of a failure in strategic and tactical intelligence; they did not expect the attack to land on Pearl Harbor, and blew several chances to detect the approaching attack force.

[lissener]

And, according to the movie (borne out by my subsequent cursory research), because of massive failures of communication. Good thing we'd learned a lesson from that, 60 years later.

[David Simmons]

Pearl Harbor worked not because of a particular technological failing on the part of the USA, but because of a failure in strategic and tactical intelligence; they did not expect the attack to land on Pearl Harbor, and blew several chances to detect the approaching attack force.It was complacency and an inability to guess correctly the intentions of potential or actual enemies.

It matter little how much information you have if you don't tie it correctly to the intentions of the other guy.

Complacency is like gravity, it's always there. Something happens and everybody springs to attention and is on the alert. You can't be on high alert forever so as time passes and nothing happens the alert level gradually reduces. Finally the alert becomes just a routine, pro forma exercise carried out for the purpose of filling in the blanks on a report to headquarters. "Have heightened security measures been instituted?" "Yes."