# World War II Buffs: WWII Strategy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 9, 2022, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720 "2022-03-09T03:28:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/61 "2022-03-14T18:08:52Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > There was also a conscious school of thought, at least in the RAF Bomber Command, that mass bombing of cities would so displace/demoralise the civilian population as to cripple their industries, whatever degree of damage that it did or didn’t cause to the factories themselves. Plus, after the 1940/41 blitzes on Britain, the public mood was receptive to “They have sown the wind and shall reap the whirlwind”. Certainly there was a school of thought that Germany had it coming after attacks on Rotterdam and Coventry. At the start of the war, Britain had had a policy of bombing only military targets and infrastructure such as ports and railways which were of military importance. While it was acknowledged that some civilian casualties were inevitable, the British government renounced the deliberate bombing of civilian property outside combat zones as a military tactic. This policy was abandoned on 15 May 1940, one day after the Rotterdam Blitz, when the RAF was directed to attack targets in the Ruhr, including oil plants and other industrial targets which aided the German war effort. The first RAF raid on the interior of Germany took place on the night of 15/16 May 1940. This view shifted by June 1941 to “area bombing” in response to German attacks on Britain during the blitz, to where not only factories but nearby housing and the civilian population were considered legitimate targets. RAF thinking had been reversed from seeing any civilian casualties as collateral damage when attacking a military target to deliberately targeting civilians in an attempt to destroy their morale. This was expected to reduce industrial production and therefore hinder the German war effort. To this end, the allies researched incendiary bombs and the correct ratio of high explosive to incendiaries to cause the most damage. Thus such terrifyingly destructive raids such as Hamburg or Dresden should not be surprising. That said, I was stunned to compare the deaths from Rotterdam (900 killed) or Coventry (568 killed) with Hamburg (37,000 killed) or Dresden (25,000 killed). Strategic bombing of Japan had a similar shift, to more destructive area bombing raids. USAAF doctrine had called for daylight precision bombing, and by 1944 they had the plane for the job, the B-29 Superfortress. Precision bombing had not been successful in Germany, though, and in Japan, where clear weather was rare and jet stream winds played havoc at high altitude, the opening phases of the bombing campaign were unsuccessful. The USAAF switched to nighttime, low-level incendiary raids, lightened the planes ( by removing all defensive guns) to carry more bombs, and gave up tight formations, needed for precision bombing, for fuel savings and more bombload. On March 10th, 1945, Tokyo was bombed, destroying a quarter of all buildings and killing over 90,000. The USAAF continued these raids on Japanese cities until they ran out of incendiaries. Although most thought the Japanese had it coming with its bombing and strafing of Chinese civilians and the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the Strategic Bombing Survey after the war stated that most casualties were women, children, and the elderly. For a country that had condemned the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, this was something new and more terrible than the normal awfulness of war. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/62 "2022-03-15T14:11:51Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > In the movie, “Midway”, one of the Japanese carriers was portrayed to have sunk that way. The fires hit the fuel and ammo, and “BOOM”! The ship was “totaled” for want of a better term, and ordered abandoned but not actually sunk. None of the bombs breached the hull so it remained afloat. For that, it required one the Japan’s own torpedoes, as noted above. Naval doctrine took into account the amount of area of the ammunition (magazines), fuel and machinery (the engines and such) typical ships would have in order to calculate how much damage could be expected from bombing or guns. > [@gnarator](#): > > On March 10th, 1945, Tokyo was bombed, destroying a quarter of all buildings and killing over 90,000. The USAAF continued these raids on Japanese cities until they ran out of incendiaries. I’ve posted before about the experience of my ex-wife’s mother and her family in that raid. She was a child. Her family and their neighbors fled together, until they came to a fork in the road. They went one way, the neighbors went the other and were never heard of again. My ex-FIL was in another part of Tokyo and it was bombed later. They went to a little dugout shelter behind the family house and a six-pound M69 incendiary bomblet crashed through the little roof, but didn’t explode yet. (There was a fuse sent for several seconds after impact.) As the oldest son, he picked it up and threw it out into the street where it went off there. The USAAF did not run out of incendiaries, but were running out of targets. [This list here](http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html) seems about right. It gives 67 cities. The [final cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Kumagaya_in_World_War_II) firebombed came on August 14, the day before Japan finally surrendered, and five days after Nagasaki. > [@](#): > > On 14 August 1945, 77 [Boeing B-29 Superfortress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress) bombers of the 314th Bombardment Wing and 16 B-29s of the [313th Bombardment Squadron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/313th_Bombardment_Squadron) launched from bases in [Guam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam)[[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Kumagaya_in_World_War_II#cite_note-4) The lead aircraft carried six 1,000 lb high explosive bombs rigged for an air burst over the city. The plan was that the inhabitants of the city would seek shelter underground, whereby the remaining aircraft would attack in a box-pattern from all sides to incinerate the trapped civilians.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Kumagaya_in_World_War_II#cite_note-Lande-2) In addition, it was hoped that the noise of the explosion would be so great that the Japanese authorities would believe that the city had been annihilated by a nuclear weapon. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/63 "2022-03-15T15:29:57Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > The USAAF did not run out of incendiaries, but were running out of targets. [This list here](http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html) seems about right. It gives 67 cities. My mistake. The first firebombing campaign in March 1945 ended when they ran out of incendiaries, but they were quickly replenished. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/64 "2022-03-15T15:51:10Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > The ship was “totaled” for want of a better term, and ordered abandoned but not actually sunk. > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > aval doctrine took into account the amount of area of the ammunition (magazines), fuel and machinery (the engines and such) typical ships would have in order to calculate how much damage could be expected from bombing or guns. Thank you, that is very interesting! In every naval movie battle I’ve ever seen, they always show the ship in question completely blown apart when the fuel/munitions are hit. I never realized that they got in wrong every time! I guess they do it that way because it’s pretty spectacular looking on the big screen. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/65 "2022-03-15T16:30:53Z")
In Hollywood everything is a Ford Pinto ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/66 "2022-03-15T17:09:27Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > In every naval movie battle I’ve ever seen, they always show the ship in question completely blown apart when the fuel/munitions are hit. If you want the best video documentary I have seen on the Battle of Midway see the video linked below. I queued it to just before the decisive attack on the Japanese carriers but the whole thing is well worth a watch. It shows how the Japanese carriers were caught at the exact wrong moment by US planes and what happened to their ships. (or exact right moment from the US persepctive) [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1w30FkSXyTE/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCOADEOgC8quKqQMa8AEB-AGeBIACjgOKAgwIABABGGUgZShlMA8=&rs=AOn4CLBKLEG3gijOwf9AExvk2C47fpyAMA "Battlefield S1/E3 - The Battle of Midway") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w30FkSXyTE&t=5868) ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/67 "2022-03-15T17:10:20Z")
Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/68 "2022-03-15T17:14:09Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > In Hollywood everything is a Ford Pinto Had to share this (from the movie “Top Secret”): [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ngtALzDAIcU/hqdefault.jpg "Top Secret: Pinto") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngtALzDAIcU) ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/69 "2022-03-16T03:02:57Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Thank you, that is very interesting! In every naval movie battle I’ve ever seen, they always show the ship in question completely blown apart when the fuel/munitions are hit. There were a few capital ships that were completed destroyed by a hit to a magazine, notably the USS _Arizona_ and HMS _Hood_. _Arizona_ was hit by an armor-piercing bomb (converted armor-piercing shells) dropped from 10,000 feet that detonated in the forward magazine. _Hood_ was sunk by a shell from _Bismarck_ that detonated her aft magazine. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/70 "2022-03-16T03:08:36Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > The irony is by the end of the war he was wrong, this was demonstrated by the fact that during the lead up to, and immediate aftermath of, D-Day Harris was overruled and, against his advice, the British bombers were used to attack targets like railroads in France. And the aiming technology and skills had advanced enough that the bombing of these specific targets was really effective, but rather than change strategy permanently to that kind of bombing, once D-Day was over bomber command went back to mass bombing of cities. Barnes Wallis had spent many years trying to convince Harris (who deeply distrusted **boffins** ) that deep penetration targeted weapons might be more destructive than carpet bombing - it was the success (as in two dams were breeched) of _Chastise_ that convinced Harris that those weapons were worth developing and resourcing. Some of that precision bombing was also carried out by 617 squadron using Tallboys. The Tallboys (and later Grand Slams) penetrated deep into the ground and detonated, causing significant subsidence and destroying or damaging foundations. According to Wallis, the aim was always to slightly miss large reinforced structures, allowing the shockwave from the sides to do the damage. However, in some cases the bombs crashed through many feet of reinforced concrete, destroying U-boat and E-boat pens in the French ports of Le Havre and Brest. Bombs with shorter fuses detonated closer to the surface, forming a crater 30m deep and 24m across - ideal for putting a marshalling yard out of commission for an extended period of time. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/71 "2022-03-16T07:02:23Z")
Actually it sounds like the bombing was precise, but inaccurate ---
**Author:** ![omenran](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omenran/32/3318_2.png) [@omenran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/omenran)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/72 "2022-03-16T08:53:03Z")
My recent go-to on naval stuff has been Drachinfel who covers just about anything WW2 and before relating to naval warfare and ships (including videos on aircraft launched from ships, design and building of ships and their components [ie engine’s, boilers, range-finding, guns, etc], to supply and more) [He did a recent video on Midway specifically with a author historian](https://youtu.be/lN79g34wjQA). [The sinking of USS Arizona](https://youtu.be/6SDcEPV5gX0) [And one about HMS Hood’s sinking as well.](https://youtu.be/CLPeC7LRqIY) Good for curiosity, or insomnia as some of the videos get pretty long. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/73 "2022-03-16T12:10:09Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > It shows how the Japanese carriers were caught at the exact wrong moment by US planes and what happened to their ships. (or exact right moment from the US persepctive) That looks like an older documentary. It repeats the now disproven story that the Japanese carriers were already prepared to launch the attack on the US carriers and the US attack came just at the very right moment. That account comes from the Japan aviator [Mitsuo Fuchida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsuo_Fuchida) who lead the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first video that @omenran linked to shows an interview with Jonathan Parshall, of one of the authors of _Shattered Sword: the Untold Story of the Battle of Midway_ which demonstrated that Fukuda’s account was a “whopper” and [simply was not true](https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=nwc-review). They were not ready to launch the strike. > [@](#): > > By 1020 on the morning of 4 June, according to Fuchida, the Japanese were finally ready to counterattack the Americans. A famous passage in Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, entitled “A Fateful Five Minutes,” describes the scene as follows: > > > [@](#): > > > > One after another, planes were hoisted from the hangar and quickly arranged on the flight deck. There was no time to lose. At 1020 Admiral Nagumo gave the order to launch when ready. On Akagi’s flight deck all planes were in position with engines warming up. The big ship began turning into the wind. Within five minutes, all her planes would be launched. Five minutes! Who would have dreamed that the tide of battle would shift completely in that interval of time? . . . At 1024 the order to start launching came from the bridge by voicetube . . . and the first Zero fighter gathered speed and whizzed off the deck. At that instant a lookout screamed: “Hell-divers!” I looked up to see three black enemy planes plummeting toward our ship.12 > > This rendition of events—wherein Japanese carriers, their flight decks packed with attack aircraft just moments from takeoff, are caught at the last second and destroyed—has been echoed in every Western account of the battle since 1955, when Fuchida’s book was first published in the United States. It is part of the common psyche concerning Midway, creating a mental image for every American who has ever studied the battle. Unfortunately, it is a mental image that is incorrect. The two authors of _Shattered Sword_ carefully go through original Japanese ship documentation to show that it could not have happened that way. The paper I linked to gives a good summary of why that could not have been the case and further states: > [@](#): > > Thus, Fuchida’s entire rendition of the climax of the most important naval battle in American history was a lie. The Japanese were nowhere near ready to counterattack at this time. The truly stunning thing about this, however, is that it essentially paralyzed the American study of this pivotal battle for the better part of fifty years. Fuchida’s tale was in English, while the operational records that belied it were in handwritten Japanese stored on microfilms. For this reason, American historians (perhaps not surprisingly) simply accepted Fuchida’s account verbatim and declined to look further. It did not help matters that Fuchida had become great friends with Gordon Prange, whose best-selling Miracle at Midway (1983) became, hands down, the most important English-language account of the battle, one whose details were subsequently incorporated into many other Western histories. Documentaries have their place, including introducing subjects in an approachable format, but unfortunately their accuracy or depth is not necessarily always the best. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/74 "2022-03-16T14:37:51Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > The two authors of _Shattered Sword_ carefully go through original Japanese ship documentation to show that it could not have happened that way. So I have no feelings about which version is true, but I’m curious about this (though not enough to, you know, read their paper 🙂 ) What is there in the ship documentation that gives them so much confidence in this conclusion? I release there are plenty of reasons a first person account might be inaccurate (I guess it would be much more palatable to believe they lost the battle due to a fluke of bad timing rather than being fundamentally beaten by the US on an operational and tactical level). But surely given a disagreement between a first person account (from both sides IIRC, aren’t there accounts from the US pilots of large numbers of planes ready to take off, as they completed their bombing runs?) of what happened, and what someone wrote on some form to satisfy the Japanese naval bureaucracy (presumably a while after the battle) with no particular strong reason to ensure it was an exactly accurate minute-by-minute account of the battle, you would choose to trust the first person account more? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/75 "2022-03-16T14:41:10Z")
It’s the classic distinction between a primary and secondary source. Sure, there is the possibility of the officer lying, sugar coating, in the official reports. A historian must take this bias into account - a primary source isn’t the word of God. Hopefully you have multiple sources and can cross check them for consistency. But there is a greater possibility of the facts getting muddied with in secondary accounts. As time goes by you naturally forget things, and then there’s still the bias factor. Plus if there _is_ a conspiracy to change the account, you have time to get your ‘facts’ in order. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/76 "2022-03-16T14:43:59Z")
> [@omenran](#): > > And one about HMS Hood’s sinking as well. Random personal anecdote about this. My grandfather had a good friend on board the Hood, he was absolutely clear (after a drink or two) that all the officers knew there were design flaws that meant they would not likely survive an artillery duel with a German battleship. Surely enough that was the last conversation my grandfather had with him, and he went down with Hood. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/77 "2022-03-16T15:45:19Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > It’s the classic distinction between a primary and secondary source. Sure, there is the possibility of the officer lying, sugar coating, in the official reports. A historian must take this bias into account - a primary source isn’t the word of God. Hopefully you have multiple sources and can cross check them for consistency. But there is a greater possibility of the facts getting muddied with in secondary accounts. As time goes by you naturally forget things, and then there’s still the bias factor. Plus if there _is_ a conspiracy to change the account, you have time to get your ‘facts’ in order. Yeah I get that if this was some early medieval event where it is a single first person account by a monk with an axe to grind, versus a ton of tax records or whatever that say different. But this is an event with a huge number of first person witnesses who were (until recently-ish) alive to tell their version of the story. That seems like it should almost always win out over what was written on a form in the naval archives in Tokyo. And it seems this wasn’t just “there are some records that could put a different spin on the first person accounts” is the “what the first person account says must be complete untrue because of what the records say” I’m intrigued as to what they say that makes them think that. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/78 "2022-03-16T16:58:41Z")
Just take something like the exact time an order was issued. What is more reliable, handwritten reports the day of, or your memoir ten years later? ~Max ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/79 "2022-03-16T17:16:41Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Just take something like the exact time an order was issued. What is more reliable, handwritten reports the day of, or your memoir ten years later? Yeah I’d choose the first person accounts, over a time written in a log book on a burning aircraft carrier, by someone with a lot more to think about than recording an exact blow-by-blow of the battle for posterity (or some other sequence of events in the fog of battle that meant planes were fueled up and armed when the US bombs fell, as described by the eye witnesses, even though the order was not officially given until later). ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2022, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720/80 "2022-03-16T18:05:56Z")
There are a few photos from the battle, and only a few CAP fighters are on deck. Ships logs are used. Much is based on the timing of the events–it would take 45 minutes to launch a strike, and between American air attacks, launching CAP fighters, and the returning Midway strike force, there was no time. I encourage people with an interest in Midway to watch the Drachinfel video with Jonathan Parshall, and to read _Shattered Sword_. I earned about _Shattered Sword_ and the Ian Toll Trilogy from a [different thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-battle-of-midway-why-couldnt-the-japanese-have-pressed-on-and-captured-the-island/917029) on this board, and I’m glad I did. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-war-ii-buffs-wwii-strategy/960720.md?page=5)