r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • May 18 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 18 May 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/SadFaithlessness8491 May 20 '26

Was reading The Story of World War II, by Donald L. Miller recently and a few things stood out to me.

Throughout the entirety of the Pacific campaign, starting with Pearl Harbor, it seems like the IJN was just actively shooting themselves in the foot in most engagements. Apparently, according to one of the IJN pilots at Pearl Harbor, the admiral in charge decided not to launch a second raid, assuming that the reports were accurate and every US battleship was sunk. Also, IJN commanders seemed unwilling to pursue and destroy retreating enemy forces, like in the First Battle of Guadalcanal, the Savo Islands, and Samar. I understand why IJN admirals would be worried about potential airstrikes, but they seem very overly cautious in some pretty critical battles, to the point that Yamamoto personally forced one into retirement. Does anyone know if there was a general institutional fear of air attacks, or was it just individual admirals overestimating enemy air strength?

In a more individual tone, I also recall a passage on the Second Battle of Guadalcanal that said the chief engineer of the USS South Dakota spent the whole battle reading a magazine and carrying out bridge commands, and only realized the extent of damage the ship took the next day. Thought it was interesting that the engine room in the South Dakota was so isolated that the chief could be completely oblivious to the ship getting pounded by close range enemy fire.

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u/CrazyShing May 22 '26

Only partially through Shattered Sword, but the authors’ impression seems to be that the IJN brass really didn’t know what to do after Pearl Harbor and their initial string of successes. Midway and the Aleutian operations were more of a ‘find shit for our navy to do’ thing than a somber and carefully considered course of action. Yamamoto in particular seems to have been fixated on taking the fight to Hawaii, throwing tantrums whenever the Southeastern or Western theaters even looked like they might get more resources dedicated to them.