Yeah, I spell like a broke back Aussie, channeling some Americana nonsense….But it is correctly spelled.. Trust the Queen.

Of course here I cant commemorate every military battle or military disaster even. But some which are actions of daring, bravery, disaster, betrayal or otherwise significant in the pantheon of humanities ability to butcher each other deserve some comment.

In some ways I don’t note so much the event, as what it pressaged. Total war. War to the end. No quarter asked for or given.

A level of violent action over innocuous atolls in exotic places, that would never receive attention ever again.

Just read Toll or Hornfischer at the strategic level or God forbid did down to the minute by minute of Guadalcanal by Richard Frank. Horrific. Horrific at the start of the war against Japan.

It got worse from there.

 

So when I come to explore military history and simulations and wargames I have a tough time. Some are too abstract and glib. Others so brutal and visceral you will want to stop playing if you care for those men in the platoons….Striking. A few titles capture the ground war very well [it aint a promo but TCS savagely captures Pacific Island Warfare the best so far ].

That level of carnage, does not hit you often. No naval game ever has come close to representing the 1940-43 period of naval conflict in visceral terms. The burning oil on the water, the dismemberment, torn armour plates on battleships, desperate salvage efforts, ineffective design consequences of ships, armor, electronics, logistics on ship, safety protocols. Nothing. No one has ever captured that harrowing experience you can read about and nod sagely, thinking ‘gee…yeah that was bad’…No. It was horrendous.

 

These naval actions were so destructive, so inept, so disastrous, you wonder how America and its allies stayed in the fight. Yet they did. Now of course I know the IJN had losses, but we are talking about a different culture and mentality and a war machine that had a decade head start. The US went into theis shit in essence blind. They came out not only victorious, but valorous in how they handled all of it.

All this loss, this learning by experience bread a raw certitude in the Naval arm. So Pearl Harbour was the tipping point of a huge pivot in history.

Then of course in compressed time, in savage detail we have the air war. Another aspect of the Pacific theater that is or has never been accurately portrayed. Losses were massive on both sides. we had technology miss matches, skill  disparity, weapon issues and the list goes on. With all of that the wargames today dont capture effective loss ratios, or wild success. I think a lot of that is due to a lack on concrete data and the limited number of ‘real’ air battles. Yes one on ones happened, but when Midway went down, no one has captured that naval/air experience accurately yet. The sacrifice, the bravery, the failure of technology, training and preparation.

So, today is that day. The Day of Infamy.

It lead to the end of a world war, but along the way it cost more than we shall ever know.