Recovering the Lost Aviators of World War II | Hacker News Reader

Recovering the Lost Aviators of World War II

smithsonianmag.com

19 pointsThevet8 comments

The undying fascination w/ WWII is really an indication of murica's arrested development.

I could only cringe when I read of Hank's and Spielberg's latest "murican's save the world" movie. How many of these are there? It's impossible to even count.

Maybe a multi-billion $ epic on how the us invaded mexico? or overthrew the government of the philippines? Or any number of elected republics being overthrown after the us got over it's own internal war.

The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains US military cemeteries and memorials around the world. If you get the chance to visit one, they're remarkable.

https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials

The attack on the islands in Palau is tragic in that is was probably unnecessary. The Japanese airfields there could have been suppressed by air attack and cutting off of supply. Instead, it would have saved thousands of US lives by diverting the forces there to instead attack Iwo Jima before it had been so heavily fortified. But that would have been unacceptable to MacArthur, as it would have sent the signal that the Philippines were a sideshow.

With the benefit of hindsight lots of things could have been done differently/better in many areas of life, especially war (and especially ww2).

I personally give a lot of latitude to the people who had to make those difficult decisions, with terribly incomplete information, that were literally life and death for hundreds of thousands of people at the time.

No hindsight was necessary. Commanders in the field (like Halsey, IIRC) were calling for Peleliu to be skipped.

By this point in the Pacific War, the general rule that "when in doubt, bypass" had plenty of evidence for it.

So in other words, incomplete information - or worse, conflicting information - or are you somehow claiming that 100% of the information that MacArthur had available to him at the time clearly and unequivocally pointed in one direction, and he did the opposite?

Should we also, today with the benefit of hindsight, try to crucify Halsey for making the decision to not move out of the way of the incoming typhoon (Cobra) that ended up costing almost 800 US sailors/men their lives and lost several Navy ships? - certainly he had people telling him to move the fleet out of the way, but he made the difficult call to stay.

Really got to love the arm-chair generals second guessing decisions made 80 years ago, by people who had no choice but to do the best they could with the information they had at the time.

I am not willing to criticize either one of them, I wasn't there.

I reject the notion that decisions in wartime cannot be criticized. Your argument would absolve any commander from being judged for any decision.

Yes, information is limited. Nevertheless, commanders are expected to make the best decisions they can based on the information they have. In that light, the invasion of Peleliu was a mistake. The negative consequences of delaying the invasion of Iwo Jima were also reasonably predictable.

Yep, on the Eastern Front pocketing the enemy was hard. In the Pacific, with the complete naval and air supperiority the US had, it was as easy bypassing an island garrison and cut it off from supply.

The fortified islands that had to be taken were hard enough to crack.

I do agree with the benefit of doubt so. Notable exceptions are all those "rockstar" generals that were better at self promotijg PR than strategy and leading men in combat. McArthur would be a prime example of one of those.

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