Midway: Teaching a Battle

Samantha Cavell joins Bo and Joey to talk about how to teach the Battle of Midway and her experiences in the classroom!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mm hmmm, talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Everybody. Hello, Tristler, Drinking this early on a Friday should
be illegal, but I'm so glad it's not. That means
it's time for another round of homebrew history. Joey, How
the hell are you?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
You know?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I didn't know.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
I'm I'm doing better. I like that you brought so
much viv and verve and enthusiasm to that is I'm excited.
It was like it was planned or something.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Not not as exciting as the evening you had yesterday.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Dude, that whole day I missed. Do I have to must? I?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yes, Okay. So I went to a work meeting in
Lake Providence, Louisiana, which to get to you have to
leave Louisiana, go into Mississippi and then come out the
other side, and it's like going through hell and then
bam or there. I had about a two hour meeting
after my four hour drive, and then I started my
four hour venture back home, and about an hour into it,

(01:32):
the vehicle I was using overheated and then melted through
some of the electric coils and wiring and such, and yeah,
left me stuck on the side of a road in
a thunderstorm with a cornfield to one side and a
cotton field to the other. And I'm going to tell

(01:53):
you what one of the most exciting experiences of my
life thus far, taking in a thunderstorm in a cornfield
with no shelter, that that was pretty cool. That'll put
hair on your chest if you're not you're not already
like you know, got the gumption that'll do it.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
If it were me, the hair would be standing up
oma back. Yeah, So then you were a twister. Huh.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
I thought I was Bill Paxton or David Cornswett, one
of the two. I'm going with corn Sweat because Superman,
but you know Bill Paxton also works. Nevertheless, did did that,
and then I finally got in touch with some people
at the main office that were able to get me
a rental car. Problem. I was like forty miles away

(02:41):
from where the rental car, was no way of getting
there until a Tensaw parish sheriff's deputy stopped and was like,
I'm going to help you out. So he brought me
from parish line to parish line, and then the next
parish over their deputy took me all the way to Natchez.
Then from Natchez, a police officer there, got me to

(03:04):
Enterprise only with like a minute to spare before they closed,
got a rental car and made my way back to
Baton Rouge, and then finally back to Punchitula. And after
a whole day of doing that, I realized I was like,
oh God, we were supposed to record a podcast.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
Tonight, and I considering.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
I couldn't remember like how to get home, and I
couldn't think about what I wanted to eat for dinner.
I don't know that I would have been really worth
a single solitary damn last night. But here we are,
well that yeah, and I, you know, like, we get
excited about these and it's it's kind of fun to

(03:51):
bring on someone that, yes, we're friends with, but we've
both studied under we both learned from UH, and someone
who continues to make such a positive impact on students
and on future leaders of our nation's military. So why
don't we just let's just cut out all the fawning
and the flattery and bring onto the show doctor Sam Cavell.

Speaker 6 (04:14):
Hey, lads, how's it going?

Speaker 7 (04:17):
Well?

Speaker 4 (04:18):
You know, how are you? I'm fantastic.

Speaker 6 (04:29):
Good, I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad. You calm down.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Not to add any flattery or anything, but my my,
my youngest brother braiding, he has not met very many
people from Australia, so by default, but also by your accolades,
he you are his favorite.

Speaker 6 (04:48):
As oh that's so sweet he's come.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Out to which you know, I might be throwing myself
under the lawnmower here and the blades are down, but
I remember he came to to Red White and Brew
with us one semester and he's like he got he
goes where where is where is Sam from? And he's like,
I can't quite pinpoint her accent, I said, but she's

(05:14):
an awesome and he's like, oh, I love her.

Speaker 6 (05:19):
Well, the accent is very messed up.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
It is.

Speaker 6 (05:23):
I've been here for over thirty years to school in England,
you know. So I say y'all and Kraky all the.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Love you more for it.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
You run the game of Cajun and Australian you know,
exitter ram all together. So you know this is the
double header because this will be part of a little
two part series that's going out to a little minisodes
that go out about midway. And we've already talked with

(05:57):
Craig Simon's about about the battle right, and you know,
if you're not going to have Admiral Nimets, Craig Simon's
is a pretty good, you know, second second place, a
good pinch hitter. I don't know anybody else that can
really get inside of Nimtz's head quite like he's been
able to, and you know those truth. I don't know

(06:18):
about you, but I thought that was. I learned more
in the hour and twenty minutes that we were with
him on Midway than I did from reading any of
the the what we'll call later the misguided classics. But no,
he king Midway right.

Speaker 6 (06:35):
He's amazing. I mean, Craig's books are They have always
been incredible, and his latest offerings are no different. They
are just wonderful volumes. I mean, his Midway volume is fantastic.
His Nimets I was. I was trying to buy the
Nimetz book almost a year before it came out, and
I think the people at the World Would Two Museum

(06:56):
were just sick of seeing me come into the bookstore
going have you got to your wet? And uh They're like, no,
we'll call you, but no, it's.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Stop coming in. Yeah, don't call us.

Speaker 6 (07:11):
We'll call you exactly, please go away. No, it's it's
a great book. And and and so is his Midway Book.
I mean, you know, for narrative history, you cannot do better.
It is. It is this succinct volume that tells you
everything you need to know, with all the latest scholarship

(07:32):
in it. So yeah, definitely a new classic for sure.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
And today we're gonna today We're so used to doing
this at night, and now we're going to talk about
teaching mid way because you come to us with a
really unique perspective in that you teach both undergraduates graduates
who are primarily civilians, and you also teach to the
Naval War College with perspective you know, military officers who

(08:01):
are trying to enhance their understandings of leadership. And here
you are with this opportunity to talk about midway. So
how do you make that applicable?

Speaker 6 (08:10):
Yeah, well, before I start, because you mentioned that, I
have to say that the views I'm about to discuss
on my own, they do not come from the d
D or the Navy or anyone else in the nabor
Walk College. I'm an adjunct, Okay, so I have to
I have to say those disclaimers. However, Yeah, I mean

(08:31):
it's pitching that story to three different audiences. And so
I don't write about Midway. I mean, I'm a naval historian,
but I focus on the age of fight and sale.
You know, that's where my research leads me. But I
have to teach Midway a lot, teach World War II
history a lot. So trying to pitch that for the

(08:52):
undergrad the graduate, and then the pm student, the professional
Military Education student, those are three different things, you know,
and generally it will break down along the lines. Of undergraduates,
You're going to usually have a tactical discussion, right the action,
the tactics, the choices that happen in the moment. Graduate

(09:12):
it's going to be tactical, maybe operational, depending on the class,
it might we might touch on strategy. But then when
you're looking at your PME students, then it's much more
of a strategic discussion because what you want to do
is get to the guts of why these decisions were made.
What are the foundations, the strategic theoretical foundations that the

(09:35):
navies on both sides were building on. Why did these
choices happen the way they did? And it's all part
of that lessons learned, that guidance that is going to
hopefully instruct them as they move forward in their professional
careers in the military. So yeah, but I mean, I
think one thing you can do for all of them

(09:58):
to kind of start the discussion is think about the
myth busting, right, because this is one of those stories,
the story of Midway, that is riddled with the mythology.
In fact, the mythology dominated for such a long time,
and it's only these these recent books that have come out,
you know, since Partial and Tully and Dallas Isom more

(10:22):
recently and Craig's book on Midway. You know, this has
started to rewrite the story. But those all classics were
they set the tone for decades. That was what we're
there they are right, Incredible victory and miracle at Midway.
Those titles tell you everything you need to know about
the content of those stories, aren't they. You know that

(10:44):
this was a victory we should not have had. That
this was you know, we were way out numbered, we
should not have won. It was a skin of our
teeth kind of victory that we pulled out in nothing
that that luck is really the dominant factor here, and
that's just not the truth at all. And I think

(11:05):
these news stories have definitely debunked that and started to
show us something different.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
That that title miracle at Midway is almost offensive to minds.
You know, it's almost spit in his face, you know.
And because like you know, as we talked about with
you know, doctor Craik Simons, is that you know, there
was no miracle. You know, this was all based on
you know, strategy, This was based on code breaking, you know.
So this is a very you know, it's one of

(11:33):
those things that it's kind of like a lost causery,
you know, if you will, to sort of you know,
sort of add myth to a story that really frankly
doesn't need it.

Speaker 6 (11:44):
Yeah, And in a way you cannot blame I mean,
these are amazing books. They're great narratives.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Right.

Speaker 6 (11:51):
In a way, you can't blame the authors here because
Gordon Praying in particular, was working with one Japanese source
when he wrote this, right, Mitsuokashuda okay who was an
air group commander who was he was there and at
the end of the war, he finds Christianity. He comes
to the United States, and he becomes the voice of
the Japanese side of things, and that's all we had,

(12:15):
you know, the access to Japanese sources. Japanese language sources
are bilingual historians. You know that that's a new thing.
And so he's working with what he's got in a way,
and and it's just that what Partial and Tully really
uncovered in Shattered Sword was that he lied, right, I mean,

(12:38):
he's not exactly talent the full truth. It's a few
poky buys thrown in there. So yeah, and that's that's
where you start to break down a lot of that mythology.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
So these books, these authors did they walk so Partial
and Tully and Craig Simon's could run.

Speaker 6 (12:59):
Ah. Yeah, I think that's I think that's a natural
and a good analogy to make because anyone who gets
into the Midway story, or anyone of a certain age
age for myself here, but anyone of a certain age,
your access, your entree into the story of Midway was

(13:19):
these books. So you know, from there it starts the
interest that is then going to lead to the additional
research that's going to get you to where we are now.
And by all means we're not at the end of that,
you know, getting to Japanese sources is no easy thing
if even if you can pass the language barrier, you know,

(13:44):
the language of a lot of these documents is not
standard Japanese. It's this special dialect in a way that
you have to be able to read this operational dialect.
It's very formal kind of writing. So there's still a
lot to be uncovered there, and I think Tony Tully
is still working on that kind of detailed, you know,

(14:07):
operational sort of picking down to the bare threads, trying
to get to what was happening, because we still don't
really know what was happening on the flight decks or
the hangardecks of the Japanese vessels, not really not into
a minute by minute blow by blow.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
I think sometimes too. And you know, Bo, we've talked
about this, and Sam, you and I have gone back
and forth over this even when I was in school.
It's like it's easy for us sometimes to pick apart
the early sources. Right, It's like me sitting here talking
about the Battle of Franklin, going, well, you know, gosh,
James Lee McDonough and Thomas Conley, they just wrote this

(14:46):
awful freaking book. It's so terribly sourced, and it's like, well,
you know, when they wrote it in nineteen eighty, they
didn't have access to newspapers dot com and they couldn't
sit in the comfort of their home and do a
lot of the art kital research that I'm doing. And
so then you criticize that, and then you criticize the
later books and all of a sudden like, oh, well,

(15:07):
this book is great because it was written in twenty thirteen,
and you know it has more access, and oh wow,
right is good because I have more access. So in
a way, it's it's like it's kind of it's fun
to poke at them, but also it's like we wouldn't
have half of the information that we do have without
these right.

Speaker 6 (15:28):
You know, absolutely, And the Internet has changed everything, right,
I mean trying to do It's changed it in my
lifetime since I've been in this career. You know, the
access to documentary sources and manuscript sources is just light
years ahead of what it was when I started writing
books and articles. You know. So yeah, no, no disparagement

(15:54):
to the work that was done here because they were
amazing narratives and that boy, you talk about hooking students,
this will do it, right, because it's readable. It's a
page turner. It's like reading a novel. And it's just
some of these important details were not available, and those
important details are now available, so they they complicate the narrative,

(16:17):
that's for sure. I mean this, the story of Midway
is not an easy story to tell, Okay. It's a
lot of complicated moving parts, and so that's where kind
of just drawing out what's important and being able to
get that across to those different levels of students that
you have to work with, that's always the challenge here,

(16:39):
and that's it. I guess what I thought was interesting
about the discussion we're going to have today is like,
you know, how do you get to the nitty gritty
the important stuff, and how do you emphasize that and
what sources are you going to use to go find
that information? Like these? Yeah, these are these are the

(16:59):
critical resources. I would say I would start here, and
then you can dig into more information about the Japanese
Navy itself in books like kai Gun, which is quite
old too now, it's like ninety seven or something. You
can dig into books on Japanese wartime culture, bushido ideology,

(17:23):
that sort of thing from Sally pain is definitely the
go to on that one. There's also a wonderful book
out by a Japanese author called The Sata called From
mahant to Pearl Harbor, So that kind of dives into
more of that strategic theoretical question as well as to
why the Japanese are making the choices that they're making
are going into this battle. So there's just this you

(17:47):
can broaden the discussion through our whole lot of additional
literature that really does enrich the story, but certainly does
make it more complicated. It's not a neat, neat pigeonole
of a now arrative to tell.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
Now, I'm steering this with no idea of what slide
comes next, so you have to tell me when you
want to.

Speaker 6 (18:08):
Gosha, I have to remember myself, okay. So so oh,
the next it's just a map, So I guess that's
a good place to go to. Next it's just a
map of the battle, because I think that also speaks
to the complexity, right, my goodness, look at any Japanese

(18:28):
plan that's that's happening with the Navy at this time
is going to be complicated. Okay. And here's a map
in which you see or you know, the whole operation
for Midway that's going off and all the moving parts
that are associated with that. Right, there's the Kidobutai, there's
the troop landing forces, there's the battle fleet force with

(18:50):
with Yamamoto. There's the submarine screen which was supposed to
be in place before our carriers left Pearl Harbor, which
made it there after they'd already left, so wasn't able
to do anything. And it also shows the entire separate
operation that was headed up to the Illusions at the
same time, and not as a diversion, mind you. That's

(19:13):
another thing that that's you know, in those early books
is that, oh, this illution campaign was entirely a diversion
for Midway, which it was not. It was its own separate,
functional campaign designed to put Japanese boots on American soil
in Alaska, you know, and really tap into those fears

(19:36):
about a Japanese invasion. So you know, they are trying
to work multiple angles at the same time, which which
also helped with this really complex situation. And of course
it was a problem because you know, one of the
one of the strategic things we talk about in the
PME classes is that the Japanese were very influenced by

(20:00):
Alfred Theayo Mahan, the influence of seapower upon history and
the principles that Mahan espoused, you know, and this is
a very simplistic way of thinking of it, but you
always think of you know, the battle fleet is the key, right.
You want to have a big, strong battle fleet to
be able to bring about a decisive battle against another

(20:21):
battle fleet, and the strongest will win kind of thing.
And then you want concentration of force. You want to
put all those assets together to be able to have
the biggest impact against your enemy. Well, the fact is
the Japanese might have been very Mahenian, but they cherry
picked what they wanted to take from, right, They picked

(20:43):
this and they left that on the table. And what
they left on the table here is concentration of force.
And ultimately, I think that's a big part of the
story because Nagumo or often gets really slammed, you know,
as being incompetent, as being not aggressive enough, as being

(21:05):
someone who just should have never been in this position.
And I think he is kind of the tragic hero
of this story in many ways because he's hamstrung by
the limitations of the force that he has. In many ways,
he never has enough aircraft to be able to do
the two jobs that he's assigned to do, one of
which is to subdue Midway the island itself. The other

(21:28):
is to take out the American carriers. He doesn't have
enough aircraft to do that on the more aircraft carriers
that he's got. Now, if he'd concentrated that force and
maybe brought in the two light carriers that went up
to the Illusions, that could have been a very different story.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
It's interesting that you bring up Mahan and Mahenian theory
because it's one of the things that we talked about
with doctor Simons was Ian Toll's book how He spends
an entire three chap just going into Mahan's impact on
the United States's naval understanding, Great Britain's naval understanding, and
Japan's naval understanding. And one of the big things is,

(22:12):
like you mentioned, they cherry pick things, but they also
look at their own history, right. They look at a
naval performance during the Russo Japanese War. They look at
the actions of aside from Yawamoto, the greatest naval figure
in their history. In animal Toga and they completely ignore
all of the lessons from both Toga and Mahan. Yes,

(22:37):
and then we're left sitting here, you know, eighty plus
years later. Well, I wonder you know why they did that? Why?
What's your thought?

Speaker 6 (22:47):
Yeah, it's some And this is another sort of myth
too that can be busted at various levels of how
you pitch this story is thinking about the Japanese naval
juggernaut or military juggernaut as being this monolith right which
it was not in any way, shape or form. First

(23:08):
of all, the army and the Navy couldn't agree on
anything that they're constantly at each other's throats. It's almost
like a civil war within Japanese leadership. And then within
the navy itself, you have a civil war going on.
You have different factions that have very different understanding of
how to prosecute a conflict, of of what their assets

(23:33):
should be doing in a conflict of where the focus
should be. I mean, the easiest way to kind of
identify this factionalism is through what they used to call
the fleet faction, okay, and the Treaty faction. The Treaty
faction of which Yamamoto was sort of at the lead

(23:54):
was very much about trying to stick with the limitations
that were imposed by the Washing Naval Treaty, which essentially
meant that Japan's navy would be limited to its own
sphere of influence. Right, It wasn't going to be able
to project power across the Pacific the way it does
in this conflict, and in that way it sort of

(24:17):
stops Japan from getting involved in any big worldwide catastrophic
wars like this. But the Fleet Faction is like, no,
you know, the limitations imposed on us are unjust, they
are unlawful, and we need to build as many capital
ships as we possibly can, and we're going to go

(24:37):
out there and going to be aggressive. I mean, Yamamosa
did not want war with the United States. So how
does a man who doesn't want war with the United
States because he knows the United States, He's been here,
He's seen our capacity to produce, right, our industrial capacity.
So how does a man who believes this, who is

(24:58):
very strongly in the treaty action end up being the
architect of Pearl Harbor? All Right, It's a conundrum because
the answer is he essentially loses the fight. The Japanese
say no, we are going to go to war with
the United States. There is no avoiding war with the
United States. This is going to happen. And then Yamamoto says, Okay,

(25:20):
if it's inevitable, then the only way to do this
is to knock him out on the first law or
kind of thing. We have to make a knockout punch.
We have to take out all of their naval assets
at Pearl Harbor. And that's the only way I'm moving forward.
Otherwise I resign and I might even commit suicide.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
You know.

Speaker 6 (25:41):
It's like and they're like, no, don't do that. I mean,
it's actually it's extraordinary how much even though he's on
the wrong side and he's on the losing side of
the argument about we're going to war, he had enough
power and enough charisma and enough clout within the Navy
to be able to put that kind of ultimatum on them. So,

(26:04):
you know, and that's how we end up where we
end up, where he believe I had six months, right,
six months to run wild. That's exactly what he had.

Speaker 4 (26:13):
Well, that's what we said with with Simon's two was
only one naval commander in this picture between the two
Nimitsen Yamamoto went to their naval boards and said, well,
if you don't agree with me, I'll just resign. The
other one didn't do that.

Speaker 8 (26:32):
Absolutely, right, Sam, Let me ask you this question, so
kind of comparing you know, undergrad graduate and you know
PME students, what is sort of the first thing that.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
You introduced to undergrad students versus graduate students versus PM students.

Speaker 6 (26:49):
Okay, I think the first thing to kind of get
a handle on is that. Okay, if it's not a miracle,
then what will we work with? Why will we so
well prepared? And the answer is our intel, right, our
code breaking Joe Rochfort and his team, and then leadership,

(27:10):
naval leadership starting with Nimetz. Okay, Nimitz is the guy
who has to take the big risks here, and why
does he feel like he can take the risks?

Speaker 4 (27:19):
Well?

Speaker 6 (27:19):
Number one, he's got a direct line on the code
breaking intel, mainly through Eddie Layton and Layton's connection to
Limitz's staff and Layton's connection to Joe Rochfort who's there
at Fruepak in Pearl Harbor. Now, technically Nimtz wasn't supposed
to get that information directly. Frupak and Roschfoot were supposed

(27:41):
to answer to Op twenty G in Washington, d C.
And then the Redmond brothers would Admiral Redmond would decide
who was going to get that information and how and
when and specifically what was going to Nimtz. Well, Nimitz
could bypass all of that because of Rochfort and Layton's friendship,
and they're right there in Pel Harbor. So he's got
this immediacy in terms of information that you know, might

(28:05):
not have existed. Other words, then's he's making some pretty
hardcore mathematical calculus situations in terms of what he knows
from Coral c that's just happened, right, he knows that
it probably he can probably take out a carrier with

(28:25):
three dive bomb hits. Right, three bombs on a carrier
probably is going to take it out. And he's basing
this on the calculus that, Okay, well it's going to
probably take six aircraft striking to be able to make
this happen. So if he's got eighteen dive bombers, he

(28:47):
can probably put those bombs on target. Right in terms
of the ratios that he's working with, So if you've
got two torpedo sorry dive bomb squadrons on board each aircraft.
Each aircraft carrier should be able to take out two
aircraft carriers theoretically, So he's doing this kind of mathematics

(29:07):
which is hopefully getting them to where he needs to be,
and then he's got to just take the big risk
and say, yes, we can get the drop on them.
If we can ambush the ambushers, then we can make
this happen. And that's another big thing to kind of
make you know, even my undergraduates awhere. Midway wasn't an

(29:28):
objective for the Japanese. They didn't really care about Midway
as a place to take, invade and hold. It was
the bait because the objective was to take out the
remaining carriers. And I think it's also important to understand
how we get there, because the whole Midway operation that

(29:49):
Yamamoto envisions after Pearl Harbor was not going to go ahead. Okay,
there is the high command, the headquarters are not going
to let the Midway operation happen. They were like, Nope,
it's too risky, not going to do it. And then
the dually it or raid comes in and bombs live
in daylights out of Tokyo, Okay and other places. And

(30:11):
it's so embarrassing to Imperial HQ that they're like, Okay,
you can do it, you know, atug go and go
and do your worst. Take out those carriers, because it
was the carriers that enabled this tack. So he gets
to go and do this. And the whole idea is
you go and you take this valuable asset and you
force the Americans to come out and fight you. The

(30:32):
Japanese don't believe we will come out willingly to a fight.
And I think this is the other key part of
it too, not understanding the mindset of your enemy. The
Japanese did not. I mean, they thought that attacking Pearl
Harbor was going to force us out of the war,
that we'd be like, oh no, now we've lost all

(30:53):
enable assets. Well we'll just how about we just do
a deal? How about that? And thinking in that way
is just absurd. There is no way a striker is
going to get us to the negotiating table. They're still
thinking in a limited war platin when that's not what

(31:14):
this is. It's not how we score it anyway.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
And the Americans highly underestimated the ability of the Japanese,
which allowed Pearl Harvard to sort of happen. And it's
kind of freshing, you know, a little bit to learn
that we learn from that mistake, you know, but the
Japanese make the same mistake, you know, less than a
year later, and it's sort of the one to do it.

Speaker 6 (31:39):
Yeah, And I think that's the other key point that's
a real takeaway in all of these stories is the
fact that the US Navy in particular learns from its mistakes.
And in fact, there's another great book that's out there,
Trent Hone's Learning War, amazing book, which is it basically

(32:00):
shows us the process of how we learn from our mistakes.
And I think I wish we still kind of understood
this aspect of the story and in our present day
military circumstances, because you were allowed to make mistakes and
you were allowed to still have a job in World

(32:22):
War Two, you know. And Nimets is the perfect example
of this. I'm not sure Craig talked about this, I'm
sure he did, but that you know, one of Nimitz's
first experiences in command, he runs his ship aground, right,
you do that today? You will never you will never
go to right, you know, and he had this sort

(32:45):
of relationship with subordinates as well who did things wrong,
and he basically would say to them, do you know
what you did wrong? And they would say, yes, sir,
I know what I did wrong, and he's like, okay,
don't do it again. And you learn from your mistakes.
The Navy in World War Two was really good at that,
and we learn mistake. We learn from our mistakes at

(33:06):
caral c H and we put them into practice to
at Midway, right. You know, we're not perfect, not by
any stretch of the imagination. I mean there are real mistakes,
especially in the specifics of you know, how we launched
our aircraft. You know the way that Yorktown launched her

(33:28):
aircraft in her first strike. She's doing a deck load strike, right,
you put all your aircraft up on that on the
flight deck and off you go. The other two aircraft
carriers under Spruance did not do that right. Horner and
Enterprise are trying to put everything up and it takes
forever to get everyone airborne, which means that pieces of

(33:50):
those those flight groups are going off in different directions
at different times, and which is why we have the
disasters with the the VT eight and V two six.
You know, they get shot down because because they don't
have any coverage, they don't have any support, so they
Spruance didn't have that experience that Fletcher did because he
was there at Carl c right, so he knows more.

(34:12):
And even within the battle. It's interesting because Fletcher is
he knows what he's doing, but Spruance is learning. So
by the afternoon strikes when they're going after hear you,
Spruance is launching more of a decload strike kind of
situation so that he can control how these air groups

(34:33):
go out together, and it's much more effective. So, yeah,
we learn from our mistakes, but the Japanese are not
great at doing that. And you know, and this is
one of the arguments in several of the books, is
that there was too much doctrinal control, that they were
too narrowly prescribed in terms of their tactical options because

(34:59):
of how Copanese doctrine worked. And there's arguments about that.
Dallas Isom says, no, not so much partial and tallisa, Yeah,
doctrine was really important. So yeah, the bottom line is
they don't learn as well from their mistakes as the
US Navy does.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
And that's pretty well seen throughout. And I think, having
just read now ninety percent of the Tall books, because
I'm in volume three now, which is no easy chore
to get done in a summer, but here we are.

Speaker 6 (35:35):
They're big books, they are.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
And the third one I thought, okay, well, the third volume,
i'd be kind of small, and in his introduction goes,
it's the longest of the three because I figured I
just put everything that I couldn't put in the other
two in here. Thanks. Thanks, But you can see the
gradual improvement in the learning process by which the Navy
comes from nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty four to

(35:59):
forty five. And it's the little things like when and
how to launch aircraft and how the recovery should work.
And should you have fully laden and armed bombs, you know,
in the same storage area as your aircraft. Should these
things be separated? And in magazines? Should you drain the

(36:22):
fuel lines out of your lines when you're in the
refueling process and when you're at sea, how should that
process work? What should you do with damage control? All
these little things that the Navy might not have had
perfectly figured out in nineteen forty one. Even by nineteen
forty two, six months after Pearl Harbor, they've already started

(36:43):
to learn a lot of these lessons. And by the
time you get to nineteen forty four forty five, it's impossible.
And I say this to someone who I have. You know,
the Royal Navy flag is just right outside my doorway
here right. I think it's the finest force in the world.
It can't compare with what the United States is doing

(37:04):
by nineteen forty four forty five because the skill in
the learning process. And you know, we say this with
you know, we've got Race Spruance right here on the
on the slides. But even with the mistakes that Spruance makes,
and notably the mistakes that Bill Halsey makes in nineteen

(37:25):
forty four to forty five, even those you can excuse
for all of the great progress that was made through
the forty years of the war.

Speaker 6 (37:33):
Definitely, And I think you bring up a really good point. Okay,
the damage control, Oh my god, that was that was
a game changer, right, And how did we how do
we get that level of damage control? Well, Fletcher was
in command, and he watched Lexington burn to the waterline
at Carl c right. So the damage control guys on
board Yorktown are like, whoa, what can we do? By

(37:55):
the way, I think this is really cool that I
think the guy who comes up with this idea, his
name is Oscar mind Yeah, says hey, what if during
battle we drain the fuel lines and pump in an
inert gas co two. Let's see if that, you know,
prevents this kind of disaster. So they implement it. And

(38:16):
this is the other thing. You have to have high
command that is willing to go Okay, let's try it
and see what happens. And they do, and this is
what allows Yorktown in the midway fight to be absolutely
slammed by the strike that comes in from here you

(38:36):
and survive to the point. So she's suffering about it.
I think the number is something like a seventy one
percent damage rate from that first strike. Okay, so she's
already been held together by Spit and Duc Dape. Then
she gets hit. She gets really slammed, seventy one percent damage.

(38:56):
The damage control crews are so proficient they managed to
put out the fires, they managed to get things under
control on Yorktown, so that the next strike that comes
in from hear you actually thinks that that's not Yorktown.
They think that, oh well, this must be the other
two carriers that we need to take out, and they

(39:18):
strike your town, your count a second time. So they'd
gotten so much under control, they'd gotten the ship looking
relatively normal again, and that means she gets struck twice
and that sort of becomes unsustainable. But it means that
we still have two carriers alive at the end of
that battle, which was not the intention. The whole point

(39:40):
that here you was there trying to do was to
even the odds to take it down to one carrier
and one carrier, and they couldn't do that because of
the damaged control efforts that were none on Yorktown, which
is just amazing, right And I think that in a
way like Spruance really gets credit for the victory at midway,
and rightly so. He's an amazing commander. He's calm, cool,

(40:03):
he is just stone cold Steve Austin, he really is
through this whole thing. But you know, Fletcher is the
unsung hero here. I think he's just an incredible commander.
He is overall in command. And yet when Yorktown is
taken out, of the fight. He has just the the

(40:30):
magnanimity I think is the best word to say. No,
I'm not going to transfer over and take over from Spance.
Spruance has got this. He's a professional, he knows what
he's doing. He's doing a great job. I am not
going to go over to Enterprise and say, oh, thank
you very much, Admiral Spruance, you can leave the bridge now,
I'll take you over from here. He didn't do that, right.

(40:53):
I mean, he's humble enough to sort of say, okay,
I can step away now because this guy knows his
job and I trust him, you know, that sort of
professional courtesy and credit. That's that's pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
I think it's definitely an unsung part of it. You
know that you have your subordinates that you can actually trust, Yeah,
and that makes that makes a world of difference, you know,
because if you can't trust your subordinates, you know, especially
commanding officers, you know of other aircraft carriers, you know,
what are you doing? You know? So Sam kind of

(41:28):
you know, because we talked a lot about with with
Craig Simon's sort of about the nitty gritty of the battle.
But you know, obviously you do have this slide here
that kind of explains you know, the force in numbers,
you know, for Midway here. So I guess if you could,
you know, I see in parentheses because I wanted to

(41:49):
kind of talk to you about that, you know, because
this is obviously Midway is sort of the emergence of
the aircraft carrier, you know, it's kind of stepping away
from the you know, First World War era, you know,
Dreadnought era battleships, you know. But I see that you
have in parentheses that the Japanese have two battleships and
two heavy cruisers missiless. You know, I guess explain that

(42:11):
if you could, because I'm.

Speaker 6 (42:14):
Well, first of all, I have to credit John Parshaal
for these slides because I stole them completely from him
from my classes because they're so effective. But yeah, I mean,
the age of the aircraft carrier completely supplants the efficacy
of battleships, right, I mean, when you can project power

(42:37):
at a distance, and the Japanese aircraft had almost double
the range of our aircraft, so they can be striking
us when we cannot strike them. I mean, that is
a absolutely enormous advantage. To bring to the table. And
so in the midst of that kind of a discussion,
a tactical discussion, what's a battleship going through. You know

(43:00):
that the range of its guns is not going to
be anywhere near the range of an aircraft that can
fly out and attack an enemy ship, you know, and
sink it. So, yeah, the whole point of these heavy cruisers,
I mean, they really couldn't contribute much to a carrier battle.
And I think Yamamoto understands that Yamamoto is a carrier guy,

(43:24):
Nimitz understands the powers of carriers. But on both sides,
behind those men, you have whole sections of the navvies
in Japanese and US who are like, no, the battleship
is still what it's it's all about. You know that
that battleship, as the as the the capital ship, is

(43:47):
something that dies hard.

Speaker 4 (43:49):
Right. It's been twenty and thirty years pumping millions of
dollars into construction and training and all that other stuff
and outfitting them, and then all the sudden you get
the Japanese Navy gone actually cut everything off the deck
and just put a flat top on it. Please.

Speaker 9 (44:08):
Yeah, yeah, then well the two biggest ships here are conversions, right,
so yeah, it's uh, the the absolute necessity of turning
this into you know, making carriers the.

Speaker 6 (44:25):
Capital ships of the new forces. I mean, you live
or die by that, right, And this is this slide
is really all about, you know, debunking that myth that
we were completely outnumbered, okay, because what it shows is that, okay,
we might have been four carriers to three at the
actual where the rubber at the road in the battle,
but we had Midway, which isn't like an unsinkable carrier,

(44:48):
and with all of those Midway aircraft, we outnumbered the
Japanese aircraft almost by one hundred, right. So yeah, so
it wasn't where we're talking about, like overall, Yes, the
Japanese had enormous naval superiority to us in the Pacific
theater because we're at two ocean powers, so we've got
divided assets, right, But where we're talking about the action

(45:12):
happening in this battle, we actually had an advantage as
much as B twenty six and B seventeen is from Midway,
we're an advantage, which turns out they weren't. But but hey,
we had them there, you know. But those those avengers,
and they did their job. They did their job of
creating that distraction, creating that that time frame in which

(45:37):
Naguma couldn't launch. He couldn't launch when he was being attacked.
So you know, all of this and all of the attacks,
even our poor old devastating performances from our devastators, those
sacrifices of VT eight and VT six, Right, what that's
all about is preventing Nagumo from launching his own strikes

(46:00):
against our carriers, taking that time off the clock so
that he couldn't attack us when he had best advantage
to do so.

Speaker 4 (46:10):
Yeah, I think two in kind of going back to
something that we talked about, and this is at the
risk of us getting massively off topic, and I fully
embraced that, but that's what this show is halfway about.
We talked about lessons learned, and we also just mentioned
how the Japanese Navy, rather than find a solution for
their battleships and their big guns, they just simply cut

(46:32):
the tops of them off and turn them into two
aircraft carriers. It seems like the US Navy found a
way to adapt the role of the battleship in supporting
their land based operations. So when you have an amphibious operation,
you put all the battleships, all the guns you can
bring to bear and bombard the islands that you're about
to assault. You use that essentially as this umbrella, and

(46:56):
you use the aircraft carriers to throw out later in
the war the big blue blanket over the islands to
support their operations. The Japanese seem like they never quite
grasp the idea of using their naval vessels that aren't
carriers to support their operations in these islands, these far
flung outposts, and then you end up with super battleships

(47:19):
like the Yamato sitting at anchorage. Basically the entire war comes.

Speaker 10 (47:23):
Out, fires arguably the longest naval gun shot successful in
the war, and then dies in a blaze of glory
Kama Kazi attack in Okinawa.

Speaker 4 (47:34):
And it makes no sense.

Speaker 6 (47:36):
It makes it does not, It doesn't make any sense,
and learn It's an interesting question really because, and some
of that may come down to just the whole idea
of supporting land based forces is not something that the
Navy wants to do right because the name and the
Army don't want to necessarily help each other in that way.

(48:00):
But I think it's also particularly towards you know, the
latter part of the war after at least after forty
two anyway, is that they just simply don't have that
many assets left and you can't produce that supply.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
I mean, how do you fuel them? How do you
keep all the battleships plus all your carriers. You got
to have to do the you know, the force allocations.
What do you do with that?

Speaker 6 (48:28):
Yeah, and that's of course your moto get a yourmato
gets run aground, right, because there's not enough fuel for
a return voyage. So and you know, and all of
that comes from I think the Emperor turned to the
head of the navy and said, well, what has our
navy been doing? You know, by the time we get
into five and they're like, wow, this is embarrassing. Maybe

(48:53):
we ordered just use it like a giant human torpedo.
I was to run her aground on Okinawa and then
everyone would jump off and become part of the landforce.
Well that was never going to happen, right, I mean,
they were never going to get that close, so you know,

(49:14):
and in a way this sort of speaks to that
issue of Japanese naval doctrine. Okay, we see this in
Midway because one of the things that happens in the
later part of the battle, where here you is the
sole remaining carrier that isn't happening, you know, run in
catastrophic fire. What they should have done is pull her back, right,

(49:40):
pull her back, because she had the range to be
able to launch her aircraft and strike at the American
forces from quite a distance. But instead of doing that,
Nagumo decides that he wants to make a surface attack.
So he's going to bring up the battleships, bring up
the cruisers, and here You is going to go in
for a surfa attack. So they start steaming towards the

(50:02):
American carriers. Well, that's just a really poor use of
a Japanese carrier with very long range capabilities with the
air groups that it has left, which wasn't a lot,
but still had that capacity. So there's a poor choice
of use of assets here that I think does speak

(50:24):
to this idea that no, we must all go in.
We never give up on the attack. You know, you
must do your best, you must throw everything you have
at it. Rather than being more pragmatic in the moment
and going, look, this is the most important capital asset
we have. Let's pull it back, Let's let it live

(50:45):
to fight another day. It can still send in its
air groups and do what damage they can while the
surface force engages. But that's not what they do. They
waste a carrier. I mean, it's it's really really flawed.
Tactical thinking, strategic thinking, all of it, all of it
comes to play there. And I think that plays on

(51:08):
a lot of these other stories too, even come later
on into the war. Don't worry, we have we have
our own problems on that level with you know, what
is the purpose of this particular weapons system with submarines
right right, because for the first couple of years of
the war, we're not quite sure what the submarines is

(51:29):
supposed to do. Are they fleet support or are they
commerce raiders? You know, and we try to do both,
not very successfully, and you know, and then we have
lassy weapons on board, so when the torpedoes don't work,
but you know, there there is a fundamental problem in
terms of how do we use these assets. And I

(51:49):
think the Japanese just had more of a problem with
that than we did, and we could adapt more quickly
when we saw that there was an issue.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
So this is kind of a two part something that
Joey and I talk about on the show a lot.
Is the decisive battle, the turning point, right, Yeah, you know,
it wasn't too long ago that we talked about Gettysburg,
and you know, whether or not it's a turning point,
you know, whatever, and people.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
Have you know, my feelings on this as a turning point.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
All too well, this one, I think has the only
exception that we've kind of come to so far. Maybe
Trifalder perhaps, but that's another story in a different drink
for me. But when it comes to Midway, you know,
obviously the Imperial Japanese Navy, they their losses are substantial

(52:43):
and this is something that they cannot replace. When you
present this to your students, do you present Midway as
a turning point? And not only that, you know, but
is this also the emergence of the United States Navy
as a modern force?

Speaker 6 (53:02):
Good questions, great questions to my undergrads. Yes, I do
as a turning point, Yes, as a decisive battle now
and and my argument there is that a decisive battle
is one that ends the war. Okay, that's really what

(53:24):
it what it means. And this is not that just
like Trafalgar is not a decisive battle and that it
does not end the war and a boll of wars.
What they do do is they shift the balance of power, okay.
And the turning point aspect of this is that before
Midway the Japanese are on the advance. They're they're on

(53:47):
the attack. After Midway they're retreating. Okay. So it it
turns the the movement of the war, and in that
way it is a turning point. Okay. Now, once we
get to sort of my graduate level courses and my
PMME courses, we break that down even a little bit too,
you know. But yes, you're absolutely right. The loss of

(54:10):
those four carriers at Midway is irreplaceable. They cannot come
back from this. And I think that that really is,
at least in the war in the Pacific, a key
part of the whole story of how things start to
shift and change. And then you have to acknowledge that
it's not just Midway, right, because it's Midway plus Guidalcanal.

(54:33):
Because you're not going to have a turning point in
the Pacific theater by solely on a naval victory. Okay,
and solely on the destruction of these naval assets. You
have to start to attreat the military forces. And where
do we do that. We create the meat grinder on Guidalcanal, right,
and unfortunately it's a meat grinder for our guys too,

(54:55):
but they are in more of a situation where they
cannot replace their losses. And we start to bring our
naval assets to bear. We can. We're pretty thin on
the ground after midway, but forty three the production starts
to kick in and and we you know, we bring
that weight of industrial production to bear. And I think

(55:19):
ultimately that's the story. That's the story of Allied success
in World War two period is productivity Wright's logistics. It's
about our ability to outproduce on everything all of our enemies, okay,
and to be able to help supply our allies and

(55:40):
keep them in the fight so that they can they
can back us up and we can sustain them. You know,
it's this mutual give and take on the ally. You know,
you've got to have allies. The people who have allies
in a war are the ones who win. But only
allies who support each other, right, And that's the Japanese's

(56:02):
got no support from their allies.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
You know, thin get one, you know one prototype of
a tiger tank. Hey, that's nice, It's real nice. I
mean that. That is one of my favorite parts of
Philip Paston's O'Brien book How the War Was Won is
he basically says there was never a decisive land battle.
It was all done in the air, it was all
done at sea, and it was all done through supplies
everything else. It's just a means to an end. But

(56:28):
you have to have those three things to have successful
land battles. Well, yeah, pretty much hammer.

Speaker 6 (56:37):
This and this feeds back to that whole Mahenian thing too, right,
So okay, so if it's about the production, great, we
have to get that production to where it's needed. Okay,
how do you do that? Will you do it? At
the time was shipping and the key aspect, I mean,
the foundational aspect of Mahon is the protection of trade

(56:59):
or the detection of merchant shipping. That's the function of
a navy. So it all starts with that. The Japanese
were never interested in doing that. They I think at
the very end of the war we get a few
convoys that are protected by naval escorts, but the Navy
thought that was beneath them. It was dishonorable.

Speaker 4 (57:20):
You know.

Speaker 6 (57:20):
Let the Japanese marous go out and do what they can.
That's the critical thing. You've got to be able to
get those resources to the guys who need it in
the fight back to the home islands to keep people alive.
And they could not do that. Okay, so when we
start sinking their marus, they can't replace them either. But
we were protecting our merchants shipping our merchant marine. Right,

(57:46):
the other big part of the untold story of World
War Two and the sacrifice that they made, which was enormous.
And then sorry, go ahead, yeah, sorry, you know I
can talk on this stuff.

Speaker 4 (58:00):
Right, I just I wanted to get all the way
to the end here to this because come on, look
at that.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
I know, and this is sorry that the dogs might
go off in a minute, but this is this is
the real story, right. The level of production and again
this is John Partial's infographics, it's just astounding. I mean,
what we were able to produce over the course of

(58:30):
basically three years, it is just mind boggling. And the
Japanese had no chance of competing with that.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
I think motives fear.

Speaker 6 (58:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he knew it. But you know,
one man does not a war make. You know, you
have to have the entire military construction on board with
all of this, and they were not.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
I find actually really interesting and I guess I knew
this but never really put two and two together. But
there's a lot of like Revolutionary War references to carryer
names Lexington, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, which is funny because I
learned not too terribly long ago that the Battle of

(59:20):
Bunker Hill wasn't on bunker Hill, that was on breethe tail, right,
So it's like, you know, some some cartographer out there
just you know, screwed up. Amazing.

Speaker 6 (59:33):
I know, well they I think they started out on
Bunker Hill and that was the original plan, and then
they realized that they actually had a hill closer to
the enemy, closer to the point down at Charlestown, and
it probably it'd be a good idea if we move
forward to that one, because we don't want to let
the enemy get high ground if we can. So yeah,

(59:53):
it was originally in the plant, but it didn't work
out quite so well.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
And just a shout out to Nathan Cannister because we've
got the Calpin's right there in the middle of the graphic.
And hey, the Mighty move still is a really good book.
I I just finished it up at This has been
the summer of US Navy and World War two history
for Joey. I have been.

Speaker 6 (01:00:15):
That's a good thing, Joey, Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
I've been. I had no choice. I mean, when you're
writing about a sailor in World War Two and gets
involved in the First Race Riot in the US after
the war, you have no choice but to try and
understand all that there is to know about the Pacific War.
So I have a long way to go along, a long,
long way. But before we before we go, and at

(01:00:41):
the risk of starting another hour long discussion, will we
have to talk about how Midway is presented in film
in popular culture, because I know this is one thing
that you know, I was your teaching assistant. We did
this in a lot of classes where we you know,
you would show clips of movies and you talk about
it depicted and if it was accurate or not, or

(01:01:03):
you know, you would force us to read really really
terrible history books just to come then I hope that
we would say, God, this was the worst you know
read and then.

Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
A stent's a good student. An outright student is always thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
So, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
So I'm trying to think of some of the you know,
showing the depictions of of of the Omaha Beach landings
by showing a clip from Saving Private Ryan. You know,
you've shown airborne landings by punching in Band of Brothers.
You know whatever. I would contend, and I know you're
going to disagree, which is why I think it's gonna
be fun. There is not a single good movie that

(01:01:44):
has ever been made about Midway because your choices are
Charlton Heston m or this awful waste of my time
and money.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
All of a sudden, his limits come on, they're basically brothers.
Look at him.

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
He's a terrible limits. It's so upsetting.

Speaker 6 (01:02:07):
Come on, see go ahead, bar let it rip on.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
I I you know, when when Midway first came out.
I don't know, Joe, if you saw it in theaters
or he saw streaming service, one of those saw it
in theaters, and and he came back and he's just like,
you know, Midway, And I was like, was it?

Speaker 11 (01:02:27):
He's like, it's too raw, raw America? You know, So
I I went and watched it. I don't have the
same opinion as Joey.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
I I bet I get it though, because there are
some points I'm like, Okay, that's that's that back a
little bit, you know. Uh, but you know what, I thought,
it wasn't bad. And this is my opinion on on
things that are of popular media. As long as it
gets the public interested in the historical topic, it did

(01:03:02):
its job. Because every in my especially in my my
two oh one or it's twenty ten. Now those numbers
are stupid. Anyway, in the first half of my American
history class, I'm like, how many of you guys truly
knew about Alexander Hamilton before the bomb play? And They're like,

(01:03:24):
I knew nothing about him. And I was like, who's
on the ten dollar bill And they're like, I don't
know Ben Franklin. I'm like, no, it's Alexander Hamilton. You
know whatever. You know, But now that you are at
least a little bit familiar, because lyn Manuel Miranda popularized,
you know, the life of Alexander Hamilton, there there have
arguably been more people who've been interested in the life

(01:03:46):
and times of Alexander Hamilton than you know, ever before
and in the same way, I think this version of
Midway does that, and I Woody Harrison weirdly looks like
minutes I swear to God hed done. You know. So
that's that's my opinion anyway.

Speaker 6 (01:04:05):
Okay, So why do you hate it, Joey?

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
I thought, Okay, aside from like the forced inclusion of
the Doolittle raid, which I think, I think it gets
a lot of things wrong. The most accurate depiction of
the raid, how it took off and everything, I still
think is thirty seconds over Tokyo, because it just feels right,
it looks right. They get the idea that, yeah, the

(01:04:30):
plane started out at max power, and like the little
things like that. Aaron Eckhart as Jimmy Doolittle not very convincing.
Got to be honest, the wrong plane, okay, shine, Okay,
he's getting into the minutia here. Whatever. Okay. I didn't
necessarily like that. I thought it could have just been

(01:04:50):
incorporated differently, or if you're going to do it, do
it better, or make a whole other movie about it,
because it is deserving of a better feature film. Then
the thirty seconds it gets in Pearl Harbor that got awful.
That now it's more observing than the kind of forced

(01:05:10):
twenty minutes it gets in this movie where it just
feels out of place, even though they're linked together. If
you have the background reading and you have the context,
you understand that the two are the two feet in
one another. But the way then in the film, it's
just here's this thing that happened on an aircraft carrier. Oh,
also at the same time, there's this other thing that's happening,

(01:05:31):
but we're not gonna tell you how it's connected. We're
just gonna imply that it is. So there's the missed
connection there. And then I mean, it's not that it's
raw raw American. I have no problem with that. My
propaganda pieces flow freely. It's the overacting stereotypes of Americans

(01:05:54):
where everybody talks like this and they're gonna shoot down
some Japanese and they're gonna window God just oh, why
are they all from Brooklyn or you get you know
the guy who who sounds like he's just rolled off
of a farm, out of a hay bale.

Speaker 12 (01:06:12):
It's like, talked like this. This is just an absurdity,
and it's just I feel like it's painful to watch
at times. Mandy Moore is such an overactor. There there's
moments where it's like, Jesus, just I want to be
on the Arizona right now.

Speaker 4 (01:06:29):
That's how bad this.

Speaker 6 (01:06:34):
Wasn't just too harsh man. I actually shock though, that
you think I share Bo's opinion on this. I didn't
hate it. I thought I would hate it a lot
more than I did. You're right, Joey, Okay, there's overacting,
there's whatever, and the thread pickers, you know, hate what

(01:06:54):
the wrong stripes are on the aircraft and whatever. You know.
But honestly, like when you think about like the big story,
the big parts of the story, they get a lot
of that, right, and they were right to include the
Dolittle raid, But you're right wrong not to link it
to the story, saying, Okay, this is actually an impetus
for Midway. This is what enables Yamamoto to go ahead

(01:07:17):
with the plan, right, And but no, I mean they
focus on the right thing. They focus on Dick Best, right,
So putting Lieutenant Richard Best at the center of this
story is the right thing to do. And that's not
a story that got told in the original Midway. You know,
it was all about Mclusky and what he did. I

(01:07:38):
think they treat the Japanese side of things pretty well.
I think they give a far better insight into the
Japanese thinking on this whole campaign, more better than we've
seen in anything else. And yeah, but kind of the
whole do Little Raid thing. I mean, you have to

(01:08:00):
look at who financed this this movie, and its Chinese financing,
so the emphasis there is that hey, Chinese over here
or we were your allies. Nice, let's not forget that. So,
you know, it's a purpose built film.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
That one.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
I include it only because it's funny to watch Peter
Fonda and Charlton Heston on screen. And at some point
you see like just the absurdity behind some of the
nineteen sixties nineteen seventies World War II films where there's
always a love story, there's always a yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:08:39):
It's so extraneous, isn't it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:41):
Yeah, And it's also it seems like it never ends.
It's one of those movies that's, like Jesus, this is
still odd, I know.

Speaker 6 (01:08:49):
And hellholebrook Okay, like my beef is the hell holebrook In,
you know, as Joe Rochfort in the dressing Gown a
cigar being like this really, you know, eccentric kind of
crazy guy with the code breaking. It's like, that is
not who that dude was at all.

Speaker 7 (01:09:07):
He was a pretty conservative naval officer who happened to
wear a dressing gown because it was freezing in his
office for back, because they have.

Speaker 6 (01:09:18):
The computers there and they got to kick the computers cold.
So he's two seven.

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):
But was it with Craig Simon's or was it in
in the book where he was talking about his Like
you know, in films, Joe Rochford has been depicted as
an eccentric, crazy man running around in slippers in the
bath in a bathroom. Actually, he was a very comminentt
naval officer who happened to be called.

Speaker 13 (01:09:43):
He was freezing, calling like forty eight hours, shifts constantly
like you know, so yeah, I mean we get a
lot of those characterizations, and unfortunately it's depictions like that that.

Speaker 6 (01:09:56):
Set the tone for everything else that comes. Right, Oh,
that was him. So that was the depiction of Joe
Rushfort for decades, decades until books actually came out about
him saying no, that's that's not the deal. And of
course that was that was habit by the fact that
a lot of that stuff was secrets. He couldn't talk

(01:10:17):
about it anyway, right, you know. And but yeah, thankfully
when records become no secret, we get to we get
to know good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
I guess it's kind of one of those things too
that sex sells. You know. Do you have this mysterious
you know, playboy naval officer who also dabbles in secrecy
and code breaking. You know, that's cool, you know, and
which which kind of makes me think that the sort
of the the first books about Midway, because we know
historians love alliteration more than anything. It's a miracle at Midway,

(01:10:52):
you know. We we write books for two reasons, right,
to advance historiography and to make money. So if you
can trey you know, Midway as a miracle. Now you
see that at a you know, books a million or
a Barnes and Noble, and you're like miracles.

Speaker 6 (01:11:10):
Yeah, yeah, it's a hook, right, it's a hook.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:11:14):
Sure, Well, some of us write books to make money.
Others of us just write books. Yeah, it is not
a given, and in fact it is. It is a
very rare thing.

Speaker 4 (01:11:32):
So oh well, you know, we've done basically an entire
episode of Booky Forego the bo Hiccky.

Speaker 6 (01:11:47):
I gotta say, I have a have a course called
fake History and Memory Wars in World War Two. I
think I'm going to rename it boo Hicky History.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Again. I tell Joey this all the time. I said,
I I fear what's in here because sometimes it comes
out of here. Boo Hickey was one of them.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
And there's going to be a whole class of graduate
students walking around going Boo Hickey. And then we're going
to hear about like the master's thesis on Boo Hickey
and how it came to be. And I'm going to
hate you forever.

Speaker 5 (01:12:21):
That's okay than you hate yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Yeah, that's right. You can't say anything to me that
I haven't said to myself five inches from me here. Yes.
But anyway, so Sam, you know you are on Homebrew history.
So we have to ask, when you are a guest
of ours, what is in your Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:12:43):
Well, it's pretty boring. So it's water. Okay, I'm drinking
I'm drinking the hod stuff today, but it is like
one hundred and fifty degrees outside. But I will say this,
so my favorite drink of late actually came via a student,
via one of my grad students, and it is getting

(01:13:05):
back to our Alexander Hamilton references. It is a rum
rye drink. Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay,
called Hercules Mulligan. So I'd never heard of Hercules Mulligan
till we did a Spy's Codes and Conspiracy grad course

(01:13:25):
and everyone had to go and find their own spy
story and report about it. And I got the story
of Hercules Mulligan, who was apparently want of a spy
for George Washington and tailored for the British officers and
brought back all the secrets. He was also a mixologist,
as it turns out, and created a drink that is

(01:13:47):
now available, has been found and recreated called Hercules Mulligan.
It's rum and rye, spice rum and rye with a
few other cool things thrown in. It is delicious. It
is the greatest drink. And I've already gone through a
bottle thankfully that was a while ago. Uh, but finding

(01:14:08):
it a little tricky, but it's well worth the search. Okay,
get yourself some Hercules Mulligan.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
If teaching you know or history or anything fails Joey
and I, Joey and I have decided to pull our
money together, uh and and start a historically themed bar
and food service. Uh and to one of those drinks
is the Packingham's punch, so that that's hilarious to me.

Speaker 6 (01:14:35):
But let me guess you're on the floor at the
end of it, Is that right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:14:40):
End up pieces? Yeah, and they have to pickle you.
It's it's great. Yeah, I mean poor packet. I mean
that man got more holes in him and switch cheese was.

Speaker 6 (01:14:51):
As hard he did he did maybe he.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Would failed to get through a metal detector.

Speaker 6 (01:15:00):
Tossion.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
I would like to put into contention that we need
to have something for William Barksdale because he likewise was
shot to pieces and shot to hell. I think to
start the drink you have to wear a wig and
it gets knocked off of you when you finish the drink.
And then, I mean, you know, if you're gonna get
shot in the chest, have a cancer around, rip through

(01:15:23):
your leg and rip your foot off, you may as well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
Sorry. Imagine the base of that drink would be a
bark swoop beer.

Speaker 6 (01:15:29):
Oh bark, that's a here would would pick a pocket,
I know, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Full of it. What I'm full of is depending on
the day. But today, yeah, but that's why my eyes
are brown. What what I was drinking was a very
heavy pore of screwball peanut butter whiskey, which is just

(01:15:59):
my I hate that. I love it so much, I
really do, you son of a bitch.

Speaker 4 (01:16:04):
You didn't even ask me when I was drinking.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Well, I was getting I was getting there again. Like
I said, I was drinking. As you can clearly see,
it's going Joey, what has been in your cup?

Speaker 4 (01:16:17):
All right? So during this recording, because it's the middle
of the day and I have to somehow still be responsible,
I had a cup of coffee because you know, hey whatever.
You also know I'm a teetotal now apparently in the
eyes of some, but I've decided to own that. So
the other night I made myself a classic one of

(01:16:40):
my favorite drinks. I just made it as a mocktail. Instead.
I had a Pims cup and I found the perfect recipe,
the perfect substitute. You have to bear with me if
you are a traditionalist, a purist, a Pims cup purist.
To do this not listening now, start singing whatever lemons

(01:17:00):
and lemon juice. Okay, fore gone right, Slice cucumber, yeah,
we knew that. Oranges, okay, here we go, fresh grated ginger,
a lemon salter. My go to was the sam Pelgrino
lemon lemon flavor. Awesome, works perfect. You can do the
sugar free if you're looking to save on a little bit. There, Hi, hello, lemonade.

(01:17:24):
I just used fresh with squeeze lemons and lemon juice
muddled strawberries because that gives a little bit of the
flavor of the pems, like it's it's there, it's there,
okay in fresh mint. All that taken together, it tasted
just like the real thing, minus the alcohol.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
So it sounds like you need a visit from the
good doctor. I don't mcgilla cuddies.

Speaker 6 (01:17:51):
That would defeat the purpose of a mocktail bone.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
It's true, but I'm not very I'm not a very good,
you know, mocktail ologist.

Speaker 4 (01:17:58):
Well, I'm becoming the mocktail mixologist over here.

Speaker 6 (01:18:01):
I can right, I'll try that.

Speaker 4 (01:18:04):
And you know what, it's one hundred whatever degrees outside.
You know, you're outside, you're walking, you're running, whatever, Come inside,
pour yourself one of those. It's actually refreshing as opposed
to feeling like, wait, wait a second, I hurt more
now than I did twenty minutes ago. And that I
can drink a Pim's cup It's gone in thirty seconds.

(01:18:24):
So this is a wonderful find.

Speaker 6 (01:18:27):
Yeah, and then you say for it because it's actually
quite strong.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
Yeah, And when you drink six of them, we have
waste fast and people are just buying them for you,
and you're like, oh, yeah, true, I'm not that.

Speaker 6 (01:18:40):
It's not a good idea.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
Back to the parking lot at Silverston, to be honest.

Speaker 6 (01:18:45):
So the blocking lot are you applying? You there going
to get in a car and drive somewhere.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
I know I had to be driven back to the
hotel we were at, and the car park is where
you met your uber, your lyft.

Speaker 6 (01:18:56):
Or oh okay, zoom, zoom, that's what it was. Zoom
to do anything that responsible, right, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
We always pre drinking responsibly. But I will say that
when I inevitably made my way across the pond and
we have ways fast, I think both Al and James
are gonna have to take out a second mortgage to
fit my alcohol bell.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
I think that's what.

Speaker 6 (01:19:21):
Grumpy Jack, scrumpy Jack or work. It's cheap and it'll
knock you on your butt.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
It's right.

Speaker 6 (01:19:29):
You gotta be careful of that stuff. It's the locals
love to throw scrumpy at you. Go oh, it's cider.
It's really no big deal. And yeah, you're don't.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Do it noted now. You know, maybe a year and
a half from now, I probably won't remember, but.

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
You will forget. You will forget.

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
Host.

Speaker 4 (01:19:56):
Come on, he'll help you out. Okay, thank you, gotcha, gotcha?
HOI douc. This has been great, bow fantastic. You know this.
I think that these two episodes will pair together really
really well. And you know, tell us, dear listener, dear
you know viewer, whatever however you're getting this, tell us

(01:20:17):
what your thoughts were. And I realize just now I
forgot to run the commercials, so you're going to get that,
and then you're going to get the exit. So bo
doc fantastic as always, glad to have you guys here.
Now everyone just enjoy a brief commercial break at the
end of the show, because last be honest, and then

(01:20:41):
we'll take us right to the outro. But until then,
we'll catch you next time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
Here's folks.

Speaker 14 (01:20:47):
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Speaker 3 (01:23:46):
The whole crew. That whole crew talking about how everybody
being tubble threw a straight pod asked going back to
the past when the ritless past it by leading you

(01:24:08):
a gas or you bite inspired, but you'll never get tired.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Of whole crew. That whole grew

Speaker 3 (01:24:21):
Talk scholars on the show with Joey bo That's Old Brew,
Whole grou