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America's Greatest Victory of WW2 ?
YellowSnow
Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 35,347 
America's Greatest Victory of WW2 ? 17 votes
Battle of the Philippine Sea "Marianas Turkey Shoot" -1944
0%
Operation "Husky" Invasion of Sicily - 1943
0%
Battle of Midway - 1942
58%
10 votes
Battle of the Atlantic - 1941- 45
0%
Battle of Normandy - 1944
17%
3 votes
Battle of the Bulge - 1944-45
5%
1 vote
Battle of Okinawa - 1945
5%
1 vote
Battle of Iwo Jima - 1945
0%
Battle of Leyte Gulf - 1944
0%
F.O. Row Peter Puffer, you left off...
11%
2 votes
Comments
Crippled the Japanese Navy.
I'm a big D-Day supporter.
really think you could break this down onto the 2 separate war theaters.
The Bulge was by far the biggest turning point in the European theater. D-Day was an enormous undertaking, but the allies still had to endure the brunt of the German forces for a solid 8 months in the worst conditions possible. Plus I understand just how hard the Battle of the Bulge can be, every day walking into Ms. Hawthorne’s 8th grade English class.
Midway was pure luck… How does Frank Poncherello find a flattop in some 200 square nautical miles of open ocean and then sink it?
My grandpa landed on Utah Beach 80 years ago this coming June 6th.
As our pod @BearsWiin used to way, Normandy was nothing special. There's no question Normandy was a huge logistical feat, but Germany's fate was already pretty much sealed by June of '44. Maybe if we fail at the landings if delays the end somewhat and the Ruskies advance further (or maybe not because Normandy too pressure off the Eastern Front).
Midway on the other hand was the greatest 15 min knock out punch in the history of warfare. Japan was very much in the fight the morning of the battle and by day's end they took a blow from which they did not have the industrial capacity from which to recover.
Better to be lucky than good. But we did do the work of breaking their code.
I don't see the Battle of the Bulge (both my grandfathers were there) as huge turning point, per se. Germany was already done. Rather, it seemed more like a big failure on our part to get across the Rhine in the Fall of 1944. I've ready some historians who think that the Morgenthau plan getting leaked cause the Krauts to put up more of fight in the West than would have happened otherwise. We should have told them we just want the Nazis out but we'll let @PurpleJ buy all the Bimmers!
And perhaps if D-Day fails and defeat of Germany is delayed 6 or 12 month, maybe they get to experience nuclear fission before the Japanese. I'm pretty sure this was on the table.
I think Saving Private Ryan nails it. Maybe the first movie that hit me so hard I felt like less of a man
I cried like a baby in the beginning in the theater.
Japan was arguably a bigger threat to America
Germany was the threat to Europe and invading Russia sealed their fate
There’s a few movies that capture harrowing and terrifying real events. This was one of them. I think I’ll start a thread about it…
In the near term, neither Japan or German had the military and industrial capability to invade the US mainland. Germany didn't even have the navy to cross the channel. The only countries that ever had the capability to "end" the US were Great Britain, the CSA, and the Ruskies. Funny how we ended up making it possible for Russia to beat Nazi Germany (via Lend Lease) and they end up being the greater threat over the long term. Obviously if the Germans win, get some lebensraum and the bomb we'd be looking at a different threat.
You could also argue for Guadalcanal. The start of a long offensive and we FINISHED breaking the back of their navy.
I'm kind of a Navy homer so I'll go with Midway. Had three uncles serve in the Navy in WW2 and lost one on the USS Langley (CV-1, AV-3) off the coast of Java in February 1942. We still have letters he sent to my mom from the Philippines in November 1941. His body was never recovered and he is memorialized on a plaque in the Manila American Cemetery.
Yep, Midway was a big deal and it wasn’t luck ~ it was the over confidence of the previously unbeaten Japanese Navy and Air Core and the tactical surprise advantage the US navy had by virtue of breaking the code and knowing the attack on Midway was coming
The advantage the US had was they knew the Japanese were coming and when, how they were likely arrayed and the likely direction they were coming from… they also knew that the Japanese expected that the American response would come from Carriers that were supposedly in and around Hawaii so that the Japanese would be looking in the South and West for the retaliation force.
By design, the American carrier fleet was split and located further East and North than the Japanese would expect and the Japanese fleet was consolidated into a single group in the general area that the American Navy expected. The Americans had radar, the Japanese did not… the Americans had 3 carriers, one of which was damaged and operating at 70% of power and that the Japanese didn’t know about.
The search was on and fortunately the American pilots found the consolidated group of all of the Japanese carriers, had the firepower to send the sequential waves of planes needed to sink the 5 carrier fleet, and had the good luck and experienced pilots to do it.
The Japanese fleet had been largely unopposed and consequently were relatively inexperienced for full scale battle from a battle group tactical standpoint, and as a result of carrier multi level design error limitations + logistical mistakes such as storing fuel and explosives on the deck, they were sitting ducks and could not rapidly respond either offensively or defensively to the attack as it unfolded.
As Yella said, at the beginning of the day the Japanese navy was in control of the Pacific, and at the end of the day they had lost more than half of their planes, 25% of their best pilots, 70% of their carriers and lacked the industrial capacity and resources to replace what they had just lost.
Unlike the Germans, it was Game Over in one battle, from that moment on they were beaten and the Japanese Navy knew it.
I know, TLDR and every board has one, but the story is an interesting one…
A couple other things the U.S. Navy had advantages over the Japanese was the firefighting capability on our ships. Made a huge difference between losing and saving a carrier.
Beating the Indonesian junk that was going round among the WACs in the Philippines was huge.
If the Japanese had destroyed US carriers and kept their own the west coast would have been in range
The US carriers not being at Pearl Harbor and then Midway secured the Pacific
Took a lot of death to get Japan to surrender though
There’s an author named Ian Toll or Tolle who wrote a trilogy on the war in the Pacific that’s really damn good. I know one of the books is called Twilight of the Gods.
It’s pretty damn amazing how we went from 3 carriers in the Pacific at Midway to carrier task forces by the end of the war.
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. - GP
Several years ago during a spirited discussion about the evils of war with my progressive/socialist daughters, I ended it with “You can make arguments about what has gone on since WWII, but if the bomb is not dropped, you are speaking Japanese, and I do not exist”…