[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by marichiko

You are welcome. Semi-surprise? On paper? Almost doesn't count. Ask the families back then of the men killed at Pearl Harbour. Not exactly a stunning American victory, now was it? Great preparation for the Jap threat. Yeppers.

I'll do better than that I personally know a half dozen people that were there. The attack of Pearl was a very risky move on the japs part. Many mistakes were made like not believing the radar, thinking the attack would be in McArthurs yard, thinking the japs would declare war first even though they had attacked without warning, repeatedly, in the past. Yes I know the Translation story.
But, we were hardly sleeping, do you think the carriers were out of pearl without their usual escorts accidently?
Yeah, on paper. You have to do that before you ramp up production of material, which had started. Of course the pols were siphoning some of that off for lend-lease, but it had started.
Were we ready for a major land war? No. The government was still trying to figure out how to convince the public that wanted to stay out of it. Gee, maybe Pearl Harbor was part of that.

In that case, nor did our esteemed British cousins who were also fighting in that particular war. In fact, the Brits declared war on Germany before the French did.

Two wrongs make a right? I was trying to stay on topic.

General Pershing of the US was hardly a military genius either. By time the American Expeditionary Force got around to joining the conflict in 1918, Pershing resisted using American forces as reinforcements for British and French units, as suggested by the Allies. Pershing also maintained the use of frontal assaults, which had been discarded by that time by British and French commanders. As a result the American Expeditionary Force suffered a very high rate of casualties in its operations in the summer and fall of 1918. No one nation had the market cornered on stupid slaughter of its troops in that particular conflict. The US was no exception.

That's right, Pershing refused to crawl in the trenches like the others. Maybe that's why we suffered 321K casualties (114K dead) compared to the 15 million the french, Brits and Russians totaled. Oh yeah, Pershing was really stupid.

Saying that they wanted us to enter the war with "crap weapons that they would overcharge us for" is a vast over simplification of the problem of supplies and weaponary in that era for the US military.

SNIP: The demand for arms was so immense and immediate and the time required for contracts to be let and industry to retool so lengthy that the Army for a long time would have to train with obsolete weapons in and, the end, would have to depend heavily on Allied manufacture.

The one weapon providing no particular problem was the rifle. To add to already existing stocks, the Army's own arsenals increased production of Springfields, while plants that had been filling Allied orders modified the British Lee-Enfield rifle to take U.S. ammunition for use by U.S. troops. All American units reaching France during the first year had to be equipped with Allied machine guns and automatic rifles, but new and excellent Browning machine guns and automatic rifles began coming off U.S. production lines in volume by mid-1918. Of some 2,250 artillery pieces used by American forces in France, only a hundred were of U.S. manufacture. Similarly an embryonic U.S. Tank Corps used French tanks, and in some instances British and French tank battalions supported U.S. troops. The Air Section that expanded rapidly to 11,425 flying officers, of whom 5,000 reached France, also had to depend primarily on planes provided by the Allies. The United States did produce a good 12-cylinder Liberty airplane engine, and a few U.S. planes saw service in latter weeks of the war. SOURCE

I'll stick with my "over simplified" version to your politically correct version.

I'll reply to the rest of your remarks later.

Waiting with abated breath.