[Milsurplus] Remembering Peal Harbor

Sat Dec 7 13:18:29 EST 2019

Hi Joe:

This is one of the things I've spent some time studying as part of my interest in all things crypto and other military 
stuff.  Some comments and trivia follow.

1. Japan sent a declaration of war to their embassy in Washington that was supposed to be read to the US prior to the 
attack, but they were slow in decryption and so it arrived after the attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_declaration_of_war_on_the_United_States_and_the_British_Empire

2. Correct.  You can see the fuel tanks on the hills in the camera footage from the attacking planes.  But it's even 
worse. Battleships were a development to counter the range of a torpedo. "Range" means how far a torpedo can go when 
fired.  It is much much greater than the range at which the probability of hitting a ship is 50%.  That's to say 
battleships were designed for a non existent threat.  Also note that the "Range" of guns on a battleship have the same 
definitions.   That's so say the big guns can not hit a ship at the specified "Range".  To sum up battleships were 
worthless before they were built, so when sank there was no reduction to the threat to Japan.

+3. The US torpedoes at the start of W.W.II were worthless because of multiple design errors.  see:
https://prc68.com/I/Torpedoes.html#Background
By the end of W.W.II everyone had working torpedoes, but people still believed in the "Range" numbers and did not take 
into account the P50 range, except for the Japanese which had a Kamikaze version.  See: 
https://prc68.com/I/Torpedoes.html#USS_Indianapolis

+4.  The Navy developed the Norden (horizontal) Bomb Sight and after testing found it did NOT work so went to dive 
bombing.  The Army took up the Norden and put it into thousands of bombers.  It still did not work.  The idea of 
horizontal precision bombing is a myth. See: https://prc68.com/I/Gyroscopes.html#Norden

+5. The A-1 Skyraider included dive bombing in it's capabilities. The half silvered mirror above the instrument panel 
while commonly called a "gun sight" is in fact a multipurpose sight that includes dive bombing.  See: 
https://prc68.com/I/Mk20Mod4Gun-BombSight.shtml

+6.  In the 1930s there were a number of jewelry store robberies where the combination lock was manipulated.  This was 
not made public at the time.  The countermeasure was to install a time of day combination lock like used in bank vaults 
today.  These were used on the vaults at Pearl Harbor. Since 7 December 1941 was a Sunday and the time locks were set 
for Monday morning, they could not open the vaults in order to get the code keys needed to decrypt the message from 
Washington warning of the attack. Hopefully the military today would not make the second mistake in sending a message 
encrypted when there is no value in doing so. A plain text message in ALL CAPS would have been a better choice.
https://prc68.com/I/Locks.html#G2Patents and patent number 2575674 in particular for a better combination lock.  Note 
that even this clock can now be manipulated, but as far as I know the modern electronic combination dial lock that is 
the standard for government security vaults can not be manipulated. https://prc68.com/I/Locks.html#Electronic_Combination
PS All of the "safes" sold in consumer stores can be opened very quickly and only protect their contents from honest 
people.  That's to say they are about as effective as the locks on bedroom doors in homes.  This includes pretty much 
all "gun safes".

+7.  The Navy at China Lake was involved in the development of many W.W.II items. https://prc68.com/I/ChinaLakePatents.html

+8.  Some info on the first Sonobuoy the CRT-1. https://prc68.com/I/CRT-1BSonobuoy.html, 
<https://prc68.com/I/CRT-1BSonobuoy.html>

+9. Some info on the Gibson Girl, CRT-3. https://prc68.com/I/GibsonGirl.html

+10. Professor "Doc" Edgerton developed the electronic flash tube.
http://www.prc68.com/I/Edgerton.html
http://www.prc68.com/I/GRstrobotac.html
One application was a very high powered flash mounted in a bomber to carry the weight of the generators and capacitor 
bank to support aerial photography.
It turns out that the high voltage circuitry needed for the flash was just the thing (Krytron) needed to set off an 
implosion atomic bomb.  That equipment was shipped from the East Coast to Los Alamos.
http://www.prc68.com/I/GRstrobotac.html
The "E" in EG&G is Edgerton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EG%26G#History

11. Flying saucers got their start in W.W.II technology that spanned into the cold war.
https://prc68.com/I/Sonobuoy.shtml#Roswell

Many of the above discoveries above are tempered by the two axioms shown below in my signature block.

-- 
Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke
https://www.PRC68.com
http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html
axioms:
1. The extent to which you can fix or improve something will be limited by how well you understand how it works.
2. Everybody, with no exceptions, holds false beliefs.

----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2019 16:42:52 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Joe Connor <joeconnor53 at yahoo.com>
> To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net, "n2lxm at juno.com" <n2lxm at juno.com>
> Cc: boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Remembering Peal Harbor
> Message-ID: <314536968.10166920.1575736972810 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>   It's still amazing to thing how the Navy and Army could get caught so flat-footed at Pearl Harbor. In researching it for a few projects in the last few years, I came across some interesting information:
>
> 1. Yamamoto, who planned the attack, never expected it to be a sneak attack. He assumed the Japanese government would declare war first, even if it was only moments before the first bomb fell. He was not happy when he discovered no declaration of war had preceded the attack.
>
> 2. While Pearl Harbor was seen as a stinging defeat at the time, the Japanese had actually missed their golden opportunity. If they had launched a second strike and taken out the above-ground fuel tanks and the dry-dock repair facilities, the Navy would have been in a tough spot. Luckily for the U.S., our carriers were at sea at the time of the attack.
>
> ????????????????????????? ? Joe Connor
>
>      

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