Presidential Art Medals World War II Medal Series

Quote:
Among his accomplishments was to corroborate [Rear Admiral Harry] Yarnell's 1932 war game findings in 1938 by staging his own successful simulated naval air raid on Pearl Harbor, showing that the base was dangerously vulnerable to aerial attack, although he was taken no more seriously until 7 December 1941. . .

Quote:
In February 1932, Yarnell pioneered carrier tactics in an exercise called Army/Navy Grand Joint Exercise 4. Rear Admiral Yarnell commanded the carriers Lexington and Saratoga in an effort to demonstrate that Hawaii was vulnerable to naval air power. The expectation was that Yarnell would attack with battleships, but instead he left his battleships behind and proceeded only with his carriers to the north of Hawaii where it was less likely he would be detected. With a storm as cover, at dawn on Sunday, 7 February, Yarnell's 152 planes attacked the harbor from the northeast, just as the Japanese would ten years later. The army airfields were first put out of commission after which Battleship Row was attacked, with multiple hits on navy ships. No defending aircraft were able to launch. The Navy's war-game umpires declared the attack a total success, prompting Yarnell to strenuously warn of the Japanese threat.

The New York Times reported on the exercise, noting the defenders were unable to find the attacking fleet even after 24 hours had passed. U.S. intelligence knew Japanese writers had reported on the exercise. Ironically, in the U.S., the battleship admirals voted down a reassessment of naval tactics. The umpire's report did not even mention the stunning success of Yarnell's exercise. Instead they wrote, "It is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great losses in the attack air force."

Yarnell's carrier tactics were reprised by Ernest King (at the time, Vice-Admiral) in Saratoga during war games held in winter of 1938, with the same results, both in terms of surprising the defenders and in terms of the tactics being dismissed as "unfair".

Quote:
This is great stuff Billy, thanks!!

Quote:
The following month, Allied forces landed in Normandy. Ernie had intended to go ashore several weeks after the landings, but felt he could not refuse an invitation to watch the landings from the bridge of General Omar Bradley's flagship, the cruiser Augusta. The next day, he observed the wreckage as he walked on Omaha Beach. "Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over those bitter sands," Ernie told his readers. "After it was over it seemed to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all." Ernie stayed in France for two more months until he again reached his breaking point. The 43-year-old suffered from the stress of living near the front lines, but also from seeing so many young men killed and maimed.