Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Part 8 of memoirs of a Japanese Destroyer Captain, He was an Imperial Japanese naval commander during the Pacific War and the author of the IJN manual on torpedo attack techniques, notable for his skill in torpedo warfare and night fighting. He was a survivor of more than one hundred sorties against the Allies and was known throughout Japan as the Unsinkable Captain. A hero to his countrymen, Captain exemplified the best in Japanese surface commanders: highly skilled, hard driving, and aggressive. Moreover, he maintained a code of honor worthy of his samurai grandfather. He was as free with praise for American courage and resourcefulness as he was critical of himself and his senior commanders. He was the only IJN destroyer captain at the start of World War 2 to survive the entire war Here is the link of the playlist kzread.info/head/PLGjbe3ikd0XEgpZaJTo25BGLPJDrer821 Link of Part 1 kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZYmXr9B8m6bHp7A.html Link of Part 2 kzread.info/dash/bejne/gXiqw7B6p5DWn5s.html Link of Part 3 kzread.info/dash/bejne/dYtmt86bpdmnl7w.html Link of Part 4 kzread.info/dash/bejne/fGR41MlxgMTUlqQ.html Link of Part 5 kzread.info/dash/bejne/qHeL2rSne725edI.html Link of Part 6 kzread.info/dash/bejne/lpyHr5h9frjMnMo.html Link of Part 7 kzread.info/dash/bejne/i3ysxcabhpyaeto.html

@leeanne3867

6 ай бұрын

Thanks brilliant work

@snafubar5491

6 ай бұрын

I read the book around 50 years ago. Thanks for posting this series. This Captain was impressive and has earned the respect he receives.

@covercalls88

5 ай бұрын

Ce

@sgt.grinch3299

5 ай бұрын

I’m enjoying this series.

As a USN vet a BIG THANK YOU for preserving these GEMS of real life during and a bit after WW-II. A very important Primary Source for historians as well as those of us interested!

This is excellent. Really enjoying hearing the other sides perspective of actions long familiar only from American accounts. Don’t mind at all that it is only audio. I appreciate that it is available on KZread. Can’t wait for the next episode. Thanks!

@WW2Tales

6 ай бұрын

Thank you so much sir for your kind words 🙏 ,we are going to upload the next part in an hour

I am learning so much from this very captivating series.

Fascinating to listen to these. I’ve been to the Japanese bunkers of Rabaul, dived on wrecks and shot down planes, and been to the battlegrounds of Guadalcanal. Ironically myself as a Marine veteran had a Japanese roommate on Guadalcanal. The Irony was lost on him .

I would love more destroyer crew stories. The scrappiness of the little ships crews are fascinating.

My father was in NZEF Div3 which saw active service on Vella so this is interesting reading for me

Listened to the entire account of this IJN Destroyer commander .. and one constant is evident. He can not stop blowing his own horn the entire length of dialog.

@doctordetroit4339

6 ай бұрын

Douglas MacArthur: hold my pipe.

@danielgaspari4347

6 ай бұрын

😂

@polarvortex3294

5 ай бұрын

You've gotta be little vain to write a book in the first place.

@danieparriott265

5 ай бұрын

Or... Angry about the General Incompetence surrounding you when you are putting your ass on the line, and se friends and shipmates killed in front of you .... ...and the Incompetent Leadership that made the decisions to get your friends and shipmates all corpsified sat on their asses for years talking about seeking "Decisive Battle" and never did that, until it was too late, and even then, they half assed it. @@polarvortex3294

@dankelly2147

4 ай бұрын

The perspective of a senior grade fleet Naval leader whose record was among the most successful of his rank and responsibilities is important. As both a ship’s captain whose battle record was exemplar and his time as a destroyer fleet commander, is sharing his impressions and critiques egoistical? Or does it reflect someone’s experience of command which, of course, reflects his biases? Show me the memoir of anyone, military or civilian, who is capable of writing his impressions of both enemy/competitor performance and a frank discussion of his senior commander/board’s performance. It will be biased by definition; however, taken from one who has had demonstrated successful command/leadership, that commentary is valuable. Real leadership in a military hierarchy is a lonely road, especially in hide bound bureaucracies such as the IJN command staffs at the next rungs up from his position. Then there’s the saga of Dougout Mac whose failing cost thousands of lives in the Pacific War and later Korea. One measure of this man’s success are the numbers of men he brought home alive versus most of his peers from the high stress of command in combat. In that regard, he was one of Japan’s best Show me any commanding officer without flaws. There are none. Show me flag rank officers whose courage in bucking the hierarchy successfully and their numbers are significantly lower in any navy, now or then, whose commitment to his men and the mission were as compelling. Faux humility is a failing. He explains the successes and major failures of both his nation’s navy and his own direct command performance. It’s from those perspectives that any aspiring command leader at any level deepens his/her knowledge of what has and hasn’t worked.

I like at the beginning the detail of the Amagiri having a bit of bow damage from hitting a PT boat - as in PT-109.

If you have an interest in a deeper perspective of the Pacific war, use these chronicles to understand more of the mistakes made to better understand the dynamic of the course of the war. If you need video, may I recommend The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War on KZread.

@tonybanke3560

3 ай бұрын

Yes, best podcast on KZread

The American torpedo accuracy was always good, but Vella Gulf was the first time the Mark-14 torpedoes worked.

@mencken8

6 ай бұрын

I believe if you read into the details of the battle, they worked because current USN torpedo doctrine was ignored. And it wasn’t that USN radar was superior to IJN radar, inasmuch as none of rhetoric Japanese destroyers were so equipped.

@danieparriott265

5 ай бұрын

The Mark 14 torpedo was used in US Submarines. The Mark 15 was used from surface ships. They were designed concurrently by the same Navy Officers at Navy Ordnance Bureau , and shared most of the same problems, most importantly the Mrk 6 Exploder .... which had multiple problems... but BuOrd could never know this, because they never did a live test. The US Submarine Force in Freemantle, Australia (under Admiral Charles Lockwood) did the first actual live testing in early 1942 and found the live warhead torpedoes ran an average of 10+ feet deeper than the dummy warhead "exercise" warhead tipped torpedoes ..... in Feb 1943, Lockwood replaced the ComSubPac Admiral English (killed in a plane crash in California in January) ... and he began further testing in response to complaints by his skippers of frequent premature detonations, frequent duds, and some low order detonations .... in August of 1943. Some sub skippers were deactivating the magnetic exploder on their torpedoes without authorization from mid-1943 on.... it's possible that the destroyer skippers were doctoring their fish in the same manner, but I think it unlikely that they were, as Lockwood didn't start his testing in Hawaii until the very end of August, weeks after Vella Gulf was over .... and the Navy made it a pretty serious crime to mess with their super-secret "wonder weapon".... Drachinifel has a really great video on the failures of the Mark 14 "Failure is like onions" ... and American torpedo accuracy wasn't any better (probably worse) than anyone else's in the first year of the war, and given that the Americans believed that all torpedoes had a similar (and SHORT) range, they tended not to use them early in an engagement ... that was a doctrine problem, not an equipment or training issue. The defeats early in Solomons campaign dealt to the Americans by the Japanese began to change that by 1943.

Love this channel!!! One suggestion. Maybe instead of just one still image for the duration of the episode, could you put up like half a dozen still images and just put them on a loop, kinda like a Screensaver? Happy new year everyone!!!

Tomeichi Hara - the kind of enemy we can respect.

🎉thank you thank you thank you! Happy new Year!

@erichughes284

6 ай бұрын

Happy new year

@WW2Tales

6 ай бұрын

@OliverClothesofff Sir you are always welcome 🙏💐 Happy new year to you and your family

@WW2Tales

6 ай бұрын

@erichughes284 Happy New Year Sir

@erichughes284

6 ай бұрын

@@WW2Tales Happy new year to you herr hauptman lol

@erichughes284

6 ай бұрын

Thank you for these wonderful informative unique stories .I love your AI and find the glitches mildly amusing but the voice soothing .

Excellent series. I really enjoy reading the Japanese perspectives. Thank you

@WW2Tales

6 ай бұрын

@ausdoug974 Sir thank you so so much for your kind support and another super thanks ,we are highly grateful and indebted to you💐🙏

@ausdoug974

6 ай бұрын

@@WW2Tales It is my great pleasure. Thank you for all the effort and attention which you put into your videos.

@WW2Tales

6 ай бұрын

@ausdoug974 Dear Sir words cannot express how much your support and kind words mean to us, You have our deepest thanks, May you always stay blessed 💐

Vella La Vella, a well known area in USN annals. Things will get much worse for the IJN at the night battle off Empress Augusta Bay later in 1943.

I read his book many years ago and enjoyed it. This series is an excellent refresher....Thanks

I love these stories, thank you.

I am struck by those who criticize inaccuracies in this telling. What we see here in any inaccuracies is what is known as "the fog of war." Any errors need to be forgiven, as such are seen in almost all the accounts of almost all commanders of almost all battles of almost all the wars. As an addendum to this history, the destroyer Shigure, having withdrawn with steering damage, was a survivor of the battle of Surigao Straight, which was a subset of the battle of Leyte Gulf Shigure was at that time under the command of a commander Niishino (i cannot say if Catain Hara was present at that battle, but I doubt his presence) and part of a force under the command of Admiral Nishimura when they were ambushed by the American force built around the battleships that were repaired and returned to service after the attack at Pearl Harbor. This was also the battle that finally claimed the cruser Mogami, a well known photo of which showed the horrific damage she received at the battle of Midway.

Love these narrations

@jwalbrig

6 ай бұрын

Interesting accounts. The English accent is definitely off-putting. .............

Fascinating story.

However Good maps are always welcome.

@peterlovett5841

6 ай бұрын

I usually have Google Earth open on another server to follow the action.

He was right doing the same thing three times in a row seems crazy sometimes the Japanese command was too rigid.

I love following along with your narration as I use Google Maps.

as long as they are honest, i enjoyed these stories

During the conference at the beginning this episode, the Japanese show a lack of crew resource management, where everyone’s ideas are entertained and considered. With input from everyone, a better strategy may be proposed and implemented.

@danh6720

6 ай бұрын

Well the first glimmers of CRM in aviation were sparking in and after WWII, and the first generation of CRM was more definitively laid out by a WWII veteran. It takes a lot to overcome that traditional inertia I suppose. And you put a few million people in repeated situations where CRM could serve them and some people will come up with those ideas, and one may even be able to implement them. But you are right. It was poor CRM, and the stress commanders talked about helps illustrate that. I’m very thankful to my CRM training. It’s freeing because it helps me think with more than one brain. It lets me give the people I might supervise the agency to act and means they are more effective. I would be in much worse shape if I had to take on the level of solo responsibility that commanders of the time did with hamstring resourcing.

"It was at that moment, when I was told that our 4 destroyers "would be like" 8 escorting destroyers that I knew I was truly F'd" 😅

(Excellent series narrator again. If AI, etc., a flawless advance.) Fine destroyer battles with details and decisions.

@danh6720

6 ай бұрын

It is definitely AI though a good one. You can hear it have issues with e after the first syllable and especially when figuring out if an e at the end of a word should be silent or not.

If this accounting is true-after all, it is given in hindsight- then Hara seems to have been an exemplary seaman and leader, whose only bar to higher rank was his outspokenness.

The ridge character of the Saumaria chain of command was an early assest ww2 but contributed to its later downfall.

Great insite got mehooked

These videos are fascinating. They also make me feel that the Japanese were not so different from us in their feelings, such as when his ship left the Solomon Islands area in another video, even when one considers their appalling conduct to prisoners and to the peoples of the land they conquered.

The American commander didn't have to chase you, because you were on the run.

This works better than rainfall on a metal roof for inducing sleep

Probably owns his life to the m14 torpedo.

@NovusDawn1

6 ай бұрын

Definitely the case, the Mk 14 was just dog shit in every sense of the word.

@Bob.W.

6 ай бұрын

When was the Mark 14 fixed?

@hoosieryank6731

6 ай бұрын

Torpedo problems were fixed by this point, I think, given the performance of the US weapons.

@jrt818

6 ай бұрын

@@Bob.W. They isolated all three major problems of the mark 14 by September '43 but the Navy still had a large supply and was still used during and after WW2.

@danieparriott265

5 ай бұрын

*Mark 15 torpedo. He owed his life to the fact that the Geniuses at Navy Ordnance Bureau never actually did any live tests on any of their torpedo designs, because that would have been expensive.

"It is bad to repeat a formula." Hence Japan's downfall

I use the Picture in Picture and play solitaire or sudoku.

Ship in the illustration has HAMAKAZE (written in katakana) on it's side.

Where did all the details come from.

@danieparriott265

5 ай бұрын

Tameichi Hara .... these videos are excerpts from his book. Look it up.

This doesn’t completely jive with any other account I’ve read on this battle. The only torpedoes fired by the Japanese were when this captain retired after the American divided force had decimated the convoy - not during the action.

@aztec0112

6 ай бұрын

The actual first hand account of the actual battle from the actual commander of actual ship in question doesn't jive with third hand accounts of historians....imagine my surprise!

@naturalobserver1322

6 ай бұрын

​@aztec01 the audio book has already been proven wrong in the sinking of a couple of American cruisers.

@danh6720

6 ай бұрын

@@aztec0112Eye witnesses have proven many times over to be unreliable. The historians you seem to belittle highly value first person, or primary source points of view. But often, as has actually been pointed out in this book itself, the story those primary sources tell can conflict quite a lot. And even beyond that, the author has obvious interests in telling the story, or even just remembering it in certain ways that may be beneficial to him.

@williamjost4526

5 ай бұрын

L​@@danh6720

Why show the IJN Hamasaki the entire episode while telling the story of IJN Shigure ? A google search finds photos of Shigeru quite easily.

The bot reading this should have a slight Japanese accent

Long Lance I can't remember if it was a 93 or a 95 has the record of 11,000 yards in that very area

@danieparriott265

5 ай бұрын

The Type 93 was the surface version ... and was used by the IJN Niizuki (or possibly Yunagi or Nagatsuki- all three fired a full salvo on a radar bearing) to sink the USS Strong (DD 467) from a distance of 11 NAUTICAL MILES .... that's well over 22,000 yards. The Type 95 was the shorter version used in IJN Submarines ... the Japanese Submarine I-19 fired a full spread at the aircraft carrier USS Wasp from approximately 1000 yards .... three hits turned the Wasp into a burning wreck .... and several minutes later, two of the 3 misses hit 2 ships in a separate Task force around the USS Hornet, which was approximately 5 nautical miles (10,000+ yards) from the Wasp task force... The USS O'brien (DD415) had her bow blown off, and the USS North Carolina (BB-55) had a large hole blown in her port side, knocking out turret 1..... Montemayor has a good video of the attack.

@AJdet-2

5 ай бұрын

@@danieparriott265 👍 thanks

Some of the comments have been colorful better or worse.

Is this a written account or just a dramatized yarn?

@WW2Tales

6 ай бұрын

@royrogers6356 Sir these are the memoirs of Japanese Destroyer Captain Tamechi Hara

Is the narrator Sting?

@erichughes284

6 ай бұрын

From the police😂

@Chatta-Ortega

6 ай бұрын

It does sound like him. It's AI.

@rorycraft5453

6 ай бұрын

Don’t stand too close to him or he will be watching you. 🤠

@erichughes284

6 ай бұрын

@@Chatta-Ortega I dont think he was serious imho .

@danieparriott265

5 ай бұрын

Every breath you take ....@@rorycraft5453

Is there a USA side to this series

@Bob.W.

6 ай бұрын

No, this is the memoirs of Captain Tameichi Hara.

@danh6720

6 ай бұрын

The US Naval Institute Press has a whole bunch of books that might be applicable, though I don’t know a specific analog.

Then dont listen..or try reading a book.

Americans learn.

This should not be a KZread. It’s strictly verbal and not video.

@watkinsrory

6 ай бұрын

Are you making the rules here?

@OliverClothesofff

6 ай бұрын

Shut up

@davidlj53

6 ай бұрын

Ignorant comment

@Steve9312028

6 ай бұрын

Time for you to go play a video game. The adults like learning about subjects that are too difficult for children to understand.

@liberteus

6 ай бұрын

Rather KZread should offer a version without video... Podcast format!

When he mentions in first minute that destroyers AMAGIRI "had her nose blunted by ramming a torpedo boat" - that was PT-109 of FUTURE U.S. PRESIDENT John F. Kennedy! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_torpedo_boat_PT-109 This is actually a fantastic series off the book "Japanese Destroyer Captain." His comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese vs the American war fleets should be studied and known by every student at Annapolis. For example, his dissection of the shortcomings of Yamamato's complex Midway operation, in particular how the diversionary aircraft carriers sent to the Aleutians should have been part of the Midway operation, instead of thousands of miles away on a wild goose chase. Yamamoto SHOULD have COMBINED the two air groups from the Shokaku and Zuikaku and included the later in the fleet steaming to Midway, but as ever Japanese cultural considerations got in the way of common sense. Speaking of which, Commander Hara (author) was AGHAST at Japan's military culture of BRUTALITY by NCOs towards low ranking soldiers and especially recruits, which violent brutality impaired training and literally wounded thousands of Japanese soldiers and sailors.