The Battle of Midway was truly the most decisive war in the Pacific which turned the tide against the Japanese for the first time since their attack on Pearl Harbor the year before, the war saw a lot of action at sea of vast proportions, one ensign George Gay really ended up right in the middle of it all seeing some key events from the Battle of Midway.
Launching an attack on Japanese carriers with TBD Devastator torpedo bombers without a fighter escort the entire squadron was doomed with near ultimate failure, gunned from the sky George managed to fly his attack on the Japanese aircraft Kaga, flying at low level for a split second he recalled thoughts of flying his own kamikaze raid on the carrier deck, later stating:
"It's when a fellow is just gone and knows it, it is just crash into the ship or crash into the sea, and you have enough control to do a little bit more damage, why you crash into the ship."
Gunned down by five Zeroes he avoided being strafed in the water and while drifting helplessly on his back he witnessed the sinking of three Japanese aircraft carriers by US Dauntless dive bombers.
He was lucky to be rescued after surviving the doomed raid and the subsequent 30 hours of destruction that took place around him.
Admiral Yamamoto once said that "you cannot invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
This rings through to be entirely true today, America has a military bigger than any of their Allies or their enemies and could take on a rather large war economy and fight multiple wars at any one time,
Following discussions on IMdB and one or two on my own posts, the scenarios most people paint are ones of which would be a sea borne invasion by the Peoples Republic of China, a Red Dawn type large troop invasion right across the Pacific, the writer of this comment put in a lot of thought into this scenario, but the truth is since the end of World War II the United States has managed to triumph a military buffer far beyond it's border against other potential superpowers, for example the United States Navy has controlled most of the Pacific Ocean for nearly half a century now.
It is the most modern in the world with a variety of attack submarines, ballistic missile submarines, a single one of their 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers can hold 90 fixed wing aircraft, are about a mile in a length and have a 20 storey infrastructure and a crew of 6,000, and has more air power than most aggressor states have in their entire inventory!
So with these giant machines 'o war patrolling far beyond the American coastlines in the oceans of the world I doubt a force large enough would manage to breach these defences, and even if they did the United States Air Force is big enough to deter any threat that would in turn fighting a war far from home, and apart from that even if the front line F-15's, F-16's, F-18's and F-22's (* sigh) fighters were outmatched there are hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of older fighters lying in the hot air of the Nevada Desert which could be readied and flyable once again in as little as eight days in case the United States come under such an unlikely threat.
I know I have been focusing mostly up to this stage on air and sea power, the United States Army has some 1,473,900 active troops along with some 200,000 Marines, plenty to defend it's ground when organized properly and very well up there with the largest standing armies in the world.
Infiltration is probably the most plausible thing that could bring down or cripple the United States, the failure to respond to a natural disaster in New Orleans in 2005 and responding by sending in armed soldiers to take peoples guns could in one sense show a serious flaw in the way things between the government and the people are run in America, but this is one eventuality the government is surprisingly well prepared for:
There are some 600 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camps spread all across the United States, they are guarded 24/7, but are currently are empty of prisoners, yet fully staffed and ready to receive prisoners if martial law is ordered from the high command, another reason for their existence is in case of some mass exodus of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border, which would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention in these camps.
Other related Executive Orders worth noting (from past and present) I have listed below:
Executive Order 10990 Allows the government to take control over all modes of transportation, highways, and seaports.
Executive Order 10995 Allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
Executive Order 10997 Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
Executive Order 10998 Allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
Executive Order 10999 Allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.
Executive Order 11000 Allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
Executive Order 11003 Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
Executive Order 11005 Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways (notable pieces of infrastructure that could help defend against an invading force) and public storage facilities.
Executive Order 11051 Specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
Executive Order 11310 Grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
They seem to be prepared for it all, however the precision and carrying out of what they are unlawfully authorized to do could have it's initial human error, that being said it is almost impossible in today's militaristic climate to invade North America!
So the new Red Dawn in my mind is going to be a bit of a stretch if they go down the Chinese east invades west in a mass troop deployment manner like in the 1984 original which I also had problems with but nevertheless enjoyed!
* The American super carriers (particularly the Nimitz class) are most definitely an offensive weapon, the geography of the US ensures that a smaller more strategically based Navy could defend their territory (including Hawaii) instead of their current Navy that protects all of their global interests and are also used as a show of power against America's enemies and potential enemies!
We all know the story that is World War II, but one would have to wonder with close inspection that in the Pacific War if the Americans were the real barbarians, I know that battleship row in Pearl Harbor was attacked but in fairness the Japanese hadn't intended for a very high casualty rate, and when Admiral Yamamoto stated he feared he had awoken a sleeping giant I doubt even he expected the war to go so badly for his side.
The Doolittle Raid in May of 1942 which saw 15 B-25's launched from the USS Hornet bombing military and industrial targets in Tokyo and Yokohama killing about 50 people, it was early on symbolized that the US could hit anywhere they wanted to in Japan and they were going to exploit that fact later on in the war.
The Japanese public had seen nothing yet.
After several vital IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) aircraft carriers were destroyed in the Pacific in the Battle of Coral Sea and Midway in 1942 the US begun to force the Japanese to retreat eventually having them hold up on their main islands while supporting Chinese forces fighting the invading Japanese in Nationalist China, the island hopping then begun.
The Japanese eager to hold their home islands had built up main lines of defence on several smaller islands (such as the famous battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa).
These massive battles saw thousands of casualties on both sides and truly horrific acts of war such as Japanese A6M Zeroes flying Kamikaze (divine wind) raids against US ships and Japanese civilians living on the outer islands killing themselves with hand grenades or throwing themselves along with their children off cliffs believing the American barbarians as they were described in Japanese propaganda would murder their families.
Most of the young and able men were sent to such islands to die in their thousands and on the mainland women, children and older men were urged to learn martial arts to defend themselves because of the shortage of guns thanks to the US naval embargo on mainland Japan.
As islands closer to the mainland were captured they were used as bases for US bombers such as the new B-29 which could go at a higher altitude than Japanese interceptors, this however also meant that the accuracy of the bombs hitting their target wasn't very good, keeping this in mind a group of B-29's flying low and using incendiary bombs firebombed 51% of Tokyo, this burned to death 100,000 civilians in one night!
Tokyo was a wooden city and completely burned, throughout May up until August 1945 the US continued to fire bomb Japanese cities in this way killing tens of thousands of civilians, examples of cities destroyed using incendiary bombs include:
99.0% of Chattanooga 85.2% of Tokushima 69.6% of Gifu 68.9% of Okayama 67.5% of Takamatsu 66.1% of Shizuoka 65.0% of Hachioji 63.9% of Imabari 63.4% of Kagoshima 58.0% of Yokohama 56.7% of Isezaki 56.0% of Ichinomiya 55.7% of Kobe 50.0% of Wakayama 48.3% of Tokuyama
The list goes on, it seemed nowhere was safe, the only cities that barely scathed were Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were to be completely leveled by the worlds first two and only two nuclear bombs used on live people, killing over 60,000 people in each case and poisoning thousands across Japan finally brought them to surrender after their whole country had been destroyed!
Now I don't think that's proportional to the attack on US naval warships at (at the time) territory of Hawaii which was a gesture to Japans actions in Nationalist China, the Japanese leadership at the time knew there would be consequences but they doubted they would have been as bad as to affect every Japanese man, woman and child!
