and i don't know what else to do. >> more from the atlantic at 8:00.e 9:00, president obama's trip to the region as well as from our on the recovery effort. hurricane katrina anniversary coverage all the >> up next, norman friedman how wargaming or military strategy colleges at the naval contribute it to success during world war ii. he is an author for the naval college's "proceedings" magazine. the institute for the study of strategy and politics hosted this hour-long event.

i'm sure friedman, as you all know, is an extremely prolific naval author. he has done untold damage to my bank account. he is going to talk about the process of wargaming between the two wars and how that pacific war.or the dr. friedman: thank you. thank you for having me. thank you for coming. newport interested in -- i add been interested in newport for many years, but i research onng some wargaming. not recommend that to anyone who does not have a lot of time and a good stomach. .ou learn a lot

i don't think you would learn the same things if you don't go through them, frankly. what you learn is newport is not what you thought it was. at we are inclined to think of the big schools as a way of educating officers. and newport, for most of the interwar. function just as much as a kind of lab for the navy. there was an aspect of a high-rankingu had officers, already a high-ranking who went there. there was one case i had, i think there were several, where there was a rear admiral. this was a guy from the fleet, have a lot of experience with aircraft. he was a very senior person. i don't think he was alone. ,o, when you look at the gaming for a significant part of that period, you are looking at what

people thought the future might be like. that gets kind of interesting. because it's also about the basis of american planning. it would be stupid of me to tell you a war in the pacific would only.aval war it was always imagined as a joint war. however, the prerequisite of army end was getting across the pacific. if you are a historian of the navy -- [bing] well, let's try this. the question -- how do you go from something that looks like that to something that looks like that in less than a decade? actually, i have been cheating, probably looks like the best navy in the world. dominant themehe

of three u.s. navy at the time. it starts like this. it inns up like this. as you may imagine, we have the battleship in tokyo bay. the thing that we really cared about, it was fragile, but we had to stay outside where it was safer. , whichyou get an navy has a powerful, but limited naval air arm, to understand what it can do with that? that's not a trivial matter. the way you try to figure out take a special is you look at history. you may know i spent a lot of time at british files, too. the royal navy is the closest to very although there are distinct differences -- and they did not get it. it's quite obvious they did not get it. for example in april 1944, the british look to what the postwar

navy but to look like. they did not look at this little financial issue that might be a controlling factor. goodare feeling pretty about themselves. the first line of the report is the battleship is the backbone of the fleet. april 1944, you might not quite see it that way. [laughter] dr. friedman: it may have something to do with this -- this is also a cheat this is the 1950's. it's a typical wargaming scene. gaming was the only mechanism we how it wouldring look. you would have to script it. you would really hate to put on a problem where one side did not

find the other. i'm not talking about cheating. i'm not talking about the games people play where no one gets sunk because it is embarrassing or something like that. what i'm saying, there would be a limited set of responsibilities. you're looking at what things full-size. you really do not simulate on paper or a game board. fightr, if you want to world war ii in 1942, you don't fight it in the western pacific. unfortunately, people talked about the way these wargames were scripted, and there was a tod deal of publicity given -- well, are you fighting the japanese, and how would you do it? there was a very good captain named holston, who wrote a book about war problems and wargames in which he used to work aims to

illustrate what would happen in a real war. that is why people who run governments do not like wargames. they look a little too realistic. on the other hand, and here, where people have the sense to shut up, you can do anything. they could do all sorts of things. think as ahing is, i lab, it was more important than anything else. this is true up to about 1934, 1935. i will say something about that at the end. it was a way of stimulating war. they took the simulation very, very seriously. they revise the rules of the games every year to make the simulation better. problems toll scale see whether these simulations made sense. , you have thing was to educate officers. how do you know what i war is going to be like, essentially -- especially because the technology will not be the same? by the way, you heading maybe

which thought it was hot stuff before 1917, and when it was integrated with the british, it was -- oh, my god. this is not kansas anymore, toto. we are toast. how do you become a modern navy? that is an education issue. the war college had a special twist, trying to teach you to think through decisions in a formal way. that does not sound like a big deal. it is. part of the decision-making process is you had to think through what the other side would do. that sounds obvious, but i assure you most people do not bother. if you read british records you how little they understand anywhere else. shocked is to minimal a word. if you look at the way that they treat people in negotiations, what they thought they would do -- ouch.

we try to be smarter than that. the of the way we tried to smarter was to tell the officers constantly you are dealing with an enemy that is as smart as you are. you know all of that stuff about how the japanese are inferior and stupid and crazy -- none. what you see occasionally is they are fanatically brave. that's about it. far as going to what the other side would do was a process of listing strength and weaknesses. a nationalas opponent to that. you do see the comment very often, it's two years into the war, the american public is getting sick of nothing happening, you are a commander in the pacific. move it or else. i know you're not ready yet. tough. that's very common in these scenarios. later, you find a lot of general officers, particularly air officers who have not been to

newport who regard that as a clumsy, stupid way of thinking. not all wargaming is the same. the royal navy did some gaming. it was not the same as ours. i don't think it did them a whole lot a good -- are good. i'mnot telling you -- telling you there is a particular way. the idea was you could only learn by doing. if you look through the war college records, i would that does itybody else who looks through the lectures. there are a lot of lectures on very interesting subjects. they are exactly what you want. i have copied the hell of a lot of them -- a hell of a lot of them. if i had my druthers, i would copy everyone i could find. but that was probably not what people learned. what they learned they learned

from actually doing it. if you are trained in the sciences, for example, you will have the horrible experience, you read some text, you really think you know what you're reading, and then someone makes you do problems. out. --ouch. that's a personal ouch. i was in the physics racket. now what are you looking for interwar? the single biggest change in the navy's interwar is airplanes. i don't see how you can get out of that. the world war to i navy, you see bits of everything else. you see bits of aircraft, but they are peanuts. what will airplanes mean? what when they do? and they will probably be a whole lot more effective in five years then they will now. the second thing with the u.s. navy -- the pacific as a whole different ocean.

your of seen it already. it's a lot bigger. that means you can get lost. that means scouting is a whole different business. people learn to fight along longer ranges. there are questions about the implications of what that may be. the least implication, if you are going to fight long range, you have to have the air spotting. you can't kill anything with airplanes. you have to maintain some air control over a battle. or find some better way to do it. you can increase survivability. people do learn to serve underwater hits. if you get to port, you can't be fixed -- you will swiftly no longer be a ship. you will be in monuments -- and monument on the bottom. that comes up by the way. that's not a throwaway line. submarines, you get more

long-range subs. and in this case, that role is usually scouting. the question is what is the future of suffering where fair -- warfare, and contrary to some reports, we thought about that quite a bit. latecomerology is a for us. you do not see as much of it, although you certainly see a lot of submarines sunk in these games. now the games give you a sense of what a war is going to be like. are prediction. they're obviously not a simple prediction. you would not want to bet your life the game i played last week in newport will tell me exactly what will happen in five years in the western pacific. you'd have to be raising. -- you have to be crazy. but if you take a lot of these games together, most of the things you see in the pacific turn up. for example, you have often were a verylomons

nasty surprise for us, because we never thought about night operations or torpedoes or just cruisers against cruisers. i assure you all three of those turn up a lot. the numbers turn up. you can't fire a lot of stuff piece mail, but in a typical battle, you might see 500 torpedoes. by the way, very few of them hit . the wastage of airplanes is unbelievable. , in a very short operation, you lose 60% to 70% of the airplanes you start with. that's a common thing. norm isay, there is a wastage of ships. the only real surprise -- and no one seemed to realize this -- the japanese did not do campaign gaming like we did. so, they did not get the sense of wastage. if you're going to lose 60% or

, you have toilots have a machine that turns out pilots, right? that's the most obvious thing. you might not be able to replace the ships -- one of the comments before the war, you do realize you can't build ships fast enough. whatever you have is what you're going to fight with. the anonymously that wins the war is built under appropriations in 1940, not 1942. plus we didn't have any idea of how fast we could build stuff. we were very good. asleep dide all the not realize they were going to have to replace a lot of pilot -- the japanese obviously did not realize they're going to have to replace a lot of pilots. they get new ones. everyone gets new pilots. they are low ranking officers. they get shot.

we did not understand what the turkey shoot was. when we shot down the japanese naval air arm in the philippine sea in june 1944, our pilots were very disappointed. they thought they had not done that much. shot down these planes, they defended their own carriers. if you read morrison, who may not be deeply insightful, but certainly had people talking to the people on the spot, you get that sense of disappointment. to me, that is the big surprise. because once the japanese run pilots, the, cause the kamikazes-- are next. how is gaming done? means ofe primary

instruction. i think there would be as many as 14 games at year. aboutly there would be eight. junior andd -- senior classes participated in a simulated pacific war. one of the funnier things i found at newport was a speech by the president at the war college. we had just changed the pacific strategy and the new big game reflected the change, but the change was secret. --h, it was the real trap the real strategy. this was the island by island stuff. strategic and tactical games were often related. very often one fed into another. very dynamicery, president of the war college named admiral landing, eris

lanning. he was a student, and it occurred to him lessons learned should be preserved and kept as a record. the then president really set up modern war college -- was impressed enough to make him head of tactics. you find out about each game that he sees, or at least each major game, talking about them in considerable detail. this is a really good thing. the things he notices and up in real life. the biggest is there is a game in which they find you can defend your carrier, if you have enough fighters, and whoever is of the american fighters makes a special effort to refuel them. was a maner, i think,

named reeves. if not, reeves was certainly engaged in this game and became head of tactics after landing. that is how we learn to operate at very high capacity. that alone would make the effort worth the price of admission. lanning goes away into the aset, and then he comes back president. he's very impressed by the fact that people do find the games and the lessons interesting. so, he decides to institutionalize it. research headed by a captain. he had a mixed career. he had been a gunnery man. he had run afoul of the world war i fleet commander. him to get out of the navy. he fought back. he was a very outspoken fellow

for us. significant he retires in 1936 and is not replaced. rap936, no one gives a about lessons from gaming. as 1934.as early the war college was moved from where it was in two part of the navy school system. which tells you it's as good as the pg school, big deal. that doesn't have to do with what happens to you if you go there. it means it does not matter anymore to the decision-makers. to some extent it does not matter to the war plans division people. war divisionn the files, you will find a lot of people. for a while, going through the war college was a prerequisite for working assignments.

after about 1936 or 1938, they go south into the indian city. not means developments longer really resonate through the system. example, yous, for do not find a lot of discussion about what happens, can we help the chinese? you don't find a lot of realism about what is going to happen if the germans take over all of the colonial powers of europe? will the japanese suddenly get frisky, as they did? so, after 1936, and probably earlier than that, you no longer see the same kinds of effects. i'm really talking about an earlier way of thinking, and i apologize for that. it would be utter if i was 1945, looking

know -- we knew ask. -- we knew x. what did we know? you can get a lot to clever when you make rules. the war college got terribly good at estimating ship survivability. theonce you know how badly ship will be shut up, you can talk about the tactics to keep you in business. that happened mainly with gunnery. at certain ranges, you are or are not vulnerable and they would talk about how you would rightto stay at the ranges. -- if youone point don't happen to know about the other guy's armor, and you don't happen to know about how his

shells perform, mainly because you do not have really good intelligence -- and of that to tell you intelligence was bad -- you might make the wrong guesses as to these numbers. and this officer pointed out the numbers were really dependent on what you knew. , they never allowed for lucky hits, but a lot of them were spectacular disasters. they were lucky hits. magazine hits, things like that. the hood did explode after she got one shot. interesting case of vulnerability that has enormous consequences. we think that in aircraft carrier can be disabled if you put a bomb through the flight deck. this is not really a deep comment. but if the carrier flight deck

is made of steel, it's disabled until he gets home and gets fixed. for all practical purposes for at least several weeks, it's out of business. you might try to operate the other end of the flight deck, and we certainly tried to, but that is one more bomb. that doesn't say you sink a carrier easily. i used to think we thought we could. no, they assume, if it's probably handled, it will float, but you won't be able to keep fighting. flight deckf the was a lot flimsier, you could fix it while you were in operation. there is a reason that are carriers stated action when it mattered in the south pacific. that is the reason. now i'm not sure that was thought up because of this problem, but certainly the war college recognized it and found it in their rules after a while. that is the big difference between us and others. at the coralns is,

sea, we lose the lexington due to a gasoline explosion. that would not have been expected. the japanese go home. don't fight at midway. that is what you expect. a limited we put number of weapons and two for japanese carriers. it tells you -- it was amazing that they sank. if you want to believe the japanese were not really good at what they did, that is some evidence. the game rules, actually the --iness about the shell fire am i doing really badly? no. ok, ok. [laughter] simms tried to

prepare the war college by sending a note to the secretary of the navy, proving using these rules that the british battle line outclassed us. and what this officer pointed out much later, if you had a more realistic set of figures for the main british gun, the relationship reversed. ok -- how do you think about a war? the first thing that happens when your gaming it is you start thinking about how it ends. you have to think about how you are going to win and then you want to get to that point. that does not sound that impressive, but i can think of a number of recent examples where having thought of that might have been extremely helpful. [laughter] dr. friedman: they taught you that the endgame matters.

if you were japanese, the thing that should have detergent to if you had done this effort, -- you ifhould have deterred you had done this effort, what is your endgame against us? what do you do to get us to put our hands up? stop up the somehow matériel, then it's over. the planners pointed out the japanese government might not be .o rationalized i remember reading a 1929 version of work plan orange, the joint version, in which they say, oh, well, if they don't get the message, we will burn them down with bombing. see how far back that goes? whenever we talked the war

about japan, we mirror image. we assume they think like us. there is no real political aboutt to the way we talk -- know what is rational. real life is not rational. between the wars, there is a very strong sense everywhere that war and other national policies dictated by economics -- is a very marxist way of looking at things, at life -- and the idea of our political movements, fanaticism, , thoseons with our things do not figure in these discussions. that's a veryt, cautionary story about how you think of international affairs. no one in the war college system seems to have caught on to that.

they did get a lot of lectures about foreign affairs, but ideological movements, it didn't seem to have much traction. theyssumption was that wanted to dominate the far east, and is not a bad approximation of japanese thinking area the idea that they would know after other colonial powers at the same time, you don't see much off. the only place you see it is a discussion of the dutch east and is. the dutch east indies are resisting and make a secret deal with us to come into the war to show up at the right time. discussion ofmuch the british except for one fascinating thing. in 1932, there's a big game in which the united states fights the british, a blue-red game, and a transoceanic game. i think it is then often that makes two comments. one is that this is a really

expensive war. unless the u.s. public is really hot to play, good luck. it will not fly. number two, he says, but let's be serious. do you realize how many -- c ruises you need you cannot possibly have? if you are going to fight japan, there is only one way to do it, get allied with the british, stop playing games, start play war games in which they are our allies. he repeats the same thing almost word for word after a blue-orange game. nothing happens. 1932. you cannot talk like this. in 1938, after the war college has lost its power, there is a fascinating paper. paper written like a setup for a wargame which is why it was part of that system. in this paper, the setup is that the u.s. fleet is based in singapore. and part of its mission, besides

defending -- besides defeating japan. it is not defending the philippines. that is incidental. that is another important thing you learned. besides the mission of just defeating them, you have got to indies,the dutch east singapore, and malaysia. as far as china goes, it would be nice but you cannot possibly defend it, so do not bother. where that went, but i cannot mention it because it is to -- i can't not mention it because it is too interesting. there was always this stuff you never see any political or cultural components, never, e ver, ever. they are very careful not to get smart about that. incidentally, also, if you want to see a contrast with the british, guess what? what's a war like? probably the japanese groep the philippines to start mainly

because the philippines -- they thwart lines of munication. they would be stupid not to do it. there were a couple of wargames in which they failed to do it, because they were deeply engaged in china. there are those who said that is what we did. we expected to lose manila bay. eventually we expected to lose the philippines. when the warplane change from going straight to the philippines to step-by-step army officers of the war college that, you morons, we have always known we cannot hold the philippines. the thing that probably propelled us over the edge is a pair of war games. there is one in which the fleet is in the pacific and it has to keep going. the usual japanese strategy in these wargames is attrition. oh, by the way, most of what the japanese do during the war in the way of tactics shows up in this stuff. weird cultural

proclivities. it is what you would do if you look at these things and a normal way. at any rate, there is a battle, and the japanese main fleet -- i do not even think that's involved. edoes do a remarkably good job. at the end of the battle, we are nominally superior but a lot of our major warships have been torpedoed and are barely surviving. it's sort of obvious that even if they get to someplace in the philippines with our repair facilities, they are dead. so, the next year, to show that we can keep playing, we start the game again as though they have all been repaired. and it is a new game involving the fleet trying to protect its temporary base and also protect convoys coming in. that one's disaster. we lose the base. one of the convoys survives, but so what? van orkin right after this one,

look, it was a real stretch that anything got repaired before the next game. the last one was called as a typhoon came in. do you really think these damaged ships ra all goi -- are all going to survive? ha ha. you had better start thinking about other ways to play this war. now, this game is unusual because the president of the war college sent a copy to warplanes with his own letter saying "read this thing." so, for my money, that made him realize that perhaps going straight into the philippines was not a real hot idea. that is a major influence by a wargame. orkin must've made himself thoroughly unpopular because he was privately willing to say what he meant. no i can see that if he was

longer protected by the war , that thoseident who have not appreciated reading these things would remember clearly. but i have no evidence of that. these are the things you see. there are no allies except for the dutch east indies. they are our friends. the us try is one not attack us when we go past australia. but -- that australians will not pastk us becausw when we go australia. scouting. there is a game in which one side fails to find the other. you can only have disasters like that in games if you do a lot of games. these were not scripted games. these were very good. loss of attrition. we figured out that is what the japanese would do to us.

the waste -- i cannot tell you how important that was. the flight deck is this mattered, and it was assumed that anybody with any sense would do what the japanese did which was a lot of night attacks and lots of torpedoes. we had no idea how good the torpedoes were. we had no idea how much they had learned about night operations. the one big failure i could think up as a way of learning's full scale is because we did not want to kill a lot of people, we did not simulate night operations. we did not realize how tricky they were. we acted like they were easy and you could do it in daytime. no, it is not. typical scenarios. the surprise attack was interesting. it is one that might resonate with you. we find out that their mobilizing, but they are not saying anything. we know what they want to do, but you cannot do anything first. if you let them land in the

philippines, they have already got a considerable leg up. so what you really want to do is force them some kind of overt act when they would not like to do it, which allows you then to go after whatever you can see and kill it. the question is, how do you define the overt act? how do you make it resonate with the public, because of the public does not believe it, why bother? you may know that in 1941, the asiatic fleet commissioned some small craft to cruise around the philippines. the hope being that they encounter a japanese invasion force before it showed up at manila. act realized that the overt would be sinking one of them. now, whether that would have energized people, i don't know. pearl harbor, we

announce there was a defensive zone around the base. if you penetrate the defensive zone, it is an act of war. but when it -- what happened, we did not catch on. if you're dumb, you deserve what happens to you. strategic scouting was a big thing. i mentioned the through ticket to manila being killed. convoy action -- you see convoys mostly against surface attack, but convoy is taken seriously. there are a lot of convoy scenarios. early on, you have a scenario in which the japanese attack why at ihe start -- attack hawai with their fleet. not a small thing. this is the very beginning of the war. the fortifications are not complete. later, they are complete, so it is not an easy thing to take over hawaii. also a alos --

suggestive one where the japanese fleet is visiting south america, and we get the word that what they are really intending to do during their nice exercise is bomb the panama canal. and that's the only game that ends up as a fleet problem. goingwe decide that straight to the philippines is probably not on, we switch to what is called a step-by-step across the pacific, which is the central pacific war. and every time you see a game, you see a separate, related game where this atolls are either seized or defended. and there is a separate cells, marines and army on both sides. that turns out to be more elaborate discussion in the game itself. are attacks on japanese trade as raids intended to divert their fleets while we do something nasty of our own. in those discussions, you get,

or instances of unrestricted submarine warfare. in one case, we try and trade attacks with summaries and the guy gets sunk. then someone else does it successfully, shoot on sight, unrestricted. he thinks the british tanker, and the british really go ballistic. then in another game, he does that and he gets his hand rapped. game in that series, there were no submarines. it is obvious people are thinking about this. this is after the war college cease to have advisory war. why was it worth the trouble? first, before all the stuff, what you learn is how to fight a war with lots of airplanes. you do not think that is important? that is only did. that's why guys who were not aviators understood what carriers were. how else would they learn?

you might learn a little bit in a fleet problem, seeing a lot of planes overhead in hearing what they dead, but that would not really get to you. that- what they did, but would not really get to you. but if you happened to use the carrier and you found out the consequences, boy, you would learn a lot. you want something that justify the money spent at the war college? i just told you what it was. other things. well, we.change the strategy to one that works. once tried the other way, pearl harbor happen, we were not going to do it the other way, but we learned how to win the pacific war. that is kind of forced the trouble. we learned that you had to have a mobile repair facility. that sounds kind of unglamorous, but once you realize there is going to be a hell of a lot of underwater damage, and un can repaired in the

forward error, -- we learned to do that. if you look at it after world war ii, you look at that o alphabet soup, a lot of those are repair ships. they did not even list the dry docks. you can see lots of photos of them in action. the rapid deck cycle, that is the thing i talked to about withh ow fa - - how fast you can land the plane's back on. at midway when we have three carriers, we have about as many aircraft on board as the japanese have. by the way, they work better. the need to repair fast, that is a very big thing. and when people laugh about how flight decksflimsy but the british had these armored flight decks, yeah, but if you destroyed one of those armored flight decks, it goes to a shipyard. 1942, you could destroy

their armored flight deck, possibly because in part, their idea of the size of dive bombs is pathetic. the circular formations. you say, but that is obvious. well, if you look at the royal navy, it was not obvious to them. and as a result of not having circular formations, their carriers had to come out of formation to launch airplanes. guess what happens when you quit your formations of destroys protecting you from subs? [blows rasberry[ ] that is hms eagle. germanrious is sunk by battle cruisers. we understood that carriers are fragile and valuable. you have to cover them against surface attack. hallseyside of that is

takes his battleships north when he goes after the japanese carriers. no one says it but it was obvious to him. you have carriers, they are valuable. do not risk them. you use them to blow things up, but you cover them with surface ships. i mean, things that can shoot back against japanese battleships. when you say it that way, halsey comes off a whole lot better. i did not think i would be saying that before. others? well, we eliminated the two peters on -- the torpedoes on our cruisers after the analyses, but after we went down the -- they went down the tubes, we brought them back. we figured out that we needed large cruisers. i know that cruisers do not sound like much in world war ii terms, but in the inter-war navy they are a big deal.

british didthe not get the same message, and because they never asked what anyone else would think, they were really surprised when other countries did not do what they did. what a shock. what did you learn? all kinds of crazy ways to try to get more airplanes. but the one that you might notice is a hell of a lot of seaplanes, because they were the things that were not limited by treaty. boy, do you see seaplanes in the u.s. navy. and you remember, these things were bombers. they were not just patrol planes. that is why it is a pby. it was a lousy bomber. the sense that you cannot build fast. so, what you going to do? and there is a lot of talk about that. this is just for the contrast. navy did some

gaming. they had two naval colleges. one was -- newport. the other was a junior officers course. the tactical people that a lot of gaming, but the gaming meant that you played standard british tactics against an opposition, lines their cleverer was "the opponent can do what he wants because who knows what the jap will do?" they do not seem to have learned much. this centerpiece of the school was a demonstration of jutlands, with modernhown technology. if you had a lot of airplanes at jutland, they would not look much like jutland. it would sort of look like a massacre. they did not do that. had exactly one

game that was a one-week game in which they simulated the main war plan, which was the far east war plan. there is no way that if you fight one game year, you are going to get any kind of honest results. y have to do a lot of themo. some of them are going to be really embarrassing. that's also an argument that it was really luck that newport was in the middle of nowhere, and it was not a lot of attention every day. you might think about that for now. this is nothing new. that's it. [laughter] this is not the same issues you have been looking at. i don't think they would ever have figured out the cultural differences that turned out to be rather important in the way the war ends. that's a serious problem with that kind of gaming. on the other hand, it did us a

lot of good. we really did rather well. and we did rather well because the people who did rather well generally had been through this particular mill. a very impressive story. started to work, i thought the war college was important almost up to the beginning of the war. i thought it lost a lot of its power because the fleet expanded rapidly in the 1930's and the best people went to the fleet. you do not have time to sit in newport for a year. but as i think more about the story of advice versus do we really care, i think they were shocked because someone did not like the advice at all. that often happens to advisors. i have been in the advice business forever. i have not been shot at, but if i knew everybody's secret thoughts -- toocally, if you understand

much the people do not like, they do not like it. i think, also, that you see a push away from naval air about the time the war college goes down. new's when you get the battleships but you do not get many more carriers. there's a period when we would have been free to buy more carriers and we didn't. i have a suspicion that -- had some to do with that. i do not think i can prove it or anybody else can. i still think, even with that, we were damn good naval air in 1941. that is how we did well in world war ii. i do not think anybody else understood these issues. period. the point of and this was, how would you think now? i think it is still relevant. thank you. [applause]

>> norman -- i spent two days a week. at the center for naval analysis looking at the current chinese maritime -- what they are doing. and i really wish that we could play a tape of this to the discussants there, because the is simply-- resonance incredible. how we are trying to think about the chinese and how they think about us. they seem to be making the same mistakes about us that the japanese did. history does not repeat but it sure as hell rhymes. problem is is that the style of decision-making a top did after -- adopted after world war ii is not the gaming style or decision-making. it is analytic. generally, it embodies a some just that turned out to be embarrassing later.

i don't know how to get out of that. >> there's one aspect -- a major theect on the demise of japanese merchant fleet, and that is the offensive mind warfare. to that come up in wargames? norman: not much. early on, they are very interested in using minds, dr ifting mines. that has been very popular in world war i. you don't see a lot of the because that goes with unrestricted warfare. we change the rules in 1941, a lot of this stuff in detail just goes away. so, no, it does not, much. ports and stuff like that, but it is not that kind of war. the assault on the merchant fleet is supposed to come out of the blockade, not out of sink on sight.

and the question is can you get to the point at which you could inflict a blockade? that is the endgame we are interested in. i do not know whether the war planners went further than that, but the thought was once you could strangle them, do it however you want. yeah? >> we had some intercepts of japanese naval exercises. how were those fed back to the war college? norman: they weren't. i got the feeling that was considered so secret that you could not play it. i'm remembering something specific you found for me, which was this amazing comment in a history of pre-war, where we find out the japanese figured out exactly what our war plan is and they are going to kill us. 0gd according to this opt 2 history, when they invade manchuria, hoover says, what do

we do? not a damn thing. we can't. i had thought that is why we changed the big war plan, but the dating is all wrong. that is what made me believe this was the 19 33rd. -- the 1933 thing. it is kind of incredible but i do not think the product was allowed to go any further. it was too scared. too sensitive. but yes, a very reasonable question, and the answer is -- uh-uh as fra ar as i can tell. they do not seem to have had a real grasp of different tactics or operations in any other navy. they are always near image like you would not believe. >> -- they were always mirror image. >> in terms of radical preparation, that is where the great fall down was? in nighthat happens is operations, both the british and the japanese learned how to do it. you do it by constructing a plot

before you go into action. the plot allows you to guess where the other guy's stuff i s. so, when you're in position, the lights go on. he's illuminated and you beat it. and part of the way you do it is since your plot is going to fall apart as soon as the other guy starts reacting, you have a few minutes to do your thing, and then you leave. way.apanese did it that if you read morrison, he l aughs at them for leaving. that is what you have got to do. we had no idea that was happening. i and that we had a fantasy that early rdar -- i think we had a fantasy that early radar soft problem. when that was an expedition to guadalcanal, he looked at the tbs log from helena, which had the decent set. it was obvious what messed it up was that this information was

being transmitted, and there was a time lag. you cannot afford that, boy. later, when everybody gets his own decent radar, it's a different world. well, i can easily imagine that since there is almost no discussion of the way plotting actually works,. no one thought about it it was something everyone took for granted. the problems of doing this kind of history is there a stuff that everyone knows, so no one mentions it. who would be domino to waste his time writing about it? as thet is as secret most ultrasecret stuff you can ever see. so part of your job as an historian is you have to guess what people all knew. well, how do you guests that? that is not easy. very often, reading novels is a better way of testing tha -- of guessing. sir? >> army war college was

conducted wargaming during the 1920's and 1930's -- such as the philippines. did the army and the navy schools interact with each other in any way, based upon your research? norman: yes, they did. there were joint games. 20's, there were expeditionary games which were joints, and they printed up by the army's press -- at leavenworth. >> it was. yeah, yeah. those strategic games were written and printed up in leavenworth. and later on, hh -- was the guy the navy sent out. he died of meningitis in 1935. he was their guy on the spot. norman: if you want to know about amphibious ideas of that era, he's a terrific way to learn. sorry. >> dr. freidman.

hornfisher in "neptune's inferno" talked about the exchange with an role -- when he trained at harvard. [indiscernible] were there any exchange programs where they came to the united states? norman: there was not an exchange program. it was naval attache. that is how we got to go around. yamamoto -- no, you do not -- want your students to watch you playing these kinds of games. it was not their business. >> because i was wondering,i in he talked inferno," about the japanese superiority in night fighting, like you were saying, but there were -- were there exchange programs or any anyr, what attaches studies intelligence or anything?

norman: no. no one was ever allowed in. as far as going to japan went, their security was terrific. were very good at making sure foreigners stayed out of business. if you think about russians -- and the russians worked really hard at it. you only see exchange programs later when the war college is no longer such a sensitive thing. look, if the war college is just ofollege and it's a nice way getting acquainted with foreigners, you can let them in. if it is a way to learn how to do youe next war, think you will let anybody in? our guys got to visit the british tactical school. the first foreigner to be allowed in. they allowed one of our guys to visit their war college in 1930.

under very controlled circumstances. if you don't have a lot of friends and allies in the world, they do not get special deals. we did not have a lot of friends and allies. if we had, all of these games would have read differently. >> ok, i think on that note, we will have another coffee break. then reconvene at 2:45. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook @c-span history. 20-year-oldq&a, hasege student kurt deon

been visiting the graves of u.s. presidents and vice presidents since he was nine and documenting his adventures on his websites. he talks about those visits and his interest in american history. >> the one great site that everybody had trouble getting to is the rockefeller gravesite. >> nelson rockefeller. >> how did you do it? >> we were able to get to it through what my father described as an act of god. my father walked on the perimeter and saw this tree had fallen. crushed the fence. he went in and saw nelson decidedler's grave, and he would have to get me there fairly quickly after that. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's q&a. >> the library of congress audiovisualus for conservation in culpeper, virginia, preserves access to the library's vast collection of