He was smart but also a dumbass at the same time.

He was killed by the P-38 Lightning.

He never said that though

It’s misattributed and was probably completely fabricated and no one actually said it

He was against prolonged war with the US because he knew about America’s industrial capacity since he went to school here

@Dr Badass PhD What’s bad about that? P-38s were long range interceptors. He had no idea that the Japanese Naval codes had been broken

P-38s were very good planes

Maybe it's the way I worded it but the Lightning was a great aircraft.

Yeah, it was definitely the wording

@Paul Z Yamamoto **did** say: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Because that was in his diary

The reason why the Lightning specifically was chosen is because it was the only US fighter that had the range at the time.

America didn't need to drop the bomb

we did

It was that, or a sea air and land invasion of mainland japan

Which would have easily seen 10x as many people dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1VdhQbfSTY

@ComradeCosmonaut Sometimes i can’t tell if you’re trolling or not

Fire bombings did more damage then the atomic bomb, the Russians were on there way and japan was already on the brink of surrender

> @ComradeCosmonaut Sometimes i can’t tell if you’re trolling or not
@Lyte little bit of both

Their pride wouldn't allow a surrender

They didn’t want Japan split in half like Germany

Unless we did something drastic

because that’s what the soviets intended

I mean they still haven’t given back some of the northern island chain

Where Japan really lost was at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

They lost everything after Midway wdym

They were on the defensive the rest of the war

What I mean is that they got roflstomped at those two battles in particular.

Which one was the Marianas Turkey shoot?

Midway was far more strategically important than Leyte Gulf or Philippine Sea

Philippine Sea

> Which one was the Marianas Turkey shoot?
@KumquatLord Philippine Sea

Ahh

They lost over 400 planes and the US lost 30. Thing was, we could afford those loses. They couldn't.

And yeah, midway was devastating because it killed their carrier fleet

It wasn’t the planes that hurt them

They had plenty of planes even during surrender

It was that they couldn’t train more pilots

> And yeah, midway was devastating because it killed their carrier fleet
@KumquatLord Philippine Sea was just the final nail in the coffin.

Leyte Gulf*