On Being Ready For War

A year and a half after we invaded Iraq, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was asked by a soldier why troops have to poke through dumpsters to find parts for their equipment. "We go to war with the army we have, not the army we wish we had," Rumsfeld replied. 

Six months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the US Navy with a force of seven aircraft carriers against a Japanese fleet of ten carriers, had halted the Japanese advance toward Australia, bombed Tokyo,  attacked the Gilberts, the Marshalls, Marcus Island, Tulagi, Lae and Salamaua and sunk five Japanese carriers. In doing this, the Army and Navy used the forces they started with. The US lost one carrier at Coral Sea and another at Midway. 

A year later, the US Navy had added seven new carriers to the force (though they lost two carriers in the Solomons), replaced the obsolescent Douglas Devastator torpedo planes with the much more powerful TBF Avenger, fixed the troubling problems with the Mark 14 torpedo, replaced the Grumman Wildcat with the Grumman Hellcat, kicked Japan off of Guadalcanal and sank another Japanese carrier.  

In the meantime, the navy had developed a proximity fused projectile for its 5"/38 caliber guns, shooting down the first Japanese aircraft in January 1943. For the rest of the war, we continued making improvements in equipment, training and organization. 

Did we have deficiencies at the beginning of the war? You bet!  

But our forces were ready to do what needed to be done. 

It took them three years and eight months to win that war. 

Some say the United States wasn't ready for war in 1941. 

Balderdash!