Jim Downey
speaker
621 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 13 Jul
Jim Downey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And lucky for him, the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet again for the second Washington Conference only two weeks or so after Midway.
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As we know from Episode 200, this meeting during the week of June 19, 1942, is mostly focused on opening a second front in Europe, which leads to the North Africa Campaign.
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Ernie is essentially told to make do with what he's got.
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No more troops will be allocated to the Pacific.
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But that just won't do.
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The volcanic-tempered Admiral is dead set on not losing the post-midway momentum and thanks to intel from Coast Watchers, that is, Allied observers effectively serving as spies on Japanese-occupied Pacific islands, the bold-if-boozy military genius already has a target in mind.
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See, word has it that, down in the South Pacific, more than a thousand miles northeast of Australia, among the seemingly endless sprawling Solomon Islands, Japan is building an airfield on a small speck of land named after the hometown of a long-gone Spanish explorer, Guadalcanal.
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Yes, Ernie wants to attack the Japanese-occupied island of Guadalcanal, and fast.
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But that isn't his call alone.
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There's a bureaucratic power struggle in the Pacific between the branches.
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Both Washington, D.C.
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's U.S.
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Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, and Australia-dwelling Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific area, Douglas MacArthur, think that the Army should call the shots.
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Naturally they do, and Doug has his own plan to hit Rabaul in the Japanese-held territory of New Guinea.
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But the Navy's Comich and CNO-in-One, Ernie King, and the Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Ocean Areas, Admiral Chester Nimitz, see this mostly water-filled theater of war as theirs.
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And Ernie is definitely convinced that his Guadalcanal idea is the better path, meaning those army boys need to fall in line.
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Well, let the inter-conflict begin.
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Doug is livid.
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The pipe-loving general sees this as confirmation of his belief that the Navy wants to elevate itself as the top and primary branch of the U.S.
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military at the expense of the Army.
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Showing 161–180 of 621 · page 9 of 32
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