Sarah Paine

Okay, great.

So I guess the idea of secrecy and surprise, normally you apply that to your enemies, not your sister service.

But that's how it works in this setup.

Now, the army does come around to the Navy plan.

Why?

Because they get walloped by the Russians on the Mongolian border at the Battle of Nomadhan.

The Russians just decimate them in 1939.

So now,

The army says, OK, OK, maybe that southern advance thing wasn't such a bad idea.

And so the Navy thinks this is great and they do their southern advance.

They go zooming down.

The Japanese mind over matter stuff seems to be going really well.

Because in 1942, the Army takes more land or more dispersed theater than any country on the planet.

The Navy hasn't lost a single ship.

I mean, it's looking really good.

Except there are a few little details here that are a problem.

What the Navy hadn't told the Army is that actually they weren't ready for this whole thing, that they needed this outer perimeter reinforced by airfields in order to make the thing work.

And that wasn't complete.

And the Army learned about this on August 17th, 1942, because one of these airfields was being built in this tropical nightmare called Guadalcanal that

the United States knew about, even though the Army didn't.