Trent Telenko Profile picture
Apr 30, 2021 33 tweets 13 min read Read on X
Two days ago plus a further 76 years (27 Apr 1945) the capstone logistical catastrophe of the Okinawa Campaign occurred.

The US Army ammo ship SS Canada Victory was given a berth far from the shipping off Hagushi beach by the SOPA. She was struck & ignited. The 7,400 tons
1/
...of artillery ammunition aboard her burned.

Nor was she the only Army ammo ship damaged off Hagushi Beach 27 Apr 1945.

The SS Clarksdale Victory was also struck by Japanese artillery & the SS Bozeman Victory took rudder and propeller damage from a ram from another ship...
2/
...maneuvering during the 27 Apr 1945 air attacks.

This is how page 36 of "Contribution to Victory - The Distribution and Supply of Ammunition and Ordnance in the Pacific Theater of Operations" describes the impact to the Battle of Okinawa.

3/
That 21,000 tons of ammo lost to sinking's number comes from the 2nd volume of the Tenth Army AAR here:

4/
The 21,000 ton number was very much soft peddled in the US Army Green book THE LAST BATTLE to make out -- by shell numbers -- that the horrendous damage done to 10th Army firepower at Okinawa...wasn't.

5/
Bar charts like that are why people say things like: "There are lies...

There are dirty lies...

And then there are statistics.

6/
Speaking of lying with statistics, attached is the 1st page of encl. 3 in the 10th Army Ordinance staff section. It lists ships, their ammo tonnage, where loaded, arrival date plus their beginning and ending unloading dates.

At 7,400 ton per sunken ship, there were 22,200...
7/
...tons of artillery ammo lost, not 21,000.

Nothing like "Rounding Errors" that magically disappear 1,200 tons of Army artillery ammo that got blow up because the US Navy Senior Officer Present Afloat refused to protect the ships carrying them.

8/
I've already had a thread on that here for more details on USN SOPA doctrine in WW2.


9/
This thread is a deep dive on what this 'capstone logistical catastrophe' in the 10th Army artillery did to the ground campaign on Okinawa & it's impact on Operation Iceberg Phase III operations.
10/
I've spoken in the other thread on how the loss of mortar and VT-fused ammo robbed 10th Army of the ability to engage the defilade dead space on the back of hill masses at Okinawa.

Photo source: FM 7-90, Ch7, Fig7-3 Artillery Dead Zones
11/
There was another very deadly detail in this wanton destruction of artillery ammunition...the data cards.

The 1996 version is shown attached.
12/
Ammunition data cards have fine details of manufacture that are essential for accurate placement of shellfire & screening out bad Mfg lots.

Photo clip from DODIG-2016-084
media.defense.gov/2016/Apr/29/20…
13/
The destruction of the three US Army Victory class ammo ships forced 10th Army to spread III Marine Amphibious Corps artillery & AA ammo across dozens of US Army artillery & anti-aircraft battalions in Mid-Apr 1945.

14/
The mixed ammo lots issued to some units were causing issues for ballistic computation.

One US Army 90mm AA gun battalion was firing ammunition from three different lots!

These AA gun battalions were the lucky ones.

15/
April 1945 was before the age of electrostatic copying. Ammo cards of that era were a typical triple copy carbon paper.

Mimeograph machines were heavy, required special chemicals plus paper to copy with...and 10th Army didn't plan print more cards.
16/
Tenth Army staff thought it brought more than enough ammo not to need to spread lots between gun battalions.

This meant that the initial infantry assaults on the Shuri line starting 9 Apr 1945 not only lacked dead space preparation. The artillery ammo on hand simply
17/
... could not be risked danger close.

And those were just the tactical effects on Okinawa ground operations.

18/
The operational effects were much larger.

Operation Iceberg was planned in three phases. Phase 1 - the taking of southern Okinawa - was to be 30 days.

Phase II - the taking of Ie Shima & Northern Okinawa - was to take another 30 days with only 40 days of heavy
19/
...artillery combat between them.

Taking Southern Okinawa took 82 days versus the 30 planned, and the US Navy lost 22,200 tons of artillery ammo intended to fight it.

20/
Okinawa occurred in the middle of a world wide US Army shell shortage. Worse, it was after General MacArthur's assault on Spanish Intramuros fortress in Manila.
21/
There simply was no more US artillery ammunition anywhere for General Buckner to draw upon until after the Germans surrendered...and it would take 45 to 90 days from a US port of embarkation to Okinawa.
22/
General Buckner's logistical "bill payers" to complete Okinawa phase I were all the Phase III Operations.

In Feb 1945 Phase III A (OKINO DAITO JIMA. THREADWORM) and Phase III B (KUME SHIMA/KNOWLEDGE) had been cancelled to concentrate on Okinawa Phases I & II.
23/
Iceberg Phase III C (MIYAKO JIMA/ADJUTANT) was a 3 division assault by III Marine Amphibious Corps planned for 1 June 1945 and was to build 2 Ftr Strip & 1 HB Strip.

It's cancellation on 27 Apr 1945 freed up 21,200 tons of artillery for Okinawa Phase I.

24/
That this was almost exactly replaced the 22,200 tons of artillery ammo lost in the burning hulks of the SS Hobbs Victory, SS Las Vegas Victory & SS Canada Victory the day the last of them sank was just a..."happy accident."

And Joe Izuzu has a truck to sell you.
25/
The next two Phase III operations cancelled were Phase III E (Tokuno/ADJOURN) and then Phase III D (KIKAI SHIMA/FRICTION).

Both were reinforced division sized assaults and neither had the ammo tonnage payoff that MIYAKO JIMA/ADJUTANT did.
26/
Essentially the German surrender on May 7, 1945 allowed Adm Nimitz to commit all of his Marianas theater artillery stock to complete Okinawa. Since his theater was now America's top priority for replacement artillery ammunition.
27/
The price of these Phase III invasion cancellations can be seen in Olympic May 1945 and June 1945 air coverage maps.

This map shows convoy air cover from KIKAI SHIMA/ FRICTION vs Okinawa (green lines).

The former covered Kyushu beaches and Okinawa did not.
28/
This Operation Olympic planning map is from June 1945 & shows completely changed planning assumptions. Land based airpower will no longer provide air superiority coverage.

These ranges reflect long range strikes against fixed targets vs Japanese strike ranges.

29/
The US Navy had signed up for providing air superiority over Kyushu beaches for 10 days in Operation Olympic until land based air could arrive in force.

30/
The massive Japanese troop build up on Kyushu in the final days before Japanese surrender was such that General MacArthur pronounced that it would take 20 days, not 10, before land based air would arrive in force.
31/
Whether it was 10-days or 20-days.

But for the miracle of the A-Bomb, the price of CentPac's failure to protect General Buckner's artillery in April 1945 was placing the entirety of the US Pacific fleet into a Kamikaze kill jar.
/End.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Trent Telenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TrentTelenko

Aug 19
I've gotten a lot of comments on this thread here and via DM. I'm going to share one from a Cold War gray beard on the engine that powers the FP-5.

"FP-5 is around 4 x Tomahawk in mass.

FP-5 Engine🧵
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.

2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Aug 19
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden

This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.

1/
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...


2/rand.org/pubs/commentar…
...was Jake Sullivan's totem animal for surfacing ideas of "de-escalation" with Russia.

Former Estonian President Ilves and Prof Stephan Blank utterly shredded the Charap/Sullivan thought balloon.

Seeing Trump revive that Charap/Sullivan thought ballon now is sickening🤮

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 18
The issue for Russia with the FP-5 is that its range makes Russian national air defense practically impossible.

Ukraine can reach facilities on the other side of the Urals and north to Murmansk with the FP-5.

Once Ukrainian drones overwhelm a border SAM battery sector.

1/ Image
FP-5's sent through the drone peak saturation area can 'squirt through into a great empty' low at high subsonic speeds.

Only an AWACS with late production SU-30 with look down/shoot down PESA radars can deal with them.

H/T @DrnBmbr
2/ Image
Furthermore, FP-5's are going to have electronic counter measures (ECM) and counter-countermeasures (ECCM) installed as standard.

The FP-5 will have at least a 24 element CRPA element layout to beat GPS jamming...

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Pres Zelenskyy of Ukraine just made an interesting statement:

"Let me give an example from yesterday, roughly like this: the Russians suffer about a thousand losses per day — that’s 500 killed and 500 wounded.

1/
I’m not even counting the 10 prisoners and so on. More precisely, 968 losses for Russia: 531 killed, 428 wounded, and 9 captured.

We had 340 losses in one day: 18 killed, 243 wounded, and 79 missing in action," he said."

2/
500 Russian KIA versus 18 Ukrainian KIA is a 29.5 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

Total Russian casualties of 1,000 versus 340 Ukrainian is a 2.9 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Actually, the Soviet Union in the "Great Patriotic War" did suffer worse casualties and win.

It is that fact which powers the "Russian WW2 exceptionalism" myth that Putin used to zombify Russians over 20 years to make suicidal assaults over and over again.

1/
I said something like what Chuck just said about Russian casualties in July 2024.

Chuck now, like I did then, underestimates how powerful cultural conditioning is in making armies able to take horrific losses and continue.

2/
As long a Putin's propaganda keeps Russians believing they are winning by taking miniscule slivers of Ukrainian land.

The Russians will keep coming.

It doesn't mean Russia will win. It means Russia is paying a disproportionate blood debt which will have to be paid.

3/
Read 17 tweets
Aug 11
The map below underlines a real innumeracy issue with lots of Western analysts of Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign.

BLUF: 40,000/52 weeks is ~769 Ukrainian OWA drones launched a week on average for the whole year.

Ukrainian OWA Drone🧵
1/
Historic war mobilization production curves are heavily back loaded.

That is, the production rates of B-17's and B-24's bombers in the 3rd quarter of 1943 versus the 3rd quarter of 1944 showed a much higher production rate in late 1944.

2/ Image
Image
We are mid-way through the 3rd quarter of the 2025 where Ukraine's OWA drone annual production goal was 40,000.

Ukraine should be around 850-950 OWA drones a week in August 2025 and will be close to 1,200 a week in the 4th qtr. of the 2025.

3/
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(