Unpack the moving van.
The track record for the previous assaults on less defended beaches & a high tide assault was a lot less costly, in all respects.
This was a combination of defender inexperience and uncertainty in the Mediterranean. Also weather effects. The similarity between Salerno and Omaha has been commented on frequently, so it may also depend on defender quality at the chosen landing site as well as weather.
Given the Mediterranean is effectively tideless, I'm not sure about a preferred practice. A bigger difference was the switch to daylight landings to use heavy bombers and naval bombardment.
Given the expected chaos of huge multi-beach landings, troops need to see. (UTAH they missed by 1400 meters.) so daylight is a late war necessity.
Naval bombardment was about equally effective at night. Generally with preparation fires you are attacking suspected targets the intel people think are good. Once you get a good navigation fix accuracy is similar. Theres a difference between day and night with spotting teams ashore, but the accuracy is the same once the team identifies a target. Daylight or bright moonlight make it easier, but once you get a navigation fix on a landmark the rest is gunnery. For air support its a different story. Radar bombing was not well enough understood, & they screwed it up in a major way on OMAHA beach. In hindsight they'd had less risk using the heavy bombers suppressing artillery and assembly areas or supply depots inland.
Depends on the platform characteristics and THE COMPUTER. US gunnery will be more accurately computed than UK, but inherent shell drift and dispersion from naval US gun salvoes was a huge problem the RN had much less to correct. This obviated USN advantages out. Slight edge RN, unless it was really close and almost direct fire. Then you were a dead defender.
California politics at this time was dominated by Republicans (including former Progressives like Senator Hiram Johnson). Then-Governor Culbert Olson was the only Democrat from 1898 to 1958. Republican State Attorney General (and future Governor) Earl Warren was a notoriuos advocate on internment (and confiscation of Japanese-Americans' property). It was a bipartisan scam.
For 1941...
House seats by party holding plurality in state
80+% to 100% Democratic dark blue
80+% to 100% Republican dark red
60+% to 80% Democratic medium blue
60+% to 80% Republican medium red
Up to 60% Democratic light blue
Up to 60% Republican light red
Blue (light or dark) is democrat, Red (light or dark) is republican, striped is 50/50. Source is data on 76th US Congress.
Found here.
IMHO - to make a meaningful difference in terms of Germany's defeat, you need a '43 invasion.
What needs to happen to make that possible:
- Battle of Atlantic needs to be won earlier - earlier Escort Carriers and/or LRMPA,
- earlier success in the Desert, with also earlier Torch (brings France back in - otherwise French Forces in NWA sit out the war),
- earlier, better British tanks - though having said that Comet/Black Prince feasible summer '44, but '43 would be very hard going!!
- quicker US decision making over what next after North Africa secure,
- if any landings on the Italian mainland unless little resistance Foggia airfields main target, and security zone.
- aim for near simultaneous landings on Normandy and South of France - anytime between June & August 1943.
- other problems - will the Allies have good enough 'Air Superiority'? Or is Air Supremacy' possible?
a. That depends on a pre-war RN that knows what it is doing. Otherwise you are stuck with the RTL mid 1943 outcome.
b. Never going to happen with Churchill.
c. Possible, but IGS needs to be reshuffled in 1938. And DTOE or whatever its British equivalent is needs to be restructured from COL on up. Or else the Americans in 1934 get Christie to quit farting around and adopt the M1932 and turn it into the American version BT-5 complete with 6 pounder or US equivalent.
d. Get rid of Churchill and go for Sicily immediately.
e. Naples and Sardinia. Fire Montgomery if he screws up like he did during Haystack, to chastise him and then bring him back when he gets "the message". Fire Clark IMMEDIATELY and put in Hodges.
f. Not enough sealift. More emphasis on topology, combat engineers, and "Funnies", better CAS and FIRE BRADLEY. Replace with Devers.
Someone in charge clearly never understood the Intelligence Cycle. The whole process is irrelevant without Dissemination. However. No matter how good the Intelligence folk may be, it relies upon the users taking notice of the briefings. One of the less obvious roles of Intelligence is to make the tactical people lift their noses off their local maps and look around to see the wider picture and notice what the enemy are doing not just themselves. To be fair it can be hard enough to keep a grip on your own folk never mind the hirsute bottomed enemy as well. I recall in my early days being told that all you can do is tell it as it is. It is up to the commanders to make the decisions. All you can do is cry into your tea over the consequences. An Intelligence briefing, no matter how formulaic, has an element of a sales pitch. Poor commanders manoeuvre their own troops. Good commanders manoeuvre the enemy troops.
Sun Tzu.
For one thing, by now, I am something of a Mark XIV (I know it is Mark 14 in the modern literature, but in the 1930s, it was Mark XIV) EXPERT, so your citations are interesting examples of how "known facts" are wrong.
1. The Mark Mark 6 influence feature of the Mark V exploder had a settable rheostat in the prototype that would have allowed setting sensitivity to local conditions. THIS was tested in the shakedown cruise of the USS Indianapolis and it was found to be "somewhat effective" for the KNOWN longitude variances in the Earth's magnetic field. the feature was deleted as unnecessary and complex over LTCDR Ralph Chrisitie's objections to save money "because test results indicated an additional failure path that would not justify the added expense and complexity in the exploder".
2. The reason that Japanese propellers (not engines---PROPELLERS (duralumin alloy unknown to the Americans, Japanese invented and not duplicated until mid 1943) were chopped up and milled in Pearl Harbor machine shops, was because the lightweight pins so milled were not as heavy and were STIFFER that the STEEL pins used in the torpedo firing mechanism which was set SIDEWAYS to the direction of Mark XIV torpedo travel instead of inline like German, and Italian percussion triggers.
3. Torpedo warhead weight was properly calibrated to the new filler weights. What caused the depth error, was the placing of the hydrostatic valve flow sensor IN THE WRONG LOCATION (aft power unit) as in the previous Mark X rather than midbody as it should have been. There was a Bernoulli effect pressure drop that caused the torpedo to sine wave as its pendulum steer control oscillated back and forth rocking the torpedo. This was discovered in the MARK X late 1942 and it was Bu-Ord realized belatedly that the MARK XIV and her sisters had the same problem. That took a half year to fix.
4. Tail control was bang-bang and this produced circle runs. Never properly fixed as it would have made the torpedo too long to fit the tube.
5. Same for Einstein impact bumper. Make the torpedo too long.
6. Quick fix was an inertia hammer arm electrical detonator circuit added to the exploder. It did NOT work.
7. Final fault? (Also never properly fixed.) the inspection ports in the power unit leaked into the depth control and the gyro direction modules.
8. Postwar a whole new guidance (artificial horizon) power unit and warhead front end had to be designed and built for the surviving stocks of Mark 14s.
Anyway Zeros be damned the real prize was Armin Faber getting his North from his South mixed up over Devon/ Cornwall and mistaking the Severn for the Channel and landing his fully intact FW190 in Wales
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Faber That has a massive impact in the design of allied planes.
The Kurt Tank power egg. First out of the box. Grumman. HELLCAT. Analog altimeter based fuel mix settings.
The connection with the Battle of the Atlantic has been the subject of the bulk of the historical writing about the Engima decrypts and the ULTRA system. I suspect the most profound effect was the use of ULTRA decrypts by the Deception Committee, the group that ran the bulk of the Brit/US deception ops. Specifically they examined decrypts of the material between the senior German commands for clues about the effects of their efforts. A feedback loop was created allowing the commanders or managers of the assorted deception ops, particualry the Double Cross system than so ensnared Hitlers attention. Combined with evaluations and advice from psychologists he deception ops were continually refined to manipulate Hitler and his senior commanders into dispersing the defense of western Europe.
Fortitude has already been mentioned, but long before Monty began relying on Ultra for some of his best work, there was this English magician who was hired to perform such legerdemain as hiding Alexandria from Italian and later German bombing raids. EW misdirects based on light shows, and other "tactical" gimmicks that predate El Alamein, such that one wonders WHY the Germans who must have learned something from these earlier British tricks; kept falling for such obvious deceptions as 1st USAG, the man who never was, and so forth.
