Now granted it is largely to the hypothetical Admiral Kimmel staying put after Pearl. Someone had to blame for a catastrophe of that magnitude and it wasn’t gonna be FDR or anyone else. But if Admiral Kimmel had retained control of the Pacific Fleet how do you feel the Pacific War would have played out? I wonder what his vision for a war strategy against the Japanese would have been like. I definitely feel Nimitz was too good a Commander not to be highly involved in the Pacific Campaign and/or replacing Kimmel at some point of the Pacific War but I wonder what everybody thinks.
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I think he was as competent as anyone else, but he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe his experience with cruisers could have prevented the great naval blunders at Guadalcanal. He too would have lacked coordinated Intelligence, he to did’nt know about the Long Lance torpedo, and he too did’nt know that japanese optical look outs would beat the radar in every naval engagement at Guadalcanal.
US had to learn to fight the japanese the hard way, and many more mistankes and blunders had to happen before the Navy had honed its skills as a fighting force.
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