Quiz 3:

One of the most memorable and significant cases of American history was a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese forces did a quick and deliberate attack that sunk eight American ships and wounded many men and women. Most importantly this attacked was not only spontaneous, but also had a great execution plan which allowed for Japanese forces to withdraw their forces completely untouched. In “Military Misfortunes”, authors Cohen and Gooch present the matter in such way that the mistakes were made due to inability to communicate and to disburse proper intelligence information to naval commander Admiral Kimmel. Communication is a vital part of the military planning and lack of “Knowing your enemy” can be catastrophic. Inadequate communication also leads to inability to attack enemy weaknesses and to avoid strengths, which United States failed to do, but on the contrary was mastered by Japanese forces during Pearl Harbor. Another mistake made during in 1942 attack was the inability to mask critical, American, plans and keep them secret. By lack of communication and inability to protect secret information both principles of war were a failure resulting in death of many people and dismissal of potentially good commanders of Naval and Air forces.
Principles of war include deliberate planning and analyses. Another example provided in “Military Misfortunes”, was a mistake of German Army on western fronts during 1918. German supreme command put together thousands of