justinpykehistory.bsky.social
MA in History. Studies intelligence, sea power, air power, and the Asia-Pacific War. Researching U.S. intelligence assessments of Japanese air and sea power, 1919-1941. Andor appreciator and PC gamer.
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Games were a huge influence on my historical journey for sure.
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Thanks! I have not read any of those actually, so I can't comment. :P
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In duck fat of course.
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At this point, I think the main reason @milavhis.bsky.social won't come visit is he knows I'd give him a heart attack within days.
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Yeah, oil tank sides are pretty thick. The tanks also have floating tops (to prevent flammable vapours), fire suppression systems, berms, etc. Heavy fuel oil doesn't just explode easily either. It takes some work, like bombs, to light them up.
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Yeah, I very much like this section of his book but I have various issues with other parts just depending.
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I finally bought Warhammer III after ignoring all of them for nearly a decade. It's been a blast.
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I'd like to see comprehensive analysis one day on losses of Japanese ground crews and its impacts. I've seen bits'n'pieces where the Japanese note it was becoming a serious problem that so many mechanics, etc. were being killed or otherwise trapped on bypassed island garrisons as the war progressed.
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My views in summary:
1. The attack on Pearl Harbor was revolutionary and mostly successful.
2. There's certainly stuff to critique. I think the mishandling of the second wave dive bombers was the most acute.
3. A "third wave" was never planned, nor was it tactically sound. Nagumo was right.
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The critic expectations of what Kido Butai could accomplish in Dec 1941 is a level of destructive power that would have been an optimistic stretch for Task Force 38/58 at the height of its power in 1944-45. The attack on Pearl Harbor was revolutionary for its time, but it was still "only" a raid.
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A similar pattern occurred with the Historiography of Midway, where historians unintentionally glossed over the catastrophic loss of four fleet carriers to make a mountain out of a molehill of losing a little over 100 aircrew. I'm not the first to notice, Parshall and Tully point it out as well.
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Throwing my own observations in now:
The warships themselves were strategic assets. Ships are hard to replace, even for the US. They take months to repair or years to build. They were worthy targets and I think historians are too eager to skip over this and over-focus on other things.
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Trying to comprehensively destroy large shore facilities is even less realistic. Kido Butai did not have the amount of ordinance needed to comprehensively destroy the machine shops, drydocks, etc. As anyone familiar with strategic bombing can tell you, these are harder targets than you think.
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Focusing on the fuel tanks for a moment. Even if the Japanese had optimistically destroyed 60% of fuel storage, that wouldn't have created a bottleneck that would have inhibited fleet action. As Jon and I note in the video, a far easier and better way to do that would have been to bomb Neosho.
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Zimm eviscerates arguments that the Japanese had the ability to neutralize the air power on Oahu, devastate the fleet, destroy 54 large fuel tanks, 500 acres of shore facilities, and a power station. He also outlines the regenerative abilities of many of these targets even if they had been hit.
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Genda notes this as well. There was consideration in early planning to hit port facilities, etc. They were on the target list. However, Genda rightfully concluded that hitting some targets as decisively as possible was better than hitting a bunch of targets half-heartedly.
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Damn!
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Hahaha, I don't want to oversell my contribution! Jon's fantastic as ever, but I really don't talk too much this time around. He was on a roll and I didn't want to interrupt him! I could definitely say a lot more on the subject, but maybe another time.
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Lol, yeah.
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Yeah, Scarif in particular is still fantastic.
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One thing that felt worse upon my post-Andor rewatch is the stuff with Cassian and Jyn at the end. It never felt right because they didn't have chemistry at all, but it feels extra weird with Bix in the picture. I know the final cut doesn't outright ship them, but it leans heavily in that direction.
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Yeah. I don't want to totally shit on Edwards, because I think Rogue One is still the best looking Star Wars movie in large part due to his direction. It's painfully obvious while watching that there were major creative differences. Lots of weird scene-to-scene tonal shifts for example.
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A lot of newer Star Wars media has reduced individual Stormtroopers to such a negligible threat that they cram more Stormtroopers on screen for the heroes to plow through in a desperate bid to create tension. This conversely makes the Stormtroopers even more embarrassing when they inevitably fail.
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Yeah... I've been toying with the thought of putting together a video essay on Andor given I spend enough time thinking about Star Wars (lol), and if it happens I want to dig into the depiction of the Empire over the years. I might call it the "Stormtrooper inflation spiral."
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I really appreciate that even a big bad like Tarkin is written and played straight, which grounds him in the universe. Yes, he's one of the worst people in the Empire, but Peter Cushing still doesn't chew the scenery. Contrast with some of the worst Star Wars baddies, like Grievous. Even the name...
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Yeah, she was the biggest victim of the two season structure IMO. Pretty much everybody else gets out OK, which is impressive, but with Bix they made her suffer, speed-ran the recovery part of her arc, and then yeeted her out of the show. At least they didn't kill her to make Cassian sadder.
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Never too young to learn about OPSEC.
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A good Andor S2 example is the use of "Grand Moff" when talking about the Tarkin Massacre. People in universe know Tarkin as an infamous contemporary figure with the title of Grand Moff. They aren't thinking about how technically he was only a Moff when the massacre occurred in canon.
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I have a historical education, so I like when fictional universes investigate how people in those universes are thinking and speaking about past events. This is a key aspect of ASOIAF, as you note. I still really want to read The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire for that reason.
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Yeah, it potentially could be? I'm not as familiar with different worlds on the fantasy side of things, but your point does track from what little I've been exposed to. There's often a historicity to many fantasy universes that sci-fi universes don't always pay as much attention to.
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I've mentioned elsewhere that there's often an expectation that all characters in fictional universes, regardless of context, will always speak with 100% accuracy about lore factoids. If they don't, it's a obviously an "error." This is entirely at odds with how people talk about things in real life.
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The implication that Lagret, as the senior ISB captain, likely replaces Partagaz is perfect. He's a mediocrity who never thought outside the box for a single second of his entire life and his sole distinguishing quality is being the right rank and seniority at the right time. He's going places.
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Yup. It's remarkable how good the movie ended up being given all the behind-the-scenes drama. It's the only Star Wars movie I watched multiple times in the theatre.
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I probably prefer Andor season 1 over season 2. S1 is near-perfect in its scope and pacing. S2 was straining under the load of fitting four years into 12 episodes and pulled it off with only a few small stumbles. I don't think it's controversial to say S2E08 is the best individual ep of the series.